We Run and Ride

What a 5K for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and National Mental Health Awareness week can teach us all about healthy minds

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Families and friends walked and ran in honor of those who face mental health challenges.

For the last six or seven years it has been a joy to rise on an early October morning to support a local race in Batavia, Illinois called the NAMI 5k. The race raises money each year for a local chapter of NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Originally the race was called the BatRun, a race title I convinced them to change. I just didn’t think the term “bat” or “bats” went well with the serious issue of mental illness. The organizers meant well, trying to relate to the Halloween season and all, but my point was in trying to place the focus on something more important than frightening fun.

For years I’ve pedaled out to the one-mile marker to read times. It is a race after all, and usually the winner breaks 18:00 or so.

But the bulk of runners and walkers cares less about time than participation. The race this year raised $10,000 for the local NAMI chapter. That’s important funding for an organization that provides mental health guidance and resources to individuals and families impacted by people with mental illness.

That’s a wide range of the human population. This fact sheet outlines the scope of people impacted by mental illness in America alone.

Participants walk the bridge across the Fox River to the start of the event, which is all about creating a bridge to people with mental health challenges.

One in four people in America experiences mental illness in a given year. Too many don’t want to admit their challenges. They might see it as a sign of weakness or disability. That keeps people from reaching out for help, leaving them to suffer alone.

13% of youth face mental illness issues that legitimately require treatment. Society too often writes these serious issues off as “kids being kids” or “moody teenagers.”

In fact most mental illnesses are a direct product of chemical imbalances in the brain. Some forms of mental illness are not only chronic, they are debilitating. It is estimated that the cost of lost earnings due to mental illness reach $193B per year.

So one would think that there would be more fund raising to address these issues. Certainly the various channels of cancer fund raising are admirable and worthwhile, but perhaps the idea of raising pink funds for “the girls” and breast cancer is a bit more alluring than raising money for darkness of the soul.

Having mental health issues does not make you “nuts.”

Yet it’s possible and people do get the idea that mental illness is a serious issue once they engage with the issue. With one in four people experiencing difficult challenges in mental health every year, it is obvious we are all in contact with people with depression, anxiety and other disorders of the brain that produce dramatic or unseen costs.

So much about mental illness is a question of context. While roaming the race grounds taking pictures the song Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen came pouring through the speakers. In context of the NAMI 5K the lyrics took on a whole different meaning…

The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybody’s out on the run tonight
But there’s no place left to hide
Together Wendy we can live with the sadness
I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul
H-Oh, Someday girl I don’t know when
We’re gonna get to that place
Where we really wanna go
And we’ll walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us
Baby we were born to run

Anyone that has felt genuine depression and anxiety knows that there is a fine balance between determination to survive and complete ambivalence at the same time. If that fine line slips there is even the intent of suicide that can creep in. Mental illness can take away the will to carry on or even survive.

Mental health issues can flare due to seasonal, dietary or stress factors.

The degrees of mental illness put individuals at other risks if their condition removes social constructs or rationality. When people lose their ability to reason their behavior can even run afoul of the law. One of the important NAMI initiatives is working with law enforcement to provide education about how to identify and handle people experiencing profound mental health episodes.

So it was heartening to see families walking in honor of their loved ones or friends with mental health. Some wore placards on their back stating “I’m walking for my mom” or other friends and family.

It was cold. And it was windy. Yet there were breaks in the forest where the winds abated and people ran or walked along without being buffeted by the brisk October weather. It was perfectly symbolic of the entire journey through a life impacted by mental illness. There are calms and there are storms. There are dark moments and also trees bright with color and hope.

People of all ages need to be assessed for good mental health.

Because it is also true that people with mental illness often experience life at a more intense level than some of the rest of us. Certainly the challenge of working with someone gifted with savant capabilities yet nicked by the inability to recognize social cues is becoming more of a mainstream issue. Conditions such as Asperger’s and autism are now discussed with more frequency. Schools have struggled with whether to be inclusive or exclusive in these efforts. But at least there is a social movement to recognize the value of better engagement.

It’s National Mental Health Awareness Week October 5-11th, 2014. Take some time to visit the NAMI website to educate yourself on mental health issues and learn where you can find resources for people you know or yourself. There are many healthy ways to gain better mental health.

Even our pets need to be watched for good mental health. They can also provide a healthy support mechanism for all of us.

I know. I’ve worked through a lifelong engagement with anxiety. The effects have been profound and impactful at times. My running and riding are healthy ways to deal with anxiety and the flipside of depression that can go with it. Through all the frightening challenges of caregiving for my late wife when she had cancer, it was important to get both chemical treatment and counseling to better deal with life events that can accentuate one’s propensity for compromised mental health.

It’s not just something you will or pray away, although cognitive and spiritual attentiveness can help. Good mental health is primarily awareness of your condition and finding ways to not just cope, but thrive in your own context.

It’s very possible, but if you or someone you know is struggling with personality or mental health disorders it is so important to seek help. Don’t be afraid. You are far from alone, and that’s the point. We’re all in this together.

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, cycling, duathlon, half marathon, running, swimming, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged anxiety, aspergers, autism, born to run, chronic depression, cognitive, Depression, inclusion, law enforcement and mental illness, mental health, mental health awareness week, NAMI, national alliance on mental illness, SADD, seasonally acute depression, spiritual awareness | 1 Comment

A long and complicated relationship with the shower

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

As a matter of tradition, the phrase “hit the showers, boys!” used to ring out after every high school and college athletic practice. We’d drag our tired bodies back to the locker room, strip naked and stand under the forgiving spray in hopes of either getting either warm or cool water depending on the season.

Athletes once thought nothing of standing around naked in the showers. Why would they? Being naked at times is part of sports. It still is with the pros.

Who knows exactly what’s happening these days? Kids apparently don’t shower after gym class during school hours. One frustrated kid put the question up on the Internet, “Why don’t schools make kids shower after gym any more?” Here’s were her observations:

My mom was recently talking about how she had to take showers in gym when she was younger. My school doesn’t make us shower (actually, they dont LET us shower) and neither do any of the middle schools in our area. at first i thought it sounded horrible, getting naked in front of everyone like that, but then i thought it would be nice to go back to class feeling nice and clean rather than hot and sweaty. and the kids could wear swimsuits if they feel embarrassed. why dont they make them shower? do they want their students walking around sweaty and smelly?

One respondent’s succinct reply said a lot:

A number of reasons:

-Time
They would have to cut the class time to make time for a shower

-Cost
Using all that water every day for hundreds of students adds up

-Personal Problems
incidents that could happen in the shower, like sexual harassment, because a teacher could not be present, also imagine the scandal if there was a homo sexual around you? Also guys running in on the girls etc.

-Liability
Schools became afraid of being sued. You could slip and fall. lol

But i think you should be able to if you want to… but still that would still have to cut down class time, to allow time for the shower.

Yes, all the insecurities of the world seem to come together in the shower. Not to mention fears. Who can forget the scene in Psycho with the blood washing down the drain? School showers simply aren’t safe or emotionally healthy places…

So much ignorance and so many selfish fears afoot when it comes to showering after exercise. Let’s not forget that some very recent studies have shown that recreation time is actually critical to student performance in the class room. There’s also the growing challenge of childhood obesity lurking around every school corner. To help manage their wait, kids actually need to be working out hard enough to work up a sweat. That means they should shower following exercise for purposes of hygiene and potential body odor.

At the gym

Showering at the health club where I belong is kind of fun. They have giant shower stalls lined with cool tile and a never-ending supply of hot water. You can work out hard, take a rinse off shower, go swimming, hit the hot tub and come back for even more hot water before you change and head back out into the world. The showers are like a refuge from everything else that’s wrong in the universe.

