TOJ's New e-Book Is Now Available - The Wellness Club: A Journey to Health Beyond Healthcare

I'm happy to announce that the e-book I've been working on for the past nine months is now available at Smashwords and Amazon. It is available in formats from most major e-readers such as Kindle, computers, and mobile devices. 

Readers of tuffoldjock may not know that I was the executive director of a community health center in Colorado prior to moving to Oregon in July 2012. 

During my last year in healthcare, a group of employees got together once a week to explore wellness topics. People in healthcare are no healthier than the general population and we wanted to find out why and what do do about it.

We had lively discussions and watched videos on a host of wellness issues. Many of us embarked on various wellness journeys, e.g., to lose some weight, eat better, exercise more, stress less. Some succeeded, some failed. We had lots of fun and learned a lot.

For only $4.99 you'll get over 63,000 words of cutting edge information on the US healthcare system, nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, and many other topics, plus the links that will take you to the sites we visited during our presentations. We promised that each time we met, we'd learn something we didn't know before. We kept our promise, and if you read The Wellness Club, you'll learn some things too that will change your life.  

You can learn more about what's inside by visiting www.the-wellness-club-medicine-show.com. We're posting excerpts from each chapter over the next couple of weeks.

My wife was a key contributor to The Wellness Club. Together we're soon launching a personal training business, called Cascade Boomer Fitness, in Bend, Oregon. Everything we do will be shaped by what we discovered in The Wellness Club. 

Blood, Sweat and Tears

A couple weeks ago, Bob, a friend of mine and practicing member of the Wellness Club, went for an after-work mountain bike ride. Nothing too technical, just a nice up and down loop to work up a sweat after sitting in front a a computer all day.

Nearing the top of an incline, he realized he didn't have enough momentum and decided to dismount and walk the last few feet. Coming to a stop, he went to put his right foot down, but his shoe cleat wouldn't separate from the pedal, and he fell over sideways before he could get it freed.

Anyone who has ridden trails on a mountain bike knows this happens all the time, and you usually get a scrape or bruise. But when Bob went down, he realized something was different about the fall and pain. He pulled himself up and could see blood spurting out the side of his leg. He looked down and realized he had impaled his leg on the jagged stump of a small tree. Using his cell phone, he called his wife, who was waiting in line at a health food store, and explained his situation. (Thanks to Bob for this picture - ouch!)

He managed to glide back down to the trail head, where his wife picked him up and got him to the emergency room just in time because he was starting to go into shock. After numbing him up and giving him a relaxant, the ER doc stuck his latex-covered finger into the wound all the way up to his knuckle, and then called a general surgeon for a consult. They decided to clean out the deep puncture wound as best they could and not sew him up in order to avoid infection by letting the wound heal from the inside out. They packed it with a ribbon of gauze and sent him home with a prescription for some narcotics to ease the pain.

Bob's healing well and getting off the pain meds, but he can't do much physical activity yet, and this is hard on him. Several years ago and headed towards 50, he decided to get rid of his beer belly by getting in really good shape. He watches what he eats and exercises hard every day, rain or snow. He's a great example of the benefits of eating the right foods and working out regularly. When people bring crap food to work, he avoids it. He's broken through to the fitness side.

When you become really fit, you form an addiction to exercise. If you don't do it, you miss it. You feel sluggish, tired, overweight, anxious, depressed. You crave exercise. That's where Bob probably is now, but won't be for long. He'll heal and be back out there soon.

If you exercise hard (do more than walking), there's always a risk of injury. Usually, it's something minor like a strain, sprain, or abrasion. When you push a little harder like Bob and most TOJs do, the risk goes up, especially if you're fatigued and try to do that one last rep or run a little faster than you ever have before. We all have a boundary that we shouldn't cross and, if we do, will get injured. Part of the challenge of getting fit is knowing where those boundaries are. And almost all people who exercise hard will get injured at one time or another.

The day Bob got hurt, he hadn't reached one of his physical boundaries. He had an accident out on a trail that really had nothing to do with fatigue or pushing beyond limits. Being fit and tough from falling other times helped him be able to get to a place he could get some help.

