Excerpt from my upcoming book “The Right Kind of Pride”

Posted on July 3, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

FamilywithchuckbwIf you ask someone why they run and ride, they’ll often tell you that it helps them stay fit and keep mentally healthy.

Those priorities and benefits are exaggerated when you find yourself in a stressful situation in life.

It can be a real blessing to have the ability to run and ride when you need time to process everything going on around you.

As caregiver to a wife with ovarian cancer for 8 years, there were a few periods where worries washed over us. In those times it helped to go out and run or ride and think things through.

There’s a long-term mental health benefit to endurance sports as well. It teaches us persistence and determination. Those qualities come in handy when you’re pushed to the limit in other areas in life.

Within the week I’ll be publishing my book the experiences of caregiving and survivorship titled:  “The Right Kind of Pride: A Memoir of Character, Caregiving and Community.”

The book incorporates the blogs I wrote to our caregiving community about the challenges and blessings we experienced during the past8 years. It’s both a practical and philosophical look at life with some humor mixed in.

Here’s an excerpt from the book, a segment in which I recount the moment when a former cross country coach her about my wife’s cancer and gave us a call:

Front lines

Despite the broad scope of assistance available to us, the frontline care giver and patient are still the primary interface when it comes to covering daily needs. As Linda and I learned what it meant to deal with cancer, my care giving skills were put to repeated tests. When these efforts fell short in some way, the stress of disappointing her could be difficult to handle. 

Fortunately there always seemed to be someone ready to step up with encouragement and advice at just the right time. Often those calls of support seemed to come out of the blue.

A few weeks into the first cycles of my wife’s chemotherapy, one of my former coaches from high school heard about Linda’s cancer and called to offer us support. We talked for a while and then like all good coaches he offered a bit of insight and encouragement. “Your whole life has been preparation for this,” he told me. 

It was a compelling notion. Over the years our relationship had grown from athlete and coach to something more. We became friends and even business partners with his corporate fitness company, so sports were never far away from the core of our relationship. His instincts about how athletics prepare you for life were exactly what were needed at the time. 

Early lessons

That coach and I had known each other more than 30 years. At the age of thirteen I played baseball for his team and later on this fiery, motivated man would also coach me in high school cross country. We enjoyed thrilling success and also learned how to deal with the challenges of defeat. He’d seen me at my best and worst. 

We need people like that in our lives to help us achieve balance and perspective, especially in times of stress or trouble. That is what my old coach meant when he told me “all your life has been a preparation for this.” Winning teaches us how to recognize and apply our strengths. Losing teaches us how to live with our weaknesses. The balance of these two teaches us to take pride in the quality of the process as well as the results. That’s the right kind of pride.

The book will be available soon on Amazon.com. A formal announcement will be distributed through this blog at WeRunandRide.com. 

Thank you for your readership!

Christopher Cudworth

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Of Body Fat and Body Thin

Posted on July 2, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Trying to stay lean as we age is a challenge. Often an incremental commitment can make all the difference. Or

Trying to stay lean as we age is a challenge. Often an incremental commitment can make all the difference. Or

In 1982 during a period of peak or full fitness produced by miles and miles of running that year, I chanced to have my body fat tested at a corporately-sponsored race in the city of Philadelphia. Standing in line with all the other runner types I was typically restless and wondering how long it would take for all these people to have their fat pinched and their bodies tested. When it comes to keeping weight low, it helps to have a hyper metabolism.

Finally it was my turn to have the calipers applied to my 140 lb. frame. The nurse gripped the calipers and grabbed what she could on my side. There wasn’t much to grab. She tried a few other spots around my frame and wrote down the results on a sheet of paper. Then she added it all up and looked me in the eye. “Don’t get caught in the rain,” she said. “You’ll die.”

One can’t tell how accurate tests like that really were. But the nurse gave my results as 2% body fat.

Again, I had just come off a 65 mile training week preceded by weeks of 78 and 82 miles. It was autumn and my fitness was swinging toward a new set of PRs at 10 kilometers.

Coincidentally that winter I did get caught in the rain. We ran 30 miles at 8:00 pace in 45 degree weather in a steady drizzle. I did not get hypothermia from that effort. I did sleep 12 hours when it was all done but that’s normal. I also dropped two lbs. off that 140 lb. frame.

Frankly I was a little too skinny for my own good. Overtraining was a key challenge. Resistance to colds and other mild infections was low. There’s a tradeoff in being that lean, thin and fit. You walk a razor’s edge between fitness and sickness. It’s the tarsnake of training.

These days my body fat is somewhat higher than it was back then. I weigh 175 lbs. now, 35 lbs heavier than my competitive weight back in the early 80s. People still call me “thin” these days, but that’s because my frame has always been lean. And obviously I do work out. So there are not fat slabs hanging from my butt or gut. But like everyone, I’d like to be leaner. Probably you would too.

Last time I had my body fat percentage taken and BMI (Body Mass Index) checked it was over 20%. That disgusted me. 20%! Does that make me 20% slower? Yes, to be honest, it does. Possibly 40% slower.