My membership is coming up for renewal and I can pay $19.99 for the simple version of the club with no showers or else pay $25 or $30 a month and be able to visit the bigger gym with the pool and all. The luxury of those showers may be worth the extra dough.

Cold comforts

Because for years the showers at the gym were a tarsnake of sorts. It was great to get done working out and hit the showers to cool off or warm up. Yet so many school and college showers were utilitarian. Our college locker rooms had those tower showers where everyone stands around a pole with water squirting at them. Sure there were towel fights and the occasional joke about a body feature, but no one really came to much harm from it all.

After showering we’d often stick our heads under the heated blow driers so that our hair would not freeze during the walk up the hill in freezing temperatures to the college Union. Yet it was sort of fun to have a Helmet Head made of ice. But some of us got sick of all that and started showering in the dorms not out of embarrassment but of convenience in getting changed.

Going without

During lunch hour workouts over the years, there were times when a shower was not always available. I’d run four or five miles and change back into work clothes after dousing myself with deodorant. That feeling of being grimy or sweaty under the clothes was never great.

My dentist used to run during his lunch hours and come back shining from sweat. Then he’d towel off with no shower and go back to work. Honestly that grossed me out. I switched dentists.

Home sweet home

Over time we develop a funny relationship with the shower. Everyone has a rhythm to their showering. Some are fast and efficient. Others take their time and dawdle, letting water wash their troubles away.

In summer nothing feels better than a cool shower after a long bike ride. If the legs need a shave I plop down on the tub floor and aim the shower head to the wall. Then I can shave and rinse. The feeling of smooth legs for cycling is simply I’ve grown to appreciate at a whole number of levels. It just looks better, but even the art of getting a smooth shave is a pleasure of sorts. It’s like painting a wall or writing a story.

Then you come out of the shower and move into your day with a zing and a tingle. The shower makes you feel truly alive, or at least brings you back from the dead after a killer workout.

Extracurricular

Sharing the space with a treasured companion can be fun too. Everything’s better when wet. Of course I tried that once with a college girlfriend in a dorm during summer break and the floor maid heard us talking. She burst in to investigate as I hid behind the door. It was like one of those scenes from an exploitation comedy about teen lust. But she didn’t find me even though she asked my girlfriend all kinds of questions.

Yes, it’s a long and complicated history one has with the shower. Perhaps you’d like to share your experiences…for better or worse?

Posted in cycling, duathlon, half marathon, marathon, running, swimming, Tarsnakes, triathlon, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged at the gym, cold shower, do students shower, hit the showers, hot shower, peeing in the shower, showering after workouts, standing under the shower, strip naked | Leave a comment

The danger in running away from ourselves

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

Still don’t know what I was waitin’ for

And my time was runnin’ wild

A million dead end streets and

Every time I thought I’d got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet

So I turned myself to face me

But I’ve never caught a glimpse of

How the others must see the faker

I’m much too fast to take that test

–David Bowie, Changes

Perhaps you’ve gone for a run or a ride in a strange neighborhood or even a foreign town and wound up in a cul de sac or a dead end street. It’s a strange sensation in many ways. You know you need to retrace your steps but something in you wants to keep going the direction you were already headed. To the point of near insanity, some of us choose to pursue a singular path over being willing to change directions for any reason at all. Our determination exceeds our common sense.

Sometimes our friends see that path and try to counsel us: That’s not a good way to go. Yet we fake ourselves into thinking it’s the best course (a marathon when we’re already injured…) because we’ve put so much effort into getting to that point that going back feels like giving up. It’s an admission of sorts that we’ve failed in some way.

Admissions

I wrote an as-yet unpublished novel back in my twenties titled Admissions. It uses the paradigm of the college admissions process to explain that the best thing most of us can do in life is to admit our flaws first, then find the right course of action. Think about it. If instead of listing all our best attributes on a college application or a resume, we were instead motivated to place all our worst flaws on paper first., and set out to fix them.

“I suck at details,” we might write, or “I hate long meetings” could go a long way toward helping us make changes beneficial to our faulty natures. That would be a lot more helpful than trying to bolster little egos with statements such as “I excel at innovation and creative solutions.” Ask any Human Resources associate. The cliches outnumber the truths.

Not that painting a negative picture would get you the job. But it might help you prevent those flaws from showing through in ways you never intended. There’s a lot of things in life like that…

Great lengths to avoid embarrassment

We go to great lengths to create this “person” that does all sorts of things for us. It’s our “personal brand” or so it goes.

But in many ways this personal brand we create is sometimes running away from the part of us that truly needs fixing. Because none of us is perfect. You can prove that fact with religion of with harsh secular rationality, but the same holds true. Our flaws hold us back from success.

Look at the way you run, ride and swim. The whole enterprise is about fixing things that don’t work and overcoming flaws. This coming week I’m going to embark on a winterlong mission to become a better swimmer. I’ve got decent swimming form I’ve been told. Yet the breathing part holds me back. I exhale through my nose and gape with my mouth but somehow I’m still not getting enough air. After two decent laps the whole thing starts to bog down. I run out of breath. That weird panic of losing air shuts me down and bam, I’ve stopped cold. Dead in the water, so to speak.

What I really fear is embarrassment at stopping all the time while others swim back and forth for 45 minutes. We don’t like to admit that we’re not as good as others at something we’re trying to do.

Negatives and positives

This isn’t negativity ruling the psyche. As athletes most of us learn the power of positive thinking or else we quit. It’s that simple. You can’t do a marathon, half marathon, triathlon, Ironman, 5K, 10K or open water swim without some degree of confidence that you can finish. You tell yourself you can do it, and you do it. Nothing complex there.

Doubt enters the picture in more subtle ways. We may prepare ourselves for an event and yet get to the line with questions.

“Have I done enough mileage?”

“Can I hold the pace?”

This is both healthy and a drawback. It’s one of the tarsnakes of endurance sports that the caution we need to apply holds us back, yet throwing that caution to the wind can cause us to blow up, drop out or hit the wall. Which means that despite all our preparations there’s always a part of us that feels like we’re “faking it.” We try to run away from those emotions and as time goes by we might actually become confident enough to believe that we are no longer simply faking it. We’re actually as good as we claim ourselves to be.

Life changes

Nothing lasts forever. So we engage and embark on test after test, pushing ourselves to find out if we’ve still “got it” in one way or another. Are we still as fast or faster than we used to be? And if that isn’t possible, we stave off the inevitable with age group efforts knowing that the people we’re racing face the same shit as the rest of us.

Jealousy enters in when competitors seem to transcend all that. They don’t seem to be running away from anything. They not only complete their races and workouts, but seem to fly through them.

Again the perilous pit of comparative reasoning draws us down.

It’s like this:

Every time I thought I’d got it made

It seemed the taste was not so sweet…

Because even success can leave us feeling vacuous and empty. There is often a feeling of a letdown after a major race or goal is accomplished. Your body and brain cry out for new objectives. “What now? Who am I? Where do I go?”

Answering questions

It is far better to take a moment to stand there and answer those questions than it is to run away from ourselves with a head full of unresolved questions about why we do what we do. The risk is finding ourselves among a bunch of other people similarly disengaged from perspective and reason about our choices, or absorbed in unrelenting focus on the ego of a thing.

We lose ourselves in that process at times. Then the changes that come our way are sometimes not by choice. Our sport becomes our self-image, and we find ourselves running away from ourselves.

There’s more to all of us than that. Yes, it’s good to be disciplined and driven when we set our goals. As John Irving once projected through a coach character in the novel Hotel New Hampshire, “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”

But the fact of the matter (even in the novel sense) is that obsession is just one tool for self discovery. It is not the entirety of any of us. That’s true whether you run, ride, swim or do all three. Our sports can change us in very good ways, but it is important that we do not fake ourselves out in the process. We all tend to be good at that. We don’t want others to see the faker, and we’re much to fast to take that test.

