Welcome to the Church of We Run and Ride

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

Welcome to the Church of We Run and Ride. 

What follows is a sermon of sorts. And if you know anything about good sermons, the content usually gives you a little history and purpose of the topic, some information on what is true, and a call to action to go out in the world and make it happen for you and others.

The Devil and Angel within all of us

The runner and rider within you is in constant conflict. If you love running more than any other type of fitness activity, you probably may not be able to find enough time in your life to ride as well.

Whether you are male or female, this is how the devil looks at times.

No matter what gender you might be, this is how the devil of tricky choices can look and sound at times.

The rider in you may feel similar about your running. When you are putting in two 70-milers on a weekend and trying to squeeze in 3 more rides a week between work and family, you’re not going to have a bunch of extra energy to go out and run a 10k.

The conflict between running and riding can breed all sorts of tension within you. It’s like that cartoon where there’s an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. The innocent little angel is saying, “You don’t have a lot of time. Let’s go for a run today.”

Meanwhile the devil on your other shoulder whispers, in a sinister voice, ‘How often do you get a 50 degree in winter. Get out there on your bike and hurt yourself. Otherwise you’ll be fat by Christmas.”

Oh, the choices can be difficult, we know. How does a multisport athlete make good choice?

Spiritual training

Religions around the world have tried to answer questions like this for years. And the sick thing is that many religions simply don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to practical matters like how to balance your training schedule. It’s not like Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount to tell you to do more hillwork. And gurus like Mahatma Ghandi did not spend a lot of time putting in base miles in their sandals. They were walking miles to deliver the truth, not get in shape for their next half-marathon. It is a rare thing indeed for our holy, wise, spiritual or political leaders to have a high VO2 max because they exercise for the love of it. Martin Luther liked his beer and Martin Luther King, Jr. reportedly had a taste for the ladies. About the only serious exerciser among the holy set might be the Holy Spirit, who seems able to really get around.

So the fact remains: the sins of the flesh are just as great a temptation for the holy highbrows as us high mileage types. It is up to us to become our own role models for balance and respect for the holy temple of our bodies.

Glimpse of nirvana

We’re all in this together of course. Those of us who run and ride are simply trying to break through the temporal world for that little piece of nirvana that lies beyond, a glimpse at enlightenment. If we happen to raise a bunch of money for the sick or poor along the way, that just brings us closer to whatever God we worship, or to secular satisfaction if we don’t.

The dilemma remains: we still face the choice of how much time to put into each activity.

Gratitude as a training tenet

Here’s a good starting point. You should be grateful for being able to run and ride at all. Because you need to remember that people with physical disabilities have to work extra hard to enjoy their respective sports. If most of us were put into the position of having to do all that extra work to get ready to work out we’d say screw it. Which is why the heightened respect for athletes with disabilities is long overdue. Because, as it turns out, these athletes really aren’t “disabled” as they have enabled themselves with far more focus than many of the rest of us.

And think about it: there’s a moral lesson in the fact that wheelchair races combine the two sports of running and riding. The choice is made sometimes. Just go with it. Stop thinking so much.

How hard is it, really, for you to run and ride? 

Recently there have been a number of disabled cyclists who have made their mark on the world, showing that the lack of an arm or leg is no reason not to ride. Illinois cyclist Joe Berenyi is a CAT 3 rider on his own merit who went to London and earned a couple medals in the Olympics. I’ve raced against Joe and seen first hand what a good bike handler and rider he really is. It makes me appreciate that whining about my bike fit or some other stupid problem is merely making excuses for a lack of gratitude and appreciation for the act of riding.

So before you turn your daily decision into a conundrum that vexes your brain, try simplifying the thought process. The Who once wrote a song called Another Tricky Day. The lyrics go like this in paraphrase:

You can’t always get it
When you really want it
You can’t always get it at all
Just because there’s space
In your life it’s a waste
To spend your time why don’t you wait for the call…

(You better get used to it…)

…This is no social crisis
Just another tricky day for you

Start by stopping waste of time

What The Who are trying to tell you is that you are probably wasting your time on a lot of activities that take away from your running and riding if you really get down to it. 4 hours of TV a night? Plenty of time to go downstairs and hit the indoor trainer for a while or go out for a 1/2 hour run in there. And if you really are time-pressed because of work or other obligations then you simply have to take what life gives you and not whine about it. That only makes things worse.

We create our own social crises by complicating our lives in ways that make time for both running and riding more difficult to accommodate. Our priorities often get overwhelmed by false comforts and slovenly habits. Replace those with constructive use of time and suddenly you find yourself able to go running and riding more.

The choices become easier to make when you’ve made adequate time and rid yourself of compensatory behaviors that give you a sense of relaxation but may not be as relaxing as you think in the long run. Stress can come from lack of involvement and accomplishment just like it can stem from pressure and over involvement. Recognizing this balance in your life is the secret to happiness and better choices about when you run and ride, and choose to do so.

But remember: this is not to encourage you to get carried away.

Is obsession the answer?

In one of John Irving’s novels, “The Hotel New Hampshire,” a wrestler dealing with struggles in life realizes it’s all about focus. “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed,” the character says.

Well, obsession has its drawbacks. For one thing, obsession can take over your whole life. That’s not really the goal for most of us who run and ride. The goal is to achieve a healthy balance that helps us reduce stress, promote better health and weight management while allowing us to participate in fun activities and events, socialize and even brag at the water cooler once in a while. Frankly much more than that is deluding ourselves into thinking that our running and riding is much more than that.

But all those competing goals can still make for pretty tricky day, because as The Who warns us, being too busy and having too many priorities can produce a social crisis in our souls. Also remember that riding can be a real salvation to the marathoner who picks up an injury during training, and that running along with weight training can keep the cyclist from developing critical lower back and knee weaknesses, not to mention stronger bones.

Let balance enter your life

So what’s the answer? To find balance, we need to listen to both the devil and the angel within. That’s basically the premise of the symbol for yin and yang. We really are in constant tension with the dark and light side of our souls. The drive to run and ride may be darkly selfish in some ways, but the returns on investment in health and stress relief bring a sort of light into our lives.

