playthink

I will be offline the rest of the summer… Will resume blogging in September.

Get outside and play before your town turns into Greenwich, where lawyers and angry neighbors are threatening to close a Wiffle ball field of dreams built by local kids. “Fun? Not in my backyard!” Ugh.

“All kids [and kids at heart] deserve a Huck Finn summer.”

Play, think…
J. R. Atwood

I just returned home after a week of high-altitude livin’ in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Two great runs bookended my trip: On day one of my vacation in Jackson, I went for a light and easy morning jog to stretch my legs. Twenty minutes into my jaunt through the neighboring community of Wilson (population: 1,300; elevation: 6,100 feet), I looked up at Teton Pass, the mountain road that climbs 2,200 vertical feet at grades of up to 10 percent and cuts through the rugged range that divides the Equality State from the Gem State, and was overwhelmed with a curiosity to run to the top. (In summers past I have busted my quads riding to the summit.) A breathtaking view of the valley floor from an elevation of 8,400 feet was my reward. Incredible.

This run was just a warm-up for when I would play King of the Mountain(s) at the end of my vacation. Starting from Teton Village (elevation: 6,300 feet) at Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, I darted up a trail that wraps its way to the top of Apres Vous Mountain (8,500 feet), then crossed over and trekked up to the tippity snow-capped top of Rendezvous Mountain (10,500 feet), and then descended just a wee-bit to Gondola Summit (9,000 feet). This epic trail run sometimes seemed like a Sisyphian challenge (especially the trudge up the steep, slippery, and bowl-shaped Sublette chutte), but was ultimately — because of the difficulty of the trek, the views afforded from the mountain peaks, the wildlife that I found myself surrounded by, and the quiet solitude of such an adventure  — the highlight of my trip.

Having just returned home, I want to share some noteworthy news items from the past week that I am just now having a chance to catch-up on:

** Philosophy Talk, one of my favorite local radio programs, gets some much deserved recognition, courtesy of the L.A. Times article, Yeah, these philosophy professors will give it some thought. “Thank you for thinking.”

** Gretchen Reynolds of the NYT highlights an important and oft overlooked concern about the health of endurance athletes: The sometimes obsessive weight iusses of male and female athletes:

In [a] study published earlier this year in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 223 Swedish Olympians (125 men and 98 women) were weighed, measured and asked about their eating habits. The thinner athletes, many of them from endurance sports, reported more episodes of wild weight swings and eating disorders than other athletes. Even more startling was that the eating and weight problems were most common among the thin male athletes. The women didn’t worry about their weight nearly as much. In fact, according to Dr. Hagmar Magnus, a physician at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and the study’s lead author, “the female Olympians ate a lot and planned meals well. The men didn’t.”

Magnus says the lessons of the study are broad. For one, “we’ve all been paying a great deal of attention to female athletes, trying to help them avoid eating disorders,” he says. “We need to start doing that for men.”

In addition, “the best female athletes in Sweden eat quite well, which suggests that good eating is a real competitive advantage,” Magnus says. “As a physician, I see many female athletes, not quite so elite, who have eating problems. That may be what has kept them from the top ranks. I’d love to get the message to them, you can eat your way to greatness.”

** Walking book clubs?! Exercise the mind and the body to maximize cognitive and bodily health, says Dr. Arthur Kramer, Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at the University of Illinois, in this interview with Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains.

** And follow-this up with another fascinating AF/SharpBrains discussion about why and how smart people do really dumb things, like the Harvard students who paid $204 for a $20 bill. Wha?! Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior, explains “the different hidden forces” and “psychological undercurrents” of our decision making processes here.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

This post is republished — and was one of the most popular articles — from a now-defunct blog I used to maintain.

It’s always a bit sad to retire a pair of running shoes, but alas, the time has come to move my Salomon XA Pro 3D trail shoes from my “running shoe” bin to my “general gym shoe” bin, also known as the place where running shoes go to die.

These shoes were my one of my first “real” pair of trail shoes, and after logging near 600+ miles in them on various dirt trails, muddy paths, and through streams in the hills of Mt. Diablo State Park, the Marin Headlands, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I want to offer a review of the Salomon XA Pro 3D. (So many shoe reviews on other websites and in magazines talk about the way the shoe feels out of the box or after running a dozen or so miles in them… Hopefully I can provide some further insight after exhausting the life of these shoes.)

