It is time for Survival of the Hattest

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Mood hatI’ve always had a lot of hats. It seems like every time I take a hat off my head, another one appears. Not quite Bartholomew Cubbins, mind you, but close.

I have specially designed running hats. Those are really great. They’re washable. When they funk out you just throw them in with the running and riding clothes and they come out of the wash like new.

Don’t dry them, or they shrink. But beyond that they’re low maintenance.

Then there are a dozen or so quasi-running hats that can do in a pinch in case I can’t find any of the real running hats. Those float around the house like otters in a kelp bed. I pick them up and put them on my head as necessary or as the whim hits me.

WorkingSometimes I seem to need a cap on my head to write. Or to paint. Fixing the bathroom plumbing requires a cap to protect my bald head from scrapes and cuts.

I wear stocking caps under my bike helmet in winter. Balaclavas on the worst days. Which this winter was every time I rode. Like, three times. I wimped out. Admit it.

The new Nike stocking cap was a Christmas present from my companion. It matches the sweet Nike running jacket she also bought me. I look very matchey in that getup. Makes me happy.

But the time has come where I need to clear out a few hats. Some are more than 20 years old. One Columbia hat was purchased specifically for a trip to Crow Canyon Archeology NikeCenter and a desert study of Anasazi astronomy. That’s a lot of vowels, I know. But it was an awesome trip. I wore that hat while running up into the mountains near Durango, Colorado. So it has sentimental value. But it is tired and old. It was red when I bought it. Now it’s kind of pink.

Same goes for the Strawberry Fields cap purchased for me by my sister-in-law from the John Lennon collection in New York city. Unfortunately, that hat picked up some oily stains on the front and needs either a wash or to be discarded.

So I’m going to perform a little hat inventory. Those that can be washed, I will. Those that can be tossed or donated to Goodwill or Amvets Hattestwill go.

Because I want to make room for some new hats. I never promised I was going to own less. Only that it was Survival of the Hattest. Evolution rocks, baby.

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Running and riding through anxiety, depression and grief

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

54.ChrisLindaFlowersA year ago on March 26, 2013, my wife died after 8 years of treatment for ovarian cancer. Notice that I do not mention the word “battle” or “fight” or “struggle” in the context of my wife’s death. We worked through everything that happened together. We had many blessings occur along with the difficulties of trying to overcome a disease that overwhelms the treatments for too many people.

There were many difficult times during those 8 years. My wife and I adopted the phrase “It Is What It Is” to describe both the highs and the lows of dealing with each phase of diagnosis and treatment. That phrase, along with the words “A Journey Through Cancer and Caregiving” is the title of a book I’ve written about the experience. I’m working with an agent and will be seeking publishers. In the prologue to the book, I used these words to describe her efforts to survive cancer.

The fact that Linda Cudworth lived 8 years essentially beat the odds. I am really proud of her and grateful for that. She worked hard at it. Another admirable quality is that she also relaxed well when given the opportunity. We lived a lot of great life together as a result of her determination not to let the disease entirely control her existence after diagnosis. If you retain any message from these words, it is this: Cancer may affect you, but it does not need to define you. 

The challenge for any caregiver in the situation I shared is to keep your own mind and life together as you work with your partner through countless chemotherapy treatments, surgeries and side effects. The sense of loss through all of this is palpable at all moments. It might be easy to slide into a “woe is me” mode. We never did that.

Anxiety

Bald nogginOne of the more difficult parts of the journey is the very real grip of anxiety that can make carrying out normal life functions difficult. Work becomes harder. Your judgment can be compromised.

It’s an unfortunate fact. People see fear, loathe weakness and seldom have the time or concern in business to accommodate those compromised by health concerns. It’s an ugly truth with bold and rare exceptions. Kudos to those who do understand. 

If you are predisposed to anxiety as a condition, as I have been all my life (a ‘nail biter’ from an early age…) then coming to grips with how anxiety affects you is vitally important.

Anxiety can undermine your ability to work, to sustain positive relationships and even to breathe correctly. Here is what Daniel Smith wrote in his book Monkey Mind (Simon&Schuster) about the challenges of living with anxiety: “Anxious people breathe too quickly, and from the upper parts of their lungs, increasing the heart rate and throwing off pH balance and resulting in all sorts of unpleasant physiological changes. Learning to breathe more slowly and more deeply is sound advice.”

Except that breathing better may actually involve breathing faster in order to quiet the body enough to breathe slower. That’s where running and riding comes in.

Many were the days when I went outside and literally talked myself into the rhythm of a run or a ride. Leaving the side of a sick spouse and going outside to run or ride can however be a jolt. You start to move and stop. You look around to see if anyone is watching. Then you start again.

Or, you ride slowly and realize after a couple blocks that you’ve completely forgotten to consider the two stop signs you just passed through. Your brain is preoccupied. Anxiety undermines your ability to concentrate, except when you concentrate so completely that all else around you disappears.

Concentration

There are traces of ADHD in all this concentration stuff too. Anxiety has a relationship with ADHD, and it is somewhat ancestral and incestual. The two cannot always be separated. Suffice to say they are not happily complementary either.

Depression

Early MorningAnd then along comes depression, the organic parallel and the flip side to anxiety. They are “opposite sides of the same coin” as one friend who has both anxiety and depression once told me.

Depression runs in our family. It runs in millions of families. Millions and millions of people experience clinical depression in their lives.

Running and riding can help treat all these experiential conditions. Anxiety. ADHD. Depression.