It is now known that too much cycling can actually thin out your bones, while too much pounding from running can cause stress fractures, osteoarthritis and other injuries. So balance is critical and the aerobic benefits of both sports are complimentary.

So do yourself a favor. Print out this blog and cut out this symbol for yin and yang.

BALANCE IS THE KEY TO ALL TRAINING

BALANCE IS THE KEY TO ALL TRAINING

Post it on your refrigerator and as you pass each day say out the word out loud: “Balance.” You’ll find your decisions about whether to run or ride that day get easier when you have that goal in mind.

AMEN!

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How do you feel about your bike? Really…

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

The Felt 4C Red Rocket has been a faithful training partner. Really.

The Felt 4C Red Rocket has been a faithful training partner. Really.

It’s a question we should all ask ourselves now and then. How do you feel about your bike? Really…

Many who ride might not feel touchy-feely all-emotionally about their bike (or bikes) and yet if pressed they would have to admit they really do have feelings about the machine (or machines) they ride.

But let’s stick with the singular for a moment, assuming that nearly everyone who rides probably has at least two bikes they ride. A road bike and a mountain bike, perhaps. Or a cyclocross war machine designed to roll over sand and other human bodies if necessary.

It happens, you know.

That unspoken devotion

Devotion to our bikes is often an unspoken thing, of course. You don’t roll up to your Saturday morning group ride and say out loud, “I love my bike.” People would stare.

And yet someone else might nod and take note of your machine and say, with some degree of admiration. “Nice bike.” And that’s enough. Said.

Beauty in a Waterford steel frame bike

One of the riders I know has a beautifully maintained Waterford steel frame road bike. It has a paint job that would make anyone smile. Red to flame yellow to blue. To ride this bike when you were a kid would have been fab. But to keep it rolling smoothly after 30+ years on the road is on the order of fabulous. He is a great mechanic, for starters, who replaced only the front fork to adjust for modern headsets. There have been parts replaced along the way of course. Cranks. Gaskets. Hubs. Wheels. But the bike, per se, is the frame. That is what we ride.

Last year I was given a Waterford by my brother-in-law. It hangs in the garage as yet because I do not want to mess with it until it has been determined with absolute certainty what should be touched and what should not. The frame is a 56″ cm and I typically ride a 58, yet my bike-wrench CAT-3 neighbor down the street who is 6’3″ and a much better rider than I rides a 56 and tells me most cyclists ride a frame that is too large for them.

“It’s all in the setup,” he insists.

And yet the Waterford has a couple issues that need resolution before it is truly ridable. The bike is designed for criterium racing. It is sharp and snappy and feels like it is connected to your body when you hop on and go. But that’s the point. The bike is so well tuned with its metal frame that unless you are fitted well to the machine at all points, it feels like you are running on shoes that don’t fit.

So it needs a new stem, but that requires a new front fork to accommodate the headset that would allow a new stem, to adjust for body length and reach. And so it goes.

So the Waterford remains a project of love and respect. The day will come when I go out and ride it, but not until it gets the full attention it deserves. My Waterford-riding mechanically-gifted friend has promised to guide me to Nirvana on that bike. Can’t wait.

Those carbon fiber feelings

In the meantime, I ride the Felt 4C carbon fiber framed road bike purchased 7 years ago. It has served me well. We’ve done over 20,000 miles together, including a couple crazy rides I should never have attempted. That day in 96 degree heat. That morning I went out into a driving rainstorm. A few races where it was only the bike that kept me in the running. Well, not exactly. I had to pedal, but I felt more like I was hanging onto the bike than riding it.

So my feelings toward the Felt 4C are genuine and real. We have shared lonesome miles trying to build fitness and worked together through the types of thoughts and emotions that drive us all to distraction. My bike thinks just like I do, you see. I know this to be true because when we both experienced that bike wobble back in September the Felt 4C did not want to crash on the road any more than I did. So we worked together to make it to the ditch even though the vibrations of the universe were working against us. Now that’s a bike you can trust. I hope. At least I think that’s how it all happened.

When the Felt 4C came out on the market, it was named Bike of the Year by some biking magazine for its combination of decent components (Shimano Ultegra and Dura Ace mix) and its generally light frame and construction. They called the bike The Red Rocket.

Bike lusts and other trusts

Well, there are plenty better bikes on the road, of course. I once rode next to an Orbea that seem to drive itself. The rider took both hands off the handlebar and pedaled happily along as he changed shirts, adjusted his water bottles and generally did whatever he felt like doing while the bike did its work. That bike was so stable and so smooth and so quiet that you got the impression, truly, that it afforded the rider an extra 2mph in saved effort.

Probably true.

Whereas the Specialized ridden by another buddy always sounds so loud that it seems like it is going to fall apart. The impression if false, of course. It is just the style of rear hub on th bike that makes noise whenever the rider stops pedaling. But impressions do count. Still, he rides away from me at will. So he feels pretty good about his bike, obviously.

Whenever new bikes are featured in the bike magazines, it is fun to leaf through and imagine how you might feel riding a $12,000 Pinarello Dogma, or other some such machine.

Multiplicity

But in the end, one usually feels pretty good about the bike you do ride, because the options are to trade up or trade off, and many riders do. Some have 4 or 5 road bikes they switch depending on conditions. Yet most riders stick with the bike they brung to the dance. They show up week after week, perhaps concerned about that creaking noise in the lower gasket or the way the chain seems to be slipping even though it is new.

The frame beneath is what gets us from here to there, and all points in-between. That’s how you feel about your bike, no matter who you are. It’s an all points in-between thing we all have with our machines. It’s the reason we ride. The space we traverse. The machine we grow to trust and depend upon. Really.

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Dealing with the tarsnake of the common cold is always a gamble

Posted on December 4, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Training through a common cold is always a gamble because it is a tarsnake that can take you down even longer if you make the wrong choices.

Training through a common cold is always a gamble because it is a tarsnake that can take you down even longer if you make the wrong choices.

By Christopher Cudworth

Through some very hard-won experience, I consider myself an expert on the common cold.

A cold history

As a committed athlete since elementary school days, and an endurance athlete since middle school, there have been countless encounters with the condition we call the common cold. It is never fun or easy to be sick, especially if you are in deep training or preparing for a big race.