Some of that is age. We can’t stay young and fast forever. But we can stay as fast as we can forever. And we can stay healthy and lean as possible.

Using fitness to watch your weight is one of the most reliable ways to gain and keep control of what you weigh.

Waking up to weigh yourself on a scale is one of those highly individual and highly subjective processes. But it can be tricky. The “ideal weight” we carry around in our heads might be based on a level of fitness we reached a year ago, 5 years ago or 10 years ago.

We can be critical of ourselves from so many perspectives. But we do have to be careful what criteria we apply to judge ourselves. Six or seven years ago, for example, I rode like a nut all summer and dropped to 163 lbs. I was lean but not skinny. It felt good. It also took a lot of time and was somewhat in response to employment transition and a wife being treated for cancer. I rode like hell for sanity.

And it worked. But I’m not that person these days.

Ironically? That’s 163 lb. frame is the weight that an insurance company fitness chart told me was ideal for my height and frame.

People tell me not to be ridiculous when I say that my fitness is not what it should be, or that I’d like to be a little less heavy. But I’m not going to make fun here by making jokes about sticking fingers down my throat or anything like that. There are serious body image problems that do not deserve to be lampooned. Those are no more funny than alcohol or drug abuse.

So it’s important to keep it all in perspective. The right thing to do if you’re feeling a little pudgier than you’d like is to map our a month or two where you increase your commitment to exercise and fitness. It’s that simple. Generally those few extra pounds will come off if you organize your life to work out more, and with more intensity.

It’s not some radical strategy that any of us need to adopt. Let’s just look at it as “dialing it up” a bit if you want to lose 5, 10 or 15 lbs for better fitness, performance and self-image.

I’ll never see 2% BMI again. Nor would I ever want that to be the case. But 15% might be nice. Lean and mean. Healthy and clean. It’s what we all want. But it comes down to how much we all want it.

See you on the road.

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The proposition of summer shoes

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

IMG_0278Having more than a few miles on your legs can be a detriment when it comes to throwing on a pair of summer shoes.

All those years of running add up. Biomechanical flaws new and old show up in your gait. Things hurt. Like knees. Feet. Hips.

Which means that throwing on a pair of summer shoes is not so simple a proposition for those of us with miles still to go before we sleep.

Most summer shoes are floppy affairs. That’s what summer shoes are all about. You throw them on and go. They let your feet feel loose and free. Let them breathe.

But the ramifications of loose summer shoes emanate from foot to hip and above. Then the perambulations of summer shoes begins.

Those of us with orthotics slip guiltily slip our devices into summer shoes hoping they won’t blow out the sides or stick out the top. And there’s nothing so non-casual about a pair of sandals with visible orthotics inside.

But if you’re going to enjoy your running and riding when the summer shoes come off and the running or riding shoes go on, compromises are sometimes necessary.

One makes peace with summer shoes one way or another. They truly do make a difference in attitude. With a pair of white pants or a set of multi-colored swim trunks a dual-tone set of deck shoes finishes the summer look. You’re living in the moment. That’s as it should be.

But one must remember, tomorrow is another day. Another run. Another ride. You don’t want your legs and feet crying for mercy. You want them happy and ready for their more serious duties. Even in the summer. Especially in the summer.

Run on. Ride on. And enjoy your summer shoes any way you can.

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The harsh truth about why we all get injured while running and riding, and how to fix it

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

IMG_8591In 1975 during my senior year in high school, a tweak of my left achilles tendon threatened to end my track season in early April. To my father’s eternal credit, he created a lift in my left track spike using a small bit of padding and a shard of brushed denim. It was a near perfect fix and I finished the season injury free.

This was an early recognition that something was wrong with the basic biomechanics of my body. There are very few runners and cyclists for whom structural flaws are not a problem. That means the farther you go, the greater your risk of injury from repetitive stress and the torque caused by oppositional forces and weight imbalance in your body.

Chiropractors must really love people who run and ride. We’re each a solo science experiment in a test to see how long it takes for the body to break down under repetitive stress. The runner with a pronation issue in one or both feet will soon enough have knee and hip problems. The cyclist with a strength imbalance will create knee problems over thousands of pedal strokes. It’s not just possible. It’s inevitable.

And the solution, we all believe, is in the shoes we wear for our activities.

Last year I purchased a bike fitting from a Specialized shop that included an assessment of my biomechanics. The bike fitter sat my butt on a sit-bone tester and then measured my legs and ankle angles. She threw a pair of Specialized inserts into my cycling shoes to better position my legs.

But guess what? Even “specialized” adaptations like that do not entirely accomplish their stated mission of injury prevention. Even pro cyclists come down with knee, ankle and hip injuries. The more and harder you ride, the more likely you will experience repetitive stress injuries. All the massage in the world can’t fix a body out of alignment. It has to start deeper than that.