It’s true whether you experience these things episodically or as chronic conditions. Running and riding can help. Endurance activities help manage your body chemistry. They can lift your mood and help you focus by wicking off unnecessary thoughts. Especially negative ones.

Counseling

I went to a counselor at the Living Well Cancer Resource Center in Geneva, Illinois, to help me cope with the psychological and emotional challenges of being a caregiver. I’d already seen my mother through to her death when she was diagnosed with lymphoma and pancreatic cancer the same year my wife was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Suddenly I was caregiver to my father, a stroke victim. He was emerging from the low function point of his stroke and turning out to be a feisty patient, a special burden during an acute time of grief. All kinds of guilty feelings swirled around.

Transcendence

photo (2)So I’d go out and run those off too. At one point I was running through a forest preserve with headphones on and listening to Edward Elgar’s Nimrod. The performance was so full of gravitas and beauty that I literally fell to my knees in tears. Such are the vagaries and beauties of grief, anxiety and depression. You find yourself living in a world that feels like an entirely different dimension.

Ultimately I was prescribed a mild medication to help with the anxiety component of caregiving. Depression was not absent, but neither was it crippling. I’d learned to recognize the dangers of ruminative thoughts. I’d also learned to turn a few things over to God in prayer. It was amazing what came of that. Answers I could never have dreamed up myself.

PTSD

And so it went. Yet at times the weight was too much to bear. I recall many a Saturday morning group ride when the pace would pick up and I had not the will to follow. I would just slide off the back, feeling wounded inside and unable to care. Feelings of ambivalence are common among those in depressive states.

Truly, I equated those feelings to something like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Called upon to react to stressful situations in training, my body and mind simply shut down or turned off. It was hard to explain to my riding partners. Normally I was a feisty, determined guy. During phases of being a caregiver to a cancer patient, the strength to ride my best simply was not there.

You need to break from those expectations in some way. That’s what I did. If people do not understand what you are going through, and that can happen even with your closest friends, then you need to find other channels. I rode slowly with a pastor friend instead. I rode with other partners who were happy to let me lead, because that’s where I felt most comfortable. It was hard to be pushed by others ahead of me. So they rode along behind and we chatted and I didn’t feel pressed or pushed to keep up. Friend are sometimes people who are just willing to follow you through life. It’s that simple. Thank you, Monte.

Good enough

I make no apologies for any of that. I did my best. Trust me on this: That’s good enough.

In a recent Chicago Tribune article titled Defining Sorrow’s Subtleties by the fine writer Julie Deardorff, it comes to light that even professional psychologists struggle to understand the subtle differences between symptoms of grief and depression.

“In normal grief,” the article states, “people feel sad, unhappy, depressed and have trouble sleeping, features that overlap with major depression and may complicate the diagnosis. But many of the core characteristics of grief and major depression tend to be different. In grief, painful feelings often come in burst, maybe lasting 10 to 20 minutes. Early on, the so-called pangs of grief are pretty frequent, totally unanticipated.”

And here’s the interesting part, the article describes: “They may also be accompanied by positive feelings, such as pride, relief, comfort and even humor. Over time, the painful bursts become less frequent and intense, and are more often triggered by specific thoughts or memories.”

Parallels

photo (4)If you were to use those last two paragraphs to describe the experience of training for running and riding, and racing, they form a quite precise parallel of the feelings we go through in our respective sports.

Could it be that running and riding are quite literally coping functions for dealing with our own mortality? Could the daily grief at knowing this life is temporal and not designed to last be the very driver that makes us all want to move, to lift our spirits and to celebrate life as we know it?

That is a very real sensation to me. It has helped me know that while grieving is important, it is also important to move on in life. I have formed new relationships and started a new company. The loss of a loved one or the grief we feel in other aspects of life is real, yet we must understand that death and loss are part of life and can actually make us better people.

“Though everyone has his or her own way of dealing with grief,” the article “Defining Sorrow’s Subtleties” says, “experts recommend exercise, seeking out family, friends or support groups, and getting involved in new or different activities.”

Sounds like a lot of us are doing the right things to deal with life and grief. The two may be inseparable, but they don’t have to be insufferable. Running and riding helps us cross those bridges every time we come to them.

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Bicycling Magazine and the hard road of naiveté

Posted on March 4, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Bicycling MagazineThe City of Chicago is a beautiful place to live and train in the summer months. I lived with a running friend and best buddy at 1764 N. Clark, right in the heart of Old Town facing Lincoln Park. From there you could run south along the lakefront or north to Montrose Harbor and back.

We had many wild nights carousing in the city. He was working on his Master’s Degree in exercise physiology and I was basically training full time, working for a running shop out in the burbs and writing and painting like a fiend at all other hours.

Naive purchase

One day when headed out the door for a morning run, a nice-looking young man stopped me at the entrance to our two-flat. He told me he was selling magazines to get through college. So I looked through the selections of magazines and decided to order Bicycling Magazine. My roommate was already a serious cyclist but I was just curious at that point. My bike was a super-heavy Columbia 10-speed with shifters so stiff it took all my strength to use the bottom 5 gears.

But the idea of cycling as cross-training sounded great. So I gave him $20 for Bicycling Magazine and a subscription to Outside Magazine as well. Fancied myself quite the outdoorsman. Wore Patagonia. Owned a tent. Traveled to the Upper Peninsula and listened to coyotes running through the dead leaves in Necedah National Wildlife Refuge.

 

Scammed

Those magazines never came. The kid was a scammer. My naiveté about such things was profound. As the weeks and months went by it began to gall me that I’d spent $20 on nothing. But there was also nothing I could do about it. Except chalk it up to experience.