Know your enemy

The most constructive thing you can do to deal with the onset of a common cold is to identify the severity of the cold if you can, from the start. You can do this by learning what forms of potential symptoms indicate the greatest danger, and what you can do to ward off a cold before it actually takes hold.

Wait a minute…

Whether you’re a cyclist or a runner, the first thing to do when encountering symptoms of a cold coming on is to hold off on your training plans for at least a day. You will not lose much in terms of fitness if you use prudence. But you stand to lose tons of time if you stubbornly rush ahead with your training schedule when a cold is in its early stages.

Here are your common cold caution signs:

Any grade of sore throat

Do not continue hard training when you feel any level of tightness in your throat, dryness at the back of your palate or see small “drainage” dots at the back of your mouth. Use a flashlight and peer into the back of your mouth to check for signs of strep, as well, which can manifest as white dots in the red lining of your throat. All these are signs that your body has begun to fight an infection from a virus.

To reiterate, if your throat is tight at any level, you should back off immediately because the body is at a tipping point. The reason your throat is tight is that the mucus membranes of your nose and throat are literally being injured and inflamed in your body’s fight against the virus. That inflammation is both a symptom and a cause of future problems.

Irritability or distracting fatigue

When you’re planning to go out and run or ride and the motivation simply isn’t there, the reason may be you are overtrained.

Fatigue is the reason for the resultant irritability, but the onset of a cold can heighten feelings of fatigue, resulting in impatience with your associates or work, lack of ability to concentrate, even a depressed emotional state can result from being overtired. That is when you are at greatest risk of getting a cold.

Sudden tingling in the nose, and sneezing

The cold virus can also come from nowhere, showing up as a sudden tingling in the sinuses or sudden sneezing. Like all cold symptoms, these issues can be imitated by allergies as well, so it can be difficult to discern, particularly in the summer months, exactly what is happening. Generally allergy sufferers know when their worst points of risk are during a season, and the symptoms are prolonged and consistent, while a cold “comes on” suddenly.

Hunger for sweets or other dietary treats

In the movie Men In Black a giant “bug” from outer space crashes his flying saucer into a rural field, takes over the body of a farmer named Edgar and goes inside the farmhouse to demand that the farmer’s wife to give him a jar of sugar water. She pours a little in a cup and stirs it. The giant bug in the “Edgar suit” grunts and says, “More…” Then he drinks down the sugar water in one big disgusting gulp.

This may be how you feel when a cold is coming on. The common cold makes you hunger for sweet things, but you must resist. Colds, like cancer and other diseases, seem to thrive on foods that provide quick energy. Especially sugar. The common cold is just like the big bug in the Edgar suit. It can take over your body and make you feel thick and stuffed up for days.

Headaches, fever and slow motion

Endurance athletes are at constant risk of getting overtired and sick because we consistently and sometimes radically push our bodies to the limit. Without adequate recovery, our bodies almost seem to seek out reasons to take a break. The common cold is one such method of bodily revenge. First you might feel a headache. Then a sodden feeling from head to toe. Achiness. Then sniffles. Sometimes you develop a raspy voice and a low-grade or intense fever. Your nose starts to run. Your throat thickens and you might even get a case of the runs. Then you know it’s too late. You’ve got a cold. But I still recommend hitting your cold with zinc…

What to do in the early stages

If you are smart enough to pay attention to the “early signs” rather than waiting until everything tips toward a full-blown cold, there are steps you can take to ward off the worst of the effects.

For example, I am an inveterate use of zinc tablets and lozenges. Apparently the chemicals in zinc are effective in combatting the cold virus. That is why it is best to keep zinc or echinacea (some believe it can boost immune systems) in some form around the house at all times during your training seasons.

Most zinc lozenges require that you suck them like a LifeSaver, allowing the zinc to penetrate the mucus membranes and get into your system. All I can tell you is that it works. In the last 15 years or so the use of zinc has warded off countless colds. How do I know that? Because I’ve had far less colds than the previous 15 years before I used zinc treatments like Cold-Eaze or zinc tablets. I’ve learned to use and trust them, and am better off for their preventative benefits.

Hyper about cold prevention

Because I hate colds so much, I am absolutely hyper about fighting them off before they take hold.

This is compounded by the fact that I cannot resort to typical cold treatments like antihistamine-based cold medicines that shrink the sinuses, etc. I learned years ago that these medicines also cause problems with the prostate. It’s all clearly labelled on the bottle, “Do not use if you experience difficulty in urination due to enlargement of the prostate.” Many cold medicines contain this warning. The antihistamines can literally inflame the prostate of men, causing a problem you don’t need to have when you’re already getting sick. For this same reason I never drink caffeine, not in coffee (which I hate anyway) or soda, and don’t miss the stimulant one bit.

And guess what? Ever since I quit taking standard cold medicines, I’ve had far fewer colds and the few that I have experienced are shorter and less intense that when I used sinus medications and other intense treatments for cold symptoms.

Cold medicines don’t cure anything than symptoms

Cold medicines are highly overrated in treating the common cold. They may make you temporarily feel better during the cold or help you get through the workday or sleep through the night. All those things are fine, in small doses. But do not think that cold medicines actually do much to shorten the length of the cold, or do anything especially helpful to cure it. That’s just not true.

It is possible that taking zinc or echinacea during your cold may help shorten its duration, however. That’s worth a try.

Far better to learn the signs of a cold and attack them with preventative measures like zinc, rest, lots of water, Vitamin C, warm showers, hot tea with honey, chicken soup and other measures that don’t slam your sinuses, your prostate or your other tender parts, wherever they may be. (Hi gals).

The tarsnake of the common cold

If you do catch a cold, here’s the typical pattern of what you’ll experience.

  • 2-3 days of sore throat, achiness, possible fever, and fatigue
  • 3-5 days of nasal congestion and runny nose
  • 3-5 days of bronchial congestion and coughing, with possible continued nasal drainage
  • 4-5 days of residual coughing, sometimes intense
  • 2-3 days of coughing and clearing phlegm

In summary, that’s about 21 days or 3 weeks of dealing with cold symptoms as a median for the common cold. Some colds only last a few days, if your general resistance is up. Others can linger for months, with dry coughing carrying on for weeks and weeks.

