Clear Goggles and Glad Tidings

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Goggles.jpgA couple weeks back I went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and purchased a set of clear goggles for swimming. All this fall I’d been swimming in the dark tinted lenses that had been so great for outdoor swimming where the sun shone brightly. But when it comes to indoor swimming, dark goggles are not ideal.

I had not run into a wall or anything like that. But part of the joy of swimming is a sense of movement in the water. Dark goggles in an indoor pool cut that sensation down. Even the bubbles don’t appear to move. It’s just you in this blue void, pushing along with your arms and legs. You feel slow.

So the new goggles work great because they’re clear and don’t hide anything from view. There’s a bit of psychology going on, for sure. Compared to the dark goggles, the new ones seem to bear Glad Tidings.

The one challenge with any set of goggles is keeping them clear once you’re in the water. The anti-fog stuff works okay in keeping condensation from building up. But actually, good old spit works just as well. It’s a lot cheaper and it isn’t hard to find. You just spit, rub and wipe it down. Then you’re back in business.

Getting the right fit on goggles can take time. The new pair are a bit tight. When I bought them, I made the mistake of tugging too hard on the strap and part of it snapped in my hand. They still work but I have not focused in to get the fit less constrictive. As a result, sometimes the bones of my face actually hurt. I’ll stop and move them up my face now and then to relieve the pressure. But that’s not ideal either.

Swimming is an interesting mix of such sensations. The right swimsuit can make you feel fast, and yet some serious swimmers add all kinds of drag or resistance to their practices in order to build strength. Drag Swim Trunks are a thing, you know.

So are hand paddles and all sorts of other contraptions invented by swim coaches to force swimmers to develop better form and strength. There are little parachutes that drag behind swimmers as well.

It makes one wonder if someday there will be handicapped swim races just like there are for horse racing. Strap a few pounds to the back of a swimmer and things start to even out a bit.

So if you really want to create a special gift for that swimmer in your life, buy them some sort of torture device that makes swimming even harder.

And in that light, I plan to invent a new device for swimmers called Blinder Goggles. They will be made of opaque black plastic. You won’t be able to see a damn thing out of them, but they’ll look so cool everyone else will want them. Sure, there might be a little more blood in the pool come practice day, but think how good you’ll get at counting strokes. You’ll be like the Pinball Wizard of the Swimming World. That deaf, dumb and blind kid, sure swims a mean IM…

So Merry Goggles to you! And Glad Tidings! Don’t blame me if you hit the wall in your new Blinder Goggles. I only invented them. Can’t be held responsible for that in this New Age of Irresponsible Governance.

light-chrisWant to read more by Christopher Cudworth? Click here to read today’s humorous yet pointed commentary about America’s First White Elephant President. Follow Chris on Twitter (@gofast) or Instagram. (genesisfix) His other blogs include: GenesisFix and The RightKindofPride.com.

 

 

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Tethered to a goal

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

When one thinks about setting and achieving goals, there are a ton of life experiences that feed into that process. At some age in our athletic careers, the transition from raw competitive instincts to setting goals has to be channeled. Sometimes that is the product of being enrolled with some kind of program, team or sport that calls for goal-setting.

 

Yet some our most important goal-setting experiences are found outside the realm of formal programs or your chosen sport.

Playground tough

 

MartinMeylin Gunshop.jpg

We never really recognize it at the time, but schools like the one I attended in 7th grade are named after actual people like Martin Meylin, the man who produced the Pennsylvania Rifle. 

As a lean 7th-grader at a middle school named Martin Meylin Junior High* in Lampeter, Pennsylvania, I was eager to join in any kind of game or sport. The playground was a giant macadam surface behind the school, and there were tall tetherball poles tucked in the alcove outside the back entrance.

 

These poles were ranked in terms playing ability, as I recall. A tetherballer had to earn their way up the ladder of players to compete on the main tetherball pole.

There were both 7th and 8th-grade students at the school, so the opportunity to compete against older kids was always there. I relished such challenges with all my might.

Gunning for success

After a week or two playing the game, I got really good at tetherball. If you’ve never played tetherball, it’s a bit of a brutal sport in some respects. The game starts with one player holding a ball that is something like a cross between a soccer ball and a volleyball.  The ball is affixed to the end of a rope tethered to the top of a pool that stands about ten feet tall.

The server slams the ball with a fist and then attempts to keep it going so fast the opposing player cannot stop it. If the opponent doesstrike the ball back, it comes flying back the other direction. At that point, it’s almost like a boxing match or martial arts contest. All is a battle of resounding force and direction as both players punch the ball with all their might.

There is no room for error or loss of concentration. Once the game starts, you have to show complete commitment and focus to dominate the game.

Total domination

tetherballThe ultimate show of skill is to serve the ball and never let the opponent touch the ball. This requires a certain amount of finesse. If one can strike the ball at an angle that puts it out of reach on the opponent’s side, and keep it going fast, the rope will make a perfect coil around the top of the pole before the ball swings closer and closer. When it actually strikes the pole, the game is over.

A good player could actively “ace” another player without letting them touch the ball at all during play. I got so good at this that several games in a row could go without an opponent touching the “serve.” You honestly had to be a real bastard, no mercy, to make this happen against a weaker opponent. It could be pretty deflating to stand there helpless as your opponent strung the ball around the pole without resistance. But I did it to many a player with relish.

Inner wrath

Part of this drive I now know came from a deep-seated anger coursing through my veins. While I loved my family there was just enough difficult stuff to make a sensitive kid like me go through life a bit pissed off. All through sixth grade I’d gotten in fights with other kids over this slight or that. Even my best friends fielded my wrath now and then.

I’m not ashamed of any of that. We all deal with emotional rot the best way we can. My choice was to fight back in life. When I discovered tetherball, it served as a relief of all that pent up energy and frustration. In certain school subjects, I did well and in others, I suffered from inattention. Some of that, I’ve learned, was the product of a creative attention disorder. Combined with a natural-born propensity for anxiety, the middle school environment was a perfect brew for reactive anger.

