Tag: running

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I have been on-and-off reading about “paleo” diet and exercise programs (also called “primal”).

I think there’s a lot to paleo, on an evolutionary basis. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of post-paleo lifestyles that have proven to be entirely successful, in the sense that generations of people have eaten all manner of particular diets and been healthy. (Native Americans ate corn, beans, and squash. Scots ate oats and kale. Lots of people ate rice and lentils.) Given that, and the fact that paleo diet programs doesn’t match well with what I like to eat, I’ve only paid a bit of attention to them. Basically, I’ve let them reinforce my preconceived notions.

I have a similarly divided appreciation of paleo exercise programs, but there I think I’ve worked out what was bugging me.

The half I agreed with is that very short bursts of very intense activity should be a key part of an exercise program. I’ve only made limited moves to incorporate this insight into my own workouts, but only because those sorts of intense bursts are hard.

I suspect it would be a really good change to compress my current 20-minute lifting workout into 10 minutes, which I could do if I really hustled between machines and counted the first set of the three leg exercises that I do as a warm-up.

To do so would require some additional mental toughness. It’s really hard to jump off the leg extension machine with your quads burning, and then jump on the leg curl machine and make your hamstrings feel the same way, and then hurry on to the leg press. Taking an extra thirty or forty seconds between machines to recover is a lot easier. (Not to mention inevitable, if you’re working out in a fitness center where you have to adjust the seat and set the weights on each machine.)

The half I disagreed with is the half that seems to dismiss endurance exercise.

Now, it may be that my reading of paleo exercise programs has simply been so cursory that I missed the paleo version of endurance exercise. But it sure seems to me like a large fraction of the paleo folks don’t merely dismiss endurance exercise, they actively disdain it.

That puzzled me, because it seems to me that the paleo human was the quintessential endurance machine.

As I say, I think I’ve come to understand the objection, which is that you can’t do high-intensity endurance exercise unless you eat loads of carbs. The paleo folks think you should do endurance exercise, as long as you keep the intensity level at a level where you can perform on a low-carb diet. Further, they seem to think that the appropriate level supports walking or hiking, but doesn’t support endurance running.

That’s crazy, although it’s understandable. The modern way of training to run is all about prompting the body to mobilize glycogen stores, by depleting those stores and then eating a high-carb diet to replenish and boost them.

That is not the only way to run. You can also engage in endurance activity powered mainly by fat stores.

Begin bonus anecdote:

When I was in high school, I decided to bicycle to Saugatuck, see a play, camp out overnight, and ride home the next day. I didn’t have a cyclometer in those days, and have always claimed that the distance was 75 miles each way. Google Maps tells me that my route (or very close to it) is 69.3 miles. Close enough.

I knew nothing about carb or fat metabolism. I made no plans to get food along the way, and in fact ate very little.

I headed out early in the morning, did just fine for a bit more than the 36 mile I was used to riding, and then bonked at about mile 40. (Bonking is what cyclists call it when you exhaust your body’s glycogen stores. It’s the same thing marathoners call “hitting the wall.”)

I was exhausted. My speed dropped from 14–17 mph down to 7–8 mph. And it stayed there.

That’s the important part of this anecdote. It stayed there. I rode another 30 miles or so that way. I rode it at less than 8 mph, but I rode it. I got up the next morning, still exhausted, got back on my bike, and rode a few miles to a breakfast spot and ate my only proper meal of the whole trip. It didn’t help much. I rode the whole way home at 7–8 mph.

End bonus anecdote.

If you haven’t trained your body to use fat stores for endurance activity, you’ll be pretty slow—as I was on my ride. And you’ll never be fast the way someone who has trained to build up glycogen stores can be. But with a modest amount of training, you can be plenty fast enough to run.

There are times when it is convenient to be able to run for an extended period. If you want to have that capability, you need to run—and not just occasional short sprints during your walks.

We don’t have much direct evidence of what paleolithic humans actually did, but I have no doubt that, in addition to walking a lot, they ran a lot. The human body is just too well adapted for long-distance running for it not to have been a key capability over an evolutionarily long period.

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Yesterday, I went on my first open-ended run of the season.

On earlier runs, I pretty much knew how far I was going to go and what route I’d follow. Occasionally there’d be a bit of room for variation—I might think, “If I’m feeling good, maybe I’ll add a second lap around Kaufman Lake,” or “Maybe I’ll add the leg out to Bradley and back.” But by and large, I knew to within a few tenths of a mile how far I’d run before I took my first step.