So the tarsnake of dealing with the common cold is this: Either you can back off training a few days and fix the cold, or risk losing weeks of quality training because you’re too sick to handle much else.

Catch-22s

The common cold is a tarsnake of decision-making, for sure. Having once raced a half-marathon during the thick throes of a common cold, I do not recommend that approach to anyone. It was 13.1 miles of snot-blowing, coughing and wiping my raw nose with an equally raw wrist. Yet I managed to place in the top 10 with a time of 1:10: 35. To this day I wonder if I’d have gone any faster without being sick. Somewhere along the way I read that the common cold takes away about 10% of your running efficiency, depending on its severity. We all live with such questions, and what to consider a good option when facing the common cold.

Some athletes slug right through the fatigue and illness figuring they’re going to be sick anyway and don’t want to give up the training they feel they need to meet their goals. That approach is brave, for sure, but can also be stupid.

Mother’s knows best?

I once tried to “train through” a wicked cold and wound up with migraine headaches so severe they incapacitated me for days at a time. Then the medicine I took (Tylenol with codeine) to treat the headaches was so strong my whole left arm went numb and I wound up in the emergency room. The technicians there worried about my developing pneumonia as well, so they did a body scan and found what looked like a gas bubble under my left lung. So they told me to take it easy and go home and rest.

That night, not wanting to be left out of the social action, I went dancing with my brothers and some girls we knew at a club called Mother’s on Division Street in Chicago. I opted to drink that cold to death. Strangely enough, it seemed to work.

Baselines

If you haven’t gathered the truth from that anecdote, I was one of those athletes that did not always have good sense about balancing training and rest. At the time of that wicked cold I was running 80-90 miles a week, weighed 14o lbs. on a 6 foot 1 inch frame and got a cold about every three months on schedule. My baseline body makeup was so thin and on the edge it was inevitable that I would get sick now and then. What would I do to change that approach? Likely replace some of the longer junk miles with strength training that could possibly bulk up my system and create a stronger baseline.

Special risks for cyclists and endurance athletes

Riding with a common cold can be especially dangerous for cyclists. The conditions faced by serious riders can range from intense cold to intense heat, both of which place maximum stress on the body. That is why cyclists in events such as the Tour de France are so much at risk for bronchial infections and colds. It’s not that the conditions themselves cause the cold so much as the lowered resistance from stressing the body through extreme conditions makes it much more possible for cold infections and fever to take hold. If you are a cyclist facing down a possible cold, it hardly needs be said that going out and killing yourself on the bike can put you at risk of being out of action for weeks. Better to err on the side of caution and live to train another day.

Rules made to be broken? 

I once did a nearly 4-hour training run in 43-degree temperatures and rain. We trotted along at 7:30 to 8:00 pace for more than 26 miles and were never cold, but when I got home that warm shower sure felt good. Then the fatigue hit me and I slept from 2:00 in the afternoon to well past 3:00 in the morning before waking up ravenous for food.

Yet through all that stress I did not get sick or catch a cold. So the rules of training are meant to be broken. You just have to stay wise

Now when I try to share my cold-earned wisdom with my own children, they turn their heads and laugh. What does a fuddy-duddy old dad know about living the night life, after all?

Oh, if they only knew. If they only knew.

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If you have a 6 mile run planned, for example, far better to go slow and do 3 at this point, listening to your body the entire way. Or if you are scheduled for a 50-mile ride that you know will press your fitness, it is best to

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Kerri Hoskins Branson runs to meet challenges

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
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Kerri Hoskins Branson with her husband Scott.

Kerri Hoskins Branson is a woman who makes her mind up about things, and does them.

That does not mean she always plans her goals or achievements far in advance. In fact some of her keenest achievements have been accomplished not because she was checking off experiences on her personal bucket list, but instead, Branson responds to challenges with an enthusiasm that raises the classic question of whether circumstances make the woman, or the other way around?

“A marathon? How far is that?”

Take Kerri Branson’s first time at running a marathon: “A bunch of my friends were out having drinks and asked me to join them. When I got there, they told me, ‘we’re running the New York City Marathon. Want to join us?’ ”

At the time Kerri Branson was already accomplished in karate and working as a personal trainer. So she knew how to get fit. But the most she’d ever run in her life was about a mile. “So I asked my friends, ‘A marathon? How far is that?’ They replied, ’26.2.’ Then I came back with ‘Sure, why not?”

Getting ready to run

The race was 5 months away, so Branson went online and read all she could about how to train for a marathon. Then she started running. In the meantime, her main training partner had to quit with a broken bone in her foot. Branson kept going but chose to enter the Twin Cities Marathon near her former hometown instead of running New York.

Despite the northerly location of the event, race day temperatures soared into the mid-80s, forcing almost everyone to back off their pace by 30%. “It was great though, “Branson says. “Fans were pelting us with water and cheering us on.

Branson’s mother still lives in the Twin Cities area and waited at the 20-mile point to cheer Kerri on, but the heat of the day had put her daughter and everyone else in the race behind their projected pace. “When I finally reached 20 miles,” Kerri smiles, “my mom came running out with tears all over her face, hugging me before I ran on to the finish. That was pretty special…”

On to Chicago

ChicagoMarathon

Kerri Branson shows how it’s done, having fun across the line at a hot Chicago Marathon in 2010.

Her next marathon was Chicago 2010. Race day again arrived with temperatures in the 80s. This time Kerri ran with a training partner who kept her spirits up by throwing water at her during the race and cheering her on. “The first part of the race was fine, but as the heat got bad, we dropped off our target pace and walked to cool off. At one point I stopped sweating and that’s never a good sign.”

Switching gears

A back problem that flares up during high mileage training has convinced Branson to point her running efforts toward adventure races and other events that aren’t so long and time consuming, because while running remains a joy, Kerri Branson also has her sights set on exciting new challenges in other phases of life.

Springboards

Raised in a family of 7 kids with one brother and six sisters, Kerri Hoskins Branson learned early how to get along and be tough in life. “My stepfather was a Vietnam Vet who suffered from PTSD, the whole thing,” she relates. “We never had a lot of money and we moved around a lot. But one thing that my mother taught us was not just to manage yourself, but also be creative. My mom didn’t especially coddle us. She was just too busy. But she did teach us that ideas and creativity do matter.”