A couple days after he returned to work, he ran into one of his fellow workers, who's young and very overweight. She asked Bob why he was limping. After briefly describing what happened, she said, "THAT's why I don't exercise."

Over the long run, guess who's at most risk between the two of them? Emergency Rooms are no fun, but they beat the hell out of Intensive Care.

Laughing Out 2010

Laughing is as good for us as fresh green vegetables. No joke. :-)

Sometimes the pursuit of health and fitness can get excessive, manic, narcissistic, compulsive, over the top. Especially when the commercial side kicks in -- performance supplements, health and fitness secrets, exotic equipment, promises of the perfect body, be like... (write in the name of your sports/fitness hero).

So let's end the year with year with a big laugh. Listen to this song called "You're Still Gonna Die" by the Old Dogs.  A classic!

These great lyrics, by Shel Silverstein, don't describe TOJs do they? Ha, ha!

So you're takin' better care of your body
Becoming more aware of your body.
Responding to your body's needs.
Everything you hear and read about diets,
Nutrition and sleeping position and detoxifying your system,
And buying machines that they advertise to help you exercise.
Herbs to revitalize you if you're traumatized.
Soaps that will sanitize.
Sprays to deordorize.
Liquid to neutralize acids and pesticides.
Free weights to maximize your strength and muscle size.
Shots that will immunize.
Pills to re-energize you.


But remember that for all your pain and gain
Eventually the story ends the same...
You can quite smokin', but you're still gonna die.
Cut out cokin', but you're still gonna die.
Eliminate everything fatty or fried,
And you get real healthy, but you're still gonna die.
Stop drinkin' booze, you're still gonna die.
Stay away from cooze, you're still gonna die.
You can cut out coffee and never get high,
But you're still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.


You're still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
Still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
You can even give aerobics one more try,
But when the music stops playin', you're still gonna die.
Put seat belts in your car, you're still gonna die.
Cut nicotine tar, you're still gonna die.
You can exercise that cellulite off your thigh.
Get slimmer and trimmer, but you're still gonna die.
Stop gettin' a tan, you're still gonna die.
You can search for UFO's up in the sky
They might fly you to Mars where you're still gonna die.


You're still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
Still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
And all the Reeboks and Nikes and Adidas you buy
You can jog up to heaven and you're still gonna die.


Drink ginseng tonics, you're still gonna die.
Try high colonics, you're still gonna die.
You can have yourself frozen and suspended in time,
But when they do thaw you out, you're still gonna die.
You can have safe sex, you're still gonna die.
You can switch to Crest, you're still gonna die.
You can get rid of stress, get a lot of rest,
Get an AIDS test, enroll in EST,
Move out west where it's sunny and dry
And you'll live to be a hundred
But you're still gonna die.


You're still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
Still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.
So you'd better have some fun
'Fore you say bye-bye,
'Cause you're still gonna, still gonna, still gonna die.


So have some fun in 2011. Run, bike, jump, pump. Breathe hard, sweat, do that last mile or rep. And laugh.
 
Happy New Year!

Food, Fitness and Fat

"The experts are always telling us to 'Listen to your body!' But if I listened to my body, I'd live on toffee pops and port wine. Don't tell me to listen to my body...It's trying to turn me into a blob!"
                                                                       -- Roger Robinson, New Zealand Masters Runner ***

I guess lots of Amercians are listening to their bodies. Recently the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a study which projects that by 2020, 75% of Americans will be overweight or obese. The OECD is concerned about this because obesity has a direct impact not just on the individual, but on rising healthcare costs. Overweight has a causal connection to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a host of skeletal problems. In fact, obesity can shorten a life by 8-10 years.

The obesity epidemic is occurring mainly in the industrialized world. The causes are well known. Too much poor quality, cheap fast food, too much sitting in cars and subways, too much sitting in front of computers and school desks, too much eating.

The flip side of these "too much's" is too little -- too little exercise, too little eating of more nutritious foods, too little eating of smaller portions, too little rest, too little suport in the workplace for wellness. It was disappointing to see a NY Times article this week reporting that after two decades of federal programs to encourage Americans to eat more vegetables, only 23% of Americans eat even one vegetable with their meals when french fries are excluded.