Release valve

So the playground was my release valve. And for several weeks on end, I’d emerge from lunch period to stand at the tetherball pole and face another opponent. I recall the churning feeling in my gut as the lunch period reached its end. That meant I was on the hook to win another set of tetherball games. The previous day’s winner always got first game during recess. And so it went. Day after day . I don’t recall how long the reign lasted, but for a good long while, I was the undisputed tetherball king.

 

ed-radesky

I looked up the guy named Ed that was my playground support. According to LinkedIn, he now runs a video production company. Perhaps he’s always enjoyed a good drama? 

My hands got raw because the ball would often be wet from snow or rain or other elements. As the weeks went by, a classmate encouraged me to toughen up my hands by not washing them. Where he got that idea I will never know. But it worked. How my mother never noticed my toughened hands with that dirt ground into the calloused skin I will never know. What I do know is that she had four boys to raise. Many of our less-inviting habits escaped that poor woman. In any case, I recall holding my hands out to compare them with a friend named Ed who engaged in esprit de corps with my undefeated tetherball run.

 

Reputation

For a while, it felt great to have such a reputation. I’d faced down the best players in the school through some tough matches that went back and forth. But always I’d emerged victorious. This turned out to be a strange and isolating sort of pride. It didn’t make me feel good or bad to win or lose anymore. The goal was just to keep winning.

Then one spring day the weather turned warm and I no longer felt like playing tetherball at recess. Baseball season was coming soon and the allure of standing out in a green field with a leather glove waiting for the ball to crack off a bat seemed so much nicer than standing on that asphalt tethered to the tetherball pole by my hard-won reputation.

Choosing to lose

img_5467So I made up my mind to lose. I don’t recall who became the victor. It didn’t matter anymore. I just wanted out.

The tetherball loss sent a quick ripple through the playground and then it was all over. I didn’t laugh or cry about it. Mostly I felt relief.

Later in life, I’d face similar circumstances in running. When I’d won a few races in a row and finally lost one, it would hurt. But damned if you don’t learn how to adjust. The goal becomes knowing how to deal with whatever life throws at you. Sometimes that reveals your true character rather than the person you’ve imagined yourself to be.

That’s one of the most useful lessons you can draw from sports. Set the goal for victory but if you lose, it’s important to learn how to process the facts. Don’t deny them. Use them to build your next goal. You simply must move on even when you’ve been tethered to a goal for so long you can’t remember why you even started.

*Martin Meylin Junior High was named for the man who made the Pennsylvania Rifle. Somewhere along the way, the name of that weapon was later changed to the Kentucky Rifle. One wonders how the originator of that famed gun would feel about the name change. It goes to show that you can’t always control your legacy. 

 

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Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

cold-day-4While riding home from church on Sunday morning, Sue and I had a laugh at the lyrics of that holiday tune, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” You know the tale, don’t you? It’s one of the most ‘date-rapey’ songs ever written.

I really can’t stay (but baby, it’s cold outside)
I’ve got to go away (but baby, it’s cold outside)

This evening has been (been hoping that you’d drop in)
So very nice (I‘ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice)

My mother will start to worry (beautiful what’s your hurry?)
My father will be pacing the floor (listen to the fireplace roar)

So really I’d better scurry (beautiful please don’t hurry)
But maybe just a half a drink more (put some records on while I pour)

Well, it just goes to show, even Christmas can be all about getting laid. Just ask the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. Of course, there’s an old joke about this grade of interplay that is not very politically correct

Q: Do you know the difference between rape and rapture?  A: Salesmanship.

And yet, we glide through the holiday season with such songs playing through our heads with nary a question about their  subversive nature. The same goes for that creepy song I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. That kid was traumatized, don’t you think?

My new favorite holiday song is by none other than Dan Hicks, formerly with the Hot Licks, who never met an insightful ditty he couldn’t write. Here are some lyrics for his Christmas song called Santa Lost a Ho.

Now, Santa’s been doin’ his best
To get into the Christmas mood.
Keepin’ his little elves happy,
He’s the number one Christmas dude.

But there ain’t no joy,
‘Cause just one toy
Is missin’ from Santa’s shack.
He never had a doll go AWOL
Once he got her in the sack.

‘Cause he used to go ‘ho-ho-ho’,
Now he’s only goin’ ‘ho-ho’ (Oh-oh! (whizz) Where’d the other ho go?)

Cold Day 1.jpgAll these songs were playing through my head as Sunday morning arrived with temperatures at four below zero and a wind chill of minus fourteen degrees. We all need something to sing when we get out the door in those temperatures. A Christmas tune earworm can help get you through those first five minutes when a risk of frostbite first hits your skin at the cheekbones.

So I hummed along with Dan Hicks while my feet crunched on some newly fall snow. The sun was just coming up and there were golden sheaths of light across the otherwise blue landscape. I was grateful that I didn’t have to pee, because taking my hands (or anything else) out in that kind of cold would have been miserable.

The snowplows had largely done their work clearing the roads. Yet the road shoulders were indistinct. So I crept to the farthest edge of the plow zone whenever vehicles came toward me. Some were gracious and moved toward the road center as they passed. Others, most notably a snow-white Mercedes sedan with a grumpy looking troll behind the wheel, budged not an inch. His vehicle passed so close to me that I waved my hands in protest as he rolled on by. Asshole. There was no need to come that close to a runner on a quiet road on a Sunday morning. But he was not budging an inch on his precious section of road. A cold-hearted bastard, he was.

Perhaps he was simply a Bah Humbug type… hauling the spiritual chains of his business dealings around with him through life. Even Ebenezer Scrooge in his most selfish moments has nothing on a stubborn driver on a Sunday morning in December.

Yet I found another Christmas tune to sing as I turned onto Deerpath Road where the snow was an inch thick and still white. Running on such surfaces is a fun bit of winter that only the early risers get to share. Once the traffic picks up the snow turns brown and slushy, and the roads get awful in terms of traction. But if you get out on a super-cold morning the snowy roads can look lovely in dawn’s light. And so it went. I traipsed along with my legs feeling warmed up and the rest of me wasn’t so terrible bad either.

