Running and cycling and swimming partners Christopher Cudworth, Jada Hambry-Butler, Russ Bautch and Suzanne Astra. We spent a weekend training in Wisconsin. And ate and drank a bit too.
Training partners can be the difference between success and something much less satisfying. A good training partner does two things: they can push you to run harder and can also exert common sense on your routine.
Last Sunday morning while on a weekend training trip with our friends Russ and Jada in Wisconsin, we planned a one-hour run through the Pheasant Branch Conservancy, a beautiful nature preserve with running trails in Middleton, Wisconsin.
We all ran four miles together and then the two gals split off to complete their six-mile run while Russ and I set off for another three-mile loop.
I was feeling really great and warmed up well, so I picked up the pace. Russ barely missed qualifying for the Boston Marathon last fall in the Fox Valley Marathon. He ran in the low 3:00 range and missed by only 20 seconds due to some late-stage calf cramps.
He’s also a finisher in Ironman Wisconsin in the mid-13 hour range if I recall correctly, so the guy has endurance. That meant he didn’t mind my one-stepping him on the quicker loop we ran together. I apologized later if it was annoying, but I really wanted to see what energy I had in the tank.
Pick it up
We climbed the first turn that skirts the prairie kame where giant oaks sit atop what is likely a pile of gravel laid down by the last glacier. Then the trail turns toward the woods and rolls along. We dropped from 9:00 to 8:00 and finally mid-7:30 pace. It absolutely felt good to run. But it also felt good to run with a training partner at essentially my racing pace for the second half of a duathlon.
Granted, 7:30 pace used to be slow for me even in warmups. I could not help thinking about that while on that loop that I could once race along at 5:30 pace in training. It’s so strange that ability disappears with age. Like ghosts from the past.
Current aims
Russ is a bit younger than me, and as mentioned, training for another Boston qualifying race this fall. He told me he was cruising along thinking about how our Sunday run applies to his future. “It’s hard to imagine doing that pace for 26 miles,” he said. Yet that’s how you begin to imagine it. By doing it on a consistent basis. So perhaps we could help each other…
Proving that different aims and stages in an athletic career do not mean that training partners cannot sync up and run together. In fact, I was feeling so good on Sunday it was tempting to dial it all the way down to 7:00 pace and give it a real run the last half mile. But we’d ridden 60 miles the day before in hilly terrain and that began to show in my legs during the last mile of the run.
Satisfaction
There were moments during that run on Sunday when the supreme satisfaction of running well with others hit home with me. I find it so satisfying to train with gals on many occasions. Having seen the literal start of the women’s running boom in the mid-1970s, I know how far women have come in training. The majority of runners on the trail last Sunday were, in fact, women. You go, gals.
In fact Jada is coming off a year in which injury kept her from running much at all. She worked hard in therapy and at some point along the way a bothersome, painful ligament fell back into line. She began to run slowly a mile at a time. Now she’s rebuilding fitness and imagining where it will take her next.
Likewise, Sue has been bothered by some hip issues and doing a combination of strength work at the gym, some chiro and other strategies. She’s also focusing on shorter races this year to rebuild her speed on the run. And it’s working.
And the running I did on Sunday with Russ reminded me so much of college and post-collegiate training runs with trusted training partners. Russ and I challenged each other in that unspoken dialogue that only occurs through breathing and the skritch of feet on a dirty trail. It was a joy indeed. Of course I was kind of sore on Monday. But that’s the price you pay.
Because, as we bounced along the boardwalk through the woods where the wetlands seep into the soil, birds were singing and time stood still.
That’s why I still run to this day. I’m sure you know the feeling.
The notion of fitness is a key element of the theory of evolution. In nature, being fit for life means having the ability to survive. There are trillions of examples of this principle in operation every day. Evolution through time has delivered enormously complex organs, behaviors, and relationships that govern how species develop and survive.
For those who run, ride and swim, the ideal preparation for these events involves considerable training. This is because building endurance requires what we might call “chemical rehearsal.” With every movement we make, chemical reactions are taking place deep within our muscles and circulatory systems. We’re not simply a coat of armor marching around in the event we are challenged.
The trouble with these ostensibly Christian objections to the theory of evolution is that Jesus himself would never have abided in them. Jesus taught using parables founded in highly organic symbolism, and was thus a naturalist before there was such a thing. His symbolic use of images from nature to teach spiritual principles is called metonymy, the use of the characters of one object from nature to describe the attributes of another.
And to that effect, every race of human being constitutes mere variations on a single species, homo sapiens, that has developed differences in appearance in response to specific climactic environments and other forces of nature. Yet for all this diversity, human beings from each of these variations can definitely breed.
thers. Some possess better capacities to process oxygen or have hearts that pump blood more efficiently to the muscles. They have an evolutionary advantage, in other words, that predisposes them to success in human sports.