The reason was that every run would take me a large fraction of as far as I could run. There was no chance I’d just decide on a whim to go a few miles further, because I couldn’t run a few miles further.

So, it was a great treat yesterday, to head out for a run with only a general idea of where I’d be running, and with no specific plan how far I’d go.

I knew I’d run halfway down O’Malley’s Alley (the short bit of rail trail that I call McNalley’s Alley), and then cut over into the neighborhood south of there. But I’d had only a vague, somewhat aspirational notion that I’d continue on as far as the trail through Robeson Park. But I knew that the trail would cross several different roads, and that I’d be able to head for home on any one of them, if I decided that I’d run as far as made sense.

In the end, I headed home when I got to Crescent. On some future run, I’ll push on as far as Mattis, and maybe continue on down the Simon trail before heading home.

This run, according to my GPS thingy, came to 4.84 miles, which I ran in 54:15, for an average pace of a bit over 11 minutes per mile. And it was a great run. My feet didn’t hurt, nor did my ankles, knees, hips, or any other bits. I did get pretty tired by the end, but not over-tired. In fact, after a bit of a rest and rehydration, I had enough energy to bicycle 9 miles, lift weights, and do an hour of taiji. (The lifting, I must admit, was a rather feeble effort.)

At over 50 minutes, it was definitely a long-enough endurance effort to produce significant levels of endocannabinoids, which I presume is the reason that my memory of the run is mainly just a strong sense that I was having fun and feeling good. There are only a few spots where specific details are sharp and clear—the spot where I had to back up and run on the grass next to the trail, to avoid a muddy patch, the spot where I thought, “There’s a hill here? How did I not know there was a hill here?” and the spot where I slowed to a walk so I could look back over my shoulder and read a street sign, so I’d be able to make a map.

Speaking of which, here’s a map of the run:

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I do almost no speedwork. Especially early in the season, my entire focus is on building some endurance—getting some daylight between my short runs and my long runs. Still, once I’ve been running for several weeks, I eventually reach the point where I feel like running faster, and at that point I figure some speedwork is in order.

I almost never run intervals. I was never a runner during high school or college, so I never had a coach coming up with interval workouts for me to do. That’s good, in that I never developed an aversion to them. But I also have no first-hand experience with them being a successful way to build speed.

My version of speedwork is what the running books call a “tempo run.” I run the same route that I’d use for an easy run, but instead of running at an easy pace, I run pretty hard.

I do my easy runs these days on the same 1.5 mile loop that was as far as I could run a few months ago. Back in March I was doing these runs in 18 or 19 minutes. In May I broke under 18 minutes. Yesterday, for the second time this month, I broke 17 minutes.

I actually clobbered 17 minutes, so I’m within striking distance of breaking 16 minutes, but I’m in no hurry to actually do so. I no longer think of being able to run fast as a capability that I’m striving to build. I just run because it’s fun. And when I think it’ll be fun to run fast, I run fast. (But, you know, not very fast.)

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A couple of days ago, I was updating my running log and noticed that my cumulative distance for the month so far was 26.2 miles.

I tweeted it, mentioning that my cumulative time spent running that distance was 5:02:53, but my twitter followers are mostly not runners, and I don’t think any of them realized that, to a runner, 26.2 miles is a round number—the distance of the modern marathon.

It’s good for me to see that my short runs do accumulate to some significant miles. It’s been three weeks since I upped my long run to 3 miles, and I’ve started to get pretty anxious to stretch it out to 4 miles. But I once before pushed up my long runs a little too quickly at just about this point (so I could run in a 5.5 mile trail race), and in the process hurt my Achilles tendon—an injury that took more than 6 months to heal. Any little thing to motivate me to keep running the same distance until I’m ready to handle longer distances is good.

I am still boosting my overall distance, I’m just doing so very slowly. My weekly mileage for the last three weeks was 8.5, 8.8, and 8.9 miles. I’ve done 6.1 miles already this week, and will probably crack 9 miles (although I might not, because the forecast high for Thursday is 102℉, and I may just take a rest day).

Longer long runs will come. Just not quite yet.

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My run on Monday included two laps around Kaufman Lake. Among the people that I encountered more than once was a pair of young black men. I don’t know how old they were—in their twenties, I suppose.

As I passed them the second time, one of them asked how old I was. I told him I was 52. He said, “Wow! You’re in great shape!” I thanked him and ran on.

That brief conversation has stuck with me.