ADIDAS ITALIAGoing back to the early 1970s, we can see how running shoes have evolved. That gives us some perspective on what we’ve been sold and why. At that moment in history, running flats were minimalist affairs. They had gum rubber souls a half inch thick at the heel and flat without tread across the arch to the forefoot. That was it. That was what we wore to train day in and day out.

I was young and had good form. So I did not get injured even when running on the asphalt around the high school for miles at a time. We even did intervals in those shoes on those surfaces.

Many runners got shin splints. Their solution? Rigid plastic heel cups. Interesting.

Then the adidas SL72 flat came out and the modern running shoe era began. And from there running shoe evolution took off. Nike and other companies experimented with shoes that played with podiatry and biomechanics. But here’s the kicker: No shoe can be generically designed to suit all runners. We’re all too unique and flawed as human beings to stick our foot in a shoe and have that be a cure for what ails us.

And what ails us? The four primary flaws we all face are as follow:

1. Strength imbalance. Any weakness results in oppositional torque that will lead to injury.

2. Structural flaws. The likelihood of our skeletal system being symmetrical is low.

3. Form imperfections. Running and cycling require form strategies in sync with strength training to avoid risk repetition.

4. Training. Errors in type, pace and volume of training result in repetitive stress.

So you can see that relying on your shoes alone to contain the risks of running and riding injuries is naive at best. The harsh truth is that it’s rather stupid.

That is not to say that letting your shoes get too old or not paying attention to what you’re wearing on your feet is a good idea. What shoes can do is reduce the spectrum of repetitive stress on your body.

See, when shoes break down in running or when your foot is not positioned well on the bike pedal, every movement is compromised to the point where your body is bearing weight in an oppositional fashion. That’s what pulls muscles and joints out of alignment, leading to injury.

So rather than look at your athletic training from the bottom up, perhaps it is time to consider building yourself up from the top down. Then your shoes can perform the role for which they were designed, as a foundation, not the soul (or sole) support of injury prevention.

Here’s how it works. If you’re serious about injury prevention, this is what you have to do.

1. Train for strength first, then endurance. 

It only makes sense. A strong body is one that can endure. A weak or imbalanced body will not survive the process, but will break down.

2. Train for form. Health and speed will follow. 

Too many athletes do not make the connection between form and a healthy body. But the same goes for speed. If you have bad or inefficient form, your body simply can’t go faster.

3. Be mindful.

Running or riding “practice” often proceeds with a rather mindless effort in which you follow along with everyone else without paying attention to what you’re doing with your own body. That leads to injury because you aren’t in control of your own effort. Be mindful of your training load, your training pattern and your workout response.

When you consider these three principles you will begin to understand that the shoes you choose to wear suddenly change in perspective.

#1: If you’re training for strength and then endurance you want cushioned foundation under you if you’re running. In cycling you want to make sure you have your pedals and clips aligned each spring. Inspect clips for wear and make sure there is rotational flexibility as you build your early season miles.

#2: Building a base in running means increasing the time you run in order to add cardiovascular and muscle fitness to your training foundation. Usually that means longer runs at a moderate pace. It is highly important as you fatigue that you do not “fall apart” at any point and allow the body to swing out of alignment. That sets you up for injury.

Same goes for cycling. When you’re fatigued after three hours in a training ride it is easy to begin mashing the pedals, putting strain on your lower back and stressing your knees. That’s how you get hurt.

Form is important, especially when you’re tired.

#3: Think about what you’re trying to accomplish each day in training. Make the commitment to follow your plan. If you have a coach, have that conversation if you have doubts. It is far better to be cautious and smart than to be determined and get hurt.

And take the long view. Always be mindful that a workout shortened or missed may feel like a failure to you today. But if you apply these principles of strength, form and mindfulness in your training you will succeed over the long term.

Only now you can take a look at your feet and start to think about what you want down there to carry you along. A pair of shoes for training. A set of racing shoes to wear on the track and to rehearse race pace.

And for cycling you realize your shoes are a direct translation of everything going on in your body from your hands on the grips all the way through your lower back to your knees, ankles and feet. Your goal is to become one with the bike because you are literally attached to it. If your feet need orthotics to keep that in alignment, then get them. Otherwise injury is inevitable.

You can do this. You just need to look at your body and training in a more holistic way.

I’m hurt right now, so I’ve got work to do in analysis, strength training and mindfulness. Despite all knowledge, we all have to go back to the drawing board now and then. A million factors can throw us off. From age to work or driving ergonomics, many things can throw us off. All the more reason for mindfulness.

But don’t expect your shoes to cure it all. That’s asking too much of anything.

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Does it pay to be passive-aggressive when you run and ride?

Posted on June 27, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Having worked with (and for) a number of passive-aggressive people over the years, and noticing how they somehow succeed in this world despite their ugly behavior, it occurred to me that being passive-aggressive might actually be a competitive advantage in the world of running and riding. Or is it?

For example, when you’re on the starting line in really great shape and someone standing next to you asks, “Are you ready for the race,” you can reply with a cryptic little aggressive answer such as, “I don’t know. Why do you want to know?”