First, the pros: Great looking shoe! To be honest, I bought it partly because of its aesthetic appeal and aggressive look. The gray on black color scheme, with multicolored label striping the tongue, reminds me of a well-polished, shiny black Dodge Viper resting quietly, but confidently, among a row of candy apple red and cobalt blue sport cars. It doesn’t need a flashy design, silly gimmick, or obnoxious color scheme to turn heads. Somehow, the understated, yet sporty designed, shoe looks fast and light just sitting in a box. It called to me. (Score one point for the marketing folks at Salomon.)

More pros: This is a light shoe that nicely hugs the foot. It wraps the heel and foot while providing enough room in the toe-box for some breathability. The firm rubber toe-stop is great for preventing stubbed-toes on gnarly root and boulder strewn singletrack.

It is a very fast shoe. I like that it rises a bit towards the back — it fits somewhere between a low-top racing flat and a high-top hiking boot, providing just enough protection and flexibility in the ankle area.

I also like the laceless, pull-tight “lacing” mechanism. I think Salomon uses some type of Kevlar type material for this and it is a neat design that provides an as-snug or as-loose fit as you want along the top of the foot. One never has to worry about a shoelace coming undone.

But one of my training buddies mentioned a potential drawback with this “laceless” system: If, for whatever reason, your lace gets stuck on a branch while running downhill at sub-5:00/mile pace, you are going down and going down hard! A regular shoelace would untie or snap, but because these laces are bulletproof and utilize a unique design system, catching a snag can bring you to an ugly and painful stop. Note, of all the miles and crazy trails I have run in these, this never happened to me. But I suppose the possibility is there.

And on a smaller note, I could not tie my car key to my shoelaces on the Salomon! Instead, I had to carry my key either in my backpack (on long treks) or in the little “key pocket” in the front of some running shorts. (I am a bit paranoid that the key will fall out or make a hole in this pockets and constantly check to make sure I did not lose it somewhere along the trail.)

Moving into the cons… There aren’t many! This was a fantastic shoe that kept me feeling fast and confident on even the most treacherous of courses. (The traction is awesome!)

But once I started upping my mileage, I began to curse the Salomon’s. Invariably, around 12-14 miles into a run, my forefeet would feel incredibly tender, soft, and bruised. The pain would be so bad that I’d find myself silently cursing and sometimes holding back a tear or two as I trudged along on a rocky course 13 miles away from my car. This is because the sole of the XA Pro is pretty soft. Its flexibility in the sole makes it light and fast, but also a poor choice for long-distance trail running. The sole is entirely too squishy.

I know the shoes are the source of this pain because I would sometimes switch shoes mid-run (after looping back to the car) and the pain would immediately subside. Other times I used different pair of shoes on the same course for its entirety without experiencing this incredibly forefoot pain.

A surprisingly large number of my friends and fellow trail runners have said they experienced similar problems with the Salomon XA Pro 3D and sent them into early running shoe retirement, opting instead to try other brands and models.

Bottom line: Would I buy another pair? Definitely maybe. (I am practicing asking my own, and refusing to answer, questions in case I ever run for President.)

These are great shoes for short-course trail running — fast and light with the perfect blend of technology and function. I have run a number of trail races, from 3 to 16 miles, and training runs up to 29 miles in my Salomon’s; I always felt confident with them on my feet. It’s just that at mile 12 or so, the foot needs something stiffer and a bit more protective.

If heading into rocky trails or runs of more than 12 miles, you might want to try something with a stiffer sole. A large number of “serious” trail runners seemed to have once tried, then moved far away from, this model, too, for whatever that’s worth.

The retail price on these shoes are north of $100, but there are many places online or at the SportsBasement in San Francisco where you can get them for around $80. For that price, maybe try a pair and hit some short trails. They make a great light-weight and incredibly comfortable hiking shoe, as well.

RIP, Salomon XA Pro 3D.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

So. Much. Good. Stuff.

*** “Can We Play?,” by Dr. David Elkind and published on the SharpBrains blog, is a summary of the “research [that] confirms the value of play.” It makes for an interesting, science-rooted companion to a book that deserves a deep and thorough re-read every year, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, by Thomist philosopher and Christian theologian Josef Pieper, who makes a compelling case that purposeless activity is the most purposeful activity that we can and should engage in!