Processing adversity

The Branson Family with friends and business associates Laura and Sean Reavis.

The Branson Family with friends and business associates Laura and Sean Reavis.

Overcoming adversity and accepting that people handle it in different ways has become a potent theme in the life of Kerri Branson. Her two sons were born with a severe form of cerebral palsy. They spent the first 2 months of their lives in the ICU. “My husband Scott and I quickly learned that we process adversity in different ways. I needed to be there every second, educating myself on what their needs were, and how to handle things. I knew that was going to be an important job going forward,” Branson says.

Her husband Scott was at first understandably anxious seeing his sons linked to all sorts of life support systems. But as time went by Kerri and Scott worked out their roles and each has learned to play to their own strengths in raising two sons that cannot speak and require considerable, round-the-clock care.

The family also makes an annual trip to Florida to get hyperbaric oxygen therapy for their sons. “The oxygen presses inflamed areas of the brain where it would not normally go,” Kerri says, pushing her hands to her own head, imagining how it must feel. “But when we were well into treatments we had a frightening incident, because Zachary had a seizure. His body decided it had enough oxygen and he stopped breathing. I was trapped inside the hyperbaric chamber alone with him because it takes 6 minutes to get you out of there. So I started doing mouth to mouth, and it saved his life. When we came out everything was fine.” Kerri and Scott have four children and live an active lifestyle that keeps them all on the go.

Kerri Branson seems to embrace her entire life that way, going from challenges she must face, to challenges she chooses to face. “If someone tells me I can’t do something, I love to prove them wrong.”

Last year Kerri Branson even took on the challenge of running for political office. As a resident of Batavia, IL, she did not win in the race for a county board seat, but learned much about the art––and some of the ugliness––in politics along the way. She winces when she admits, “The other side resorted to some tactics that were supposed to intimidate me,” she grins. “It didn’t work. But I learned a lot.”

Getting a kick out of life

Kerri Branson rehearses for her role as Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat

Kerri Branson rehearses for her role as Sonya Blade in Mortal Kombat

Kerri Branson is not much intimidated by anything it turns out. Her early career included modeling for Playboy and she combined that notoriety with her background in karate to become the acting and body model for the virtual character Sonya Blade in the video game Mortal Kombat. She still has many fans that follow her career and Like her on the Facebook page for her business ventures. “I love my Mortal Kombat fans,” she says. “All that brought me out of my shell.”

The Big Picture

Recently Kerri closed down her personal training business to focus her efforts on a venture that capitalizes her long term interest in the arts and serving others. Kerri and

Kevin Kuster and Kerry Hoskins Branson stand in the Creator Gallery space being prepared for opening in late 2012

Kevin Kuster and Kerry Hoskins Branson stand in the Creator Gallery space being prepared for opening in late 2012

her associates are launching an arts and events space called Creator Gallery. The gallery will feature Kerri Branson’s paintings as well as the work of one of her partners, photographer Kevin Kuster and selected other artists.

Kerri and Kevin met 20 years ago at Playboy Enterprises when Kerri was modeling, doing production work and hair/makeup for photo shoots. Kevin left Playboy last year after 20 years as Senior Photo Editor. He is currently one of the top editors for the mobile application Instagram.

Artistic talents emerge

Kerri Hoskins Branson paints images that are arresting and real, yet hew to an abstract idea.

Kerri Hoskins Branson paints images that are arresting and real, yet hew to an abstract idea.

Remarkably, Kerri Branson only began painting in 2012, but she comes from a family where her grandfather  was a professional painter and her mother paints as well. Kerri takes a fresh and direct approach to painting, depicting animals and natural abstractions that stem from organic close-ups. She approaches her painting with the same fearless attitude that has driven her modeling career, personal training, being a mother and running marathons.

The business model

Creator Gallery is being backed by friends and business associates Laura and Sean Reavis of Nebraska. Sean and Laura are involved in several already successful ventures. They are ownership partners in a minor league hockey team and also own a manufacturing company. Laura is a writer and has published a children’s book. She also has a talent for interior design and works part-time as a hospital chaplain near their home in Nebraska. In his full time job, Sean is a Senior VP with BP.

The business plan is to create a space that is not only an art gallery also serves as a site for weddings, receptions, parties, arts education and other inventive events. The distinctive design of the gallery is a collaboration borne from design contributions by each of the partners, including interior designer Rebecca Ersfeld, Kerri’s mother.

The gallery space under construction is built with recovered wood such as these beams hewn from telephone poles.

The gallery space under construction is built with recovered wood such as these beams hewn from telephone poles.

Entering the gallery space, one encounters giant faux barn doors facing the front, while the bathrooms feature wood beams hewn by masterful carpenter Mark Fowler who created the beams out of telephone pole wood to create a rugged yet elegant space in the bathroom stalls where Kerri Branson installed the slate tile. The entire Creator Gallery team is installing high-quality imitation wood flooring throughout the gallery space. Materials were purchased right next door to the gallery at Douglas Tile.

Picture this

The photography component of the business will include a include fine art portraiture, weddings and pets, while also working with area school districts in sports photography, graduation, drama and other events for students and families. Scott Branson, a teacher and coach in 3 sports (as well as half-marathoner) will be involved in the PR end of the business working with school districts and sporting events in area communities. .

A special mission

Creator Gallery will also reach out to special needs families who do not otherwise typically seek professional photography because of the difficulty and expense in balancing medical bills with other needs. Creator Gallery will essentially be tithing this work to the benefit of these families.

While a beauty and an athlete, Kerri Hoskins Branson's grit, faith and devotion to family are some of her strongest traits.

While a beauty and an athlete, Kerri Hoskins Branson’s grit, faith and devotion to family are some of her strongest traits.

It’s already been a fantastic journey for Kerri Branson from engaging young model to Mortal Kombat warrior to personal trainer, mother and now marathoner and artist. The faith she has shown in diving into each new endeavor is reflected in the name Creator Gallery.

