Once A Runner…

Once A Runner Never Fails to Deliver

I just finished Once A Runner for the God-only-knows-how-many-th time I’ve read it. By the time the duel between upstart Quenton Cassidy and world record-holder John Walton reached its fever-pitched climax, I was ready to throw the book down and blow out the door for a burn-down-the-demons run myself. Ah, if only I could.

Regardless of the fact that I can’t run right now, reading Once A Runner seriously makes me want to run again all the more. Yeah, it was nice to get swept up into and carried along by the excitement of John L. Parker, Jr.’s writing. He does a damned fine job of describing the racing, for sure, and he gives a very good picture of the training involved in just getting to there to toe the starting line for the race, too. It’s a cult classic for a damned good reason. It speaks directly to the runner. And I hope I never wear out my copy.

So, I picked up my ordered copy of Again to Carthage from the local Borders last night, but I had to finish the obligatory rereading of Once A Runner before I dove into his new novel. I’m really looking forward to seeing how Quenton turned out after all these years, and I hope Bruce Denton and Jerry Mizner show up so I can find out how things turned out for them, too.

I’ll probably not comment on the book until I’m finished. Maybe not until I’ve read it twice. If Again to Carthage delivers a marathon race anything close to Once A Runner’s mile, I’ll probably love it.

Knee Pain

While I set this blog up for myself to track my journey back to running and better general health, I forget sometimes that I’m not as alone in this and related issues as I might feel. I forget that there could be literally thousands of folks out there who’re going through the same thing, or something similar, as I am.

Judging from the search terms used to find this place, there are plenty of people concerned about at least two of the things I’ve posted something about here:

• Burning calories
• Knee ailments

The calorie burn thing I covered in my post How Many Calories AM I Burning?, which linked to a site that explains the whole thing far better than I’m qualified to do.

The knee pain issue is one that affects all of us at one time or another, I suppose. If we’re not searching for help to diagnose, heal, fix, nurse, or rehabilitate knee injuries, we’re looking for how to prevent knee injuries, and there are literally hundreds of places to find help on the web.

Of them all, I find this site: bigkneepain.com seems to be more comprehensive than any other I’ve seen so far. In fact, I’ve decided to put it in my sidebar links, too.

So, now, anyone who lands here because of my stupid post about my having some minor knee aches and pains might also find this post and, through it, I hope it can help them discover something they might find far more useful than me whining about my own problem.

Reading Once A Runner for the Umpteenth Time

Again to Carthage is on order from Borders, so I’m rereading John L. Parker, Jr.’s excellent Once A Runner again. You know, I’m not sure when or where I bought my copy of Once A Runner, but it’s from the Third Printing, November 1978, and it has a Cedarwinds price sticker inside the front cover — $8.95. It seems I’ve owned it forever. I remember reading it many times throughout the 80’s, so I reckon I’ve had it a long, long time.

Anyway, after reading Tom Jordan’s Pre, Amby Burfoot’s The Principles of Running, and thumbing through Hal Higdon’s How to Train, it’s rather pleasant to kick back and visit with Quenton Cassidy again while my homemade beef jerky slowly dries out in the oven over the next six hours.

I need to study Jack Daniels’ “White Starting Plan” with a calendar at my elbow to plan out completion of that program with a sensible flow into following-on with the “Red Intermediate Plan.” Then I can start looking at a reasonable train-up for the Cowtown 10K, but right now I just want to sit here and relive the old days through reading of Quenton’s running.

Yeah, yeah, I’m getting a little antsy after the success of yesterday’s little bit of jogging. I’m feeling pretty enthusiastic, I guess, and maybe a little bit cocky, sitting here comfortably in a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans I couldn’t even begin to button up just a month ago. But — dammit — the legs felt great after yesterday — not a peep out of the knees today — and I’m starting to think this is looking very doable right now. And that is encouraging.

Honestly, I’ll never be even as fast as I once was, nor become as fast as I once had (and wasted) the potential to be, so I’m not pretending I ever will. But I’m feeling very optimistic about just being able to run again within the very near future, given a reasonable period of building up, of course, and keeping my head on straight about properly progressing.