Changes inside and out

It’s okay. It feels so good at times to be in control of our health and fitness that it can take control of our entire being. The danger is when you lose that sense of control through injury, illness or other life circumstances. Then the real you is forced to take over once again. That’s the person that exists whether you run or ride or swim or not. Don’t forget that person exists. They’re pretty important in times of crisis or during those periods when our avocations necessarily take a back seat. There’s a person in there that loves and marries and keeps track of the kids. Who gardens and walks the dog and actually goes out to make a living.

Life is full of changes. It requires that we look outside ourselves for feedback, and to understand who we really are. Yet the ultimate process is one of self-examination.

So I turned myself to face me

But I’ve never caught a glimpse of

How the others must see the faker

I’m much too fast to take that test

Run, but don’t run away from yourself. Ride, but don’t ride until you’re out of touch with reality. Swim, but don’t drown in your own ego about what all this really means.

It’s about self-discovery, and nothing more. Your running, riding and swimming are not in fact the whole you. That’s always going to change depending on what life throws at you. You can’t really run away from that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged bowie music, changes, Christopher Cudworth, david bowie is, much too fast to take that test, see the faker, werunandride | 2 Comments

Here’s to a bloody good time when you run and ride

Posted on October 1, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Something in us is wired to recoil at the sight of blood. Yet the phrase “bloody” or “bloody good” is used as an “intensifer” to describe all sorts of activities from drinking to comedy to simply hanging out with your homies. If you’re British, that is.

Whenever I try to give blood I faint. It’s not the sight of blood that gets me. I last all the way through the withdrawal process only to fade at the very end. Some sort of imbalance takes hold and out I go. So I don’t try to do that any more.

Last year I got stuck in the finger by a tiny sliver and it infected the joint in my middle finger. That required bloody surgery, stitches and a pick line in my arm that looked like a Frankenstein experiment. There was blood under the clear bandage that perpetually looked fresh and frankly freaked me out. Was I leaking?

Then came the accident last June in which I had my head down during a bike ride and crashed face first into a fallen tree. That required four stitches to sew up the bloody wound on the front of my chin. Right after the accident a sweet young couple had ridden up behind me and asked. “Are you okay?”

I told them I was fine, but she pointed to her own chin and grimaced, stating, “Um, you’re really bleeding.”

Indeed I was. There was blood all over my neck and face. I wiped it up with cycling gloves and it finally clotted into a dark black clump. The doctor hosed that down with alcohol and sewed me back up. But he missed. A fleshy dome of skin still hung from the wound. If I touched it the wound reopened. Later I met a nurse who told me the doctor messed the thing up. There was nothing to be done by then. For weeks afterward the bruises under my skin migrated around my body carrying dead blood to who knows where. It was like a map of destruction, colorful and crazy in its construct. The bruises settled in my ass crack and migrated up the shaft of my penis, then disappeared. Like a magic act, the blood performed its functions and then vanished into thin air, or thin blood.

While shaving my legs for cycling this summer I resorted to some cheap fixed blades and wound up taking chunks of my skin off the shins and knees. While writing this blog that morning the blood ran down my legs and pooled on the ground by my feet. I hadn’t noticed the wounds that much. My feet smeared the blood on the floor. It looked like a crime scene. My girlfriend blanched that evening when she saw the raw flesh. “What did you do?”

I lied and told her it was yard work that caused the blood. Actually it was that too. Shaved legs do not hold up well in the garden. Every loose stick or thorn bush takes a chunk of flesh. Cyclists who shave their legs should probably not be gardeners as well. I dumped those cheap blades just the same. It was not worth the compromise to shed so much blood.

Then over the next couple weeks I would absentmindedly pick at the scabs and the blood would come rolling out again. Don’t pretend you don’t do that too. Scabs are irresistable. It’s true whether they are physical or emotional. We pick at them because we want the flesh or emotions clean again. Yet here comes the blood, reminding us there is something deeper to the issue.

People who cut themselves gravely crave this cycle of bleeding and scabbing. People who can’t leave emotional wounds alone suffer the same fate.

Those of us who run and ride cut into the soft flesh of every new day with hard or soft efforts. We’re rehearsing the pain that comes of full intensity. We bleed ourselves from the inside out. Our blood carries oxygen to our muscles and returns to the heart blue with exhaustion. Our veins and arteries do their work without complaint unless we open them up. Then the conversation turns bright red. Then our animal nature is exposed.

It hurts us when we see our pets exposed to the horrors of blood. When my girlfriend’s cat was attacked this summer by a neighbor’s dog, the blood flowed freely. Only it was not just the cat that got bloody. That sweet feline clamped her claws and teeth into the face of that dog. The dog paid dearly in blood and pain.

We speak of becoming “blood brothers” when we exchange blood as a bond of loyalty. Slicing the hand open and pressing it to the flesh of another bleeding palm is a pretty strong commitment. Likewise the moment when a man penetrates a woman for sex during menstruation. The aching need for love transcends even blood. There’s a clinging lust in the warmth and draft of all that. Some can handle it. Others cannot.

At a running race I once visited a Porta-Potty where the bright red blood of a woman’s period graced the top of the messy pile of urine and feces. It struck me that men know nothing of this export, this ability to bleed without dying. Yet women do feel pain in the process. The cramps of the female body unloosing eggs that will never see or meet sperm. It’s so earthy at some level it was considered taboo by those who wrote the laws that became scripture. Menstruating women were considered “unclean” and were to be isolated from the rest of society until their “period” was over.

Without blood we’d all be dead in a minute. A soldier shot on the battlefield bleeds out, becomes cold and then shivering on the brink of death. In great battles it has been reported that blood flowed like water down the street. Human lives washing down the gutters.

I once had a teammate whose nose burst forth with blood during a cross country race. His white uniform was splattered with his own blood. Yet he kept running despite the bubbling red froth in his mustache. We all stood in awe at the sight of him. “It doesn’t hurt,” he blurted while spitting red bits of blood around him. “Why stop?”

Similarly I was once arm-wrestling a kid in 8th grade study hall whose nose spurted blood from the effort. It shot all over the table and my companions all shouted and jumped back in their chairs to avoid the pool of blood rolling across the table. The study hall teacher came angrily over to check out the situation and was aghast at the scene. She gave us a stern lecture and ushered the wounded kid off to the nurse’s office.

When he left we all stared at each other and said, “Coool.”

So we love and hate the sight of blood. When blood spills in the movies, we marvel at the special effects or label it “fake” if the blood looks too red or not gory enough. The blood spilled from the body of Jesus during the film Passion Of The Christ was meant to change the hearts of those that had never considered the gore and pain endured by the man the Jewish populace of those times called Yeshua. People either worship the man or ask “What’s the bloody difference?” if they believe or not.

Surgeons and nurses mop blood off bodies and off the floor. They witness the warm smell and feel of blood and it is nothing to them but an occupational necessity when getting in and out of the human body. The same goes for veterinarians, scientists and everyone else who turns the universe of the body inside out.

During college biology I conducted a series of experiments on animals in the lab. One test involved convulsed the leg muscles of a frog using electricity to test its performance as lactic acid built up in the muscle fibers. I have never forgotten the sight of that frog’s legs twitching their last, too fatigued by lactic acid to carry on. The blood could no longer carry away the bad stuff and replace it with good stuff. It gave new meaning to the term “frog’s legs” to me. I have had that feeling in my own legs many times over the years.

That experiment with the frog went well enough, but the tracheotomy on a live rat did not. My lab partner cut the carotid artery and blood spurted straight up and hit the ceiling. It pulsed like a geyser until the rat finally died as the blood fell in a shallower ;arc until the experiment was over by default. Nature seems to use the color red as a warning, that life is just beginning, or may be over.