*** What is the best way to boost cognitive functioning? By exercising the body or by exercising the mind? What about the use of nutrition supplements and the practice of meditation? Jeremy at PsyBlog explores these questions in, Brain Health: Physical or Mental Exercise?, also republished on the SharpBrains blog. (If you regularly peruse only one or two sites about the brain sciences, SharpBrains is the best.)

*** Light reading: Boris Johnson, the recently-elected Mayor of London, analogizes bike riding with and without a helmet to the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” sharp elbow game of politics in Get a bike helmet to get ahead - or maybe not, an opinion piece in Britain’s Daily Telegraph.

*** To listen to: NPR’s Talk of the Nation has an audio archive of today’s discussion with Alan Schwartz of the NYT about his front-page profile of Kendall Bailey, a “6-foot-6-inch 19 year-old”  diagnosed with cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and autism, but who also happens to be one the fastest disabled swimmers in the world. Kendall is so fast that he is favored to win gold, if not set a world record in the breastroke, at this summer’s 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. That is, if he is allowed to compete. Officials of the event have been slow to confirm whether Kendall, because of his intellectual and mental handicaps, would be allowed to compete alongside physically disabled athletes. The politics of sport and the heart of a champion. Read Schwartz’s article here.

*** Another provocative read: This story about how the government of Japan is responding to its own national obesity epidemic (it seems everyone, everywhere — not just those of us in the U.S. — is getting fatter) by imposing limits to the size of its citizens’ bellies. (!) If you are a male, it is against the law for your waist to exceed 33.5 inches; for women, the government says your waist can be no bigger than 35.4 inches. If you eat too much and are too plump around the mid-section, you can be fined and forced to attend health education courses. Too much government intervention, or a necessary public policy?

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

Be sure to give yourself 20 minutes to read “No Finish Line” by Alexander Wolff, a Sports Illustrated profile of former marathon world-record holder Alberto Salazar. It’s a fascinating story about a great athlete who, after suffering a heart attack, is forced to come to grips with the fact that “life is the only long run that really matters.”

The opening paragraph paints a vivid picture about the The Agony of Victory:

Death is one of those things Alberto Salazar used to run into. He’d finish a race and all but perish, as likely from fire as from ice. In 1978, at the end of the 7.1-mile Falmouth (Mass.) Road Race, he was read the last rites after collapsing with a body temperature of 108°. After he won the 1982 Boston Marathon, paramedics had to give him six liters of saline solution in an IV drip when his temperature dropped to 88°.

When done reading the SI article, check out Malcolm Gladwell’s blog post about Kenyan runners. Gladwell, citing Salazar’s observations about and experiences with the sport of running, makes a case for “put[ting] the genetic argument about Kenyan running dominance to rest.”

The genetic versus cultural debate does not die, however, as evidence by the string of lively, heated, passionate responses in the comments section of Gladwell’s blog.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

Chocolate milk is just about the best thing an endurance athlete can drink after a hard workout.

Forget the fancy packaging and multi-syllabic scientific terms that are used to describe the nutrition benefits of expensive powders, gels, and other liquid concoctions found at General Nutrition Stores. Muscle Milk and its similar-marketed cousins of the “endurance fuel” family have nothing on moo milk and Hershey’s syrup. Seriously.

With the increasing demand and use of protein and carbohydrate drinks aimed at the hard-core athlete, the New York Times published comments from an un-scientific taste and performance test of leading post-activity sports drinks designed to optimize recovery. In “Gear Test: How About a Spin and Tonic?“, Gatorade Protein Recovery Shake, Met-Rx RTD, EAS Myoplex Read-to-Drink, Powerbar Recovery, and Cytopsorts Recovery Drink were sampled.

I could not help but notice how expensive all these drinks were. And the image of chugging any of these drinks after a workout brought to mind a picture of a mechanic topping-off the fluids in a race car after a hard drive. It seems as if the marketing of these products appeal to an idea in our head of our bodies as machines that need to be re-fueled with fancy chains of lab-designed amino acids, carbs, and proteins.

Then I remembered of hearing an anecdote that Michael Phelps drinks Carnation Instant Breakfast between races. For Michael Jordan, “It’s gotta’ be the shoes!” For this Michael, maybe, “It’s gotta be the milk!”