Oh, I just thought of another book I once had the chance to buy but for some odd reason never did — Paul Christman’s The Purple Runner. I’ve been scouring the Internet here and there for it, and even have the local library hunting for it, but I still haven’t found it available at all, much less at a reasonable price.

I’ll probably remember some more books I once read and would like to get my hands on again, but for now it’s time to get back to Quenton teaching Jack Nubbins an important lesson about racing the morning training runs.

I Managed A Little Jogging Today

The wind was howling this morning — 30 MPH gusts — so I waited until the afternoon to walk, only the winds didn’t let up. Too bad for me. I went anyway. The wind was brutal and the wind chill was about 37 or 38 degrees. Guess who forgot his gloves, too?

I drove out to Fort Gordon to use the red clay loop around Barnes Field, figuring it would be softer than asphalt for a change. It would’ve been, but recent rains (much appreciated help with our long drought) had parts of the track compacted, other parts muddy, and the wind had torn down two branches from a couple of the already-blooming Bradford Pear trees that border the parade field all around the inside circumference of the track. One of those branches was quite large — it stretched across the whole track!

I set out on a 45-minute walk, but after clearing the headwind on the second turn I picked it up into an easy jog for a short bit three times with walking between. Then I repeated that on the second lap, with a seventh short jog on the first turn of what would’ve been the third lap. I went about 18 minutes over my workout target — I always seem to go longer than I set on the Nike+ iPod workout. At the end, Joan Benoit Samuelson piped up and congratulated me on a new “personal best” for the mile, and I completed the 5K faster this time around than last time I went that far, too. (Yeah, yeah, I know. But it’s progress.)

So, how did the jogging feel? Pretty good, if I get over the fact that I was lumbering along more like a bear coming out of a rudely interrupted hibernation than like the runner I want to be again. I felt really heavy and slow, which is the truth — I am heavy and slow, but just to pick it up and move a little bit faster felt okay. The knees weren’t much trouble at all, either, so I count it as a great leap forward.

I won’t do that again too soon, though. Getting a little too rambunctious too soon could derail what progress I’ve made so far. Tomorrow will be a longer walk because I really like moving around more on the weekends when I don’t have somewhere to be right away. Saturdays and Sundays give me the opportunity to go a little longer, something I want to encourage to become habit since I’ll try to get in a long run on those days in the future. I might as well try to get it set in my head to go long every weekend now as try to change things later.

So, a little jogging and it felt okay enough that I have hope that I can maybe begin the “White Starting Plan” from Daniels’ Running Formula by early April, just as the weather starts to really get nice. I can hardly wait. That program will carry me through most of July. Then I can start the “Red Intermediate Plan,” after which I should be adequately prepared to start getting ready to run the Cowtown 10K with my brother, Darrell.

The Road Back So Far (Week Four)

Well, here I am at the end of the fourth week of this odyssey. Not that “odyssey” is completely accurate as things haven’t been very eventful, but there has been progress and some of it almost good enough to qualify. It has been long and wandering — or it will be before I’m done — so I guess maybe the word does fit after all.

I’m still a long way from my weight goals. The initial weight goal being to get over the line out of “overweight,” which for me is about 173 pounds. I still have about 15 pounds to go. The goal after that is to get back down to something nearer my weight when I retired from the Army — 160 pounds. I probably may never, but I would love to, get back down to the weight I’ve always identified with serious running shape — about 2 pounds per inch of height. For me, that would be about 140 pounds, but that’s probably just too damned unrealistic a goal to pursue.

The diet has been slightly modified, but is still going strong. I added back in old-fashioned oatmeal for breakfast a few times a week, and frozen beans and corn are back in, sparingly. Oh, and the wife and I now share an English muffin at breakfast, so I get one-half of one. There are “free meals” on the diet plan, so I can deviate somewhat for up to three meals a week but we’ve not done too much of that. We will, though, because we both have missed Tex-Mex food terribly — tacos with very lean ground beef are in the menu plan for this weekend. (I’ll just walk a little farther than usual Saturday or Sunday.)

I’m still not running, and when I try jogging my knees still protest, but they protest less vociferously than they did in the beginning. I hope that is a good sign that I may realize that goal eventually and be able to return to running. It’ll be a red-letter day for me when I can. I’m so looking forward to being able to run again. Just jogging for half an hour would be wonderful, as that is pretty much the end-goal of the Daniels’ Running Formula “White Starting Plan,” a sixteen-week program that is probably a lot like The Couch-to-5K Running Plan or The Runner’s World 8-Week Beginning Runner’s Training Program, except for being twice as long and, I think, would build a good base, as Jack Daniels says, “… as preparation for future, more advanced training.”