We all get scammed sooner or later. The world is full of people phishing the Internet and sending you letters about Nigerian bank accounts and how you can take home a million if you send them $10,000. Or whatever.

It’s true in all sorts of relationships. We give our hearts and time to people we trust and find out they lie or cheat or steal from us. Even with 2000 years of wisdom under our belts and a Bible under our arms, there are still ways for evil to creep into our lives. We screech and cry to God that justice is not served, but God has long warned us that the world is not a perfect place.

Modern Subscriptions

These days my subscription arrives every month for Bicycling Magazine and Runner’s World as well. I ordered both from a neighbor kid who was raising money for his school. This time it was true. I wrote out that order with a trace of wistfulness however. It made me wonder how I might have taken a different course in life had those magazines arrived the way they were promised.

Because while I rode my roommate’s bicycle on an indoor trainer all that winter, I did not take up serious cycling until about 10 years ago. The bikes I owned between that time were not worth writing about. One was a mountain bike by Raleigh called an Assault. The bike shop owner who worked on it one time looked at me and said, “Nice name huh?”

Tarsnakes of perception

That’s how life is sometimes. Full of tarsnakes of perception. The very things we think are doing us a favor sometimes turn out to be deceiving.

But you know what? Even the bad things that happen to us can turn out to be good for us in the long term. That’s called experience. Paying your dues.

It happens across the board. We train or work with people that we think are looking out for our best interests and learn that behind the scenes they do not respect us or wish we’d go away.

Experience.

We place our faith in a coach or a relationship that seems like it is wholesome only to learn that their are ulterior motives at work.

So what do we do to overcome our own naiveté?

We get wiser. We hope. And if that doesn’t work we make changes.

We change schools.

Change churches.

We change spouses. We change our attitudes and learn to accept that we can’t know everything. Decisions that we regret must be incorporated into our collective experience so that next time we face a similar situation we know better. Hopefully. 

Naive hopes

Being naive is technically the act of being hopeful to a faulty degree. Our naive hopes are exactly what people in this world try to exploit. Sometimes they succeed.

That does not mean we should give up hope. We just need to use it more wisely.

Sometimes those lessons cost us $20. Other times we naively enter a race and find ourselves in a world of pain or difficulty.

Our entire lives are founded on hope and effort. We can come to the end and wonder what it is all about.

“Why didn’t I know better?” we ask ourselves.

“If I only knew then what I know now,” we lament. (That’s especially true of men, who figure they might have gotten lucky more often if they knew more about women when they were younger. They only wish.)

Earnings

But the world fortunately and unfortunately does not dispense experience like a vending machine. You have to earn it.

Some seem to be wiser than others from the start. They run the race of life with what seems like such confidence and grace. But there is always a back story. So do not covet or desire what they have. Your own story is enough.

Others stumble and fall and go out too fast or too slow. We wish too hard and work too little. We give our money to people we should not trust and give our hopes too easily to those laugh behind our backs.

But God Bless you.

Do not quit trying. Do not quit training. Do not quit gaining. Do not give up. Do not lose hope. Do not stop trusting. Do not forget to forgive. Do not neglect gratitude. Do not sell yourself short. Do not ignore love, or deny it out of spite. Do not spend without thinking. Do not relinquish your self-respect. Do not let the world get you down. 

The hard road of naiveté can make us all want to quit at times. But we run and ride because the allegory is true:It makes us better at many things in life. We gain experience we could not gain any other way by traveling the road of naiveté. Tarsnakes and all.

And that’s a really, really good thing.

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Honestly, you should never lie about your best times

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

The steeplechase turns out to be a test of honesty.

The steeplechase turns out to be a test of honesty. One of the hurdles in life is to always tell the truth. 

While swimming at the XSport fitness center this past week, I noticed an athlete in the pool who seemed to know what he was doing. His swimming form was smooth and strong. When he stopped after a few laps and I was at the same end of the pool, I complimented him on his swimming.

He told me it had been almost two years since he swam. “I’m a runner,” he said. “So I have to work at this. Running comes easier.”

Next level of conversation

He did look stronger than most runners I know. As it turned out, his event in college was the steeplechase.

I resisted asking him his best time. Most runners don’t like to be pinned down like that right away. It’s a bit abrupt and judgmental to just skip to the raw times without engaging in conversation about why they run, and how they’re doing these days. Context matters in all conversations.

Yet as our conversation deepened he talked about his experience at a Division 1 program. He admitted he was not the top tier athlete at his school, but that he really enjoyed competing there. At that point it seemed fair to ask him his steeple time. And then it happened.

America's best Steeplechaser Evan Jager runs times in the low 8:00 range.

America’s best Steeplechaser Evan Jager runs times in the low 8:00 range.

‘8:17’ he said.

Alarm bells went off in my head. 8:17? That’s world class. That’s Olympic-level running.

So I knew he was lying. Or something like that. I didn’t press him on the fact. But I did blurt, “Wow, that’s a really fast time.”

Today I checked the school record on the University’s website. Best time ever by a steeplechaser at that school? 8:49. Good, but not world class. No athlete at the college he attended has ever come close to running 8:17.

So he’s a Liar. Or something like it.

Holding back for goodness sake

I ran 9:20 for the steeple in a conference track meet where. I held back in order to save some energy for an attempted double at 5000 meters. I had no business trying that double. It was too hard for me.

We lost the meet not because those of us who won events and tried to come back in others ultimately failed, but because our best pole vaulter with the best height in the conference chose to pass all to 15 feet in a selfish shot for the individual title. He no-heighted. We lost a couple points or so. Had he jumped just one height and placed 5th or better, we might have won.

