Running with a Hernia

Leading up to the last weekend in February the talk in running was all about shoes. Should there be limits placed on what shoe companies make for the elite runners? Rules put in place for all shoe companies to follow. How much did Nike have a say in those rules? Then finally at the US Olympic Marathon trials Nike gave every entrant a pair of their new approved Nike Alpha Fly Next %. 

We are now sitting here on April 21st one day after the scheduled Boston Marathon (since moved to September 14th) and no scheduled running or triathlon races at least until June and probably long after June. The shoe discussion has been replaced by social distancing. 

In the world of social distancing my running is actually increasing. I’ve run 31 miles the last two weeks and will probably hit 35 this week. I’m not necessarily trying to run more miles I’m simply running faster these days. I didn’t say running fast just running faster. My 90 minute 10 mile run is now 11 miles. Well Sunday it was only 9.6 miles at that’s party because I the run at 1200 feet of climbing and a hernia. 

Yes, on Friday I was out walking the puppy. I was standing on a slight slope in the grass the puppy was running around with her best friend. Somehow they got behind me with me paying much attention. They charged into the back of my legs (when they are charging they are usually tangled up together). They hit me and I fell backwards down the hill. For the rest of Friday and Saturday it kind of felt like I got punched in the gut. I couldn’t remember getting hit in the gut so I ignored it. Sunday after struggling up the hills I took my shirt off and looked down. Their protruding out of my belly button was a hernia. Apparently the impact did it. 

I took Monday off, drank a ton of water and pushed the hernia back in. I woke up today with no pain but I called our health provider. They said as long as I wasn’t vomiting or doubling over in pain I could continue my activities. So, I went for a run. 

Five for Friday: Change is Good

"Every day the bucket goes to the well, One day the bottom will drop out"...... Bob Marely

The theme for today is doing the same thing over and over and expecting things to be different. The Bob Marely quote in I Shot the Sherriff speaks loudly to me right now. Doing the same thing day in and day out and one day it will just break. We need to change it up. So here's my top 5 ways to change it up.

1. Meditation - It's new to me so I don't begin to fully understand the impact but I'll try here. In easy to do Breath Awareness meditation you sit for your desired length of time and focus on your breath. Every time you mind wanders and it will, you bring focus back to your breath. I've found myself often recently bringing focus to a situation quickly. Where in the past I would get emotional and animated I don't do it. I quickly asses what is important and focus on that. The only reason I can find to that new found calm is the 5-10 minutes each day sitting in meditation. What's the most interesting to me is I can sit on the floor and get mauled by our chocolate lab Niki. Sit on the floor in meditation and she senses what I'm doing and leaves me alone. Think about that for a second. An Animal who doesn't have our brain senses the calm and remains calm.
2. Shock the System - Arnold talks about his early body building days where he learned to constantly shock his body to get results. He didn't do arm curls over and over and over again to get those arms. He shocked his arms with different movement with different weight with different cadence. This applies to your fitness goals. Do the same thing over and over again and you won't see change. My wife Mary does the same thing most of the time. Recently she started a belly dancing class. Instant change!
3. Quite Your Job - I know it's not for everyone and it's really scary. Believe me I'm sweating bullets each day wondering if I made the right decision. But at the same time it's really liberating. I'm relaxed and energized right now and ready for the new challenge that I know I'll find.
4. Walk Away - I'm so lucky to live in Cardiff by the Sea with the Pacifi Ocean just minutes away but my ocean is your nature trail, country road or mountain meadow. When the stress of the day builds up, walk away. I was always one to stay and fight the stress. Use food or coffee to fight it.  I've come to taking walks on the beach in the middle of the day and it's so refreshing. If I'm dead tired and cranky I walk away and come back calm and energized. It's different then meditation in that there is blood flow and fresh clean air. Sometimes I even combine and sit on the beach and do the meditation in the middle of the walk.
5. Stop Consuming - Oh my this has been liberating. I sat down a few weeks back and penciled out how much money I needed to make for us to maintain our life. The basics, food, water, shelter. It came out to less than half of my previous annual salary. So then I looked at where the rest of the annual salary was going. We were consuming (It didn't all go to consumption at huge portion went to long term saving). After that exercise I stopped consuming. Where swiping my debit card was just easy to do, I've gone days without a single swipe. I don't need to do this, we have money and I have time to get back on the work bus. The point is I forced myself the change a habit and it has been liberating.

It's a good life.....

The High School Runner - Ironman Training - Long Running and Family

Do you remember high school when upper classmen would graduate and move away? Our son Marco since he was a freshman has made friends with the upper classmen mostly through running but in other ways too. On Saturday he and another gave a farewell send off to one of their buddies. They did this by inviting him on a 14 mile run. Now the Boost Boys (as they were called last year) are down from 5 to 2. It was sad for Marco to say goodbye. It is awesome to watch him grow in front of my eyes.

That's Marco on the right and the graduate on the left before the run.

 

Here they are 14 miles later. Happy to be done, a bit tired and a bit bummed to be saying goodbye.

 

 

That afternoon my friend Shawn who is training for the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii asked me to ride with him. I'm never one to shy away from a long ride especially when it's helping someone prepare for the big race. The only problem was Shawn couldn't go until noon, on a very hot Saturday afternoon. But ride we did and 5 hours later we were wind blown and exhausted. Highlights included putting Shawn in the front in the big wind and saying "this is Kona wind". We got flipped off by a woman on the back of a motorcycle. I guess she didn't like our skinny butts in the middle of the share lane (You know the lane where bikes have right of lane). Then we hooked up with another rider for about 5 miles. It was nice for me to get a break from being in front most of the day. The only issue is he was a big boy and when he pulled I could see nothing but his back in front of me.