Cold Day 2.jpgThen I glanced down at what I thought was a dead mouse. Only it turned out to be a leaf that had the same shape. So many winters I have come across such dead things and wondered about their last moments. That’s the real reason for the season. The universe is a cold, largely lifeless place. It is ours to calculate our minorly warm presence in the face of such extravagant desolation and dark matter.

Snow.pngIn the last 400 meters toward home, I cut through a field with snow drifts that were sculpted by the wind. These were artfully arranged, and I tried to avoid the prettier parts to allow the universe to have its way with the look and feel of the place. Yet as I arrived in my own backyard, the temptation to run through the drifts was too great and I shot a slow motion video that you can find on my Instagram account genesisfix. You can also follow me on Twitter : @gofast. 

It was a fun little three-mile run about which Sue had some concerns. “Be careful out there,” she warned as I dressed up with two hats, two layers of sweat bottoms and sundry other items to keep warm. But I’ve been doing this for a long time. I don’t take the weather for granted, yet don’t let it scare me too much either. Because according to that song, Rudolph never let the weather conditions scare him either.

If you stop and think about it, the scarier prospects of some situations await you indoors, where the people are. Just listen to the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and you’ll realize that’s true.

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Skewer words need never be said

Posted on December 16, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

skewerOn a visit to my friends at Prairie Path Cycles in Batavia, I noted the changes the store had done to improve the shop. The service department was moved and expanded to make the workflow go smoother and quicker. They were also set up with an all-new computrainer setup. It all looked very inviting. Nice work, Mike Farrell and crew.

In truth I was there to pick up a trainer skewer for the rear wheel of my Specialized. For some reason, I have never been able think of the word skewer lately when trying to remember to pick one up at the local bike shop. I’ll turn to Sue and say, “I need to go to the bike shop and pick up one of those…” and she’ll say, “Skewer” and I’ll say, “Yeah, one of those.”

So I walked into the bike shop and spoke with Mike Maravilla, a bike mechanic and longtime employee of PPC. “I need one of those things that goes in the rear wheel so that I can put my bike on the trainer,” I told him.

“A skewer?” he asked me.

“Yah, one of those,” I replied.

While he was off in the store picking out one of those…skewers, to put in my bike’s rear wheel so that I can ride on the trainer, I turned around to look at all the new bikes shining under the track lighting. And was mesmerized.

The scene reminded me of a place that I used to visit when I was a little kid. We called it The Little Store. It was a small grocery in a little building just off Route 222 south of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. There was a rather large candy counter where you could buy all sorts of sweets such as string red licorice and Good’n’Plenty in a box.

At least once a week I’d gather up whatever money I could scrounge and pedal my little fat tire bike or walk the half mile to The Little Store. There I’d stock up on candy necklaces and Smarties, chocolate bars and Whatever Else struck my sweet tooth that morning. Then I’d bundle it up in shorts and pedal my way back home.

On a budget

The Little Store was first real exposure to personal budgeting and transaction. I was old enough to count change and even plot out my purchases. Once I started collecting baseball cards, each visit to The Little Store meant making choices between things I could keep (the baseball cards) and things I could eat (all sorts of candy.)

Sometimes these choices paid dividends on both ends. On certain summer mornings that candy tasted so good I would stop and sit on the steps of my friend Lynn Wagner even if he wasn’t home. Lynn’s place sat at the base of a small valley between The Little Store and my house at 1725 Willow Street Pike. I’d lean my little fat tire next to a tree and sit down to ingest a pack of Smarties or Sweet Tarts.

Baseball cards

mickeymantle1952toppsThen I’d open one of the packs of baseball cards if I’d purchased them that day. And hope like hell for players that I did not already have, or at least that I’d heard of before. It was quite a joy and something of a feat to find a Roberto Clemente or Mickey Mantle in your new set of baseball cards. But for some reason, I kept winding up with duplicates of players from the Philadelphia Phillies or New York Mets. I hated the Phillies because I’d been to their cheap concrete stadium, plus they typically sucked in the 1960s. And the New York Mets I hated because I never liked the colors blue and orange together. Not as a kid. But I credit that to some form of childhood OCD.

Still, who can deny that color matters somehow? That’s what went through my head as I was standing at the bike shop admiring the new bikes with their front tires perched up on racks so that the lights from turned their matte or shiny green and coral and black and blue into a candy cornucopia of sweet-looking bikes.

Never too many bikes or guitars

I turned to Mike and said, ‘You know, I can see what Robin Williams had so many bikes,’ and chuckled.

guitar“Yeah, it’s like guitars,” he agreed. “So many models. You can never have too many.”

Bikes and guitars. They are similar in many respects. Lots of adjustment required.

One of the guys with whom I played in Praise Band at our church was always buying new electric guitars and sound devices. He’d show up with a new gadget to try out at practice and one time nearly blew our ears out because the sound toy malfunctioned, sending his volume through the roof. Several angels fell from the ceiling and were left writhing in the aisle between the pews.

“Hey, that’s cool,” he smiled. We all had our hearing checked the next week.

rael-road-bike-designSome of the bikes at PPC had paint jobs that were nearly that loud. I wanted them all. Every last one of them. But just like the little kid in the candy story all those years ago, I know that choices must be made. I already own a carbon-fiber aero style Specialized Venge Expert, a Waterford steel bike with a blue paint job that gives classic bike fans an orgasm when they look at it, and my sturdy old Specialized Rockhopper mountain bike.

My steel frame Trek 400 is now in the possession of my son out in Cleveland. But he will be moving out west where he can ride all the time in the sunny climate of Southern California. So I suspect his candy store instincts may kick in as well. The kid is a good athlete and could be a helluva cyclist.

Or not. We all need to make our choices in life. I’m going to head home now and put that thing in the rear wheel of my bike to mount it in the trainer. I’ve skewered enough topics for today.