Luckily, once you get on the path to fitness you start to realize that years of brain-washing by our culture and advertising make it necessary to reconsider all our assumptions about food and our cravings. The food industry, indifferent to the effects of their industrialized products on your body (they leave it to the healthcare system to deal with it), has made it necessary to become more picky about exactly what your body does listen to.

Most Americans are addicted to sugar and fat before they are teenagers (I speak from experience). Our bodies are the product of evolution. Not that long ago, when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, fat and sugar were rare commodities. Our body needs both, but not in the amounts and forms heavily marketed nowadays. We crave them naturally, and the food industry stands ready to satisfy our cravings at a nice profit.

But once fitness becomes a focus in your life, so does food. Strength, endurance, reflexes, balance, ability to rest and sense of well being are all affected by food choices. For a TOJ, food is even more important to ensure muscles receive adequate nutrients to repair and grow and to maintain a strong immune system as the body is subjected to the stress of exercise.

When you exercise frequently and hard, you also begin to rewire your cravings. You become less satisfied by consuming empty calories with few nutrients. Soda pop, burgers, fries and soft serve ice cream pass into history like your youth.


*** Quote from "The Quotable Runner" edited by Mark Will-Weber

Food for Fitness

Emil Zatopek, the great Czech distance runner in the 1950's, once said, "If you come to think of it, you never see deer, dogs and rabbits worrying about their menus and yet they run much faster than humans." (This is from The Quotable Runner edited by Mark Will-Weber, a great book.)


He could have added neither do bears and elephants that are stronger than humans, nor kangaroos that jump further than humans, nor eagles that can see better than humans, nor whales that swim better than humans.


Yet we do. Right now this TOJ is reading a book entitled Power Eating by Susan Kleiner, which packed with references to studies, recommendations, recipes, do's and don'ts, lists, and eating plans. Wow, there's a lot to worry about -- nutrient timing, food combinations, right mix of carbs, fat and protein, hydrating not too much, not too little. You will not find an exercise magazine that doesn't have promise nutrition secrets inside the cover to make you better.


No doubt there's some truth among all those facts and opinions, but you have to be your own ultimate guide when it comes to deciding what you will eat and drink because we are all the same, but we are also different.
I found I felt weak and spacey on a vegetarian diet although Brendan Brazier has developed the endurance and strength to successively compete as an elite triathlete while eating a 100% vegan diet.


Science is uncovering as many mysteries and contradictions as it is certainties. For instance, check out the article by Gretchen Reynolds about "What Exercise Science Doesn't Know About Women" in which she reports a study that made a surprising discovery. The conventional training wisdom is that you can hasten recovery after a hard workout if you eat a mix of carbs and protein. However, the study discovered that is only true for males. Women, in fact, recover faster with straight carbs.


This TOJ likes to stay abreast of current thinking on these topics, but figures it's best to discover what's true for you. I appreciate all the hard work and time intelligent people put into finding some truths about food. But for most of us, nutrition will have a much bigger impact on our health than it will our performance, no matter what physical activities we prefer.


Another quote I really liked was by Don Kardong, an American marathon Olympian in the 1970's: "Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos." Now that's wisdom.

CINNAMON CHOCOLATE BANANA ICE CREAM

5 large frozen bananas broken into chunks

1/3 cup cocoa  or carob powder

1/4 C. agave nectar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

2 to 3 Tbs. water

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend into a thick cream adding water if needed. Serve immediately or place in freezer.

The Discomfort Zone

Another new study shows that you can gain significant cardio benefits from intensity (interval) training in as little as ten to twenty minutes a few times a week. In this study, all it took was ten to twelve one minute sessions on a stationary bike, alternated with a seventy second recovery period.

In a fast-paced, time-conscious world like we live in, you have to wonder why aerobic exercise like running and biking still remain much more popular than intensity training. The reason is likely that, for short periods of time, it hurts.