The individual choices we make are sometimes hard to reconcile even in retrospect. My desire to succeed individually was strong that day, yet the call to hold back with the goal of helping the team was a greater motivator. There really is an “I” in team. We get that wrong all the time.

So all these years I’ve had to accept that my steeplechase PR could likely have been 5-10 seconds faster. It felt like I was jogging that day. Indeed, it might have helped going into nationals to have a 9:10 PR rather than a 9:20. A better time might have given me confidence that I could run with the best in the nation, or even made All-American, Division III. But those are excuses. My teammate ran a 9:14 and missed All American by one step. You make the most of the opportunities you are given. And live with that.

True and untrue perceptions

Given these perspectives, it made me wonder what the guy at the pool hoped to gain by lying about his steeplechase time.

I mean, I could legitimately say I once won a competitive steeplechase in the time of 8:46. There is proof, too. At one point that time ranked me Number One in the college ranks in Iowa. But that time was a mistake. Meet officials shot the gun a lap early. I kicked in and won, but the race was a whole lap short. My real time would have been a whole lot slower, as you can surmise.

When that time showed up on the college circuit one week in advance of the Drake Relays, people wondered where this kid from little Luther College got all that speed.

Our small college went to compete each year against schools like Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas and Iowa State. Running against D1 athletes pulled us to faster times. But we weren’t delusional. I wasn’t entered in the steeplechase against Henry Marsh and the other world class runners at Drake because my real times did not justify it. I’d have finished a lap behind, or perhaps a little less.

The test of honesty is the real test of character

Being honest with yourself about your personal records, your work history or your military record is incredibly important. Your baseline self perception is equivalent to your character. Exaggerating your character or creating false images about yourself is living a lie.

Is Congressman Paul Ryan capable of telling the truth? It's hard to tell sometimes.

Is Congressman Paul Ryan capable of telling the truth? It’s hard to tell sometimes.

It catches up with you. Consider the ramifications when Vice-Presidential candidate Paul Ryan lied about his marathon time during the campaign. Here’s how it played out, according to the Huffington Post:

GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan on Tuesday continued to clean up the mess he made last week when he falsely claimed he had completed a marathon in under 3 hours.

“I literally thought that was my time. It was 22 years ago. You forget sorta these things,” Ryan said in an interview with Toledo News Now.

In a radio interview before his Republican National Convention speech last week, which was itself heavily criticized for factual deficiencies and outright fabrications, Ryan claimed that when he was younger he had run a “2 hour and 50-something” marathon.

See, honesty counts. Character counts. Lying about your best running times is in many ways an indication that you cannot deal with empiric truth. Stuff like that bleeds over into politics, business, culture and even your religion. If you can’t tell the truth about something so cut and dried as the times you actually ran in the marathon, half-marathon or triathlon, how can you be trusted with the brand of truth that actually relies on using your judgment to discern the best course of action?

It’s even tougher in cycling, where you might be able to ride 50 miles at an average speed of 18 mph. But jump in the draft of a really great group ride and suddenly your ride that 50 miles at 22 mph thanks to the pulls of those awesome buggers with big legs and big engines. Where is the truth in that circumstance? You rode all that way that fast, but how much was you, and how much was due to your ride partners? That’s one of the tarsnakes of running and riding. It’s best to mention in those circumstances that you were in a group going that fast. Of course Strava ignores all that. Even the empiric data in our world can do our lying for us at times.

Yet in the end it really does matter what we say about how we run and ride. Remember that the next time someone asks for your PR. The true answer is always best.

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It’s Oscars time. Here are the Academy Awards for the best running and riding movies never made

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

A few years back, I organized and hosted a giant Academy Awards party at the Arcada Theater in St. Charles, Illinois. More than 900 people attended. Catering was provided by Panera Bread. People were excited to be seeing the movie awards on the Big Screen.

One band of happily overdressed women showed up a bit over served. I found them seats but they did not stay there long. I didn’t mind them falling out of their dresses. I just didn’t want them to fall out of the balcony.

I think of those gals every year when the Academy Awards come around. They turned that night into their own brand of party, and that’s a good thing. It is therefore in their spirit that today’s blog post will feature the Best Pictures Never Made About Running and Riding. Life is all about alternate realities, which is what the Academy Awards are all about anyway.

You can use the Comments Section to vote for your choice of the Best Picture Pictures Never Made About Running and Riding.

Bike Wobble

Bike WobbleThis mind-bending thriller begins in a small town in northeast Iowa where a professor of history at tiny Luther College sets out on a trek among the area’s many hills. Not long into the journey his bike develops a strange set of harmonics and the ride becomes an allegory for getting through life’s difficulties. With every new shudder of the bike’s frame on a downhill section of road, we witness flashbacks to traumatic events in the professor’s life. The loss of his daughter to food poisoning. The ensuing fights and drama with his young wife. The divorce. His tragic followup relationships. All are recalled through intense flashbacks as the cyclist tries mightily to keep his actual bike on the road. The shuddering frame of his bicycle and the speed at which he’s moving downhill are all captured from incredibly technical camera angles. The movie ends with the professor pushing his bike up the steep incline of his driveway. He collapses in his garage and then a voice comes out of the kitchen. “How was your ride?”

Run Fast. Die Slowly. 