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Putting up with the cold and putting up with a cold

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Snowman2.jpgAfter attending church on Sunday, my nose started to tingle by that evening. We visited the Praise Service and participated in an ad hoc Nativity Scene in which everyone chose a character to portray. There were Wise Men and Angels, Sheep and Donkeys. Joseph and Mary too.

Sue and I chose to be Wise Men. She was quite pleased to temporarily receive a sparkling gold crown to place on her head. “I like this crown,” she muttered softly over my shoulder. She looked cute in it.

Actually, she’s been the Queen of Workout Discipline of late. Her coach has her building a winter base with running and cycling workouts. Most of these have been done indoors on the bike trainer and treadmill the last week. A combo of heavy snowfall followed by zero degree temperatures has made running outside less than inviting.

Strong constitution

But more impressively, she hardly let her head and chest cold symptoms slow her down at all. She simply excels at putting up with a cold. Despite aching muscles and phlegm that could choke a horse, she went through her paces including her plyometric exercises to build strength. Finally, her cold abated. Yesterday she announced, “I ran from the office to the train tonight and I feel really bouncy.”

Perhaps you know the beauty of that duality. Once you’re over being sick it’s like a weight is lifted from your shoulders. But if you’re in decent training mode, that can happen any day of the week. Your legs feel stronger. There’s a bounce in your step. Even the cold weather can’t keep you down.

Relative strengths

I’m not training quite as hard as Sue. And yet, last Saturday I got out for six miles with a friend even as a stiff wind was nipping at our ears. Then came Monday morning and we went for a tough Masters swim workout with 6 X 100 tacked at 30-unders. This was all tacked onto a prodigious warmup session and some fast 25s between.

By Monday afternoon, there came a scratch in my throat followed by sneezing. By evening I felt slow and draggy. Then the sneezing turned into a hacking cough. Praise the Lord, by last evening, just two days after it started, the cold mercifully began to abate. It’s gross when the phlegm starts flying out, but it’s a relief as well.

What do you zinc about zat? 

Perhaps my use of zinc tablets forced the cold to die out. I always take zinc when a cold is coming on and even through the first few days, because it seems to keep it from getting worse. Way back in the Big Training Days, getting colds was so common I learned all the little warning signs. Now when my nose starts to tingle or the throat goes a bit tight, I take Zicam or Cold-Eaze and let them melt in my mouth. It sure seems to help keep colds away. I seldom get them very often or for very long these days.

There was a time when I was perhaps a bit of a baby about having colds. Yet I kind of forgive myself for that. In my teen years and during college and through my 20s, the colds I got were so severe they were outright painful to endure. Part of that came from the lowered resistance caused by intense training.

Going viral

Sometimes it’s just a fact of life that when you’re exposed to a cold virus in some ways, the symptoms can start and take hold no matter what you do. When I sat there in church last Sunday watching little kids cough without covering their mouths, I said to myself, “Well, this won’t end well.”

I recall another Praise Service at another church where one of the Praise Team directors had a morbid fear of germs. We were seated in the front pew waiting for children’s story time to begin and she was already visibly tense about all the coughing and hacking she heard from the pews behind us. When a group of twenty children sat down right below her feet and proceeded to cough and wipe their snotty noses within inches of her, she covered her mouth with a program. At one point, she literally waved her hand as if to shoo away the germs floating through the air.

I’m not so paranoid. Half the reason most of us are healthy in life is that we build up immunity through regular exposure to dirt and germs and conservatism. Society is learning that too much sanitizing and trying to control every blasted germ, virus or chunk of literal dogma can lead to weakened immune systems and lowered intelligence.

Flu shots my ass

Even the annual flu shots we receive are little more than the utility infielders of disease prevention. Medical experts pick samples of the most common influenza strain and dish out vaccines designed to increase the antibodies in our system that help us combat the flu. Doctors now admit as much. They’re not being assholes about it. They just want you to know that flu shots are not 100% foolproof.

And there is absolutely no such thing as a cold vaccine.This is true because there are so many strains of the common cold. Some start with snotty nose and go to a cough. Others start with a sore throat that evolves into the snotty nose, and that leads to a cough from the snot draining down your throat. Still, others start as a cough and stay as a cough. Those can last for weeks. The cough literally becomes part of your personality, like carrying around a Coach handbag or wearing a black whale tail thong under your white jeans. People come to know you by your quirkiest aspects, and a persistent hacking cough is one of those attributes people grow used to tolerating, but make no mention of it in polite company.

The best you can do for any cold is treat it preventatively with the mild chemotherapy of zinc or Vitamin C. Otherwise, there are cold medicines you can use. But these deal more with cold symptoms, because nothing yet invented provides a real cure for a cold.

Share and share alike

Perhaps my cold simply migrated in part from Sue’s nose and chest to mine. We’re close buddies, you know. Colds happen. It’s kind of like, so what? Like the vows say, “In sickness and in health.” It’s share and share alike in partnership. Take the bad with the good, because it means you’re connected to the world and each other in an intimate way.

Yet there is also an art both to putting up with a cold… and putting up with the cold. These two needs tend to go together. We’re all cooped up during the winter season here in North America. People are crammed together indoors, which turns us all into walking, breathing germ factories. We infect each other through human contact, by leaving germs on doorknobs and by carrying around hacking toddlers who crawl all all over the place including God’s own house, the church. Or synagogue. Or mosque. The common cold cares not about one’s religion or view of God. We’re all just spicy human meals to the common cold virus.

All you need is love

You just gotta love it, don’t you? It’s the human condition. Deal with it. Put up with it all. The human condition demands interaction, lest we all seek to live like the germ-fearing Howard Hughes, locked away with all that money and living in a prison of OCD about microbes.

Screw that. Rather than live like hermits unfit for this world, let’s all go forth and run and ride and swim and pray and share and love and catch a cold now and then. It’s what we’re living for.