Of course they’re generally asking you the question just to be nice nice. But that weird little guilt thing that drives passive-aggressive people kicks in and you find yourself saying something a little more passive in response like, “Actually I’m not really here to race. This is really just a training effort.”

That’s a fucking lie of course. Because in fact you’ve trained your ass off for this race of 8 months and all you can think about is the joy of kicking the ass of everyone that has wronged you in some way the last 12 months.

Don’t lie. We’ve all been there. 

It's supposed to be about balance. But passive-aggressive people aren't so sure about that.

It’s supposed to be about balance. But passive-aggressive people aren’t so sure about that.

Passive-aggressive behavior is basically the line down the middle of the yin and yang symbol. You want to achieve inner balance but your brain engages in these perambulations in which your passive side, the part of you that is not so confident, gets in an argument with your aggressive side, which makes you want to run down old ladies with your $10,000 Cannondale carbon fiber road bike with sharpened front forks.

Yes, you know that state of mind, don’t you? You love to run and ride because it helps you achieve that carbonic bliss in which you are in tune with the whole universe. But on that way to exhausted Nirvana there are just a few too many things to work out in your head. So you go passive in some brands of thinking and aggressive in others.

Not laid back

It begs the question, why be passive at all? But there are answers to that question. If you are engaged in an event like a marathon or a half marathon, it simply does not pay on an average day to go out at a pace you cannot sustain for 26.2 miles. So you use your passivity in a constructive manner.

Our aggressive side often lurks just outside the perimeter of thought.

Our aggressive side often lurks just outside the perimeter of thought.

Only when fatigue sets in should you release your aggressive side. And even then you need to process it through the filter that does not allow you to drop down to a pace that is 30% faster than your target pace. Not unless you are named Meb or Rono or some other constructively African name should you allow your aggressive side to completely rule the day.

Given the very clear value of balance in events like running and triathlon, where a mindful approach is always best for success, it makes you wonder why so many people in the workplace seem to get away with passive-aggressive behavior.

Workplace woes

Well the answer there is simple. The workplace is not a just place. It is a concept as well. By comparison with running and riding, where judgment is based on empiric values such as finish time and place, the workplace is full of ugly little nuances of personality and politics. So being passive-aggressive is not a bad strategy for some people. They actually value keeping everyone else on edge because competition in the workplace is like that. Having a way to keep your friends and enemies off kilter as you compete for recognition and ownership of key projects really can function as a competitive advantage. That’s why so many bosses seem to be passive-aggressive. It works. And it makes hell for other people.

In the epic existential play No Exit by Jean Paul Sartre the opening scene begins with hints of passive-aggressive exchange between two of the characters:

GARCIN: (enters, accompanied by the VALET, and glances around him): So are we here?

VALET: Yes, Mr. Garcin.

GARCIN: And this is what it looks like?

VALET: Yes.

GARCIN: Second Empire furniture, I observe…Well, well, I dare say one gets used to it.

VALET: Some do, some don’t.

See, it’s all about being cryptic. Of course Garcin has no idea he is being enrolled in an eternal scenario in which hell is other people.*

When we’re not sure about the future or the present or the past, it is somewhat natural to engage in passive-aggressive behavior. It helps us calculate the odds and the risks of any given situation. P/A behavior is like sticking out your antennae to see which way the social wind is blowing. This is done out of uncertainty and fear.

Passive-aggressive. It’s the ugly truth of modern politics where people cry loudly or pretend to cower when you question their opinions. Then they come back with full force in a personal attack in order to put you on the defensive or try to crush your hopes. It’s an almost institutionalized political method used by people like Karl Rove and other psychopathic personalities. Passive-aggressive behavior is currently crushing America’s soul, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s not only the big players in politics. It’s also all over social media sites such as Facebook where people beg compliments daily or post egregiously partisan content and then get angry when people debate those posts with rational arguments. They call you intolerant if you do and uncaring if you don’t. It’s a really fucked up passive-aggressive world we live in.

Fortunately those of us who run and ride actually can achieve some clarity.

Real winners

Because by contrast it helps to just jump to the point of the matter. It helps everyone involved. Rather than engage in some sort of passive-aggressive banter, just cut to the chase and tell it like it is. You’ll be surprised how nice it feels. While the honesty may hurt a bit at the start, people either deal with it or recover. That’s the world of running and riding. Most of the time.

Racing is a pure and clean pursuit if you go about it honestly. Watercolor by Christopher Cudworth

Racing is a pure and clean pursuit if you go about it honestly. Watercolor by Christopher Cudworth

For example, during the opening mile of a 5 mile race I was once asked by a fellow competitor what pace I expected to run. I glanced over at him for a half second and replied, in earnest: “Faster than you.” Then I took off and won the race by 35 seconds in a final time of 24:49. Kick ass. Talk later.

Oh, but were the world world so clean and honest at times.

Sure, I could have stuck around and chatted with this passive-aggressive sort for a few minutes. And perhaps he might have convinced me to run along at his pace for a while as he gauged my strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps his language could have raised some small doubt in my head at which point he could have taken the lead with me left believing that I did not have the fitness to counter his objectives. And that is how passive-aggressive behavior works. It can really be a manipulative advantage if the victim allows it to be.