Those experiments may seem cruel to some, but they’re really not so different from what we do to ourselves in events like a marathon or Ironman. We push and push and push, blood coursing through with vital nutrients carried to muscles that die without them. We either transcend or bonk on the way to the finish. Our faces grow flush with blood just below the surface.

Red also makes a bloody good sign to Stop lest you get flattened and bled out by a passing car. Those of us who run and ride would be well served to remember that.

Then there are those pursuits that put life, limb and our very blood on the line. If we crash in a high speed accident during a criterium, the blood spilled on the coarse road surface marks our commitment to speed.

We literally race to defy the end of life. We wrestle with youth and age with blood racing through our circulatory systems in defiance of the dust to dust reality that is so dry compared to the plasma to platelets reality of our day to day existence.

We speak of “feeling the flow” during peaks in performance. That is no coincidence. It is all a product of a blood good time when you run and ride. Here’s to hoping you have the best of luck with your blood without showing too much of it at the same time.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged blood flow, bloody, bloody bood time, bloody good, bloody movies, bloody noses, cats and dogs, circulatory system, cycling, cycling crashes, fainting at sight of blood, hard efforts, lust, menstrual cramps, menstrual cramps and athletes, menstruation, period, picking scabs, racing, sex during menstruation, sexua penetration, shaving legs for cycling, sight of blood, veins and arteries | Leave a comment

What one small bird can tell those of us who run and ride

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

This time of year is peak migration season for songbirds. Millions of birds are moving south for the winter in search of food sources and warmer temperatures.

It’s a tough go, made even tougher by the fact that in the last 250 years there have been a lot of obstacles erected in the path of flying birds. Tall buildings in Chicago regularly knock thousands of birds from the sky. By necessity and out of compassion a volunteer crew of avid birders moves through the city streets from dawn until rush hour each morning collecting dead birds and shipping stunned but still living birds out to the Willowbrook Wildlife Haven in Glen Ellyn where they are rehabilitated if possible, and released.

The birds that aren’t collected are often eaten by crows or gulls, which also move through the city at dawn scarfing up free meals. Up to 5000 birds a season are rescued and released. Many of these are rare or precious species of birds whose populations have been impacted the last 200 years by human changes to the environment.

Fight or flight

Humans have a lot in common with birds you see. The adverse environmental impacts that affect birds include pesticides, pollutants, habitat and wetland loss. Climate change of any type, warming or cooling, is also known to have major impacts on bird and human populations. The somewhat ironic fact now is that anthropogenic (caused by humans) climate change is turning tables on everyone who lives on the planet. Birds and humans are now interlinked in new ways.

There is talk that climate change may reduce bird populations by millions. Entire species may vanish from the earth, creating a mass extinction on par with past decimations wrought by meteor collisions with earth, volcanic eruptions and long term climate heating and cooling brought on by natural shifts and systemic change.

This time climate change is happening so fast the effects are measurable by visible degrees. The rate of change is unprecedented. Ice core samples in the Antarctic show consistent, regular cycles of climate change over 800,000 years, but never has a spike like this one occurred. As a carbon-spitting race of beings we’ve spiked the climate punch.

Strange histories

Climate change deniers like to point to the long and ancient history of earth as a sign that human beings could never affect systems so big and large. Ironically these perspectives are partnered with religious view that contend the earth is not that old, perhaps 10 to 30,000 years old, tops. Collectively these views are held by something like 30% of the American population, the exact figure that matches up with diehard conservative voters.

What an odd, contrarian mix of beliefs it is that forms the alliance of climate change deniers! Meanwhile changes to our weather produced by global warming confuse the issue even more in the minds of those who choose to deny climate change on ideological grounds. Here in Illinois last winter we had the coldest, snowiest weather imaginable. Some seemed spitefully content to grumble “so much for climate change,” yet they should have listened to their own words. Climate change was exactly what set up a new Polar Vortex that sent cold air rushing down from the arctic.

Big patterns

We’ve known about systems like this for a couple centuries now. The Gulf Stream keeps northern Europe climatologically stable. Without that warm water from the south, Europe starts to freeze. Climate change could screw with that.

Already we’ve seen glaciers melt away from major mountain systems. There is concern that reduced snows in the mid-Rockies could result in river systems drying up across the central United States. Irrigation is fading in California due to drought, and messing with agriculture and the ecosystems of that state. Major economic, political and social changes have already been implemented to contend with such changes. Is it a symbol for what’s to come on a global scale?

Rolling changes

So you can see that we humans and birds are dependent on the same natural systems to sustain us all. And how does that affect those of us who run and ride?

A few love to jest that warmer weather would be a welcome adjustment in the northern climes. Some speculate that in 100 years the climate of Chicago could be just as warm as New Orleans. We know from the fossil record that entire continents once received much warmer temperatures. Massive tropical environments hosted dinosaurs that grew to huge proportions because there were food sources and the environment to sustain them.

But when the climate changed, things got serious and massive die-offs occurred. It can still happen. Denying the impact of human effects on the atmosphere and the climate does no good. When big picture climate change gets really rolling, there’s no stopping it. It’s like trying to stay away from the peloton as a solo rider. We could all get scooped up by the fast pace of hot weather brought on by global climate change.

Tiny signals

I studied that little ovenbird carefully this morning. I’ve seen birds that were stunned before. This one sooner or later got its wits back together and flew away. That bird was victim of an artificial circumstance. The reason birds hit windows is that they perceive the reflections they see as a reality. They fly right at the window as if it were a woods in which to escape.

The only way to change that perception in birds is to alter the false appearances by placing objects on the window that warn them off. It’s not just cosmetic. But its also not perfect. Sometimes birds still hit the windows even when there are stickers or other prevention measures set up.

It’s almost a perfect parallel: the human race is about to strike a giant window of our own making. We’ve placed an obstruction to a healthy future in our own path.

The impact on the human race could be severe. There could be droughts that kill crops, loss of water sources leading to major international conflicts, and changes in the oceans that could lead to flooding and radical shift in population centers.

It’s not alarmist. It’s common sense. More than 90% of the world’s scientists agree about the facts of climate change. It’s not some political conspiracy or partisan plot to get funding for science. In fact it’s the opposite way around. The people who don’t want to fund climate change prevention seek only to keep money for themselves and protect a status quo that is costing the rest of us dearly. They are the selfish bastards, in other words.

Human nature

Let’s apply some theology and some logic here to consider the contentions of climate change deniers.

If on religious grounds one determines that humans cannot effect something so large as the order of creation, how does one explain the fact that the Bible chronicles the creation of a fallen world based on original sin, the acts of one man and one woman? If human beings can’t affect the order of creation, then the Bible is a lie.

If on economic grounds you contend that preventing climate change will adversely impact existing industries, then you refuse to consider the striking parallels between the dynamic environments required by both an economy and an ecosystem, both of which are dependent on healthy environments (conditions) to thrive.

If on political grounds one contends that dealing with climate change is a waste of money compared to other social issues, then you’ve divested your politics from common sense, because a nation is first and foremost composed of the health and availability of its most resources. Climate change puts those resources at peril and risk.

If on ideological grounds one maintains that climate change is the creation of a liberal faction that is always inventing social problems, then you likely refuse to acknowledge that effecting social change and responding to human needs and civil rights has always been the province of liberalism. That’s a proud and demonstrable fact, one that goes all the way back to the founding of the American Republic and the quite liberal document known as the Constitution. Civil justice and environmental justice are inextricably linked.

We all have a lot at stake in terms of overcoming such unsound objections to action on climate change.

In the same boat

All this matters to those who run and ride because our treasured activities truly do depend on a healthy climate and ecosystem. That’s what makes prosperity possible. Without that firm dynamic in place, life quickly turns to issues of survival. There is no time for leisure when food and water is scarce. There is no time for fun and running and riding when nations are at war over dwindling resources and land.