The practical application of all this theory also suggests that your training must evolve over time. Changes in physical ability from ages 12-24 are profound. Athletes gain strength and endurance during these years as they reach maturity. Maximizing endurance from ages 24-34 is the goal, when most athletes reach their peak.
Beyond the age of 40, an athlete’s training absolutely must evolve in response to physiological changes occurring within the body. The human body loses some of its ability to recover from stress as we age. Our systems literally begin to wear out past the age of 40. This also mocks the idea that human beings once lived 600-800 years. Evolution defies any such claims on simple grounds that animal flesh simply burns out with time.
Yes, there are some formulas for success, and good coaches abide by them. But great coaches also know how to adapt training to the athlete’s ability to respond. If something is not working, then an alternative must be found. This is especially true in response to the inevitable injuries that occur as a result of physical stress on the body from training. Plowing ahead when injury or illness catches up to an athlete is insane.
Of course, there are always those who want to game the process of evolution. That’s where practices such as using steroids, doping or blood infusion for endurance athletes enter the picture. When Lance Armstrong convinced his entire cycling team to engage in use of EPO, his doctor was simply applying drugs invented to help cancer patients maintain healthy blood oxygen levels to enhance athlete performance. The same held true with blood-doping, the extraction and reinfusion of blood into an athlete’s circulatory system. None of these methods would work without a complex understanding of the evolutionary processes behind athletic performance. The basic premise of the program was to help athletes exceed the body’s native capacity to produce blood and process oxygen. In other words, the goal was to become superhuman.
From the outside looking in, the sport of triathlon certainly looks insane. Magic Marker numbers scrawled on bare skin. Tight racing suits, radical sunglasses and a strange variety of hats and helmets. Bikes that look more like wine bottle openers than bicycles. Wetsuits that make everyone look like a beached seal or a giant black licorice stick. All while sweat or water is pouring down faces and other body parts. What’s this all about, really?
That conversation
All about the calves
The pleasant little town of Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin is located just south of Kenosha along Lake Michigan. The triathlon conducted out of the RecPlex has gotten a deserved reputation as a great race. Reports from years past indicate the parking situation is much improved. Everything from registration to transition is within a nicely confined area.
So it felt good to be competing. Again. I do these events with a bit of a chill attitude, I must admit. Getting all nervous doesn’t really help much. But I will admit to some pre-race yawns. Echoes of competitive days of yore. I finished second in my age group and 21st overall.
In our area, the transition in types of water ultimately leads to Lake Michigan. I’ve watched enough triathlons and realize that the lake can throw a lot of interesting conditions at you. There is always water temp to consider, which in Lake Michigan in summer can still hover in the low 60s through June and July. Then there’s wind and chop, which can mess with your breathing options. There are also swells and actual waves, which can mess you up.
Understand that open water swimming is a bit of a cathartic experience for me. My life over the last 10-15 years has had a lot of changes in it. I lost my mother to cancer in 2005, my wife to cancer in 2013 and my father to natural causes this past October. Through all that, I’ve been the primary caregiver to all of them in some way. There have been many times when I’ve felt like I was doing nothing more than treading water. Trying to stay afloat in the emotional depths of circumstance. From the depths of caregiving and anxieties to the shallows of financial challenges, it took willpower and some frantic swimming to get through it all.
My son and daughter are amazingly sensitive, intelligent people. Perhaps I hurt them in some ways through all this transition. I’ve tried not to do that. I’ve asked their forgiveness if I have.
While driving home from a visit to Cleveland on a section of the Ohio turnpike, I noticed a band of motorcyclists wearing classic black leather jackets and riding Harleys. Curiosity about the group made me follow them for a hundred miles or so. I watched them signalling to each other about road debris, and how wisely they moved through occasional bouts of traffic.
There’s an obvious relationship in how motorcycles and cyclists move on the road. Yes, the speed dynamics are different. Lane positioning too. Cyclists need to ride on the side of the road, not in the middle like a motorcycle.
I’ve been thinking about the more intimate relationship motorcyclists and cyclists have with the road. A significant pothole or road crack can throw a motorcyclist or cyclist off their machine in a heartbeat. Yet a car or truck sails right over. So one can see why people that have never ridden a bike have so little sympathy.
Perhaps you know someone with depression. I know I do.
For Father’s Day, I spent a weekend in Cleveland with my son and had a really great time. We visited the 
“Born In the USA” as a political rally song, apparently no one in that campaign stopped to examine the fact that the lyrics were an absolute indictment of the My Country Right or Wrong philosophy of the neo-conservative movement.
new beauty queen was about to take place. So I stopped to take a selfie with the outgoing “queen.” She was more the age of a princess. But you don’t always get to choose the royalty with whom you associate.