Are all competitive cyclists passive-aggressive pricks? 

Unfortunately cycling is by nature a passive-aggressive sport. You can’t just ride off from other people like you can in running. The power of the group of peloton can just reel you back in. So you have to play the game of passive-aggressive behavior by riding in the group for the most part. This means sucking wheels for miles at a time in hopes that you can find the merest advantage at the end of a race or ride.

I always find it a bit ugly and yet amazing that sprinters can ride all that way in a Tour de France stage and then sprint it out at the end. Talk about your passive-aggressive instincts come to life. They sit behind a mass of teammates for 100 miles or so over the mountains and through the wind for the opportunity to dial it up for three minutes and try to grab victory without crashing the entire race by running into someone sideways as you literally throw the bike forward. All to “win a stage.” Sheesh.

So it’s not surprising that a lot of cyclists are pricks of one sort or another. They love the concept of a free ride and hate their fellow competitors and riders for having to rely on it. The peloton is really like the hell in No Exit in a lot of ways.

Sometimes you can’t even get your fellow riders to agree what their purpose is on a given day. Or they state something passive like, “Let’s go easy today.” But then they’re the first ones to one-wheel you for 10 miles, or do long aggressive pulls that leave everyone exhausted and angry. One rider with whom we ride would rather gutter the group the entire ride than move to the center of the lane and allow everyone else to use the draft to keep up. That’s passive-aggressive bullshit. But when you’ve got the legs, you’ve got the license.

Of course even those P/A riders get their lunch handed to them sooner or later. If a pro shows up for the group ride the bully gets dropped just like the rest of them. There’s always someone willing to kick the ass of those who make life hell for others. But was Jesus even passive-aggressive? Some people ask that question. 

Beware the tarsnake of passive-aggressiveness

So passive aggressiveness is not a useless behavior even if the people who engage in it are often snarky, disgusting creeps at times who try to alternately cajole and scare you into agreeing to whatever madness they want to foist upon the world.

So be aware. Don’t be a passive-aggressive jerk even if it is a tempting way to win a race, lead a training run or achieve some other form of pyrrhic victory. You may win the day, but you lose in matters of character.

Being passive-aggressive in relationships is wrong, controlling and evil. Don’t do it to your spouse or partner or even your biggest competitor.

Find a way to be honest with them and yourself in the process. And when you’ve learned the lesson about how not to be passive-aggressive when you run and ride, remind yourself and hopefully others that being that way in the world of work and relationships is wrong, wrong and wrong again.

Or is it? Do you really think so? I’m just going to go off and think about that and let you decide. 

But when I get back you had better have an answer. 

It never ends.

*Want to read an interesting bit of theology about the concept of hell, and how it was never meant to be presented as we think of it today. Read this piece about it. 

 

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A running feud with chipmunks

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

This photo I took of a chipmunk shows a rather unforgiving face.

This photo I took of a chipmunk shows a rather unforgiving face.

Before I get on the bad side of animal rights activists, let me go on record in saying that I’m a huge nature buff. I even spend time in the buff in nature whenever possible, so long as there is no one else around.

So before I digress too far from the subject of a long-running feud with chipmunks, let me state that I literally mean them no harm.

Which is not to say that I have never harmed a chipmunk. Quite by accident many years ago I stepped on the back of a chipmunk crossing my path while running and killed the little bugger. I felt horrible of course. Because I like chipmunks. I really do.

But this was in my prime as a runner, and while training on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a college teammate, we were flying along at 5:00 pace and feeling great when a chipmunk darted out on the path, changed directions halfway across and ran right under my right foot at the moment it was striking the foot path. And damn, the poor thing was dead in an instant.

“You KILLED IT!” my friend said as he stood there in amazement. “You’re going to go to chipmunk hell!”

And so it was that chipmunk karma began.

Another chipmunk tragedy

Because a little while later that year, I was walking across the campus of Luther College when I spotted a chipmunk writhing in the grass. It appeared to be hurt so like the good biology student I was at the time, I bent down to pick it up and got hold of the tail. Not a good plan. The tail came right off its little butt and the chipmunk jumped up and ran away.

That’s nature’s strategy you see. Better to lose a tail than to be eaten on the spot. Just ask the Fantastic Mr. Fox. He later recovered his tail and pinned it to his ass for appearances, but everyone knows that once you lose your tail it’s never quite the same.

Getting some tail

After all, human beings lost their tails about 1.5 million years ago and we’re definitely not as interesting or attractive as we used to be. The phrase “I’m going to go out and get some tail” so often uttered by bachelors on the prowl never had the same meaning.

And think how awesome it might be to have a little bit of tail sweeping out the back of your Nike shorts as you raced down the boulevard. That would make you feel and look really fast.

Why, we’d almost be as studly amazing as chipmunks, who run around the yard with their tails raised whenever they are alarmed or in a hurry.

