Resilience

Greetings, exercise and wellness fans. TOJ is back, and the book about a year of working on wellness with my former co-workers a community health center in Colorado is finished. We'll release it as an eBook in late spring. You'll find it full of useful health and nutrition information along with stories of real people trekking the winding, upward path to wellness.

Watch this inspiring TED Talk by Charles Eugster. He's a 93 year old, serious athlete. You'll see this is not an oxymoron. He can do 50 push ups in 45 seconds. Wow! His insights on the state of our health and what to do about it are right on.You can read more about him here and discover some other amazing older people.

This TOJ is impressed not by Eugster's physical abilities, determination and message, but what an incredible example he is of our resilience. He's not a guy who worked out all his life. Quite the contrary, he encountered serious health issues, but instead of succumbing, his will to live life to the fullest kicked in and he turned his life into a truly remarkable story.

See? It's never to comeback to life!  Your body is ready, willing and able. Never forget.

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!

Rite of Passage

The year I turned 50, I entered a bike/run duathalon being held in a small mountain town in the foothills west of Denver, Colorado. It was a a new race, and there was a small turnout of 120 people or so. When I went to pick up my bib, the woman at the registration table told me the race would start with the bike segment and pointed to the start area in a nearby meadow.

I went back to my car, took a long drink of water, pulled on my helmet and gloves, then rolled over to the start. I took a position behind the first line of riders with their front wheels on a rope barrier demarcating the start.

I'd been there only a few minutes when a race official came up to me and said, "Sir, you're in the wrong wave. Your wave is the next one back. Look at your bib." Sure enough, "Wave 2" was scrawled in magic marker in the upper right corner. "Sorry about that," I said. He nodded and smiled, and I worked my bike backwards and made my way to the far side of the rope marking the second wave, which was just forming up. Again, I took a position in the second line as other bikers closed in around me.

A voice on a bullhorn called out, "Two minutes to start." I watched as the riders in Wave 1 hunkered down over their handlebars, one toe clipped into a pedal, ready to go. I noticed that all the people in Wave 1 were all young men. There was not a woman to be seen. Then I glanced around my own wave, which was all women except for a couple of older men scattered here and there.

It occurred to me that it was the first time in my life that I had been seeded in a race with women. I was well aware that many women are excellent athletes and many of the young women would easily beat me. I had come to terms with that years earlier when my daughter scorched me in the bumps while downhill skiing.

But still, when the starting gun sounded, and I watched the wave of young men pumping away up the hill, I felt a mix of anger and sadness. Somehow I felt demoted.

When Wave 2 started a few minutes later, we raced across a flat section that narrowed to a single track making a long climb into the trees. The top racers quickly pulled away, and over the next couple of miles the field spread out. It was a bumpy, winding course. The track was narrow, and rocks and trees flanking both sides made it difficult to pass or be passed.

For the first half of the bike segment, I was tailed so closely by a girl that several times her tire bumped against mine. A couple times she called out "On the left" for me to pull out so she could pass, but I just cranked harder and pulled a few feet ahead to tire her just enough that she couldn't get by.

With about three miles left, which was mostly downhill, we were descending fast through a stand of lodgepole pine that hat been thinned for fire mitigation. The trail was brand new, blazed just for this race. On a tight turn my right pedal hooked onto a stump which had been hidden by a clump of grass, and the bike pivoted and hit a tree trunk, throwing me off to the left where I rolled on my shoulder. The girl who had been behind me hopped over my rear wheel and sped down the trail. Luckily, I had fallen onto soft pine duff. I had a few scratches, no broken bones.

My bike had not made out so well. The right front brake was twisted. I pulled it away from the wheel. The front rim was slightly bent, but rideable. I completed the last two miles with no front brake, but had a smooth, slightly out of control, ride despite a wobbly front wheel.

The 5 mile trail run was challenging because of the high altitude and the leaden feeling you get in your legs when you run after riding a bike. Breathing hard and concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, I forgot all about waves.

I finished 2nd in my age group of male TOJs. There were only 5 of us. That was the last time I paid any attention to waves or any other measure. They don't matter. Whether riding alone on a trail or running in the Bolder Boulder with thousands of others, the prize is the joy you feel while doing it, no matter where you start, no matter where you finish.

Book recommendation:

Cycling Past 50 by Joe Friel is a good book for any TOJ, whether a biker or not. The first section provides an excellent overview of physiological changes in older athletes. If you are a biker, you'll find plenty of useful information and inspiration.

Surviving the Medicine Show

TOJs have a natural interest in health so that they can keep being TOJs. In the Information Age, separating the signal from the noise (that's the hip digital metaphor), or the truth from lies (old fashioned knowledge), ain't easy, especially when it comes to how to best maintain your health. There are a few reasons why this is so difficult:

1. The human body is very complicated. Modern science finds more and more to marvel at as it goes deeper and deeper into electro-chemical physical processes.

2. Each of us are more different from one another than science wants to admit. Complex factors like genetics, environment and age can make what is good for one person be poison to another.

3. Science is for sale. In the western world, scientific method is the accepted means by which truth is discovered. But we have also discovered that scientists are not above biases and skewing data (maybe even unconsciously) so their tainted conclusions are eventually rewarded with money, whether it's doctors selling their own concoctions to endowed chairs at prestigious universities.

4. A numbing barrage of advertising promises easy sleep, unbounded energy, four hour erections, etc. Much of it is not true.

So what's a TOJ to do, especially one like me who took a one too many shots to the head playing football and boxing causing my synapses to misfire here and there? I think you need to be skeptical, cautiously experimental, and open minded. What does that mean?

There's a good book by Robert Davis called The Healthy Skeptic: Cutting through the HYPE about Your Health. In addition to a hilarious (he didn't intend this) history of health scams through the centuries -everything from enemas, sexual deprivation, zany diets and food fetishes - he exposes some of the popular ones now like supplements, diet books, sunscreen mania and anti-aging doctors. After each chapter, he provides excellent sources for credible health information. Like him, you've got to dig for facts.

By cautiously experimental, I mean if something seems to have some encouraging evidence, and often it might be anecdotal, check it out yourself. Take glucosamine-chondroitin. I first heard about it from a neighbor and happened to mention it to my brother, who was a professional football player. He said he and other players he'd spoken with found it helped their battered bones. Academics have come out with recent studies that say it "probably" doesn't do anything. In my case it did, and it isn't the placebo effect (and if it were, so what?). I read about the pros and cons, got a reliable brand, varied the dosage, and gave it time to work. My knees feel better.

Finally, by open minded I mean you need to be curious about research and studies going on. I listen especially closely to people who are not being paid to endorse or recommend something. Health care consumes 16% of the country GDP. It's going up every year. The Boomers threaten to break the Medicare bank. Armies of researchers are looking for valid solutions to health problems. More than ever they will be making important discoveries, many of which will help TOJs, and I will discuss here.