Run Fast.Die SlowlySet in New York in 2001 during the 9/11 tragedy, this docudrama is based on true events. The life of a woman runner who carried victims of the 9/11 tragedy to safety after the twin towers fell is shown in almost silent gravity. Her curiosity at the crashing planes and burning towers pulled her from a run in southeast Manhattan all the way to the site where chaos, smoke and ultimate tragedy occurred. The contrast between the early phases of her focused run along the East River serve to demonstrate the gap between her desired solitude and the impact of the events unfolding in downtown Manhattan. We see her sprinting across the city through the streets of New York. She arrives seemingly exhausted, sweaty and a bit scared. Suddenly the first tower falls and she is enveloped in dust and nearly choking to death. Yet she finds strength to discover and carry people out of the swirling hell of 9/11. For hours she works, using her fitness to do everything she can to help. Yet finally, she is too exhausted and suddenly too sick to carry on. She leans against a wall of one of the city’s tightly compressed buildings and never awakes. The story then captures the testimonies of actual witnesses including the people she saved that day.

Domestiques

DomestiquesSet in the future, this movie hints at what cycling might become in the future. It also chronicles the looming acceptance of performance-enhancing drugs and what it means to the sports world in general. The story centers on one cyclist and his experimentation with PEDs, the mind-wrenching stress of performing beyond your perceived limits and the entire meaning of what it means to be a “domestique.” The training. The racing. All in preparation for a Tour de France that has been taken over by a secretive conglomerate that calls themselves TDF. The movie implies that the enterprise that ran cycling in the 1990s has set out to “get back” at the punishment doled out, and a barely disguised Lance Armstrong character with a gruff Batman voice is running it all.  The organization raises the stakes and turns the Tour into a massive testament to excess and an almost cruel caricature of the limits of human endurance. Every rider now wears a helmet cam, and rewards are given out for the most spectacular crashes. A death can earn the rider’s team 1 million dollars, but only if it can be determined to be accidental. The viewers vote on that based on helmet-cam evidence. The now-4000 mile tour lasts 5 hellish weeks. Stages top 200 miles and riders spend entire years training for critical roles as scantily-clad domestiques, a process rather pruriently documented with gratuitous massage scenes and ritualistic shaving. The movie centers on the intense struggles faced by one of these domestiques, whose dedication to his teammates is all-consuming, right down to serving the sexual needs of his fellow riders and the lovers who slavishly follow them. Yet it is the relationships outside the race that hint at the potential for real love to save our souls from the role of domestique.

Gotta Love Your Mudder

Gotta Love Your MudderThis bittersweet, road-weary comedy travels to the backwoods of small-time extreme races across the country, where cyclocross races and “mudder” running events draw a continually changing and strange cast of characters. A brother and sister from a broken family hit the road together in search of fun and self-discovery. Their ventures take them to extreme locations where the rules are not always clear and even victories feel like losses.  The two struggle to make ends meet with earnings from small-time prize money and working odd jobs across the country. The film shows them training in strange and wonderful environments, from trashy industrial towns to posh resorts where they labor cleaning hotel rooms and stealing food from the all-inclusive smorgasbords. One hilarious scene shows the two retreating to the back of the hotel while carrying mounds of still-fresh food in their arms. They eat until they are oblivious. And without knowing it, they are working back to a reunion with their long-lost mother, whose divorce from their father when they were children was the result of chronic abuse by him and her own resultant drug use. She is running and riding in a process of redemption and self-discovery. Her middle-aged talents for running and riding bring her an underdog’s fame. In truth she is driven by her deep sense of loss and range over losing custody of her children long ago. She speaks little of the past, yet we clips of her memories of her own children as she dreams while running and riding. Both of these life tales converge at a combination running and cyclocross event in the hills of western Pennsylvania where the “mudder” of the two younger champions finds a muck-covered reunion with her long-lost children when they win their respective age categories and meet up while washing the mud off their faces at the end of the day. She sees their faces emerge from the mud and match up with her dreamlike memories.

Tarsnakes Trilogy

Ice SnakesIn a series of one-hour films within a three-hour movie, Tarsnakes uses uninterrupted footage to chronicle 60-minute runs and rides through sections of America that illustrate the challenges faced by the nation, and how to solve them. The first sequence opens with a rider crossing traveling through the rough streets on the South Side of Chicago all the way through the Loop to the parks and big homes of Evanston. Throughout the long scene we see the camera popping down to look at tarsnakes on the road. They seem to symbolize the jarring reality that our streets can take us anywhere, or take us down.  The middle sequence features a runner on a highway in the heartland. We can hear her footsteps and breathing, for the camera follows close behind, almost voyeuristically. The vantage point highlights the dangers women face on their own as inevitably, cars honk and men wave out their windows. The “tarsnake” in this case is clearly the freedom the woman feels, yet the traps of harassment seem to wait around every turn. The final scene of the movies features children riding along with their parents as they run. The parents engage in conversation about their lives and their problems while the children mutter quiet observations to each other about the trees, bugs and flowers they see along the way. the contrasts illustrate the divisions between childhood and adulthood, the ultimate tarsnake in life.

So there you go. Five films that ought to be made about running and riding. Which would you most like to see?

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People who run and ride can be a pretty creative bunch

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

If there’s one thing you learn from all those miles of running and riding, it’s how and when to improvise. Creatively.

Extending Shoe Life

Faced with premature wear on our shoes, we improvised by using athletic tape to keep the heels from wearing down too soon. It worked.

Faced with premature wear on our shoes, we improvised by using athletic tape to keep the heels from wearing down too soon. It worked.