First of all, I don’t think of myself as being in great shape, although I’m getting fitter. That particular run went on to be 2.4 miles at an 11:27 pace. That matches the distance of my longest previous run this year, and was actually the best pace I’d managed at any distance in a very long time. (When I’m estimating time or distance, I generally assume a 12-minute pace.)

Jackie pointed out that, if I was right about the men’s ages, their fathers would probably be just about my age. That might well mean that they have a very specific referent for the default fitness level of a man in his 50s.

There are certainly a lot of men in their 50s that are in pretty poor shape, but that doesn’t mean that I’m in good shape, let alone great shape. I’m still quite overweight (although as of a couple of weeks ago, no longer obese, according to the National Institutes of Health). I’m not in nearly as good shape as I was in 2004, when I was routinely running 6 and 7 miles for my long runs, nor the summer of 2005 when I was working my way up to riding a 100-mile bike ride.

Today’s run was 1.5 miles at an 11:22 pace. I’ve been recording my 1.5 mile runs as “easy” runs in my training log, but this was really the first one this year that qualified. The previous ones, if judged objectively (by heart rate, etc.) would rightly have been classified as “hard” runs. But I’m past that stage. I can run along at a comfortable lope and not be maxing out my aerobic capacity.

This is when running gets fun. And maybe that is the same thing as being in great shape.

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Last month I posted a bit on endocannabinoid production in cursorial mammals, pointing to an article on new research that both supports the hypothesis that endocannabinoids are responsible for runners high, and that the whole system may have evolved to encourage and facilitate long-distance running in mammals whose success depends on it.

I found that I was still quite interested in endocannabinoids and running, and a little more research brought me to this 2004 survey paper by A Dietrich and W F McDaniel in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, endocannabinoids and exercise. It turns out endocannabinoids are involved in a whole range of systems, both centrally in the brain and peripherally in the rest of the body.

Some of the things that endocannabinoids do are entirely to be expected by anyone who has any experience with exogenous cannabinoids: pain relief, sedation, reduced anxiety, euphoria, and a general sense of wellbeing.

But other things were new to me:

  • Anandamide, a particular endocannabinoid, prevents edema and inflammation—probably a very useful mechanism. After all, running is bound to produce minor tissue damage to the feet and legs. Those endocannabinoids probably greatly reduce the need to get clever with ice and elevation and compression and anti-inflammatory drugs.
  • Anadamide also acts as a vasodilator and produces hypotension, perhaps facilitating blood flow during exercise.
  • Although in large doses cannabinoids produce motor inhibition, in low doses they produce increased locomotion. It appears that they make it easier to perform motor skills that have been practiced to the point where performance is automatic, such as running.
  • Cannabinoids act as brochodilators, perhaps facilitating breathing during exercise.

On that last point, I’ve certainly noticed that going for a run produces a profound relaxation of my upper airways. My nasal passages are pretty much permanently inflamed due to allergies—to the point that I spent most of last year needing to use a nasal steroid spray if I wanted to be able to breath through my nose. I have no idea if it’s mediated by endocannabinoids, but my nose is much, much more open after a run than it is before a run, and the effect lasts for hours.

One thing I found particularly interesting was an explanation for why cannabinoids don’t seem to be very addictive. They’re involved in the same dopamine systems that other addictive drugs are, and by rights ought to produce withdrawal symptoms when they’re withdrawn. In fact, you can produce those symptoms (in rats), by habituating the rats to THC and then administering an antagonist that blocks cannabinoid receptors. But mere withdrawal of the drug won’t do it, apparently because the drug hangs around in the system for so long that even abrupt withdrawal ends up resulting in a gradual tapering off.

On the other hand, gradual withdrawal is still withdrawal—even if it’s not drastic enough to produce shakes—and endocannabinoids may explain not only runners high, but also the addictive behaviors reported in runners:

We do not suggest that the addictive aspects of exercise are identical with the addictive properties of exogenous cannabinoids, but that a similarity exists between the desire that some people have for exercise and the desire they may have for exogenous administrations of cannabinoids. The parallels between these results and the subjective experiences associated with exercise abstinence, as discussed previously, are considerable.

What led me to this paper in the first place was a desire to get some data on just how much exercise was necessary to start producing endocannabinoids. On that question, the paper does provide a datapoint:

Using trained male college students running on a treadmill or cycling on a stationary bike for 50 minutes at 70–80% of maximum heart rate, we found that exercise of moderate intensity dramatically increased concentrations of anandamide in blood plasma.