Chipmunk strategies

See, it’s pretty cool being a chipmunk in this world. Generally you run around stuffing your face full of seeds and other foods and run back to your hole in the ground. Then you squeeze your face through the hole and dump all that stuff out of your mouth into a little food cache for safe eating later on.

A woman doing her best chipmunk imitation

A woman doing her best chipmunk imitation

In fact while stuffing their faces chipmunks look a lot like triathletes or marathoners or any number of other endurance athletes so hungry for nutrition they cannot slow down enough to actually chew their food. Rumor has it that the typical insides of an endurance athlete contain whole, undigested bananas, long wedges of fermenting raisins and entire half slices of bagels, unchewed and unmolested. That’s because we make ourselves so hungry from all that endurance training our bodies crave food beyond reason. Oh yeah, there’s always a few Oreos down there too.

Which means the typical endurance athlete often shits out an entire grocery cart of perfectly good food whenever they take a dump. I’ve seen bananas still inside the peel left along the road when the urge hits a runner and they need to excavate their bowels. That explains why you sometimes see food wrappers at the bottom of Porta Potties. Those plastic wrappers do not digest well.

So we kind of have a kinship with chipmunks in that we run around shaking our little tails and eat like insatiable pigs, sometimes stuffing our faces so full there is no getting around it: we are little more than giant rodents when it comes right down to it.

Living with chipmunks

When a chipmunk moves in, they seldom move out.

When a chipmunk moves in, they seldom move out.

It’s even hard for human beings and chipmunks to share the same living space at times. The pair that lives under my back steps loves to tease my dog when he comes snuffing out the back door on the hunt. Then they race up the drainpipe while he goes apeshit sticking his nose up the pipe because he can smell those little buggers up there and they’re Oh So Close.

Catch and release

Some people don’t put up with chipmunk antics. They catch them and cart them away to other places. My uncle did this for years until one day while he was driving a chipmunk away from his home the little guy escaped and ran up onto his shoulder. That gave my uncle such a start he almost wet himself.

And catching a chipmunk inside a car is no easy feat. There are a zillion places for a chipmunk to hide, and there’s usually plenty of lost peanuts under the seat. So they can live in there for days.

Settling in

A squirrel's nest extricated from the front of an SUV engine.

A squirrel’s nest extricated from the front of an SUV engine.

A close relative of the chipmunk is the gray squirrel, and they are even known to make nests in the engine of your car. Here’s a photo with living proof of that phenomenon. Talk about “going along for the ride.”

If chipmunks catch up with that mentality, we’re all really screwed. I once had a mouse set up shop in the heating vent system of my Subaru. When the heat came on in fall a giant blast of mouse chewings came flying out the vents into the car. If chipmunks follow those habits and learn how to invade our cars we could wind up with peanut casings up our nose.

Stuff like that can drive people to criminal levels of chipmunk hatred. It’s bad enough they climb to the top of your sunflowers and knock the 10 foot plants to the ground. They really are destructive little buggers when they try.

Too cute for their own good

But they’re so darn cute in all their chipmunkness that it’s hard to get really mad at them. Which is why I put up with the pair (or more) that has now taken over the space known as my garage. Every time I open the door they are scampering in or out. I’ve let my dog chase them around the garage and they inevitably escape. They really liked the pile of wooden fence posts that sat on the north side of my garage for a few weeks. It was like a chipmunk hotel with holes in the fence posts so they could go over, under and through the posts. It was like Disney World for chipmunks.

So there is always fun company when I go out to the garage to get one of my bikes down or stand there stretching in the shade before going out for a run in the summer sun. I’ve offered an apology for killing one of their cousins way back when. But pretty much those chipmunks sit there and stare at me without an ounce of forgiveness in their hard little eyes. There is still some penance to be paid, perhaps. Which is why I don’t ever talk about the chipmunk that got rolled under my bike wheels a few years ago, or the ones that succumbed under my car wheels. We won’t go there at all.

Was this the act of revenge by chipmunks for my long ago crimes?

Was this the act of revenge by chipmunks for my long ago crimes?

Because if my local chipmunk friends ever get wind of those incidents, there may be a full-on war declared against me, with chipmunk karma raining down on head from all quarters.

So I’ll beg you to keep all that quiet, lest they all gang up and try to take me down on the bike by felling some giant tree in my path as an act of sedition toward their hated enemy. That would be bad, because if you’ve ever crashed your bike into a tree you know how bad the damage can be.

Heyyyy, wait a minute. Now that I think about it I think there were some teeth marks at the base of that tree that fell across the trail where I crashed the other day.

Those little bastards.

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iRun and iRide and my iPhone saved my butt

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

The bent iPhone.

The bent iPhone.

The folks at the AT&T store had not seen anything quite like the shape of my iPhone the night I brought it in for inspection after crashing into a tree with the phone in the hip pocket of my cycling kit.

“It’s bent,” the store manager said with some degree of admiration. “How’d you do that? I’ve never actually seen one bent like this before.”