Intervals push you into your anaerobic zone, where your heart approaches it's maximum rate. You enter a state that is not dissimilar to being in the high altitude death zone climbers experience as they near the summit of Mt. Everest, where they experience a condition known as hypoxia, which is dangerous when endured for a long period (hours) of time.

Most of us don't venture into that zone for an extended period of time, but even if only for a matter of seconds (like when you sprint a quarter mile around a track), it's very uncomfortable as you struggle for breath and lactic acid starts to burn in your muscles, like a self-defense mechanism for you to slow down, whether you want to or not. Being mostly pleasure seekers, we don't go looking for discomfort.

But, more and more, the scientific evidence shows repeatedly going into the discomfort zone for a minute or two is good for your heart and lungs, burning calories, and metabolic efficiency. Interval training is not inherently any more dangerous than long distance running if you don't have serious heart disease (and even then it can be good for you - discuss it with your doctor). Here are some good examples from exercise.com.

The best way to approach interval training is to go slow and gradually build up both the intensity (a heart rate monitor is nice, but you don't need one - you know when you are running out of breath and your heart is pounding) and duration (one minute intervals are a good place to begin). Whether you are going to sprint quarter miles or pump an elliptical, make each repetition slightly harder than the first. On the last few, see if you can spend most of the time in the top end of your discomfort zone because that's where you derive the benefits.

As this TOJ has rhapsodized many times, in the case of running there are other benefits that often puts it at the top of my exercise choices because of the runners high (a real phenomenon) and joy of being outdoors. Plus endurance running, where you go five, ten or more miles, presents its own kinds of pain to conquer in the leg muscles, joints, and feet. And if you race, the discomfort is guaranteed.

Intensity training offers only indirect benefits in any specific sport. Whether road running, trail running, bike racing, or cross county skiing, you have to spend most of your time training the specific muscles used in that sport. There is absolutely no substitute because optimum performance relies on specificity training. Lance Armstrong is a great bike racer, but a mediocre marathoner. Michael Jordan was a great basketball player, but mediocre baseball player. Neither spent the time training in their second sports as they did in the ones they dominated.

A TOJ is interested in good health more than athletic goals. Intensity training is short, sweet, and good for you, and afterwards you can enjoy a beer.

The Art of Falling

When I was a kid, my dad talked to me about how important it was to be able to fall to avoid injuries and taught me some of the basics. That was over fifty years ago.

I have been trail running and mountain biking for a long time. While trail running, I've probably fallen an average of 5 times a year, slipping on ice/snow or tripping on a root/rock. I figure I've fallen at least 200 times in a pair of running shoes.

Here's what I've learned:

Train for your body for falling. Strong hearts and lungs are great for racing, but when you fall you need to have a strong upper body and core to absorb the fall and protect your skeleton. You don't need to be a power lifter. Find a mix of push ups, ab crunches, dumbbell workouts, yoga poses like the plank, exercise balls, kettle bells, and pull ups that strengthens every muscle group from head to toe. Always do some basic exercises where you hold up your entire body weight with your arms at least twice a week. Total body fitness is your best defense.

Learn the art of falling. Sometimes you go down so fast there's no chance to react. Bam, you're down. But usually you have a little time on the way down to help yourself.

• First, you want to disperse the force of the fall over the length of your body, not just one area, like your elbow, hip, or head. Injuries happen when the force is concentrated in one area. You can help by rolling slightly, like a ball, so the force is dissipated over parts of the legs, arms, and back.
  
• Second, collapse into the fall, meaning don't be a stiff plank, but think of yourself more like a coiled spring. All your joints should be slightly bent so each can absorb some of the force. You do not want your arm perfectly straight so the force is transmitted right into your shoulder joint. Instead, bend it slightly so some of the force is absorbed in the hand, the wrist, the forearm, the upper arm, then the shoulder. Steer the hit to your soft spots like your butt (not tailbone) and upper arms, not the hard spots like your head.
  