That sounds pretty reasonable, although I wish they had data for exercise for 10 to 40 minutes as well. My guess, based on reports of runners high, is that it does take upwards of 50 minutes to start seeing a significant increase, but it’s just a guess. It’d be nice to have some data.

Most unconditioned people can’t maintain 70–80% of maximum heart rate for 50 minutes, meaning that if it’s true that it takes 50 minutes, most people won’t be able to experience this “dramatic” increase. The typical sedentary person would probably have to train for weeks to achieve this level of performance.

So far this year, my longest run was 26 minutes. But it was a great run (unlike my first long runs of the previous two years, which were not entirely successful). I’m quite optimistic that I’ll be able to ramp up the distance without much difficulty.

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Chuck McCaffery and me, after finishing the Allerton Park Trail Race in 2003
Chuck McCaffery and me, after finishing the Allerton Park Trail Race in 2003
Chuck McCaffery and me, after finishing the 5.5 mile Allerton Park Trail Race in 2003. Photo by Jackie Brewer.

I remember back in the late 1970s and early 1980s people were speculating that endorphins might be the source of runners high—and I remember how disappointed they were when experiments showed that exercise-induced levels of endorphins were much too low to produce the reported levels of euphoria.

They may simply have been looking for the wrong class of euphoria-inducing chemicals—it now looks like runners high may be produced not by endorphins but by endocannabinoids. Further, according to a paper in the Journal of Experimental Biology, there’s reason to believe that this euphoria is important enough in improving reproductive fitness that it is broadly selected for in cursorial mammals (that is, those with bodies suited for running). See Endocannabinoids motivated exercise evolution for an overview. (The paper itself was behind an annoying paywall when I originally posted this, but now seems to be available here: https://doi.org/10.1242/jeb.063677.)

This could explain a lot of otherwise hard-to-explain behavior:

. . . a neurobiological reward for endurance exercise may explain why humans and other cursorial mammals habitually engage in aerobic exercise despite the higher associated energy costs and injury risks, and why non-cursorial mammals avoid such locomotor behaviors.

Sadly, the evolved system does not show much promise for turning couch potatoes into endurance athletes:

. . . couch potatoes are not about to leap suddenly out of their comfy chairs and experience the pleasurable effects of exercise, because they probably cannot produce enough endocannabinoids. . . . Inactive people may not be fit enough to hit the exercise intensity that leads to this sort of rewarding sensation.

This is why I’m so pleased at having come up with an exercise regimen that I can persist with over the winter—I enter spring already able to enjoy the euphoric joys of exercise without having to first get in shape.

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I’m of two minds about running for exercise. Except when I’m running or wishing I was running; then I’m all for it.

I used to have a lot of reasons I ran for exercise, but they’ve been dropping away.

One reason that I run for exercise is that I want to be able to run. (Sometimes I want to get somewhere reasonably close in a hurry, and running is great for that.) I always figured that, if I wanted to be able to run, I needed to run for exercise—to build and maintain the capability.

Except, twice this month I had to run to catch the bus, and I did—even though I haven’t been running for exercise since last year. These impromptu bus-catching runs weren’t long runs, but I did them flat-out, without warmup or stretching, wearing whatever shoes I had on at the time—and both times were fine. I did them without undue effort and without getting hurt.

So, it seems that my regular fitness activities are enough to maintain at least a minimum capability for running.

Another reason I run for exercise is that it’s wonderfully efficient. All winter, the aerobic portion of my fitness regimen has been to walk for an hour on the four days a week that I’m not lifting and doing taiji. In an hour I walk a bit over 3 miles. If I cover the same distance running, I do it a good bit more quickly, meaning that I don’t have to spend as much of the day exercising.

Except that I’ve found myself fitting the hour of walking in very easily, without scheduling any exercise at all. There are several local errands (grocery store, bank, neighborhood restaurants) that are about a 10 minute walk each way. To run my slightly more distant errands, I take the bus. It’s a similar 10 minute walk to the bus stop, but that’s typically followed by 10 minutes of walking at the other end as well, for a total of 20 minutes walking each way.

So, if I go on one outing by bus plus one neighborhood errand, that’s my 60 minutes already. Running is efficient, but it’s not more efficient than that.