I explained that the $650 iPhone 5 was perched in my hip pocket inside a $40 protective case when I slammed into the thick trunk of a downed tree.

“Interesting,” he said, holding the phone up for another look. “It really is bent. It might have saved your ass.”

“That’s what the doctor said, too,” I offered.

“I don’t think it can be fixed,” the AT&T guy told me.

I already figured that one out.

“But the screen didn’t crack,” I laughed. “So maybe I can sell it for parts.”

Other store employees gathered around to admire the damage to my phone. “That must have hurt,” one of them said when I described the bike accident again. Actually, the bike was not at fault I told them. It was purely my lack of attention that caused the accident. My bike was an innocent participant.

At least I wasn’t texting, I told them. See, I’ve seen several videos recently about driver safety that scared me into safer driving and safer cycling. This PSA from New Zealand puts safe driving in a compelling human context.

We’ve all made mistakes while driving and cycling. 12 years ago when I was first taking up riding and was doing a 25-mile tour of a suburban bike trail I was nearly struck by a vehicle traveling 40 miles an hour. The trail dropped suddenly onto a street from the height of the former railroad embankment and I did not see it coming. I hit the brakes and barely avoided getting crushed by a fender.

I look like the planet Jupiter.

I look like the planet Jupiter.

So I was lucky this time that my inattention on the bike resulted only in a painful encounter with a fixed and immovable object like a tree. The daily pain in my lower back is the swelling wisdom of experience. The bruises are a clear reminder that paying attention is paramount when you run and ride.

But honestly, there is a chance that the damage done to my iPhone actually saved me from injuries that might have been worse. Fortunately there was a provision in my plan to get a new phone. It cost me $50. Who knows what the stitches on my chin will run me when that bill arrives?

So while I feel stupid for crushing an iPhone and crashing my bike into a tree, I feel a bit wiser for the experience. I’ll still ride hard and fast, but there’s a call to attention in all this. For all of us.

Learn from my experience if you must. Save your own phone from destruction, and save your ass from a really colorful, painful week of recovery.

Because accidents happen. They really do. iKnow from experience now.

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In life and on the road you sometimes get only one shot at success

Posted on June 24, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

As a tiny little kid I recall the day my father called us all inside the house and ushered us upstairs to the attic where a tall window overlooked the back yard.

“Now be quiet,” he told us. “I’m going to shoot the groundhog.”

The groundhog, you see, had been digging under the barn foundation. My father did not like that. So he loaded his .22 caliber rifle and propped it on his forward hand while his finger rested calmly on the trigger. We all waited quietly.

Crack. That was the noise the rifle made when dad pulled the trigger. At the same moment it seemed, the groundhog fell in a heap.

“You got him!” we all cheered.

There was no remorse. The groundhog was not going to see his shadow ever again. Dad had proved himself in the eyes of his sons and the barn was now safe from the portly rodent piling dirt around its edges.

So many times in life we get one shot at success. The moment is right. Perhaps we’ve even planned for days, months, years to accomplish some goal. Then you get one shot at success.

I recall the day I sat with a potential sponsor for one of my print projects. I made my pitch and showed him the painting that would be turned into a poster for promotional purposes. The painting was executed on site at a baseball stadium. The sponsor’s logo was visible above the left field stands.

Somewhere I had heard the proviso. “He who speaks first, loses.” After I made my sales pitch I sat back in my seat and waited. Not saying a thing. The client looked at the painting and held it up and set it back down again. Minutes passed. Still I said nothing. Finally he responded in a somewhat flat voice. “And where would my logo appear? On the bottom?”

And I had him. One shot. Then I sold the other sponsorship with even more confidence.

All around the world people are taking their one shot at one thing or another. It might be a marriage proposal or an attempt at a 10 kilometer record under the lights at some European track.

I recall a hometown race in which a major regional competitor unexpectedly showed up at the line. His presence turned sure victory into a challenging race. He led the first 5K in 14:55 and it was my turn to take over. And from there I dared not let him have the lead back. If he surged, I surged. We moved up over a hill in Mile 5 and I could feel his stride beginning to shut down. Finally as we approached the last mile I gained 2-3 yards  and won by 6-7.

But that move at 5K was my one shot at victory. It was either going to stick, or not. Which proves that sometimes your one-shot opportunity might take quite a while to complete. Just stick with it.

One shot. That’s all you get sometimes. Set aside the fact that there are too many guns in this world and too many people are killed or hurt by them. This isn’t about guns. It’s about opportunity and recognizing that some moments are absolute. Carpe diem.

So it occurs to you:We only get one shot at life here on earth. So you’d best make the most of it.

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Comparatively and artfully bruised

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

IMG_0082So the aftermath of last Thursday’s crash into a downed tree while riding my road bike at 20 miles an hour and letting my attention drift to creative ideas rather than paying attention to the trail ahead is this: I’m now a very colorfully adorned guy. The bruises look like a work of art. So I’m really pleased about that. Really I am.

The canvas actually extends all the way from my lower back to a patch of apparently floating blue bruise material migrating toward my crotch. Blood is weird. Especially dead blood. But it makes good art. I can tell you that.