It’s hard to remember exactly who conceived the idea, but in the days of 100 mile weeks and long training seasons, someone in our clan devised a way to keep the heels of our shoes from wearing down too quickly. It was a simple idea that worked great. We all took good old white athletic tape and applied it to the heels of our shoes.

It was better than Shoe Goo, an invention that came along a little later. You could quite precisely control the thickness and breadth of the managed area by peeling specific lengths and sizes of tape and sticking them to the heels of the shoe. It worked brilliantly. We made our shoes last 600-700 miles in those days, and the taping of our shoe heels helped make that possible. Fortunately we also ran much of our mileage on dirt roads and grass, so extending the live of our shoes was not as difficult as running all our miles on asphalt or concrete.

Socks As Gloves

That type of ingenuity is evidence that those of us who run and ride are willing and able to adapt to life’s challenges in ways that others might not appreciated.

Wearing socks as gloves really works and it still recommended as affordable running gear.

Wearing socks as gloves really works and it still recommended as affordable running gear.

There are many other examples of creativity and ingenuity while on the run or on the ride. Some are so basic they barely qualify as ingenious. But the basics are sometimes the best response to need. That qualifies as creativity, because it’s just good enough to exceed the alternative, which is doing nothing at all.

Before running gloves evolved into Gore-Tex wonders with moisture wicking properties, there were no real viable alternatives for training in cold winter weather. So we wore socks on our hands. Usually tube socks. Sometimes two pairs, if the temps were below zero. And it worked. Mittens are still superior to gloves in many conditions. Not sure if socks were superior, but it worked. The practice is still recommended as affordable running gear.

Churches as Water Stops

Thank God for country churches. They've saved us from thirst many times.

Thank God for country churches. They’ve saved us from thirst many times.

While riding 50-80 miles, it is sometimes a fact that you run out of things to drink. My riding buddies happen to know the location of many churches, where there is almost always an available garden hose out on the lawn, or at least a faucet you can access for fresh water. Many times I have personally thanked Jesus for a re-filled water bottle.

All these little innovations add up to making us more flexible in our daily lives. We’re problem solvers with better attitudes because we realize that while life sometimes sucks and throws you challenges you wish weren’t necessary, you can make things happen if you think it through, and then try something new.

Carry that knowledge with you going forward. Your running and riding really are making you a better person. That’s something to be thankful for.

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Funny Video: How to be a Road Biker

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

Um. Better than my video. And pretty funny. But mine was home made. Enjoy this nevertheless.

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According to Leviticus, those of us who run and ride are going to hell or die

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

4ad1e6849And here we thought running and riding was all so innocent, even spiritually enlightening. It turns out your favorite activities are actually the root of all evil. It says so right in the Bible. Especially Leviticus, where you find out that the original laws of the Lord warn us against all sorts of things we do in our favorite sports.

Be Thou Not a Hot Mess

6 Then Moses said to Aaron and his sons Eleazar and Ithamar, “Do not let your hair become unkempt[a] and do not tear your clothes, or you will die and the Lord will be angry with the whole community.

Well, ain’t that nice to learn now? So it turns out that your bad case of Hat Head or Helmet Hair is evil in the sight of the Lord.

And who hasn’t accidentally ripped out the seams of a wet shirt while trying to take it off after a long run or ride? But that’s just the beginning. Leviticus has more to say about your pet hobbies.

Thou Shalt Not Drink Strong Beverages

560949_3524507667658_1984708737_nThen the Lord said to Aaron, 9 “You and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drink whenever you go into the tent of meeting, or you will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, 10 so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common, between the unclean and the clean…

Well, crap. So much for grabbing a beer in the post-race tent.

And Watch Out for Those Skid Marks

15 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When any man has an unusual bodily discharge, such a discharge is unclean. 3 Whether it continues flowing from his body or is blocked, it will make him unclean.

Listen, running and riding is kind of an earthy occupation. We try to avoid sweating, peeing our pants or leaving skid marks in our chamois. But hey, sometimes things happen. You might even head out for a run after hot monkey sex in the morning and find a little sperm on your inseams. But according to Leviticus, you are unfit for human contact after that. For you are Unclean.

We Reiterate: No Hot Monkey Sex For You

Ice Snakes16 “‘When a man has an emission of semen, he must bathe his whole body with water, and he will be unclean till evening. 17 Any clothing or leather that has semen on it must be washed with water, and it will be unclean till evening. 18 When a man has sexual relations with a woman and there is an emission of semen, both of them must bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening.

So much for rolling out of bed after hot lovemaking and going for a run together in the morning sun. According to Leviticus, you need to part ways, go wash yourself with water and wait it out till nightfall. Doesn’t sound like much fun. And so much for going to work.

Women Take Note: Stop Bleeding Out Your Crotch

19 “‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening.

I remember going to a Porta-Potty at a bike race and staring down into the well where a fresh layer of blood on a feminine product stared back up at me. So I get the ancient shock over womanly menstrual flow. But seven days? That amounts to solitary confinement. But if we’re going to pay attention to Leviticus, ladies, you better prepare yourself to train alone for a week or so. And that’s 12 times a year. At least.

Now You Know: Menstruating is Like a Fatal Disease

20 “‘Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. 21 Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 22 Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. 23 Whether it is the bed or anything she was sitting on, when anyone touches it, they will be unclean till evening.

Who knew that having your period was a crime against humanity? And God Forbid you should let anyone else sit on your bike seat or plop down where you just sat after a 20-miler.

luge_men_singles_slAnd Also: Swimming In the Red Sea is Verbotin

24 “‘If a man has sexual relations with her and her monthly flow touches him, he will be unclean for seven days; any bed he lies on will be unclean.