 

 

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The cycling gift that keeps on giving

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

bikeLast year in December I started the research process to identify the right kind of bike to replace my Felt 4C, which had succumbed to a combination of my own fatigue and stupidity. I had gotten home from a cold October ride during which a low-grade flu made for a long, angry slog. All I wanted to do was park the car in the garage and get into bed. But that was a mistake. I clicked the garage door opener and drove forward. Chunk. My Felt 4C Carbon Fiber Red Rocket Bicycle was still on the roof and it got crunched.

That meant I didn’t ride during November at all. I did take the mountain bike out a few times in a sad testament to the death of my Felt.

Then the New Year threatened to arrive without a plan. So I wandered some local bike shops and found a Felt aero bike that held promise. But it turned out to have no drops in the handlebars. I still like a road bike for racing crits. So that was out.

I took the idea of a new bike to my friend Bruce Heidlauf at Mill Race Cyclery, who helped me think through a few options. The bike he suggested that really resonated was the Specialized Venge Expert.

Specialized Venge.jpg

That bike turned out to be a good choice. Then Sue and I took a trip up north on a bike fit date with  Jessica Laufenberg at Rocket Bicycle Studio in Verona, Wisconsin. It might not seem like a romantic venture to you, but watching my gal perched on a bike fit machine might be one of the loveliest things I’ve seen all year.

And so it went that my Specialized Venge was set up for success. Sure enough, my race pace increased last year during the bike segments of triathlons. Our longer rides were much smoother as well.

I did leave the 44cm bars that came with the 58cm frame bike. They’re perhaps a bit wide for my shoulders and there was occasional fatigue from that on longer rides. And when we were out west on a triathlon training trip in Arizona, Sue and I rode a pair of Specialized Robaix bikes that were quite sweet. Those bars were 42cm and felt just about perfect. I actually measure out at 40cm according to every bike fit I’ve had done, but sometimes the middle ground is best.

Significantly, my longtime cycling partners commented right away on my riding position on the Venge. “You look a lot better on that bike,” said my friend Jack. I know very few people who know more about bikes or have ridden in more situations than JB. He raced CAT 3 in his day and can still light it up when he wants.

The same encouraging feedback came from my friend Greg, who raced a bunch of triathlons in times past and has ridden several Tour de France stages including Mont Vontoux. Greg has always enjoyed riding free an strong. He doesn’t care for cyclometers all that much, and pedals his LeMond frame with the best of them when he’s fit.  Between the two of them, they were my support network starting out. We’ve been friends since high school when we ran cross country together, and have trained many miles in many modes since. Running. Cycling. Cross country skiing.

When I started out in cycling, I rode a steel frame Trek 400 given to me by my brother-in-law. But once I purchased the Felt, life began to change. I could suddenly keep up on most rides. Those first few years, I raced a bunch of criteriums. All told, I probably put 40-50K on that Felt before I crunched it. Sadly.

Come January I’ll test some bar widths on the Specialized and see if that’s a benefit. I’ll actually need to buy new bars if aero bars are in the future for triathlon racing. The bars that come with the bike are not suited, I am told, for clip-on aero bars or anything like them.

It all worked out pretty well from last December to now. I started paying for that bike in January 2016 and finished it off by March 1. That was the goal and Bruce was great in helping me make that happen. It goes to show you that a local bike shop has a lot of value if you put some trust in it.

The Specialized will be up on a trainer in our bike room at our new place. So far I’ve been riding the Waterford to get in some basic pedaling. It’s certainly true that cycling is the gift that keeps on giving. But having a nice bike is like a gift from Santa every day.

 

 

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Are you equipped to handle triathlon?

Posted on December 12, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Masters Monday.jpgIt is 4:30 a.m. The great horned owls outside our home have chosen this hour of day to talk with one another. Sue and I lay in bed in the half-dark listening to them the other morning. We both had smiles on our faces. “It’s amazing,” she whispered.

The birds have far more nuance in their vocalizations than you might think on first listen. Their owl conversations are much more complex than just HOOT HOOT HOOT.

In fact what I head this morning, in my half-awake, half-asleep mode, was something on the order of “Get oooout of beeoood and gooo to Muassters Swim!’

Sue was already dressed and gathering equipment to go swim when I lurched out of bed and shuffled through my little Get Ready For Swim routine. This whole early morning swim thing is still a relatively new activity compared to decades of getting ready for running, which is easy, or to go cycling, which is always a pain in the butt because there is always so much equipment including shoes, helmet, bottles and food to lug around even for an hour ride.

Not so bad

Swimming falls somewhere between the two sports in terms of equipment and preparation. Going to swim would be simple enough if it was just the suit and goggles one needed to go to the pool. Instead, the swim world has invented all kinds of floaty devices necessary to bring to the pool or be deemed a hopeless novice. The pool float I use is a pleasant looking object with two sort of blobby ends, one larger than the other. It is black and white, but many of them are what I’d call “pool blue,” sort is sky-colored with a chlorine tinge.

I don’t yet own a float board, but when I do, I’ll write some motivational words on one side  on the order of Jens Voigt and his famous “Shut Up Legs” stuck to the top bar of his bike. On my float board I’ll take a pen and write “Just Don’t Drown.” I’ll admit that Nike will never make that slogan because it seems so damned defeatist at its heart. But you make do sometimes with whatever inspiration you can muster. “Just Don’t Drown” is quite a practical bit of advice.

Somehow the words “Just Do It” don’t seem to apply when you get to the pool. There are so many considerations before you even get in the water. Like, how cold is the water today? So one sits on the edge of the pool with calves and knees immersed while adapting to the water. Of course, you just know it all feels fine once you make up your mind and dive in the water. But those moments between ‘out of the water’ and ‘in the water’ have caused many a swimmer to curse their very existence. Just Do It, indeed.

Cold considerations 

During band camp as an elementary school kid our band instructor invited everyone to join the Polar Bear Club and come swim at 6:00 a.m. Always a sucker for doing things that were harder than everyone else, I showed up every morning with my skinny little body shivering in the morning chill. So there’s a long history of early morning swimming in my genes. That’s also why I participated on the Swim Team at Meadia Heights pool. Workouts were held in the mornings before anyone else was allowed in the pool. That made me feel special.