The bird on my front porch this morning was a patent little warning that human beings really can screw things up without really trying. We’ve wrenched the climate loose from its slow moving moors and are adrift in history. It’s not too late to throw ropes and pull ourselves back in. But the boat is moving even if some people refuse to see it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged anthropogenic climate change, birding, birds, birdwatching, Christian fundamentalism, climate change, climate warming, global warming, gulf stream, ideology, religious grounds | Leave a comment

Time as measured by pumpkins and apple cider donuts

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

America seems to believe that mo pumpkins is always better.

There was a moment in the mid-season finale of the Starz series The Outlander in which the main character Claire Randall Beecham Frazier (you’ll have to watch to understand) approaches a set of stones on the hill of Craigh na Dun in Scotland… where she can travel back through time. As she nears the Stonehenge-like gathering of stones, she calls out to her husband who is at the same spot in “the future” to hear her voice coming to him through the stones. Tantalizingly, his voice can also be heard by her in return. They near the same point in the universe but in fact are 300 years apart…

I won’t spoil the plot for anyone interested in watching the intriguingly crafted series. It’s not that it makes time travel seem possible, or even desirable. It’s that it makes time a commodity about which we should all be more aware.

My own piece of Scotland

I’m Scottish, and there is a spot in my life much like the hill of Craigh na Dun. It sits at the intersection of two roads in central Kane County. The roads themselves have been altered over time. At one point they formed an odd junction in which the curved road and its t-intersection formed a triangle among the cornfields. That spot seems to draw me back again and again. Many of my cycling rides pass that spot. It has significance to me.

The campus of Kaneland High School where I attended 8th-10th grade meets that arc in the road. Our cross country team would run that curve around a set of trees planted in a long semi-circle. For decades after I ran there as a freshman and sophomore in high school, an indentation from our many footsteps could be seen in the ground.

That trace of the past may have been meaningful only to me. Who knows if anyone else ever even noticed it, or knew its origins? But when I moved away to another school a part of me got left behind on that campus. It lurked as an artifact of times past just like the trace of the Oregon Trail that sits one mile north and east of the Kaneland campus. It only means something if you know the history.

Time on earth

The simple footpath that stood up through multiple mowings lasted for decades. It held the early secrets of my running life, those first moments when you realized you could really do something in this world if you worked at it.

Of course I’m no more important in the world of running than a million or more other runners with similar abilities. So I’m not suggesting there is any value to these memories other than a link to some sense of self.

But there are paths of a similar order that do bear greater significance, and to which so many others do have connections. I think of the cross country course in Peoria where the state championships are held each year. That’s where I watched Craig Virgin set the state record that still stands. Though thousands of other runners have tried, no one has ever run faster than Craig did that day. That time warp feels like a worm hole in my mind. I was there to witness history and realized even at that moment… the chasm of time between a talent like that and my own. Yet those connections are real.

For there is triumph in the feverish memories of our own efforts on a path around a thousand campuses just like the one on which I once ran. Our coach once challenged the Top 5 to complete the .87 circle in under 4:10 to earn a steak dinner. And we did it. So there are cogent miles of effort tied up in that space.

Being present

Getting in touch with our inner farmer.

It so happened that 40+ years later, on the very first ride I did with my companion Sue, she liked to pause on that same campus as her turnaround point of a 30-mile ride. So she plopped down on the very grass where I once ran as a kid and sat back with a smile to ask, “So, what do I want to know about you?”

You can imagine the sweep of thoughts going through my mind at that moment. Here we sat literally on the path where I’d once run my guts out as a 15-year-old sophomore cross country runner. We were also in sight of the cafeteria where I once danced so close with a girl named Joanie Hankes that I thought I’d absorb right into her skin. Or wished I could. So what do you say at moments like that? What do you choose to reveal about yourself?

It turned out we talked about a lot of things, especially our current interests and our growing interest in each other. She knew the story of how I’d lost my wife Linda to cancer several months before. She learned of my pride in that woman’s life, and her perseverance and character. That was ground we’d continue to cover together. The grieving process is individual, and I had nothing to hide. Life and time go on whether you acknowledge that fact or not. I had made the decision that time should not stand still.

Turning points

A few weeks later while riding with Sue she had a crash. I accompanied her to the Urgent Care Center and a rush of familiar sensations came over me. In eight years of cancer treatment with my wife I’d spent many moments sitting in waiting rooms as the medical teams gathered information about her.

Now here was Sue giving information to a medical team. They asked her name and she replied, “Linda.”

Then she quickly turned to me and said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you about that. I go by my middle name Suzanne. But my real first name is Linda.”

I was not freaked out. Just intrigued by the enormous circumstance of how odd life can be.

Time travels

Which brings us to the present and another spot not far down the road from the Kaneland campus. There sits an apple orchard and pumpkin farm that turns into a major tourist attraction each fall. The Kuipers family farm erupts each September into a fest of autumn goodies, honey-crisp apples and a hundred other opportunities to celebrate the transition of the seasons.

Last year my daughter Emily and I made a pilgrimage to Kuipers in memory of her mother. We both made it through the store until we hit the spot where they make apple cider donuts. That’s where we both lost it. The memories were still fresh from the year before. So we stood there and hugged in line without being able to tell the people around us exactly what the tears were for. But it was good. That was a place were my wife Linda and her family liked to go each fall. Our memory of her was partly wrapped up in that place. Even when it was hard for her to walk during the worst throes of chemotherapy, we still made it out to the apple orchard for fall goodies. She never gave up.

We’d purchase bushels of apples and her late father Melvin would peel them all and make dozens of apple pies and pans of apple crisp. Before his health failed and he died three years ago, Emily sat with Mel to learn the craft of his pie-making.

So you can sense the meaning of applies and pumpkins and cider donuts. They represent both the preciousness of the moment and the passage of time. They come together in one place and we are transported in some way.

Present hopes

Kyle lifts 90 pounds of pumpkins.

This year our little clan headed out to Kuipers for some fun and the day was magnificent. My daughter Emily and her boyfriend Kyle joined Sue and I for an afternoon drive and a wander through the Kuipers campus that has grown into a regional attraction. The weather was 80 degrees and sunny.

Just the day before I’d biked up the hill on the south side of the apple orchard with a couple friends and told them, “We’re heading there tomorrow.” In fact I’ve ridden past the orchard many times this summer. Every time the swirl of recent and past memories flow through my head.

Yet I don’t feel these memories the same way I once did. Maturity and age give you perspective than can be mistaken for ambivalence if you’re not careful. There were times in life when I felt emotions so passionately they threatened to melt me down like a ring of solder. My anger and love and competitive fury mixed together, making victories and losses feel like life and death.

Time has a purpose

There was a purpose to all that. When life and death really did come along, I was prepared to deal with them. That’s what’s so hard to explain to people who might wonder what it is like to deal with the death of a spouse, and why it is okay to feel love again, and want that flow to return to your life. All of us encounter those cycles of time and life and death. Future, past and present seem to combine in those moments.

I love my children so much and it has been painful thinking about the loss of their mother this past year. As wordy as I can be at times, there have been moments when words or the opportunity to say them have perhaps failed me.

I did not lose my own mother until 2005 when she was 80 years old. By contrast their mother was just 56. She’d worked through cancer treatments so many times it seemed impossible she’d ever die. My method of coming to grips with that possibility involved writing my way through both the fears and blessings of all that we experienced. That has helped me face all kinds of life challenges. I can only hope my example and love for them is sustaining. That and telling them that I love them.

Less fear

The fact of the matter is that I emerged on the other side of life with less fear. There was help. While my late wife was taking steroids to treat the side effects of surgery for cancer that had migrated to her brain, she once woke me up at 4:00 one time to tell me to go for it. Write my way to the life I wanted to lead. Do it, she told me. She’d seen me race and win and live life without fear when we were first dating. Get it back, she seemed to be saying. And so it goes.