So much for the notion of being One Flesh in marriage.

So Much For Those Sunday Morning Long Runs or Rides

29 “This is to be a lasting ordinance for you: On the tenth day of the seventh month you must deny yourselves[c] and not do any work—whether native-born or a foreigner residing among you— 30 because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. 

Better stay home in bed or risk the wrath of God and neighbors.

“Goddamnit” and “Christ!” are not acceptable ways to express frustration when you miss your PR by three seconds

12 “‘Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord.

Nuff said. We presume.

Stop gossiping even though that’s the main reason you like to run or ride with others

16 “‘Do not go about spreading slander among your people.”

Gossip is fun. It makes the miles go by smoothly. Leviticus says no. Shut your trap and run or ride.

Stop Riding and Running So Fast

“‘Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord.”

Closeup Shoe Porn 2Tech Fabrics and Running Shoes are not allowed

“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.”

Well hell, that cuts out just about every type of running and riding gear you can buy these days. In fact the whole reason you buy that stuff is to see how cool the different textures of fabric are when you sew them together.

Stop Screwing Around 

293.mccon.running.dog.11210610 “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.

That law from Leviticus pretty much cuts out the entire Triathlon community where people enter into illicit relationships because they’re in the process of discovering their true selves through better diet, exercise and raw narcissism. It might just put a damper on sports as a whole in fact, if you put people to death for screwing around. That takes out the entire NBA, most of the NFL and probably all the outfielders and infielders in MLB as well.

People who run and ride like to explore the world with their bodies. It someone happens to get in front of you while you’re doing that, and sex ensues, it’s really not much different than straddling a bike or humping your way up a long hill on foot. Sex is part of the athletic world. Leviticus doesn’t agree, however. So good luck with that.

Now Leviticus is Just Confused

13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

See, we’re starting to see that Leviticus can’t even get its facts right. This “law” we’re considering ignores the physical mechanics of the male and female anatomy. A man cannot technically have sexual relations with another man as one does with a woman. Men do not have vaginas. So the entire claim of sin here is a non-starter. And how funny is that when right now so many conservative religious believers use phrases like this from the Bible to ban gay people from having sex or buying things in Arizona. Perhaps we’re beginning to see that it’s actually Leviticus that is sort of screwed up.

What About Respecting Your Fellow Competitors? Loving your enemies?

blue-meanies_pic19 Anyone who injures their neighbor is to be injured in the same manner: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury. 21 Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a human being is to be put to death. 

Leviticus means well, and these laws we’re talking about here had their time and purpose.  But there was a certain Jewish fellow named Yeshua who came along and used hyperbole and really cool stories to convey spiritual principles. He wasn’t so much into enforcing the letter of the law as much as he was into getting us all to realize that it is the spirit of the law that counts. It doesn’t make things easier, necessarily. But it does not put a noose around your neck, because there’s this little thing called forgiveness at work in the world.

So it’s safe after all to run and ride and sweat and come and even leave some skid marks on your fitness shorts. You won’t go to hell or be put to death for your earthy endeavors. Not even if you mix Pearl Izumi clothes with Nike shoes. No one’s going to stone you or put you to death.

We Run and Ride to see the world in a different way. Thank God we’re not stuck in the Old Ways, or we’d probably all be dead.

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Is the controversy between rear and mid foot footstrike in distance running for real?

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

Is there really controversy over the benefits of mid-foot versus rearfoot striking for distance running?

Every decent distance runner knows you need to use a combination of both. You don’t sprint on your heels and the efficiency of running distance races over 5K completely on your forefoot is diminished as you fatigue.

So here’s a hint: Learn how to do both, and use both running methods in every training run you do.

Classic yet modern form

If you want to see the perfect stride in action, consider the running form of 1984 Olympic Marathon and World Cross Country champion Carlos Lopes. This video of Lopes shows his smooth form. Notice how his feet seem to “kiss” the ground rather than strike it either with the heel or the forefoot.

Carlos Lopes finishing a marathon. At this stage, even in fatigue, his form is still efficient and his foot plant balanced.

Carlos Lopes finishing a marathon. At this stage, even in fatigue, his form is still efficient and his foot plant balanced.

This is a runner who knew how to use his feet properly in races ranging from the 5K to the marathon. If you’re struggling over whether to run strictly on the heel or the forefoot, take the example of Carlos Lopes to heart. At 38 years of age he won both the World Cross Country championships and the Olympic Marathon.

It’s all about running “over” the ground whichever foot plant you choose. The greats of course combine the two forms. The efficiency of stride in Carlos Lopes is something few people can really replicate. His form was honed through thousands of training miles and races to boot. At one point he ran the second-fasted 10,000 meters of all time.

Those of us without the physiological or biomechanical gifts of world class  talent must learn how to use both methods depending on pace and conditions. It’s as simple as that.

Adaptation

As a distance runner who has raced 5K in 14:45 or so, and now runs closer to 21:00 in my mid-50s, I have learned to adapt my running form from a clear mid foot strike to a combination during a race and training that enables me to run both long and fast, depending on the distance and pace.

A world class runner in full stride is moving "over" the ground.

A world class runner in full stride is moving “over” the ground.

But let me be honest. For half a year I moved completely forward to a mid-foot strike because I was interested in reducing the pounding my body was taking. For a few months it worked. Then my achilles became sore and the discomfort would not go away.

I have moved back to a combination mid and rear foot strike and for distances up to 8 miles my achilles are fine. Beyond that there is some soreness from fatigue. There is weakness somewhere in my lower leg or foot structure that even my orthotics cannot correct entirely. This may be something I accept or else try to use calf strengthening and weight work to overcome.