It felt exclusive and real to be let in the pool when no one else was around. Just the call of birds in the trees, and that plain, flat water. And me. It felt that way walking around in my first baseball uniform as well, with cleats clacking on the asphalt. Those sensations meant I was entering a world of sports where what you did was everything that mattered. I loved the feel of that commitment. Which is why I also loved the sound of that pool gate closing behind me. Whatever dread I felt at the prospect of swimming was countered by the feeling that I was part of a group doing cool things.

That’s part of the mental equipment that comes with doing any sport. We may do tons of our training alone, but we also yearn to belong. To earn our place.

I’m still working my way toward the day I can truly swim at the same pace as the other Academy Bullets Masters swimmers. Most have been at this a while and can swim much faster. Today we closed out the workout with a set of twenty 25-yard intervals. It so happened that I did a set of those on my own last week and was able to hit 21 seconds on most of them. But that was with 30-second rests. And I was going all out.

Today we were supposed to do 25 yards and go on the 30s. If you hit 21 seconds you got nine seconds of rest. All the good swimmers were tearing up the water in the middle of the pool while I hung in the outside lane where I always go. I kept up the first interval. And the second. Then I couldn’t go in time for the third. See, I really do believe in the mantra “Just Don’t Drown.” There comes a point in anaerobic work where swimming beyond your pace and capacity to recover presents a genuine risk of sinking to the bottom of the pool. That was me.

I am just not equipped to keep up yet. That will come in time. My 100-meter time is now down to 1:50 from my former best just a month or so ago of 2:10. So things are coming along. My kick is much stronger and Sue has refined a couple elements of my freestyle stroke.

Equipment ready

Rinsing off the chlorine sheen in the shower at home, I stood in the shower contemplating the differences between swimming, cycling and running. Over time, it’s our job as triathletes to equip our brain and bodies to transition between the three disciplines. It may not be possible or advisable in this endeavor to count every step or stroke along the way. That way lies madness indeed. Yet it truly is repetition that gets the job done.

That is true even when you are the last on in the pool when the workout is over. Or perhaps you bring up the rear on the group ride, sucking wheel just to keep up. Or perhaps you’re finishing your last run interval when the rest of the group is sucking water and telling jokes.

Even these experiences are part of becoming equipped to do the sports you love. The main equipment in all three is persistence. That is the most important piece of equipment you have. All triathletes should change their middle name to Persistence.

Or write it on your float board. On the top bar of your bike. Or the palm of your hand when you’re out running. Persistence. It makes winners.

 

 

 

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Pain as a way of life

Posted on December 9, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

img_5507Yesterday morning while running in the dark, I turned my ankle a bit. Kept running with no real consequence. That was no real surprise. Usually, when you turn an ankle or tweak a knee, the true effects don’t show up immediately. It takes a while for any pain to kick in.

Two winters ago I did something really stupid during the Sno-Fun Run in Lake Geneva. The streets were icy and I hurdled a traffic cone. Don’t know why, other than naive exuberance and a history as a steeplechaser. The knee reverberated inside.

I finished the race fine. But for weeks after, my knee was a mess. It was sore throughout. All the ligaments had been stretched. That cost me some valuable training miles, but a lesson was learned.

Hurting yourself either from your own stupidity or ugly happenstance is never fun. Which is why, while I was sipping on a beer at my brother-in-law’s birthday party last night, it struck me that running in the dark without headlamps isn’t really a good idea. With all the LED equipment out there, I could have easily avoided the ankle twist that was suddenly, at 7:00 p.m. last night, causing me a considerable amount of pain.

It came on like a toothache. Sort of background pain. It centered under the part of the arch where the ankle pad meets that strong yet tender plantar fascia. “Oh no,” I thought. “Not that.”

I’ve had plantar fascia problems before. It was a long time ago. I’d gone running naked on a beach in Virginia, leaving both shoes and clothes behind. It was a marvelously free experience. But it had a cost. No, I didn’t get thrown in jail for letting my whank out in public. I hurt my arches badly by running on soft sand. It took weeks for them to feel good again.

The truth of all this is that runners and cyclists and swimmers all get used to living with pain of one kind or another. Pain is a way of life for us. Even when we’re not injuring ourselves in some stupid or smart way, there is pain from training hard. Pain from accumulated fatigue and physical distress. Pain from skipping dessert.

img_5483Yes, there is emotional pain as well. Pain at having failed in some way. Pain in quitting on a day when we should have (could have?) gone on.

Pain from little tweaks and angers in relationships with training partners, coaches and life partners. Pain from guilt at spending too much or too little time at what we love, or without the people we do love.

Pain is a way of life. It really doesn’t matter who you are or what you do. Life is painful.

There, I’ve said it. The difference in you and me is that we court this pain rather than let it hit us in the solar plexus and the brain every day. If you’re the praying type, you might well try to pray away the pain that life doles out. “And deliver us from evil…” goes the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

Save us from the pain, in other words. That we cause ourselves. That we inevitably cause others.

sun-up-movingYes, life is painful. But when you confront that pain and run through it, or cycle up a hill that you never thought you could climb, or pull yourself out of the pool following 3000 meters of hard swimming, life feels easier. You can let down a bit. The pain of everyday life doesn’t seem so bad compared to what you’ve just put yourself through.

And there you have it. Pain as a way of life is the antidote to pain. Just like drinking a bit to fight the Hair of the Dog That Bit You. Or calling an old lover out of the blue when you know it’s going to be a rough phone call.

Taking out the garbage or doing the dishes even when it’s not your turn. Pain.

Life is just a total pain in the ass. So deal with it. Go after it. Go find it. Run through the pain. Run and ride and swim with it, for God’s Sake. Love the pain.