Flipsides

That type of confidence in faith and hope has helped dispel any fears toward making it on my own. With the many challenges of forging your way in your own business, there also comes a freedom that makes life feel more real. I first felt the flipside of that emotion while being a caregiver to my father once my mother died. I realized his care was now entirely in my own hands, and that there were really no rules to follow. One learns to step up in that moment to accept the responsibility. You lose fear over making decisions and accept the consequences, both good and bad, of being the one who cares.

So when our group of four wonderful souls walked around the Kuipers pumpkin patch it struck me that when it comes to making decisions in life, you either go big or go home.

The pumpkins at Kuipers in fact looked like they were raised on other-worldly fare. The stems were huge and phallic. The bodies of those gourds stood two feet tall in some cases. There was a fecund quality to all of them, an inspiration in some ways to me. They cost 39 cents a pound and we bought three of them and stored them in the back end of the Subaru. We came home with $100 worth of popcorn, apples and apple cider donuts. So goddamnit, we went big and we went home. Who says you can’t do both? That’s how we’ve got to roll in this world.

Ironman pumpkins

Sue Astra poses with Ironman Pumpkins in anticipation of her race next year.

In a week Sue and I will ride the Pumpkin Pedal down in Ottawa, Illinois. Last year the winds were so strong at times they nearly stripped the kits off our backs. It’s likely after a warm, dry and calm spell here in Illinois that we’ll see a shift in the weather for next weekend. It may turn cold or wet. But we’ll be there. She’s in the early phases of training for next year’s Ironman Wisconsin. Every ride counts whether it builds fitness or builds character. We’re traveling through time together now. And through time, every effort counts for something.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged apple cider donuts, apple crisp, bike riding, builds character, cancer, cancer survival, cancer survivorship, Christopher Cudworth, competition, cross country, cycling, donuts, go for it, gourds, ironman wisconsin, kuipers, life and death, pilgramage, pumpkin farm, pumpkin pedal, pumpkins, running, The Outlander, The Right Kind of Pride, time, time travel | 2 Comments

Running around the Garden of Eden and the Human Race

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

Today’s We Run and Ride features lessons in morality and some important thoughts about commitment to your training. You likely know how it all begins, for it is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We enter the story at the point where Eve encounters a certain serpent in the Garden of Eden. The serpent tempts Eve by encouraging her to break the only training rules God had ever issued…

The Fall

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

And there you have it. The serpent sets up the first-ever stumbling block to a faith in God and commitment to a training program. Because the first principle of training is never to eat something you have not tried before, especially before a race. And given that Adam and Eve were ostensibly the beginning of the entire Human Race, they had pretty good reason to be careful in their preparations for the task ahead.

But no, Eve thought she knew better. She elected to ignore the advice of her coach, also known as God, and venture into trees unknown for training food.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Granted, we all make training mistakes sometimes. But this was a pretty big foulup. Because once Adam and Eve had fallen into the trap of thinking they knew better than their coach, a whole world of options opened up. The lesson they learned is that the truth may set you free, but there’s a whole lot of other junk that comes with it.

It’s a sin and a shame that Eve didn’t have the common sense to stick by the training schedule mapped out by God. The course they had laid out around the Garden of Eden was a great place to log the miles. Every day Adam and Eve would train together. He’d point out birds and critters along the way, giving them names and such. They ran as equals and enjoyed each other’s company. There was no such thing yet as lactic acid or fatigue. Adam and Eve could run and run and run all day and not get tired.

There was just one problem. Training the same day without much challenge gets kind of boring after a while. That’s why Eve was so tempted by the serpent. Any break in the routine is welcome after you’ve trained the same way and eaten the same things for so long. A new piece of fruit sounded pretty good about then. So Eve wandered off the training path and found out that this new fruit not only tasted good, it made you feel smarter too! Hot damn this was fun!

The very next day she shared some of the Forbidden Fruit with Adam. He loved the new fruit too. It was almost better than a new flavor of Gatorade. But that’s getting a little ahead of the game.

As they started to train using the new fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden, they started to sense fatigue from running off the course God had mapped out for them. All of a sudden they felt an unfamiliar tiredness in their legs. The tree of knowledge had deceived them! Not only did they start to recognize Good and Evil, they now knew exhiliration and exhaustion as well.

“What have you done?” asked Adam. “This isn’t as easy as it used to be!”

“I know,” said Eve. “But if we train really hard I think we can get back to the shape we were in before. That’s how it works, you know. No pain, no gain.”

“Oh is that so?” Adam barked at her. “And who are you to decide how we should train anyway? God had it all laid out for us. Our path was perfect. Then you had to go tweaking our training program with this Forbidden Fruit stuff and now everything’s screwed up.”

“Relax,” Eve snapped at him. “It’s not like we’re completely out of shape. Yet.”

Just then they heard the sound of other footsteps in the Garden of Eden. “Run!” cried Adam. “God is going to pass us this loop! “

“The man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

We all know what happened next. Adam and Eve had to explain why they broke the training rules God had mapped out for them. The story broke on social media of course. All the animals in the forest were now talking about what screwups Adam and Eve really were. “Like, Adam gave me this stupid name that I can’t stand,” one of the animals said. “Who wants to be called an oryx. Sounds like some part of your rear end.”

Thus the whole rebellion started in the Garden of Eden. All sorts of discord erupted among the animals and God had to strike their ability to speak because there is nothing more annoying than a bunch of dumb animals bitching about what they’re called. And that’s how animals lost the ability of speech.

And God was pretty pissed at the serpent for starting all this mess by tempting Eve and then Adam into breaking the training rules He had mapped out for them.

¹⁴So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
    and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
    and you will eat dust
    all the days of your life.
¹⁵And I will put enmity
    between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring^[a] and hers;
he will crush^[b] your head,
    and you will strike his heel.”

Then God turned to the woman, who really was in good shape by this time from all that running she was doing, and laid down the law about how it would be from then on:

¹⁶To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

To Adam, God turned and said. “And why did you have to be such a dumb shit? Things were all set up for you with this Man Cave I created called the Garden of Eden. If you’d have stuck around long enough I was going to give you the remote, for God’s Sake. Now you screwed it all up.”

¹⁷To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
¹⁸It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”

“Well, that kinda sucks,” Adam said. And Eve just rolled her eyes.

“Now get outta here,” God said to them both. “This training facility is now officially closed. I’m not sure I’m going to keep it open at all. The upkeep was too high anyway. Go find your own club, or build one yourself for all I care. And good luck with that running thing you’ve been doing. That’s going to hurt a lot more now too.”

But God felt sort of bad for the first two athletes on his team. So he helped them out. Sort of.

²¹The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. ²²And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” ²³So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword, flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

And that, my friends, is the biblical explanation of why running and riding and anything else you do on this earth to stay in shape is so damned hard. It could have been easy if Adam and Eve had not broken the training rules. You could run forever and ever, right up until you entered the Gates of Heaven, then you could run some more. You’d be like the Forrest Gump of All Time and Eternity, running over the clouds and racing Ezekiel up that crazy ladder into the sky.

Of course we would still not be as fast as God. There’s only so much glory to go around.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Adam and Eve, biblical history, breaking training, breaking training rules, crawl on your belly, crush your head strike your heel, cursed are you, enmity between you and the woman, God walking in the garden, hid from the lord, Lord God, rebellion toward God, the serpent, training rules | 2 Comments

Making sense of things down the road

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Roads are very symbolic objects. We use terms such as “somewhere down the road” and “on the road to success” because roads take us places we want to go.

We tend to take our roads so much for granted these days. But perhaps we should not be so cavalier.

Twelve miles west of where I live there is a remnant of the Oregon Trail, one of several branches of the wagon trail used by settlers to get to lands further west. The indentation in the ground where the trail once passed is several feet deep. The rut was cut by wagon wheels, pressed into the earth by hundreds if not thousands of people moving to a new life.