Kerri Branson is one of those people who seems to gain confidence by trying new things. That doesn’t mean she does not experience fear like the rest of us, but her inspiring example is in how she processes those fears and challenges to make the best out of life for everyone she meets.

Information on Creator Gallery:

  • 1057 W. Orchard Rd. North Aurora, Illinois 60542
Phone (630) 229-0828
Email kerri@creatorgallery.com
Website http://CreatorGallery.com

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The fine line between the Paleo diet and the Oreo diet

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

IMG_8163I watch what I eat. I really do. I watch it sit on a shelf, and then I eat it. Like this Oreo.

Not exactly the Paleo diet, now is it? I couldn’t help it. The guts were too tasty. I licked them out like the blubber from a dead seal on a platter.

Paleolithic vs. Paleolickit

Back when the Paleo diet was all the rage, human beings had little time for leisure activities and literally had to run for their dinner. That meant there was no time for exercise as we think of it. You exercised or you died. That was that.

The Oreo diet

Now instead of the Paleo diet, many of us are on the Oreo diet. We eat processed foods because they are convenient and we don’t have to chase them down to eat them.

That’s the big difference between runners now and runners then. Back in the Paleolithic era, they ran in bare feet or sandals, carried spears as they ran and did not think much about “watching their weight” or even “watching their diet.” If you felt like chomping your teeth into the fat of an elk or ingesting 5 lbs of seal blubber in a single sitting, you did it. No questions asked. Paleo decisions were simple.

It’s all a process

Now we process our opinions and ideas just like we process our foods. Nothing is simple anymore. Unless you make it simple.

Like, today. I made a simple decision. I ate the rest of the bag of Cheetos I purchased when I ran to Walgreen’s early this morning to buy my wife some of those hot packs for her back. I don’t know why… those Cheetos just needed to be in my belly. There’s not a thing about them that’s good for me except that they’re comfort food. And that’s the modern version of the Paleo diet.

We eat our anxiety before it eats us. 

Comfort food everywhere you look 

Which is also why I stopped into a gas station on the way home from doing an interview with a band for my next article on Yahoo! I didn’t eat lunch before going so I got hungry on the way home and the gas station was on my way and something about that place said “OREOS” and I popped in to buy a 6-pack of Oreo (yes, you heard what I said) for $1.79 and a Diet Coke, which is basically bubbly sewer water in a poison bottle.

Not on the Paleo menu

There is nothing in either of those “food items” that is anywhere on the Paleo diet. I was not being a good little cave boy today, as you can tell.

I didn’t run a step, except with the dog.

I didn’t cycle either, even though the weather was close to 70 degrees here in Illinois. In December. Who does not go out on a day like that? A busy, modern man, that’s who. No wonder we get uptight.

I could have run I suppose. But I biked 20 yesterday, ran 6.2 the day before, biked another 30 the day before that, and ran the day before that.

Listening to God

So Sunday became a day of rest. I went to church. Listened to a beautiful Cantata. And then ate some Cheetos. And Oreos. And a Diet Coke. How comforting. Salvation and comfort food. They go together.

But none of that made me a better athlete, I know. Except the praying maybe.

I mean, what the hell…

Perhaps it was my way of saying, for one day: Screw it. I’d rather relax and eat junk.

Don’t tell me you never do that.

I had a cup of yogurt too. So I ate something healthy today. And two Cutie oranges. So sweet and juicy.

Tomorrow I’ll get back to real eating, like the salad I had the day before, and the pulled pork and whatever I ate last night out at dinner.

We can’t be all Paleo, all the time. There’s a little bit of Oreo in all of us. Once in a while you gotta go with it.

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Saturday Original: Watercolor of a once-favorite running route

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
While living and training in southeastern Pennsylvania, I trained on the backroads around Paoli. A favorite spot in the bottomland was this narrow railroad underpass. This painting was done on site, plein air by Christopher Cudworth.

While living and training in southeastern Pennsylvania, I trained on the backroads around Paoli. A favorite spot in the bottomland was this narrow railroad underpass. This painting was done on site, plein air by Christopher Cudworth.

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Bigfoot is real. He almost ran me down yesterday.

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

By Christopher Cudworth

SmalfutWhile rumors of Bigfoot and Sasquatch sightings have fascinated a considerable segment of the general public over the years, it was not until recently that actual DNA evidence of Bigfoot surfaced through the pursuit of science.

The news broke fast and large across the Internet. A genetic researcher named Melba Ketchum claims to have found DNA evidence of Bigfoot in human history. The Huffington Post reported “Under Ketchum’s direction at DNA Diagnostics in Nacogdoches, Texas, a team of researchers has concluded that the creature may be a human relative that somehow developed around 15,000 years ago as a result of a hybrid cross between Homo sapiens with an unknown primate.”

The story continues: “While many people have claimed to have seen the creature, its existence has never been confirmed, despite a plethora of photos and footprints. The ongoing search is the subject of Animal Planet’s “Finding Bigfoot” television series.”

Bigfoot prints

My own documented Bigfoot Evidence is featured in this photo of Bigfoot imprints in a

Bigfoot imprints in local asphalt. Click to view larger image.

Bigfoot imprints in local asphalt. Click to view larger image.

bit of local asphalt. But even greater is the evidence captured in this photo, in which Bigfoot, wearing bright red adidas shorts, appears just off camera as I was running down a forest preserve path near my hometown.

 

 

Direct encounter!

This close call with a Bigfoot on a local running path was documented by my photographer.

This close call with a Bigfoot on a local running path was documented by my photographer. Click for a larger view.

The photographer taking the photos was so focused on composition that he did not notice the giant creature whisking through his peripheral vision. But when the digital photos were downloaded, Bigfoot showed up clear and real.

Hard evidence

That seems to be how Bigfoot works. Consider the quote of Melba Ketchum in the Huffington Post story.  On finding evidence of Bigfoot in DNA, she had this to say: “Well, it came to me, I didn’t go after it, that’s for sure,” in her exclusive interview with the Huffington Post. “I did not believe in these creatures. But my lab did a lot of animal testing, and we did species identification. We didn’t have any hits on anything interesting until five years ago.”