But cure it too. Like last night, I asked for a couple Advil and took two of those big blue plastic ice blocks from my brother-in-law’s fridge and applied them to my foot. Propped my tweaked ankle up on the chair and set my foot on the cold ice. It took a while for the Advil to kick in. Meanwhile, I drank a couple Killians and had some pizza and birthday cake. By the time I got home later that night the pain was gone.

donald-trump-caricatureThis morning I got up and rode the bike on the trainer and watched the news on Good Morning America. The talking heads were pontificating about how Donald Trump has refused to relinquish his Executive Producer role on Celebrity Apprentice or some other “reality show” that does not mean a goddamned thing to the health and welfare of our world and yet this selfish bastard still can’t give it up. He is the most painful, selfish, narcissistic public figure in the history of the universe. Next to Hitler.

But like I said. Life is painful. And if this guy does wind up serving as our President it will be a long four years. But many of us are quite used to living with pain. So we’ll get through it somehow, if he doesn’t manage to kill us all first. But you know, you don’t feel pain when you’re dead from a nuclear holocaust caused by some arrogant twit taunting North Korea. So there’s that.

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Hard truths about cold running and cold truths about hard running

Posted on December 8, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Cold truths.jpgThis morning was a damn cold run. Yet it was familiar territory.

In fact, it felt like I was frozen in time. 6:00 a.m. is a fine time to run, and I’ve been doing that for many, many years. The sky is just starting to brighten at that hour even in wintertime.

This morning’s run also brought back memories of all those mornings I delivered newspapers in the little town of Elburn, Illinois. The entire town was my route, and I pedaled my Huffy three-speed bike in temperatures as low as 17 below.

But I never let it bother me that much. The $8.50 a week I earned in those days at least let me buy cinnamon rolls at will in the high school cafeteria. I weighed 129 lbs as a freshman and 132 as a sophomore. Skinny and hungry all the time. I could afford some extra carbs.

It was always cold, for the most part, on those morning paper routes in the early 1970s. I’d pedal around at a fast pace with that paper bag over my shoulder. At each house on the route I’d dump the bike on the street and traipse across snowy lawns or trot up driveways to stuff the newspapers into the door as I was called to do. It was great aerobic training when I think about it.

Later on during my high school and college years, that morning paper route was replaced by tw0-a-day runs through November, December and January. One gets used to running when the temps are cold. You learn where the drafts get you at the edge of your clothing, and how much your face can take before you have to cover it with mittens or gloves. Then you learn to blow just enough to warm the flesh so you won’t get frostbite. These are the hard truths about cold running. You learn to love them.

Dark shapes

As I took off on my three-mile run this morning the wind was biting and severe. It came as if  it were blowing straight from the lungs of a dark shape hung low to the horizon to the northwest. I no longer ascribe evil to such views. Winter is what it is. IT comes and it stays and it goes AWAY eventually. No need to emotionalize it any longer.

My pace picked up as my body warmed. Essentially I’d wind up running one mile at 10:00 pace, the next at 9:00 pace and the final mile clipping along at 8:00 pace.  This may be the perfect prescription for winter running. Try it sometime at your own pace.

Hit Pause

The only interruption in the run came when I stopped to drop my drawers and unload in a blessed woodland along the road. It was a damn cold dump if I may say so myself. I had tried hard to get that business done before leaving the house but the body was not yet awake enough to make that happen.

It took a wipe with a handful of snow to get things cleaned up. That just about slammed my sphincter shut and I knew that would have a price later in the day. That tender flesh around your ass is no fan of ice and snow. A friend of mine once got vicious hemorrhoids from sitting on a cold step for too long in his garage. The same thing can happen if you shock your tender butthole with snow during a cold winter run. These are the cold truths about hard running. Sometimes you have to stop for these reasons and there is no escaping the demand no matter how fast you might be running. No one can run fast when the urge takes over. It is impossible.

Tripping along 

The last mile was thus a relative bit of relief. I felt good except for the ankle I’d turned in the early going. There was an uneven space where new road had been paved next to old road and I almost sprained my left ankle badly. In fact, I barely caught myself from falling, which has been a frightfully common thing lately.

Back at home, Sue gave my cold cheeks a pat with her warm hands. She was just out of the shower and looking adorably warm in her bathrobe and wet hair. I wanted her with every ounce of my being but accepted a grateful kiss and headed up to the shower.

I’d gotten in a good workout despite the cold. I’ve learned that I don’t need to do massive miles to race decently all year round. It’s a blessing to have enough talent to get by well enough on my 15-20 miles a week. Racing 7:00 pace at nearly 60 years old is a respectable trade. I’ll keep it up as long as I can.

Being

Yes, I’ll push it a bit more this year, but this morning’s run was more an exercise in simply being than in worrying about any of that. At the start, I tucked the strings from my bright yellow sweatshirt inside the hood so that they wouldn’t whack my ears and make a loud noise as I went along. I was too much enjoying the sound of my feet scruffing along and the howl of the wind through the black trees to want any distractions.

Yes, I could have waited back home for Sue to finish on the treadmill, or take a trip down to run on the indoor track at the Vaughn Center. But there’s only so much time in the day. And only so many winter days in our lifetime. So we run.

Besides, I would have missed the chance to freeze my ass off taking a dump in the snow. Or cowering as that lone car drove past, when I hid the reflective part of my running jacket so that the headlights wouldn’t flare me out. Damn, you feel alive in moments like that.

I would have also missed the smell of my own breath floating back to me as I ran in the same direction as the wind. And the fetid tinge of sweat emanating from the hooded sweatshirt that needed a wash. I really didn’t know that. Now it’s in the laundry basket. Our own stink is the best sign that we’re really living.

These are the hard truths about cold running and the cold truths about hard running. This is what it means to be alive.

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Keeping our wits about Cheerios and cancer

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Christopher Cudworth

Run CheeriosA couple weeks ago the story broke that the breakfast cereal Cheerios® from General Mills is one of the products in which glyphosate was found in trace amounts. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in a Monsanto herbicide called RoundUp used in agriculture to control or kill weeds. Glyphosate has also been suspected by some of causing cancer.