 

 

Quick change and Mary, Marco and I were off to Hillcrest a funky fun community of San Diego where  we had dinner with a former student of Mary's. We had a great dinner at a Spanish Tapas bar and then had outstanding Gelato to cap the night off. I was so hungry I ate three Tapas on my own.

We were playing around with Mary telling her hair was messed up. I took this picture while she was using my phone as a mirror. She is just as stunning today as the day I met her.

 

Sunday is long run day. I've been meeting a group to start the run and as I showed up I was trashed and not really looking forward to run. But then my friend Greg showed up and everything was good. We had run the previous week together and we were both happy to do the same run again today. Solid pace but easy enough to talk, laugh and have a general good time. The run went by fast and it was good to get it done. It's hot in San Diego county right now and what is typically a moderate temperature run was filled with heat and humidity. I drank three bottles of water after the run to cool down and hydrate.

 

Sleep was simply outstanding Sunday night.

 

It's a good life... 





Rambling on in this Life

 It's been a rough three weeks. Travel to China is always a challenge especially when things don't go the way you expected. With the trip and the rough days at the office sleep was a challenge. The best sleep I got was 5 hours on the plane from Bejing to Chicago. Then it was off to Chicago to drive some business and see the family for a short time.

1. 5 hotels
2. 2 Overnight flights
3. 16 hour time change one way 2 hour time change the other
4. 30 hours on a plane

 By the time I got home I was wasted. I should have taken time off from work but the things in China caused me to push on. Finally on Friday I slept. 9 hours straight and it felt great. I've found over the years, Sleep is the biggest problem. When I don't sleep well, I get cranky. The people around me should know when I don't sleep well. I get mean. When I sleep well stress melts away. As my friend Chris says, excessive time change travel and a lack of sleep is a sure path to an early grave. It's a good thing I slept really well for 6 weeks before this travel and that I'm now back on good long sleep again. Minimizing the off sleep days is a big goal. I did not do so well this time around. But move on I must. 

The day I started running at the age of 17 I was sitting on my couch stuffing my face with Oreo cookies. Now Nabisco has invaded my Kindle and is tempting me with more Oreos. I haven't had one in 20 years and I don't think I'll start. Nice try Nabisco. Running over Oreo Cookies any day. 

The day before my trip to China. Marco the Runner broke a small bone in his hand. It's the one that allows our thumb to work properly and it's a bitch to heal. So little Marco is in a cast for 3 months. The great thing is against doctor orders he's still running. 3 days a week he runs 3-4 miles on the track. Last Sunday he and I ran 40 minutes side by side down the coast highway. Even with the cast he simply floats when he runs. It's so much fun to watch.

With a full cast on his arm he's not able to participate in the track meets. Thursday marked the first track meet at SDHS in years. The new track is beautiful and it was awesome to watch a track meet there. He'll get many opportunities to run here but even I was bummed that he couldn't run on this day. 

Snoopy here is my brother Bob's dog. Snoopy about says it all in this picture. Bob is not doing well. My only other experience with ALS was with John Blaze. John was able to do the Ironman World Championships with ALS. My brother Bob went from diagnosis, to Wheel Chair to Hospice Care in less than a year. He can't do anything without help and it's sad. His family is hurting, he's hurting and Snoopy here is struggling. ALS sucks, there is no cure and it's just a matter of when. I love my brother and it's tough to get through each day knowing that I'm able to do what I love and he sits in his chair waiting. His faith is strong and I'm glad he has such a supporting wife and son at home. There will be more trips to Chicago in the near future.

It's not very often that you randomly pick up the Wall Street Journal and find one of your products listed.  It was fun to see a running shoe I worked on show up in a feature article. This feature though was funny. They were putting the best of the best triathlon gear in this section and the retail price tag for all of it was $21,000. Not a motivator to jump into the sport.

Travel to China, Chicago and wherever else I have to go is always ok as long as I get to come home to this. This picture was taken at 11:00am this past Saturday. Not a cloud in the sky 75 degrees and the bright blue Pacific in the back drop. This never gets old and it's such a great place to call home. 

I hope everyone has a great week. You may not have Cardiff by the Sea but there are things to be grateful for. Find them and some sleep and maybe like me you can melt the stress away.

It's a good life....

Running Shoes Fashion or Function?

Quote of the Day: "Some runners are too concerned with fashion, and we try and steer people away from that." Bryon Mahon in an article about How to by the Right Running Shoes

I'm the biggest believer that you should buy running shoes based on Fit and Function. Know the kind of shoe you should run in and then find the best fit. But I work in the shoe industry and am a huge fan of shoes looking good too. There are plenty that I look at in the market and just say yuck! The shoe pictured above is one I worried was too much. But my recent travels and my recent times wearing it tell me quite a different story. Here's what I'ver heard: 

1.  Those are stunning - Flight attendant as I was boarding the flight. 
2. What's the Brand - Everyone
3. Where can I get those - The Customs Agent in LA. 
4. Are those Brooks, they have the same lacing - Guy at Whole Foods. Little does he know we were using it long before Brooks and I didn't tell him that. 
5. I really like those - They guy at Starbucks commenting in front of my new Boss. I did not pay him to say that. 

The interesting thing is nobody knows I work at Zoot. They are commenting on my shoes. Think about that, how many strangers have you approached to comment on their shoes. I have done it often but it's my job. It simply has amazed me. Every time I wear them somebody makes a comment. 

I love my job.....

It's a good life...

Dave