• Third, touch the ground in the shortest distance and time you are able. Watch NFL football receives and running backs - many times you will see them reach towards the ground as they are on the way down after a tackle. If you are on a steep stretch of trail or on snow covered ice where the odds of falling are higher, get your hands low so they can meet the surface as quickly as possible to start the absorption. You want to make the distance of the first part of your body to hit to be as short as possible because the longer the arc, the higher the force. (A couple weeks ago I was with my daughter, coming down the snow-packed Red Mountain trail in Glenwood Springs. Towards the bottom, we met a guy on the way up who asked a question. When I looked to him to answer, I hit a patch of ice and went sideways. I rolled from outside of the knee, to hip, to hand, to elbow, to shoulder. Not bad pain, it works.)

Practice falling every now and then. Pick some deep grass in a park, an exercise mat in your house or gym, or a pile of snow. Fall sideways and forwards a few times to see what it feels like. Become familiar with the sensation and get accustomed to feeling how to dissipate the force of your body. With a little practice, you will do this without thinking.

When my dad was 76 and legally blind (he had some peripheral vision), he decided he wanted to go on a bike ride with me. No one in the family was very enthusiastic about the idea, but I figured he should be able to do it if he wanted to. So he got on my mountain bike and I borrowed my wife's, and, early in the morning when nobody would be out yet, we rode from Copper Mountain down the asphalt bike path to Frisco.

It's a six mile ride on a gradual downhill. I rode alongside him and would advise him when to brake or that we'd be turning slightly to the right or left. Everything went fine until the very end where we came to a fork and another rider came onto the path and swerved slightly into his lane. He braked a little hard, causing the bike to go over. Riding the momentum, he tucked slightly and, with amazing grace, rolled his aging two hundred pound body off the asphalt into the dirt.

The rider and I quickly dismounted to see how he was. His elbow was scraped and he had a small cut on his cheek, but he was grinning ear to ear. "I'm fine," he said, "I know how to fall."

The Best Weight to Train with Is Your Own Body

TOJs hunt for the best exercise ideas. Among the best are the techniques used by special forces in the military, which has known for a long time that the optimum weight to lift in your training is your own body. Unlike a gym, it's accessible 24/7, no matter where you are. Unlike a free weights, kettle bells, or elaborate weight machines, it's free. Most important, putting your body through these workouts develop strength, balance, power, endurance and flexibility -- the very physical characteristics a TOJ seeks.

Pick up a copy of Mark de Lisle's Special Ops Fitness Training or Andrew Flach and Peter Peck's The Official United States Navy Seal Workout. The exercises may seem basic and mundane. Many you'll recognize as calisthenics from high school gym class that involve lifting, pushing, pulling, squatting, and jumping. Although I enjoy lifting weights once a week, these exercises are superior, and harder, in several ways.




First, they develop functional strength that you need in everyday life or athletic/fitness endeavors. They are total body workouts involving multiple muscle groups, not the isolated hypertrophied muscles you get with standard repetitive weight lifting, e.g., Sylvester Stallone's biceps in Rambo. Bulging muscles are actually useless except for photographs (and big muscles weigh you down when you run and turn to parking lots for fat cells if you don't keep them toned).

Second, they develop coordination from head to toe. Some exercises require the body to be held up like a suspension bridge, others to balance in an awkward position as the muscles burn. Full body exercises fire nerves and pump lymph through your body via muscle contraction, both natural health tonics.

Third, they take you through a wide range of motion, sometimes as a stretch, sometimes as a lift. The exercises include dynamic stretches that are more effective than static yoga poses. TOJs need to make an extra effort to promote flexibility while maintaining their strength.

Fourth, they place an emphasis on the core muscles in the abdomen, lower back, and butt. TOJs don't give a damn about six pack abs like you see on the cover of Men's Health, but they know that because this area of our anatomy is the epicenter from which all strength and balance emanates. Back pain is a frequent skeletal/neurological complaint and is controlled or eliminated by a strong core.

One type of exercise the military regimens encouraged me to include in my weekly routine is jumping, like you see kids and athletes do every day. There are lots of ways to jump, from jumping jacks to star jumpers to frog jumps. There is a whole exercise science called plyometrics (for a quick intro to to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plyometrics) that is based on jumping. It is strenuous, and you need to gradually relearn to do it if you haven't for years.