The story goes on to note that Ketchum’s professional work includes nearly 30 years in genetics research and forensics. After her team attempted DNA sequencing of hair samples from an alleged Bigfoot encounter, they found some unusual things in the hair. But there wasn’t enough DNA to conclusively verify what they were seeing.

Smells like reality

As for my own encounter with Bigfoot, I noticed a rather pungent smell carried from behind me on the north wind. For a moment I thought it was my own flatulence, as that is a common occurrence on many a run. But the smell was not rooted in the burritos I’d had the day before, but smelled like more natural fare, most likely venison and smaller game such as rabbits and foxes.

So it appears our local Bigfoot is eating well and not relying on fast food like Taco Bell or Kentucky Fried Chicken. And yet you can see the grimace on Bigfoot’s face, as if he’s asking, “Who cut one?”

Well, Bigfoot, I say the one that smelt it, dealt it. So there.

Getting wilder in Illinois

Given the recent Cougar sightings in Illinois, it seems as if things are getting pretty wild around the Chicago area. First mountain lions, now Bigfoot. Although that might be plural if there is more than one Bigfoot around. Then we’re dealing with Bigfeet. And that’s a whole new level of problem for Illinois.

After all, if the Bigfoot population increases in our state, Bigfoot can lay claim to voting rights and even lobbying to redistrict rural areas to influence Illinois politics.

But the problem for us runners and riders will be if Bigfoot entrants start showing up at local races. Who wants to compete with a 9 foot runner that makes the ground shake when they tromp by you in the last 2K? Or who wants to go on a group ride with 15 Bigfoot cyclists elbowing for a spot in the echelon in a crosswind.

Not me, I’ll tell you. My first and hopefully last encounter with Bigfoot was close enough. From the looks of things he almost ran me down already. Or is that a she? Women’s running is on the increase, you know. There’s no reason why a female Bigfoot might not have been out doing some miles to shed some weight. After all, Bigfoot and human beings seem to have some pretty common roots and close relations. That DNA had to get there somehow, you know.

Best to keep on running, folks. That’s my advice.

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What to do after the tar snake of a bad race

Posted on November 29, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

A bad race can leave you feeling like dead meat.

By Christopher Cudworth

Sooner or later, we all have a bad race.

Running into trouble

If you’re a runner, you might have planned all year for a marathon, and things went sour somewhere along the way. Or that half-marathon you planned to use as a tuneup turned into an injury-hobbled slog and a DNF. You shot for a PR in the 10k and blew up at four miles. Your 5K just pace just never got going. What do you do when those things happen?

Riding away from you

If you’re a cyclist, bad races can happen fast. You can crash, for one thing. That ends your race in a hurry. Or you can make a mistake, get stuck in the back of a pack and miss the break. It’s often “race over” at that point whether you’re in a road race or a criterium. In cycling, contact with the lead group of riders is everything. There’s no making up the difference when the group ahead is sharing pulls at 25 mph and you’re humping along solo at 22. The math is not in your favor.

Everyone blows up now and then. Misses the break. Has a bad day. The reasons are multitude. But the solutions must be simple.

Gaining perspective

Imagine if you are an Olympic athlete and have a bad day? You might have put in 4 years of intensive training, watching your diet and weight work and everything it takes to be world class and still find yourself sick with a cold or not feeling your greatest on the day of the race. The disappointment can be crushing.

The natural response is often to look for excuses. The weather was not in your favor. You can’t help your luck in a cycling pack. On and on.

There are better ways to process what happens during and after a bad race.

What to do after the tar snake of a bad race

  1. Start by making no vows. Often the first thing we tell ourselves during and after a bad race is “I’m never doing this again” or “I quit” or “Why do I even (run) or (ride). Resist the temptation to make vows to quit. It’s natural to want to divorce yourself from the situation, but leave it at that. Confine your anger or disappointment to a single event. Do not case a negative net over your whole love of the sport. Even though you hate it at the moment, you can prevent digging yourself a mental hole by stating, in positive fashion, “Things did not go well today but I will reserve judgment until later how I really feel about this.”
  2. Chronicle the “bad” event rather than ignoring it. You’ll be surprised how liberating it can be to take out a piece of paper and write down all the things that went wrong. Or make an angry entry in your journal if need be. It’s okay to be mad when things don’t go right. It’s even okay to carry that anger with you in constructive fashion.
  3. Find a focus for your anger and frustration. Many times it is the anticipation and stress that cause us to fail under pressure in athletic competition. The first step in finding new focus for our efforts is to discover whether the reason behind your failure was temporary or permanent. If you have overtrained or become stale leading up to your target race, you cannot expect to bounce back out there and try another race. But if you simply got a side stitch running or made a dumb tactical move in cycling, it is possible to recalibrate your objectives and enter another race on the momentum and training you’ve built up. Many an Olympian athlete who failed on the big day goes out and races the rest of the season and salvages their soul by using that hard-earned fitness to other ends. Of course, there are times when it is better to back off completely and not go back out there an race. Which means you must first…
  4. Analyze. Coming off a bad race, make sure you try to understand what contributed to your off day. It could be something simple like your diet leading up to the race, taking in too much or too little fluids, over or under training in the weeks leading up to competition.
  5. Keep the motivation, but also forgive yourself. It’s good to look ahead, determined to do better next time. It is also important to forgive yourself if you screwed up somehow, got too eager or trained too many miles and wound up tired on race day. Everyone makes mistakes. Don’t bury yourself in blame and regret. That’s good advice in running and riding, and in life itself.

Listen to yourself

A bad race is not the end of the world. You don’t need to moan and complain to everyone you know about your misfortune. Your training partners can be a good sounding board if you ask them to help you analyze your training. Often they see mistakes even when you don’t.

Learn from mistakes

I recall clearly my teammates asking me in advance of a high school cross country race on a confusing course, “Do you know the route?”

Arrogantly I assured them I did. Yet when the course went straight on a second loop rather than taking the longer way around a track, I ran the longer way while a competitor went straight––the correct route––and my 200 yard lead vanished. I finished second.

That was a preventable mistake, and the lesson learned from that “bad” race was to pay attention to preparation right up to the minute of the event.

We all learn things the hard way sometimes. It’s how you respond to those lessons that can turn potential bad races into better future efforts.