In 2006, the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism published a study conducted at Indiana University that found:

Chocolate milk contains an optimal carbohydrate to protein ratio, which is critical for helping refuel tired muscles after strenuous exercise and can enable athletes to exercise at a high intensity during subsequent workouts. It is a strong alternative to other commercial sports drinks in helping athletes recover from strenuous, energy-depleting exercise. (Source.)

How effective? Co-author Joel Stager says, “Chocolate milk was nearly twice as effective than the synthetic products [such as those taste-tested by the NYT] as a recovery product.” (Source.)

“The researchers found that cyclists who drank chocolate milk during the rest period were able to bike nearly twice as long before reaching exhaustion than those who consumed the carbohydrate replacement drink.” (Source.)

Bonus: “And the athletes liked the taste a lot better.”

Double bonus: Chocolate milk is relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to the $3-4 cost of a single-serving of Muscle Milk.

What is so great about chocolate milk? And what about that sugar? That can’t be good for you, can it? Well…

Chocolate milk has the ideal ratio of carbohydrates to proteins — 3 or 4 grams of carbs to 1 gram of protein — for optimal post-exercise recovery. Regular milk does not have this same ratio.

It’s not just the ratio of carbohydrates to proteins that makes a difference. There seems to be something special about milk itself that cannot be replicated in the lab. “Endurox, which has the same carb-to-protein ratio as chocolate milk, fared poorly” in the study.

What gives? One researcher supposes that “It may have to do with the different composition of the sugars in the milk. The sugars in the milk may be better absorbed in the gut than those in the Endurox.” (Source.)

Whatever the reason, Mother Nature and Hershey’s know what’s best. Pass me some milk and chocolate syrup!

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood

Further reading: Swallow This by Gretchen Reynolds discusses the trends and science of post-workout recovery nutrition.

In Chip Brown’s wonderful portrait about Tiger Woods, It’s Good to Be Immortal, the New York Times journalist makes reference to a story in which Michael Jordan, a good friend of Woods, said he (Jordan) was “driven to win because somebody might be watching for the first time.” 

What motivates Tiger?, Brown wanted to know. Woods said, “I don’t see how you can live with yourself not trying and not giving your best. I don’t see how you can go home and say, ‘I didn’t give it my best.’ People do that. I don’t know how they do that. That to me is unacceptable.”

If pride in a job well-done is not enough to help you achieve peak physical performance, Men’s Health magazine, home to “tons of useful stuff,” offers 20 Ways to Stick to Your Workout. Some of the tips are Duh!, such as “Don’t do what you hate.”

Some, no matter how “motivating,” feed off of fear and insecurity, including “Ask your wife/partner make a list of your most displeasing physical characteristic… Make the most-hated body part your workout focus for 4 weeks, then repeat the quiz for more motivation.”

A couple are really useful, even if an echo of what you’ve read on various message boards, including competing/racing (not just training) and registering for an event that is a few states away. Paying — now! — for the registration fees, hotel rooms, airplane tickets, and car rental will certainly be an incentive to train. (Sometimes the best motivation affects the pocketbook.)

But my favorite tip, included maybe half in jest but certainly a unique and effective technique, is number 20 on the list: Blackmail yourself.

Take a picture of yourself shirtless, holding a sign that shows your e-mail address. Then e-mail it to a trusted but sadistic friend, with the following instructions: “If I don’t send you a new picture that shows serious improvement in 12 weeks, post this photo at hotornot.com and send the link to the addresses listed below….” (Include as many e-mail addresses — especially of female acquaintances — as possible.) “It’s nasty, but extremely effective,” says [fitness trainer] Alwyn Cosgrove.

Hey, whatever works.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

A couple of really great articles from the archives of the New York Times‘ sports magazine Play…

“That which does not kill me makes me stronger” by Daniel Coyle is, at first glance, a profile of Jure Robic, an ultra-endurance athlete from Slovenia. Robic’s athletic accomplishments are incredible — he is a two-time winner of the Race Across America (RAAM) and the world record holder in the 24 hour time trial. But the article is most interesting and gripping as a rich exploration of the relationship between pain and emotion, providing insight into the (disturbed) mind of a champion athlete.