Less important than either of those, but still a reason I run, is that it gives me a sense of health and fitness. If I have an irrational sense that there’s something wrong with me, going for a run will usually take care of it. (Surely, I tell myself, if there were something really wrong with me, I wouldn’t be able to run like this.) I always knew that this was the sort of false comfort that’s only appropriate when I’m really quite sure that my sense of unwellness is, in fact, irrational. Going for a run is a fine way of dealing with, let’s say, a  panic attack. It’s a really dumb way to deal with a heart attack. (I don’t have panic attacks, but I am prone to worrying about my health unnecessarily. Those worries don’t prey on my mind as much when I’m running regularly.)

The problem with running is that I get hurt. Almost every runner I know gets hurt. To the best of my recollection, I’ve never had a walking injury more serious than a blister nor a bicycling injury more serious than a sore butt. But I’ve lost months of exercise time due to running injuries.

Still, despite the problems with running, and despite the loss of some of my rationalizations for running, I’ve started running again. But I’m doing it a little differently, now that I recognize that my reasons for running aren’t as strong as I’d thought they were.

Now I recognize that I run mainly for fun. I run because I really enjoy it. I enjoy the runs themselves. I enjoy the feeling of tiredness in my legs after a run. I enjoy knowing that I can run further and faster than I’m likely to need to.

If my enjoyment is the main reason I do it, that suggests that I should only do the fun part. So, I’ll abandon any effort to make a plan or set a schedule. I used to carefully structure my runs around an idea of stress followed by recovery. (I’ll still include both stress and recovery, but I’ll just decide each day which is appropriate, based on how I feel.) I used to aim to be able to run a particular distance on a particular date, so I could run in a race. I won’t do that any more. (Although I might run a race on a whim, if I feel like it.)

I went on my second run of the year today. It felt great. My first run, a couple of days ago—merely a good run—moved me to haiku. In the original Esperanto, it’s:

spiro laboras, genuoj doloretas… jara ekkuro.

Which in English might be rendered as:

Breathing hard,
Knees a little tender…
Year’s first run.

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After years of getting into shape during the summer, only to gain weight and lose fitness over the winter, I think I’ve finally put together an exercise program that’s working year-round.

It’s pretty simple:

  • Three times a week we go to the Fitness Center and lift weights, then go to the Savoy Rec Center and do an hour of taiji.
  • The other four days of the week, I try to spend at least an hour walking.

We’ve been very good about the lifting and the taiji—we’ve scarcely missed a session for many months now. I’m a bit less consistent about the walking, but I’m hardly ever entirely sedentary, even for one day.

I often get the bulk of the walking just by running errands in the neighborhood—I can get 10 or 20 minutes of walking just by going by foot to the bank or the grocery store. When the weather is nice, it’s easy to get myself out to walk around Kaufman Lake.

On the grounds of the mansion at Allerton Park.

Even better is when we can get out someplace like Allerton and hike over some more interesting terrain.

At a minimum . . . . Well, it takes seven minutes to walk around the block here in the apartment complex. I can hardly ever get myself to do the eight or nine laps that would amount to a full hour, but I can almost always get out for at least one lap—and once I’m out, I can usually convince myself to do a second.

What’s great about this is that it’s working. For the first time in my adult life, I weigh less in January than I did in October. My usual metrics for aerobic conditioning (running time and distance) don’t really apply, but the ease with which I can do ordinary stuff like carry groceries up stairs suggests that I’m in adequately good condition.

I’m looking forward to summer, when I can get back to bicycling and running, but I’m not waiting for summer to work on my fitness. This is a huge improvement.

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My reflective vest

People treat me differently when I wear my reflective vest.

I bought it four years ago, for when I run after dark. But as long as I’ve got it, I’m inclined to wear it anytime I’m going to be crossing streets on foot after dark.

Last night I was greeted in a friendly fashion by an older black man who called me brother. The last time I can remember that happening was in the 1970s.

My theory, based on that and a few other encounters, is that some people see me and assume that I’m a working-class guy heading out for for some sort of outdoor nighttime physical labor job. If they’re also a working-class guy familiar with outdoor nighttime work, it prompts them to greet me in a comradely fashion.

There’s another common reaction: Many people seem to think I’m “official” in some way. Cars that would have zipped around me in the daytime exercise additional caution, just in case. People make way when I’m going down a hall, in case I’m on my way to some minor emergency. Related to that, surprisingly often people who know me don’t recognize me—they see the vest and don’t imagine that anyone they know might show up in one.

I expect the reaction I’d get would be very different, if I wore a reflective vest designed for runners. I’ve got one of those too, but it won’t fit over a coat.