North and east of my home is a road called Army Trail. And yes, at one point it served military needs during the Indian wars in Illinois.

South and west there is a road called Deerpath Road. It winds through an oak forest where indeed there are white-tailed deer that are now considered more of a pest than a pleasure.

All these roads have a history of sorts. Some helped define history while others are more an echo of history and the success people have had in taming the landscape.

Of all the beneficiaries of success, cyclists and runners have to thank God for good roads. On a recent charity ride our group of cyclists found ourselves on a rough patch of road extending far to the west. Its surface was pebbled and shook the bike frame as we rode along. The high winds and rough roads slowed our pace by four to five miles an hour. It was a long slog for several miles. Those difficulties only came to full light once we’d turned off that road onto an entirely smooth surface. Then we glided back into a better pace guided by a favoring wind.

“Aaaaahhhh,” someone intoned. “That’s better.”

Runners can appreciate a good road as well. The dynamics are different, but road surface still matters. So does the camber. The angle at which the road falls off to the shoulder can put a strain on the legs on a long run. We tend to run against traffic for safety reasons, but that means the left leg is often striking a surface up to an inch or two lower than the right in some cases. Your hips bear the brunt of that cambered strike force. So do your knees.

Which makes it all the more special when a road crew comes along and installs an all new tarmac where there was once a crappy, pot-holed, tarsnake-ridden road. Recently a new road was installed on one of the most popular stretches of cycling route in our country. Campton Hills Road leads out of St. Charles to crest a glacial hill about 80 feet high. It’s one of the few climbing routes in our area topped only by the rise to Town Hall Road two miles west. That route of two successive climbs is where almost everyone who bikes central Kane County starts west for open country.

But the road was in terrible shape between the soccer fields west of town and LaFox Road three miles further out. There were sections of peppered potholes where your bike would almost come to a halt the road was so bad. These also tended to be in shaded areas where any moisture or fallen debris would make the road slick as well. It was dangerous to be cycling along and come to nearly a complete halt when there were cars bearing down on your from behind. The visibility is poor in those shaded areas as the shade was deep enough to obscure even brightly dressed cyclists.

We used to run that road quite a bit when I was in high mileage mode. The shoulders are basically absent however, formed only by short sections of gravel that fall away into weed-chocked drainage ditches. As runners we’d hop to it when running down the hill on Campton Hills Road. You don’t want to waste time in sections where cars some so close to you.

And there tend to be plenty of those. Campton Hills is the primary thoroughfare for traffic headed back and forth to subdivisions between Route 38 and Route 64, both state highways.

Then there are the thrillseekers, truck blasters and kids zipping out to the Mini-disc golf course tucked into the woods beside Campton Hills Road.

We’re perhaps fortunate there have not been more incidents in which cyclists or runners get hit or hurt on that section of road. The only recent accident was a cyclist in our group who was climbing so slow his wheel got stuck in a rut and he fell over and got a concussion. That was his own fault to a degree. But the condition of the road had something to do with it too.

So there is a blessing and a curse to the fact that Campton Hills Road was recently gifted with all new asphalt. It’s a safer ride for sure. But it also gives the illusion of a potential for greater speed to motorists as well. The road climbs a series of dips and half turns and that can obscure a runner or a rider using the road for recreation.

It would not surprise at all if someday the City of St. Charles were to ban cyclists and runners from the road. There are plenty of moneyed folk out west of town who don’t like to slow their vehicles down on the way to work and other places. The same goes for another hilly road north of Campton Hills, where Burr Road takes a series of sharp, clean climbs on its way north out of town.

Drivers love the same types of roads as cyclists and runners, and that can be a problem.

All this rider can say is that the climb up the west incline of Campton Hills Road was a ton more fun yesterday. There were no rough patches to slow you down or force you to swerve to avoid a flat. Just smooth black asphalt as you hit the six degree section and finished up and over the hill. Then the ride down the other side delivered a 34mph spin at full velocity.

And then, a surprise. For some reason a 40-yard section of road was not re-paved. All the familiarly dangerous potholes were still there. I gave a quick glance to check for traffic behind and did a slalom through the rough spots. At 30 mph that takes concentration and reaction.

Then it was back to smooth road and a brief contemplation why the road crews left that one section untouched. Perhaps there were drainage issues to address there, and it would be done later? It would not be a surprise. The Campton Hills area is formed of glacial till, a giant mound of pebbles run through by groundwater. One side of the road forms a park thick with oak woodland. Natural prairie has been planted and managed there as well. The birding and nature study in that park is fantastic.

That’s the yin and yang of a beautiful road. It serves so many people there is inevitable competition for use of the space, and at what pace. Who is to say that the light flickering through the windows of a BMW speeding through the woods is any less relevant than the cool shadows and warm bursts of light on the backs of cyclists and runners?

We all pay for these roads in one way or another. They are the property of the commonwealth, you might say. It can’t be too hard for anyone to use them or it would be unfair to everyone.

The whirr of your tires on new asphalt is the sound of peace to many. That’s how we make sense of things on the road, and down the road. For better or worse, the road is where we do much of our thinking, or lack of it, these days. Give that some thought next time you share the road with someone else.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged beneficiaries of success, cycling, cyclists, down the road, echo of history, making sense of things, on the road to success, Oregon Trail, road cycling, Road Runner, road running, road surface, runners, running, somewhere down the road, tarsnake, tarsnakes | Leave a comment

The Endurance Athlete Matrix and how it can help you plan your life

Posted on September 24, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

The world of endurance athletes can often seem complex. Balancing priorities can be tough when there are so many activities to balance.

It can help to have a tool to step back and assess your efforts. The above graphic illustrates the primary activities and values most endurance athletes use to plan their activities.

You will notice there is a somewhat oppositional construct to the Endurance Athlete Matrix; from racing to solo training, from performance-based to fitness and health oriented training.

ACTIVITIES

RACING The peak performance of individual and/or team effort.

COMPETITION Sub-peak races or events used to hone fitness.

EVENTS Fundraisers or other opportunities to test and use fitness.

GROUP EFFORTS Joining others for workouts.

SOLO WORKOUTS Any effort or training done on your own.

TRAINING Workouts planned for a measurable result.

FITNESS Activities done for general health, balance and cross training.

CLUBS A serious or even paid commitment to group workouts and racing.

VALUES

The “Inner Ring” includes four value measures that include:

GOALS The objectives for performance.

FUN Enjoyment of the activity or sport.

HEALTH Lifelong benefits and current status.

SOCIAL Relationships and bonds.

If you were to take this Endurance Athlete Matrix out a step and mark activities in which you participate each year, you would essentially be able to establish what percentage of time you spend in each category or activity.

Naturally workouts and training activities would dominate the activity level. But how many are done with a group as opposed to alone?

Also, how many types of events, races or competitions do you do? And how do you determine which are the most important, or how hard to tackle each one?

The truth is that simply being aware and keeping track of your annual matrix of activities can help put your fitness, health, social and goal values in order.

We hope this helps you assess your own objectives. Endurance sports are a great way to enhance life and enjoy fitness in a variety of ways. May you find your balance and your best performance as a result.

All graphics copyright 3C Creative Content, Christopher Cudworth

Posted in Christopher Cudworth, cycling, duathlon, half marathon, marathon, running, swimming, triathlon, We Run and Ride Every Day | Tagged 3C Creative Content, Christopher Cudworth, clubs, competition, cycling, endurance athlete matrix, events, fitness for health, fun, goal-setting, group efforts, life balance, life planning, life tectonics, racing, running, social fitness, solo workouts, training for health, triathlon | Leave a comment

Getting up to speed at Victoria’s Secret

Posted on September 23, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Apparently I’m not alone. A search on the web for Discarded Panties turns up a ton of images.