The benefits of jumping are obvious after a couple of weeks. Beyond the anaerobic cardiovascular challenge (at first you won't jump for long), you develop explosive strength. The muscles must fire hard to get you airborne and the g-forces as you come down help your foot and ankle strength, as well as stimulate stronger bones and good balance. And it's exhilarating -- we're hardwired to jump when we feel joy.

Go slowly with your jumps. Build up over weeks and months. To get started, stand with your feet shoulder width apart and just bounce lightly for a couple minutes with your feet on the ground, raising from your heels up onto your toes. Then as you get stronger, put an inch of space between your feet and the ground. That will acclimate you and lay the foundation for higher jumps. Don't hurry, don't try to jump too high, too soon. Start slow and low, and go higher.

If you're a TOJ, don't expect to do the same number of reps or perfectly match every exercise you see young, exceptional soldiers perform. They are as elite as any NBA or NFL player, and, by most measures, more fit. Go slow. Where they recommend 30 reps, do 10. Do only what you are comfortable with.

Mark de Lisle gives some good advice he says is heeded by special ops during their training to avoid injury. It is doubly true for TOJs -- do the exercises smoothly and with control. If your form falters, stop. When you start to lose your form, it means you are at a level of fatigue where you are at risk for injury.

Navy Seals and Special Ops troops don't stay fit to win multi-million dollar sports contracts or endorsements on TV and in glossy magazines for underwear and deoderants. For them, fitness can be a matter of life and death. If these exercises are good enough for them, they are good enough for a TOJ.

Mick Jagger Receives TOJ Honor

For immediate release: Mick Jagger, lead singer of a music group called the Rolling Stones, has been named a honorary TOJ, a recognition that must rank a close second to having been knighted by the Prince of Wales in 2003. Many hard core TOJs are confused how such a high and rare honor could be conferred on such a skinny runt (143 lbs.) better known for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Thus far he has not commented publicly on the honor; rumor has it he is just too overcome with emotion.

The other night I was watching Martin Scorsese's 2006 "Shine a Light," an entertaining documentary about the Rolling Stones' performance at New York's Beacon Theatre, when something caught my attention -- Mick Jagger's energy as he strutted and danced during the entire concert was mind boggling! He was around 63 at the time. In a concert, you can fake singing by lip syncing, but there's no way to fake the intense workout he put his body through in that performance. A TOJ recognizes strength and endurance when he or she sees it.

I'd seen Jagger perform up close in 1970, and though his stage style was high-energy, but he was limited in his range of movements by microphone cords and a relatively small stage. But when I saw him again on the Voodoo Lounge tour in the 90's, and he had clearly elevated his fitness to a new level because he was performing in Mile High Stadium in Denver, where I've seen many NFL players brought to their knees by the altitude. The stage had long runways extending twenty yards on either side, and Jagger, liberated by a wireless microphone, skipped and ran back and forth, non-stop, all night long. That night I wondered if he wasn't a closet fitness nut, the yin of Keith Richards' dissolute yang, because that level of fitness doesn't happen by accident or just good genes.

The Scorsese film confirmed my suspicion. I went online and Googled "Mick Jagger + physical training." What popped up was an article from the Vancouver Sun, written in the same year, that reported Jagger routinely runs 12km, kick boxes, lifts weights, rides a bike, and practices yoga and ballet. He also eats an excellent training diet that is heavy on low-fat foods and grains. He even travels with a trainer and dietitian like many pro athletes. Read it for yourself at:

http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/arts/story.html?id=7507b298-230f-44a4-a33d-4507247dad3f

Mick Jagger has earned his honorary TOJ membership because he's an inspiring example to young and old alike when it comes to fitness (yes, his love life is another story). You do not need to compete for medals or endorse energy drinks to be an athlete. It's more simple than that: you exercise hard, eat right, and rest.