One of the things you might not know about RoundUp is that it is used to prepare crops just before they are harvested. In the case of the oats we ingest, RoundUp is sprayed on the body of the plant to kill off leaves and foliage just before the oat seeds are harvested. This ostensibly saves the oats from what they call pre-dessication issues. The practice of spraying oat plants is highly advocated by the folks at Monsanto on grounds that it saves grain harvesters a lot of trouble in dealing with excess material.

It also makes a lot of money for Monsanto in RoundUp sales.

RoundUp is an interesting product because it is used in many different kinds of applications. Most of my habitat management friends in the environmental community use RoundUp to knock back unwanted plants. It is used as a weedkiller to kill off persistent nuisance plants such as buckthorn, garlic mustard or purple loosestrife, all of which can take over natural areas and cause native plant communities to die out. They like it because it works.

Habitat managers have long claimed to like RoundUp because it is reputed to have a short lifespan or period in which it remains active. Then it supposedly disappears. Yet there is raw and disturbing evidence these beliefs are not true. The active ingredient in RoundUp, known as glyphosate, is turning up in groundwater in much higher concentrations than people anticipated. Concerns about glyphosate have been percolating for years, as evidenced by this 2012 article that raises concerns about the amount of this chemical that is turning up in the environment around the world.

And now, the active ingredient in RoundUp is appearing in commonly consumed products such as Cheerios.

There have been a number of studies done on the subject of glyphosate and its possible links to cancer. Some studies claim there is very little risk of cancer from the chemical glyphosate at all. Others suggest that the amount of glyphosate that it would take to cause cancer in humans is pretty large. As this article on Mashable explains, the jury is technically still out on whether glyphosate is a harmful product in the small amounts detected in products such as Cheerios.

However, there is considerable evidence that suggests exposure to RoundUp in high levels can and cause cancer. If you want to know why that’s true, simply follow the money. And the lawyers. One website titled Youhavealawyer.com specializes in legal representation for farm workers whose cancer can be traced to high levels of exposure to the herbicide RoundUp. Obviously, every case has its own specific facts to determine whether a person is entitled to compensation for their illness. In every case, the legal world bears the burden to provide proof of the link between any product and cancer.

Yet the evidence seems clear enough with the product RoundUp to drive significant business for that group of lawyers. We all know they don’t work for free. This is what their website says:

The product liability lawyers at Saiontz & Kirk, P.A. are reviewing potential class action lawsuits and individual injury cases for individuals diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma or other cancers that may have been caused by side effects of Roundup. In early 2015, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research on cancer (IARC) warned that the weed killer glyphosate was a probable carcinogen. As a result of Monsanto’s failure to adequately warn about the potential cancer risk, financial compensation may be available through a Roundup lawsuit for individuals diagnosed with:

  • Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma
  • Multiple Myeloma
  • Leukemia
  • Other Cancers

To review whether you or a loved one may be eligible to pursue a claim, request a free consultation and claim evaluation.

So there’s a campaign afoot to hold Monsanto accountable for the potential side effects of its product known as RoundUp.

We’ve also seen that there are many such companies who engage in less-than-ethical distribution or pollution with carcinogenic chemicals. We have Erin Brockovich (the real person, and the movie) to thank for making the case that certain types of chemicals (chromium, for example) in our groundwater water can cause people to become very sick. In fact, links between air and water pollution and cancer is an ongoing story in America.

 

Bike Cheerios

So while the amounts of glyphosate in Cheerios might be miniscule, advocates for safe foods find its mere presence disturbing. In that context, one has to wonder whether the practice of spraying oat plants just before harvest is really all that necessary. If the presence of glyphosate in oats could be prevented by changing that practice, wouldn’t that be a wise idea?

For athletes and other people who claim to maintain “healthy eating” habits, it does not give comfort to find out that a supposedly “heart-healthy” and relatively sugar-free product such as Cheerios has trace elements of glyphosate lurking within. It’s just disturbing to think about. Yet the truth about our food chain is that we’re likely ingesting some form of agricultural chemicals such as RoundUp at every meal. I’ve been pretty lax over the years in washing fresh fruits and vegetables. Who knows what sprays lurk in the bloom on those products?

But let’s dig deeper.  This list of the Top Ten hazards in our food supply is enough to make you sick just reading it. And these concerns are genuine. Cancer rates are high enough in America to cause intense concern in some people about what we’re really eating in foods purchased at grocery stores. For all the billions of dollars spent on cancer research, we still have very few answers about how safe our food actually is to eat. That leaves everyday people to speculate on the nature and source of so much cancer in this world.

One thing is clear: Sugar is surely one of the greatest enemies to healthy lives. Sugars of various types are responsible for all kinds of human disease ranging from obesity to heart disease to diabetes. It stunned me to realize the role sugars play in our systems when I watched my late wife go through a PET Scan to detect any spread of ovarian cancer in her body. The PET Scan test basically detects areas of higher metabolic activity. Sugars such as glucose are pumped into the system and the test detects risk areas because cancers simply love sugars. It feeds them.

Swim CheeriosUgh. When you consider the fact that toxins introduced into our bodies can disturb cellular activity and kick cancerous cells into gear, it all is enough to make you suspicious of everything you eat and drink. That’s why people are shocked and disturbed by the knowledge the Cheerios are laced with glyphosate. It’s not that people think eating a bowl of Cheerios will kill them. It’s that the cumulative effect of all these chemicals, hormones and other toxins in our environment and our food system is outright disturbing. We have a right to be concerned. We’re swimming in the stuff.

So companies that make these products do need to be held accountable when their products turn out to be compromised by such chemicals or causing contamination in our food system, air and water, and the human body.

Because I can tell you, it’s no fun to say “cheerio” when someone you love dies from cancer. And yes, we all bear responsibility for our own health. Smoking and drinking too much, or indulging in too many sweets can be just as deadly (or moreso) than trace amounts of glyphosate in our cereal bowls.

It’s when we do try to pay attention to these things and people find themselves still at risk from chemical poisoning that folks get pissed. That’s why a little overreaction may be in order when chemicals turn up in our Cheerios. Contamination of our food chain is pretty prevalent. It may be time to say “cheerio”to such risks in whatever ways we can.

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