For a few years in the early 2000s I experienced a strange phenomenon. Everywhere that I rode or ran or hiked there were loose panties discarded by the side of the road. I found them in parking lots too. There were thongs and hiphuggers, grannies and gross examples of Saturday Night Fever tossed out next to beer cans, cigarettes and condoms. I could hardly go for a run or a ride without finding the detritus of some lovefest or other colorful scenario. It was like someone was conducting some form of performance art installation at my expense. The World According to Panties.

And then, it stopped. I haven’t seen any purple lacy things by the road for a couple years now. No triangles of fabric bearing kitty cats or skulls. Suddenly the whole panty thing vanished. I don’t know why. But I might have a clue. We’ll get to that toward the end of today’s blog.

But first let us consider this whole panty thing in a fuller context, so to speak.

Victoria’s Secret

What hides inside this bag could be the secret to increased speed in your running and riding.

Because just this week a marketing piece addressed to me from Victoria’s Secret showed up in the mail. Somehow my name got on their mailing list years ago and once in a while they ship me an offer for free panties. Usually I dutifully hand these along to my daughter and say “Have at it.”

Like millions of young women in America, her collection of underthings could probably be crumpled into a ball and held in one fist. I know this because I regularly transfer her laundry from the washing machine to the dryer, then on to the big table where we sort the clothes.

But you have to be diligent to avoid sending the panties along with the towels or somesuch. Panties cling to other layers of clothing like a Tom Cruise character sneaking up the side of a building in a Mission Impossible movie. Panties in the laundry always look like they’re up to mischief.

Faithful shopper

When the Victoria’s Secret mailer showed up this time I noticed that there was a coupon for a free pair of Hiphugger panties. So I asked my companion if she would like those and she told me “Yes, those are cute.”

I know that discussing panties can be an indelicate topic. One of my riding buddies once engaged in a quite firm discussion with his wife about riding commando in her cycling shorts. He insisted to her that bike shorts were designed to protect everything down there.

“Not going to happen,” she told him.

He pursued the subject a bit further. Out of curiosity of course. She shut him down. “This topic is closed,” she responded.

Practical mysteries

These unabashed gals and guys are having fun at the UndieRun.

That leaves the whole panties and underthings topic a bit of a mystery in the minds of some men. Yet the earthier women among us are all too glad to tell us why women wear certain bits of clothing, especially panties under bike shorts or other athletic wear. It has a practical purpose in terms of hygiene and protection as well as a sense of propriety. So there. Now you know all you need to know.

That does not stop the whole panties subject from leaning toward blatant titillation at times. Walking into any Victoria’s Secret is very much like walking into the candy store as a kid. There are Sweet Tarts and Sweet Hearts and a whole range of other treats if you know where to look. It’s all just eye candy. And women seem to love them too. It’s almost like they want their butts to look cute. Imagine that.

A real workout

There’s also an exercise section at Victoria’s Secret these days. The bras look much more pushup affairs than humble JogBras. They also cost a ton. The sexier stuff ain’t cheap. It never is. Another Catch-22 of the bra and panty world is that the more you spend the less you get sometimes. If you bitch about that, all it takes is for someone to hold up a pair of $9.99 granny panties and you’ll gladly pay twice that for 1/10th the fabric. Bring it on.

It’s a fine line sometimes between underwear and racing gear.

The same holds true for running shorts and cycling gear. A simple pair of racing shorts from Nike or Reebok or Newton or whatever costs about $45 these days. They are made of light fabric that you can hardly feel when you are running. Same goes for skinsuits in cycling. The whole purpose of workout wear these days is to feel and sometimes look like you’re essentially naked. There’s nothing between you and the world except a fiber-thin layer of fabric. If you’re lucky it holds your personal effects in place. Just don’t try to carry your keys. They’ll poke you in the crotch.

Some runners and cyclists have dispensed with the clothing ruse altogether. You can enter UndieRuns and Naked Bike Rides where the outfit of the day is your underwear or nothing at all. That’s called getting down to basics.

Panty factories

As I wandered through the Victoria’s Secret store at our local mall it occurred to me that there must be a giant panty factory somewhere in central China pumping out zillions of panties a day. Who really knew? Unless you spend time thinking about the incredible variety and styles of panties available on the market, you don’t really know what’s out there. So to speak.

But as I stood there considering the vast panty universe, a wry. soft-spoken gal with a British accent sidled up beside me at Victoria’s Secret. “They’re fayvh for twenty-five dollahs,” she told me in her thick English coo. “That means you’ll get the sixth payrh fffree. And you can chewwse from any shelf you want for those.”

This fellow seems happy enough to be down to his briefs for an Undierun. A pair of panties might make him even faster.

Why, that little tart. She’s trying to sell me on a little naughty business. Here I was, all innocent and focused and such, sticking to the respectable rack (no pun intended) with the Hiphugger panties that matched the coupon. Now she was pointing me toward a tempting pile of lacy things two tables over.

I feel a tightness in my throat and decide that it’s too much to handle at the moment. My brain can’t process that many styles of panties it. Some have so little fabric they should not qualify as clothing. They are essentially a series of filigreed holes with straps connecting them.

Some other day. The pairs I’ve chosen for my gal will be a surprise and a treat, but anything more will have to wait. I scrape my eyes off the back of my Scattante sunglasses and head for the checkout counter.

Under. Estimated

Those really lacy ones won’t do much good under bike shorts anyway. That’s the only real reason I was buying these panties for my gal anyway. Really. I mean that. My imagination was firmly focused on the task at hand. I swear it. There are no innuendos in this paragraph at all. It was the coupon’s fault. That’s what brought me there. No ulterior motives. (insert cricket sound here…)

At the check out counter the truth emerges. I turn to the checkout gal and say, “I’ll have to buy a bottle of wine to match each pair.” I don’t know why I said it. Perhaps I wanted to prevent any intimation that I might be buying those panties for myself. I’m sure they see the full spectrum of interests at Victoria’s Secret. There are all kinds of tastes in this world.

Fast company

There male competitors demonstrate the speed a pair of panties under their shorts can add.

And who knows? Maybe a nice pair of panties under those cycling or running shorts would actually make you faster? if you’re a guy who gets turned on by a nice set of panties, why not try it out sometime? Remember the character in Bull Durham who wore the garters under his baseball uniform? They helped him loosen up and throw harder. So to speak.

Which might just might explain why all those roadside panties seemed to disappear. Perhaps there are enough men out there that have uncovered the fact that sexy panties makes them faster?

Don’t lie to me. You’d do anything to take a minute of your 10K time or 15 minutes off your marathon. If throwing on a hot set of panties on under your cycling kit or running shorts would help you gain a 20% increase in speed you’d do it in a heartbeat. It’s perfectly legal even in the Tour de France. And they do understand kinkiness in France, I believe.

But even here in America we’re all in the same game. Like the Kinks once sang:

Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.

It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world…Except for Lola.

Um, no. That’s not it.

So go get your Lola on, guys and gals. If a pair of lacy whatnots is going to improve your PR or help you become an Ironman (so to speak) then who’s to say it’s not a good training and racing strategy? Don’t be so damned uptight! The gal with the hot British accent at Victoria’s Secret will help you choose a pair of paintes that fits your needs and helps you find your speed. Whatever that might mean. Enjoy yourself. It’s the secret to success.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 'male thongs, 10K, bikeshorts, bras and panties, checkout gal, christopher cud worth, Christopher Cudworth, commando, cricket sounds, cycling, discarded panties, English accent, hot underwear, naughty business, pretty panties, running, sexy workout gear, tart, thong, thong underwear, triathlon, triathlon training, truth emerges, undierun, Victoria's Secret | 2 Comments

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Getting up to speed at Victoria’s Secret

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