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The Big Wheel Dream that could not be killed

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

Big Wheel. Because it had a big wheel.

By Monte Wehrkamp

When I was a kid, there was one toy I wanted more than any other.

A Big Wheel.

You remember those, don’t you? Made almost entirely of plastic, the low-slung Big Wheel was (and still is, I’m told) a tricycle for older kids (up to around 8 years old). It looked fast, with chopper-style swept back handlebars, a huge front disc wheel, and a hand brake which locked up the right rear wheel so you could perform tail-out power slides.

No. You’ll kill yourself. 

But my Mom said no. I couldn’t have one. For surely, I’d roll down our steep driveway into the road where I’d be killed by the terrible traffic. We had, counting the mailman and the milkman, perhaps 11 vehicles pass our house daily. Twelve on garbage day. No matter. Were I to be given a Big Wheel, my imminent death was certain, so proclaimed my mother.

But mom, all my friends have one…

Of course, all my friends had Big Wheels. My best friend Todd had one. His house was on an even steeper hill than mine, and 38th Street actually had traffic. We’d post lookouts at the top and bottom of the hill, and when the coast was clear, fly past his house on his Big Wheel, coming to a spinning stop in the intersection below. We were never squashed by murderous Buicks or pickup trucks, though we did manage to crash into a mailbox or two.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjTAA_da97w

VIDEO CAPTION: As you can see, Marx didn’t do me any favors with this commercial. It only further served to convince my mother I would certainly be killed.

This was only the beginning of my mother’s irrational fear of cycling which she attempted to instill in me early. And often.

My mother’s fear that I’d be killed cycling moved up a notch when it came time for me to get my first bike-bike.

The Red Sting-Ray

It was a red Schwinn Stingray complete with banana seat, 5-speed shifter, drag slick rear tire, and ape hanger handlebars. And it looked, when I first saw it by the fireplace that Christmas morning in 1972, like this…

The ultimate child ride: A red Sting-Ray

The coolest bike in the world. Ever. But it didn’t look like that for very long.

“Oh George, it looks…dangerous!” Mom said to my dad.

Uh-oh, something bad is going to happen, I thought.

“Just look at those handlebars, sticking up like that!” she continued. “We can’t leave them like that. Those have to be fixed.”

Granny Handlebars

So my father drove to the hardware store where he purchased a granny handlebar — you know, the kind which usually has a wicker basket and a bell attached to it. Off came the ape hangers and on went the grannies. All in the name of safety, don’t you know. (Never mind sticking up from the the top tube was a stick shifter just a couple inches and one big crash away from, well, let’s just call them “Mom’s future grandchildren.”)

In the course of a few minutes, the coolest bike in the world became the lamest bike a young boy could possibly call his own. It was disfigured, maimed, set upon by an overprotective mother. It screamed, “I’m a dork and my mom still cuts my meat.”

But she wasn’t done yet. No, far from it.

The Yellow Columbia 10-Speed

After years of having to endure the embarrassment of my Mom-customized Schwinn, I graduated to my first road bike at the beginning of junior high (since I’d be riding it to school every day, unless there was a blizzard, and even then, only when the snow was deeper than six inches).

Understand that in western South Dakota in the middle 1970s, road bikes weren’t all that common. The most exotic bicycles in our town were 3-speed cruisers. But with 75 bucks burning a hole in my pocket, my father and I went downtown to Sears where I purchased

Classic Yellow Columbia 10-speed

a bike even cooler than my Stingray (brief pre-molestation period). A yellow Columbia 10-speed!

My bike was only a few seconds old, shining proudly in the driveway, when my mother pounced.

“What are those things?” she asked my dad.

Oh please God not again!

“What things?” he asked.

“Those curled-under things on top,” she said pointing at the drop bars.

Here we go again.

He’d be killed, George!

“You cannot possibly steer a bike with those…crazy things. He’ll be killed, George,” Mom continued. “Those have to be fixed before he goes anywhere on that bike!”

Off to the hardware store Dad went, with me protesting the entire way (in the passenger seat of his truck, sans seatbelt, of course, because it didn’t have one). But it was already settled. There was no changing Mom’s mind. If I wanted to ride my new Columbia 10-speed, it would have to be made safe with the dreaded granny bars. Complete with rubber grips with little grooves for your fingers.

After a few minutes of wrenching, my new bike was made just dorky as my old bike. Oh, how the neighbor boys all howled in glee. “Oh my God, she did it again! Haaaaaa ha hahha hahahhahha ha.” I tried to smile and go along with the teasing, like it was no big deal. But it was a big deal.  Even now, it’s a shattering memory. Really. I’m scarred. It pains me to type this.

In the end, the Columbia was stolen. Nothing left of it but a clipped bike lock hanging from the bicycle rack at school. A professional hit job. Truth be told, while it hurt for a long time, and I kept my eye out for my yellow 10-speed for months, there was a small sense of relief. At least I wasn’t riding around with granny bars.

The Beater. Beats nothing…

It wasn’t much later when we found a replacement bike — Dad and I went to an old guy’s garage, a kind of secret, underground bike shop. In it was a no-name, used 10-speed, complete with its original drop bars. It was scratched up, well used. This was a good thing, Dad reasoned. Less appealing to bike thieves.

And, as it turned out, able to fly under Mom’s radar as well. Finally, I got to ride a bike that hadn’t been safety spec’ed by my mother. I could pedal to school with my friends on a bike just like theirs. Riding dangerously!

No helmets. Yet we survived. 

Amazing when you think about it. We never wore helmets (not invented yet). Often times, we’d each have an armload of books (backpacks were unheard of back then). And for some of us in band or orchestra, an instrument case miraculously balanced across the brake hoods (in my case, a trombone).

——

Actually, Mom, looking back, it was a stroke of luck that we weren’t all killed. Your maternal instincts were spot-on, if only a little misdirected. Time certainly has a way of changing a child’s perspective, so that as an adult, one can appreciate their parent’s point of view.

But dang, did you really have to insist on granny bars?

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Which is the harder sport, running or riding?

Posted on November 27, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

Which is the harder sport, running or riding?.

via Which is the harder sport, running or riding?.

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