Foundations

It’s all about learning the right way to run from the beginning however. I’ve had many years to work on my stride mechanics and still maintain enough flexibility to do speed work on the track at just under 6:00 pace. As time goes by that will likely be reduced and I may find myself a pure rear foot striker.

Our foundations change with training and time.

However, there are still some basics to follow when “training” your body to be able to run with both a forefoot and a heel strike.

1. Practice your forefoot running on a predictable surface.

It is preferable to do faster paced running with a forefoot strike where the surface is level and predictable. That way you can concentrate on the form and not your balance due to road camber, cracks or God Forbid, tarsnakes trying to trip you up.

2. To run faster and use your forefoot for speed, you do not necessarily need to lean forward, but you do need to increase leg turnover.

Take note that the sensation you should feel when using your forefoot to run is not to “grab” or strike the ground. If you are doing that you are overreaching with your forefoot in a way that may actually slow you down. Instead, thinking about what is basically a “paddling” motion in which your forefoot is actually coming back toward the center as you run “over” the surface.

3. Use your forefoot to increase tempo, conduct surges and for a finishing sprint.

Those three situations are when you need to use your forefoot for better speed at efficiency.

4. Your heel strike should also “kiss” the ground.

One of the most common mistakes in running for speed is form that amounts to a jarring or “braking” effect. That can happen with over striding. When your foot strikes the ground with the leg fully straight, you’re essentially “running into” the ground every stride. Ugh. That hurts and it slows you down. Instead, you need to concentrate on moving your legs through like the Road Runner cartoon.

But we can’t all be gazelles.

Need inspiration that speed can come even from an ungainly stride? Watch this video of John Tracy racing Steve Ovett in the 5000 meters. Talk about contrasts! Ovett is a miler running with perfect forefoot speed. Tracy is the consummate “mudlark” as they call him in the video, somewhat staggering forward with the Irish determination. Yet his form gets him where he needs to go. What a lesson and an inspiration for all of us.

But controversy over rear or mid-foot striking? I don’t think so. The only controversy is why you would to want to train yourself to be able to do both, and use them as needed during races and training. WeRunandRideLogo

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How is your relationship with time?

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

TimeThose of us who run, ride and swim have an interesting relationship with time. It is the measure of our being in substantially different ways.

First we experience time in hours and days around which we construct our lives. That is time in the sense of cosmology. It measures our being in terms of existence.

Next we experience time in terms of schedules and daily activities. We plan our work and family lives, and map our workouts. That is time as cosmography. It measures our being as part of a construct.

Finally we experience time in terms of performance. We map our goals and try to achieve them. We train and race and hit the buttons of our stopwatch or Smartphone. This is empiric data we crave. This is time as cosmogony. It is how we bring ourselves into being.

We define ourselves for better or worse by constructing theories about what we should be and can be, and that’s where emotion enters the picture along with motivation.

SeikoAll these constructs define our relationship with time. There is a relatively narrow window in which we all operate on all three levels. 80 years of living is simply not that long a time on earth. Not when you consider the earth itself is more than 4 billion years old.

Time cares not whether we exist, you see. Human beings essentially invented the measurement of time in order to give our lives structure and also to imbue some sense of control over the incredible breadth of infinity both before, after and beyond our comprehension.

Then there are those who believe in God, the great infinite being that invented it all.

There are also those who do not believe in gods of any kind.

Yet we are all faced with the difficult yet incomplete notion that time is irreversible. We can’t go back to fix our mistakes. We can’t get back those lost to time and death. We can’t recover lost love any more than we can go back and run the third mile of a 10K with a bit more focus.

ChronoWe’re not trapped, exactly. Yet there is a feeling of destiny in every moment of being if you stop to consider where you are, and why you are there. When we step to the line of a race there is one path in front of us. The Start leads to the Finish. If we are lucky, that happens.

At one point while studying the philosophy of existentialism, I happened upon the concept of the “irreversibility of time.” It shocked me into the moment. Then it shocked me into considering what I was doing with my life. Then it numbed me to the point where frustration crept in.

I actually began complaining about the ugly wrestling match we had with time. Out on our long, lonely runs in the hills of Iowa, it was hard not to run too hard all the time. We kept the pedal pressed to the floor all the time. Our runs of 6, 10 and 15 miles were all done at the same relative pace, between 6:00 and 7:00 per mile.

It was insane. Time became a harsh bother. So I bitched about it. Then I broke from the pack one day and sprinted ahead.

Journal TooIt was depression, I later realized. The first point of my life where the realization that my brain functioned in a manner that was not constructive to my well-being. It could have been seasonal. Or it could have been something else.

It all came to a breaking point when my roommate turned to me and said, “You know what, Cud? What you need to do is shut up and run.”

And that’s what I did. And once freed from the constraints of complaint and the sounds of that fight I was conducting with time in my head, it all fell into place. My PRs at every distance fell like hurdles.

Experiences like these are necessary to help us understand our relationship with time, and what we do with it. Difficulty breeds perseverance. We learn to reckon with time.

Which is what made it all the sweeter to read the words in another book, for another class. The book was titled Ambiguous Adventure. It dealt with the experiences of an expatriated African living in France. His loneliness and disconnectedness haunted him until one day he realized his place was defined not by his notions of home, but by his willingness to experience life in the moment. “The purity of the moment is made from the absence of time,” the book said.

And I believe that. It has made the relationship with time much more easy to accept.

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