I’m still kind of hit-or-miss on the strength training and not really doing a regular routine. I have mostly just hit some work on my quads, gastrocs and soleus, and some upper body work. I’ve been relying on the walking to do most of the rest. I really do need to get more serious about it, though, and not just because the garage gym is sitting out there unused if I don’t. More lean muscle mass burns more calories to maintain itself, which helps lead to greater weight loss and a chance I can keep the weight off.

I had last repeated the wisdom of continuing anything for 21 days makes it a habit, and then I read somewhere that 35 days was when the magic happens. Regardless of which is supposed to be true, the walking has become pretty much a habit now. So’s the diet. Now, I just have to get that to happen with the strength training side of this battle.

Overall, I’m pleased with the progress so far. I want more, of course. I want to be running again. I want to be more healthful and physically more fit.

And, so long as I stick to it, I’ll get there. Patience and perseverance. I’ll get there.

Nike+ iPod Is Gonna Go to the Gym

iLounge has an item posted yesterday that shows Nike and Apple want you to take your Nike+ iPod to the gym with you so you can use it to record your workouts on new Nike+ iPod-enabled cardio equipment. Sounds like a good thing for people who already do the gym as well as those who might want to add some cross-training activities to their program.

The whole story is at News: Nike + iPod program to expand to gym equipment.

When that hits gyms in my area, I know I’d really feel more motivated to get in some cross-training. I’m kind of compulsive about being able to keep track and this would package the gym workout into the overall system for me.

Opening Up the Discussion A Bit

Completely rewriting this post because it just sounded kind of pompous and idiotic the first time around.

I’ve enabled registration for anyone now. I still reserve the right to moderate comments that I find inappropriate, but I’ll try not to be too heavy-handed about it.

I’d like to have the discussions focus on:

• losing weight
• becoming more healthy and physically fit
• the benefits of walking for fitness
• running — both for fitness and for racing
• training
• gear and gadgets that make any of the above easier or more fun
• books about any of the above — fiction and nonfiction

Sometimes, I might rattle on about something else entirely, but I’m going to try to keep this blog centered on these things.

Anyway, the floor’s open to comments.

A New Addition to My Wish List

I found Podophile a couple of days ago, a nice blog with lots of good stuff about Nike+ iPod. And that’s where I found my new watch — or the one that will become my new watch when Nike finally releases it — the Nike Flight+. Podophile has the details in this post: Nike+ iPod Watches Confirmed: New Details and Photos. The Nike Flight+ is the model a little over halfway down the page, a watch that controls the iPod through the Nike+ Sport Kit dongle.

Currently, I wear the Zodiac Sea Wolf that my dad left me during the day, but I don’t risk that baby out on the roads. Instead, I have a Casio with a broken wristband attached to my reflective vest. I wear my iPod Nano (the 3G one) in a Nike Sport Armband and have to wear it upside down to manipulate the controls. Odd, yes, but it works for me that way.

The Nike Flight+, on the other hand, would free me to control the iPod from my wrist. I just think this arrangement would be much more convenient while actually running — whenever I can manage that again. I could continue to wear the armband, of course — but right-side up from then on — and never have to crane my neck to see what I’m doing. And I could choose to carry the iPod in a pocket instead, since the Nike Flight+ becomes the controller for the iPod and I wouldn’t have to actually be able to reach the iPod controls.

Pricey? Yeah, maybe so, but probably convenient enough for me that I’d consider it well worth it. So, it’s going on my Wish List — though it’s probably more fair to say that I will hold it out as a reward I will give to myself once I start running again. Plus, well, it’s a gadget, and I like gadgets.

Update: I was obviously too excited to see the dates on the posts. The Nike Flight+ should’ve already been released last May, but apparently wasn’t. The Nike Amp+ mentioned in the Podophile article is available, though. I wonder if I should just get that one, but it’s not really what I’m looking for. Neat gadget in it’s own right, but the Amp+ doesn’t have all the features I wanted.