In the documentary, there is a clip of an interview with a twenty-something Mick Jagger. He's asked if he can imagine himself being a rock singer when he is in his sixties. With a smile, Jagger answers, "Easily." I bet if you asked him today if he imagines himself exercising when he is in his nineties, his answer would be the same. Jagger may be a famous rock star, but away from the stage, he's a TOJ.

Don't Judge a TOJ by the Size of His/Her Shorts

On the Fourth of July over thirty years ago, I was at the start of a five mile race on a then-dirt road that runs along Horsetooth Reservoir, just outside Ft. Collins, Colorado. I had lined up in the second row behind the really fast people wearing singlets and skimpy dayglo shorts. Although I was in good shape and expected run the hilly course in pretty good time, I wasn't a serious racer with any expectation of placing, especially with some of very competitive local runners I recognized in front of me, including one who would soon be one of the top 10K road runners in the U.S.

One guy caught my eye when he took up a position almost right in front of me because he looked like he didn't belong there. He was large, with tent-like baggy shorts and ridge of fat bulging from under a x-large T-shirt. I wondered if he was arrogant or just plain ignorant lining up where everyone most of the field would have to run around him in the first hundred yards.

But when the starting gun fired, he pulled away from most of us and quickly disappeared over the first hill, with the lead pack, in a cloud of dust. By the time I crossed the finish line, he was relaxing with some other early finishers, laughing and drinking a beer. Later when they announced the results, I found out he had finished fifth. He had come within a minute of the winner, the guy who would go on to national fame and a contract with Nike. The heavy mystery runner had come from somewhere up in Wyoming. I never saw him again, but I never forgot him.

I thought of him when I picked up a book called Shape Up with the Slow Fat Triathlete by Jayne Williams, a large athlete who has weighed upwards of 240 lbs. and has also completed over twenty triathlons, among her other athletic accomplishments. I enjoyed her book for lots of reasons. Although it talks most directly to women, the book is full of useful facts and suggestions on training, attitude, competition, clothing, nutrition, and health. With humor and light heartedness, she addresses everything from Lycra and energy gels to hydration and the color of healthy urine. Her words have the authentic ring of experience; when she describes a greasy concoction to help avoid rubbing your butt raw on a bike seat during a long ride, you know she has been there, done that. The core information is pertinent to athletes of all ages and genders, including TOJs.

But it's not the facts that drew me to her book. It was because she conveys such a deep and abiding love for exercise that is shared by every TOJ. Reading her insights, you realize she has fought personal and physical battles to be athletic, starting with being a heavy woman in an body image-obsessed culture and rising to the real challenge of moving that body with skill in one of the toughest endurance competitions. The simple laws of physics dictate that a heavier runner will expend more energy and effort to cover the same distance as a flyweight. And the heavier runner will endure exponentially higher forces on his or her joints, especially the knees.

"Heavyset" and "endurance sports" seem to be concepts that are at odds, but Jayne proves that is just conventional (and wrong) wisdom. Exercise is fun and good for everyone. People of all shapes and sizes love it and have a right to participate in any pursuit they choose. Much of what she has to say about heavy athletes is true for TOJs as well. Until very recently, it was an unspoken rule that as we age, we become less active, as if all there is to do when your hair turns grey is to voluntarily resign yourself to a sedentary life of checkers, knitting and television. The cultural signals are all around us. When you pick up a copy of Runners World, you will never see a heavy runner, nor will you ever see a TOJ.

Jayne Williams gets it -- you pursue your physical passions for your own reasons, whether it's a race or a jog in the park. You will likely never win anything. You may never look sleek or strong. Physical effort might be hard for you and sometimes you might get injured. Other times you will become tired and lazy. Sometimes you train like a Spartan and watch what you eat, other times you eat like a pig. The athletic life is dynamic because your body, the weather, the terrain, skills, techniques, equipment, everything is constantly changing. It's what you have chosen to do, despite all odds. It's how you fill your time, like a Zen master sits on a cushion and stares at a wall.

And after all is said and done, Williams, like a TOJ, feels a great sense of joy, humility, and gratitude. In a book with many memorable lines, my favorite reads: "Simply being able to move your body around is something that should make you feel awed and grateful every day." To that, this TOJ would only add: Amen.