Back at it

By Saturday afternoon I rode the bike for 15 minutes to see how I felt and everything was fine except for the pain getting on and off the bike.

Sunday morning I went to church and it actually hurt pretty much to get up and down from the pews. But like all good Christians I fought through the pain because someday if I’m lucky that could make me a Saint. Never mind that we Lutherans don’t really brand people saints. I figure if I suffer enough for God the Catholics will pick me up on a free agent option and a player to be named later. I think that’s how they got their current Pope, who seems a lot more like a bleeding heart Lutheran than some hardass Catholic like Rick Santorum.

So, after church I was visiting with congregants when one of them said, “Have you seen (name redacted)? He was in a bike accident yesterday…”

I thought, “What?” My buddy never gets in bike accidents.

And then I thought again. Actually he’s been in quite a few accidents of many types. Just last winter while skiing in the Birkebeiner he did a forward flip so legendary the fans who witnessed it were talking about it in the bar a few hours after the race. Listening to their conversation he asked, “Where did you see that guy flip?”

They described the location and he admitted, “That was me.”

“Dude!” they all yelled in beer-soaked voices. “That was epic!”

History

He’s a good athlete. One of the best pure endurance guys I’ve ever known in running and cycling. A few years back in his middle 40s he was riding with the hotshot Tuesday-Thursday group that averages 28 mph on training rides and regular flips it at 30-35 plus. So my boy can ride and he could always run.

But once he gets turned sideways, he goes down hard.

And this time was no exception.

He and a riding partner were turning onto a trail when his tires slipped out from underneath him on a bridge and down he went. His entire hip and butt are an oozing mess of road rash and bruises. About an hour into a graduation party we were both attending we slipped aside to compare war wounds. He won. Hands down. Mine are prettier, but his are worthy of every Expressionist artistic work every completed.

I was secretly relieved that he had gone down too. He’s the more experienced cyclist having ridden since the early 1980s. I was worried what he’d say about my stupidity in not paying attention on the trail. As it turns out, you can crash whether you are paying attention or not.

Life likes to kick your ass. That’s all there is to it.

So we’ll both spend a week getting our lower back flexibility back. Like I said, he’s got a bit more experience in that area than I. Over the years he’s gone down in cyclocross and other bike accidents. It’s familiar territory.

Which makes it all the more funny now that I look back on our first “serious” ride together back in the early 2000s. I had my red Trek 400 but my other buddy insisted on me riding his Pinarello so that I could get the feel for a “real” bike. And one mile into the ride I fell over sideways trying to clip in and he quipped, “You’re a real cyclist now.”

WeRunandRideLogoWe rode 20 miles down a bike trail and out into the country. Then we swung back into town and I was glad because it was pretty tiring trying to keep up with those two.

Being clipped in was both a death-defying and liberating experience. It became moreso after we stopped at a place called the Mill Grill and drank 4-6 beers. I lost count at some point.

Then we climbed back on our bikes for the ride back home to his place and I never managed to get the second shoe clipped in. I was a little drunk from the beer and should not have been riding a bike at all, much less clipped in when I was over the legal limit drinking-wise.

But I half-pedaled the whole way home not saying a thing about my inability to get the other half of my cadence to work.

Sometimes the cycling gods have mercy. Sometimes they do not. That is the moral of this story. It is what you gain from the experience that counts.

So yes, I’ll be paying better attention from now on. But I was already doing that because of some videos I’d seen about the dangers of driving while texting and all sorts of other shit on the Internet that can scare you into being a better driver. In general.

The question for me is not just safety, where I’m being pretty careful about intersections and traffic lanes and such. It’s about paying respect to the cycling gods. Yes, that’s a bit of a pantheistic philosophy but when you’ve gone down because some random tree seemed to appear out of nowhere it may be time to burn some incense and pray that you don’t run into anything again soon. The cycling gods must be assuaged. In the blood or smoke of life, you make your own choices. Nudge your own fate. Or go down trying.

 

 

 

 

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You really can judge a book by its cover, also known as keep your eyes on the trail or you’ll crash

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

With a couple fixes. To the blog. Not me. Although that too.

Christopher Cudworth's avatarWe Run and Ride

By Christopher Cudworth

Evidence of recent events includes a pair of blood-soaked gloves and tissue. Evidence of recent events includes a pair of blood-soaked gloves and tissue.

Having not hidden much of my life while writing this blog, which now totals more than 500 entries, this is probably not the time to start hiding things now. So I will immediately confess that I did what seems like an impossibly stupid thing last night. I crashed straight into a large tree that had fallen across the bike trail.

That sequence of words is exactly how it should be stated. The tree had only recently fallen across the trail. A large storm passed through yesterday afternoon south of where I live. At 12 miles into a 25 mile ride I chose to cut west on the Virgil Gilman Trail, a well-maintained route that stretches four miles from downtown Aurora to Bliss Woods, a beautiful forest preserve with lots of birds and trees and plants…

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