“Thank God, this will only get worse” is Stuart Stevens’ first-person narrative of how he discovered and fell in love with endurance sports, and provides an opportunity for him to ruminate about some of the triumphs and tragedies that he has experienced as an endurance athlete.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

Opening in select cities this weekend and expanding to more cities throughout the month, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* looks to be a must-watch documentary that explores America’s (sometimes tragic) sporting ethos of winning… at all costs. The movie’s summary:

In America, we define ourselves in the superlative: we are the biggest, strongest, fastest country in the world. We reward speed, size and above all else: winning - at sport, at business and at war. Metaphorically we are a nation on steroids. Is it any wonder that so many of our heroes are on performance enhancing drugs?

From the producers of Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 comes a new film that unflinchingly explores our win-at-all-cost culture through the lens of a personal journey. Blending comedy and pathos, BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER* is a collision of pop culture, animated sequences and first-person narrative, with a diverse cast including US Congressmen, professional athletes, medical experts and everyday gym rats.

At its heart, this is the story of director Christopher Bell and his two brothers, who grew up idolizing muscular giants like Hulk Hogan, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and who went on to become members of the steroid-subculture in an effort to realize their American dream. When you discover that your heroes have all broken the rules, do you follow the rules, or do you follow your heroes?

Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (BSF*) promises to elevate the level of discussion about steroids and has a 100% Fresh rating on rottentomatoes.com. Some select quotes from the critics:

“Easily one of the best documentaries of the year.”

“Bell’s film is not only captivating and entertaining, it takes an American subculture and turns our general understanding of it on its head.”

“…manages to be two films at once: One is an informative portrait of a power-hungry society; the other is an intensely gripping narrative of personal growth.”

“Bell’s debut feature addresses its subject with both humor and intelligence, approaching the issue of performance enhancement from every conceivable angle.” [Source.]

An excerpt from Stephen Holden’s review in the NYT:

How do you reconcile the imperative drilled into children by parents, teachers and the news media that winning is everything with the increasingly quaint moral injunctions to play fair, exercise good sportsmanship and do the right thing? If your childhood idols are preening supermen like Hulk Hogan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who preached clean living but revealed their own reliance on steroids, which path are you likely to follow?

The movie ponders the question of what constitutes cheating when you look objectively at the role of medicine in competitive sport. Is it cheating for a bicycle racer to pump more oxygen into his system by sleeping in a high-altitude chamber? Has Tiger Woods’s Lasik eye surgery given him an unfair competitive advantage? The lines between cheating and fair play, the movie suggests, are hazy to the point of being arbitrary. Pharmaceutical enhancement extends even to the sedate world of classical music, in which musicians susceptible to stage fright consume beta blockers to keep them calm.

American culture’s embrace of steroids, or at least benign neglect about responding to the proliferation of cheating and use of performance enhancing drugs in sport, is a curious phenomenon. It was not all that long ago when we looked to the doped-up Soviet athletes in the Olympics from the 1950s to early ’80s with indignation and smug pride. They were products of science, freaks, machines. Our athletes were natural. Real. Steroids were un-American, as Senator Joseph Biden is heard to say in BSF*.

Or, asks Stephen Holden, “are [steroids] as American as apple pie?” Is it cheating if everybody does it?

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood 

A story out of the United Kingdom provides an interesting complement to my most recent post about Nintendo’s Wii Fit…

A pilot study was conducted at a primary school in Scotland to investigate the potential value of utilizing video games in the classroom — video games that are specifically designed to improve memory, spatial reasoning, and other abstract brain functioning skills.

In the study, students were given a Nintendo DS, which is a handheld video game console, and played Dr. Kawashima’s More Brain Training video game at the beginning of every school day, for 20 minutes a day, for 10 consecutive weeks.

At the end of the trial period, the average math scores of students that played with the brain training video games increased by 10 percent (compared to their scores from a pre-intervention assessment). The time it took these students to complete the tests decreased from 17 minutes to 13 minutes.

Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) is the lead organization for curriculum development in the country; Derek Robertson is the development officer of games-based learning for LTS. In the Telegraph article, “Pupils to start day with Nintendo Brain Training,” Robertson said the initial pilot project of Nintendo’s brain training video games produced “fascinating results.”

Not only was there a marked significant improvement in mental maths, but there was also an improvement in concentration levels, behavior, and self-regulation in the learning process.

LTS is so intrigued by the potential of brain training video games that it is expanding its study to include 32 schools — at 16 schools, students will start their day by playing brain training video games; 16 other schools will serve as a control group.

If the results from this larger study are promising, maybe playing video games will become mandatory homework for students.

Play, think…
J.R. Atwood