New Gear for a Minimalist (Cheap Ass)

ROUND 1- How I didn't throw up in the mall

That's not a block of blue cheese, but a "pull boy" for helping with swimming technique and building upper body strength. Practice doesn't make perfect, but perfectly-executed practice will make my swim stroke much more efficient. Right now, I drag my legs. That's okay, since kicking of the legs sucks up over 50% of a swimmer's energy. BUT, even though the human body is mostly water, my legs are mostly Sasquatch hair and rock-hard muscle-- very sinkable. By practicing keeping my hips up near the surface of the water, it makes me feel like I'm swimming downhill--it feels very easy. Very much more better and FASTER.

Unfortunately, after my first day using my pull boy, I accidentally misplaced it at the pool locker room. It was a lesson in detachment, I guess. Honestly, sometimes, I forget I'm taking a shower. (This week, for example, I even went to work, forgetting to brush my teeth. I haven't done that since...EVER. Luckily, as long as I'm eating raw, I don't build up nasty smelling tongue and teeth, and I can pretty much just rinse my mouth out with water). So, anyhoos, I had to have a few hard days in the pool, without the pull boy, risking reinforcing an inefficient stroke. 

ROUND 2- back to the mall--yuck!
I was feeling particularly worthy of a man-pamper this Friday coming home from work. So, I ventured back into the mall and bought some new equipment for training. Of course, I bought another pull boy. I also bought some webbed hand-fins, despite my swimmer friend, Clare's sage advice. And, as you can see below, I also went outside of the box and I got some new Saucony running shoes. They technically qualify as minimalist shoes, although they feel like a step backwards, in the clunky direction, compared to my Zoots. The fact is, I'm really enjoying running on the trails around the neighborhood and I've run my Zoots' tread paper thin and I need something a bit more insulated from the ground's coldness. Compared to how much I'm enjoying the trails, the pavement might as well be boring old treadmill. I will reserve my Zoot's for treadmill and pavement.

Here's the new training gear. Bananas are sleeping in my bedroom too, trying to get warmer and ripen by jumping inside my new trail running shoes and inside my neoprene hand-fins. You'll notice a bottle of Hippie Heinbaugh's Hardcore Holiday Homemade Manly Danly Handy Lotion. These guys are my favorite new micro-sponsor. I'm going through lotion like crazy since the chlorinated pool really dries out my skin.

Gear for gear's sake is over-rated as far as exercise and fitness, but when it comes to competition, it's essential to put all the tools to good use, in service of the goal. The only remaining gear stuff I have to take care of is to get my bike tuned up before I ramp up the outdoor riding mileage.

Here's an absolutely beautiful vid of what you might call an all-natural athlete. No gym membership. No gear, (unless you count swim trunks). But all of these exercises could just as easily be done in the buff. 

And speaking of in the buff, here's another great group of minimalist athletes, that we all could learn something from.

The Body is a Wonderland and So Much for the Winter NOT Kicking My Ass and Other Nefarious Misadventures

I feel compelled to share the both the ups and downs of this raw food experience. Certainly the ups far outnumber the downs so far. Every day feels like a muddafriggin vacation inside my body. For those fortunate enough to be able to travel to St. Barts and trip on acid with Hansel and the spider monkeys, I feel a solidarity with you. I just hope that while you're there, you have enough vitality to do more than fart in the sand and meditate about your sun tan. Because lately, me feeling like The World Champion is the rule, while feeling sick, low, sad, slow, or funky is a very rare exception.

The blog-father counting his IQ or getting ready to eat the photographer?

Nevertheless, two weeks ago I spent four days on death's door, totally beat down by the flu. OUCH! it hurt. I squeezed in one epic 3 hr swim-bike-run on Monday, but then, 'till Friday, it felt like my vertebrae got run over by a truck. The whole time I was thinking, Is this low fat raw vegan (LFRV) diet totally BS? Or rather, is it my lackadaisical version of raw that is the true BS?

Despite the New Year's resolution, I have actually not been 100% LFRV-- more like 90%. For the most part, though, a typical training day includes 6 grapefruit, 20 bananas, 1/2 lb of dates, 1/2 lb of leafy greens, 1/2 avocado, 1/2 lb of berries, 10 stalks of celery. It's typically 3200-3700 calories. And so far, it hasn't been enough-- I'm losing weight. So, I'm very much open to the possibility that I'm doing this wrong.

I have a few occasional calorie-dense cooked-food holdouts, like rice/bean veggie bowls at Chipotle, or steamed veggies and rice, or hummus with romaine "dippers", especially when my fruit isn't ripe-- whatever it takes to get in calories at the end of a long day. But I'm kind of in limbo right now, thinking that I am neither fully committing to the raw nor getting enough calories from my naughty cooked-meals. Or it may be something different altogether. I'm getting at least 8 hours of sleep, but could it be that I'm missing genuine rest? Or is my body starving for sunshine and fresh air?

What are the chances that last week's sickness was actually my body detoxing from 29 years of bad karma?

Was last week's "flu" the karmic revenge of a deep fried MickyD's hash-brown-soaked-in-tomato-flavored-high-fructose-corn-syrup, sticking its middle finger at me?

I had romantic notions that there would be no detox process for me and a) only radical healing and b) dramatic performance improvements. For whatever reason, sickness happened. After four days of muscle aches, head aches, congestion, zero appetite, and zero medication, my body finally rebounded after a 16 hour nap that seemed to sweat it all out.

What may have been the scariest part of the sickness was that the physical pains were feeding into emotional pains and professional chaos was undermining both, and then this strange shit-storm was distorting my entire decision-making process. I almost made some very bad professional decisions. It's funny how only about one year ago, a family of rotten feelings were almost a daily occurrence. So, I feel like the last year has been a huge detox. But to say I'm done detoxing is like saying I love the big hairy horseshit of the technocratic world... which I don't.
 
Now that I'm back in the pink, my workouts have resumed much of last year's prior vigor. Missing those workouts last week was a major inconvenience and all-around bummer. But I just have to trust that my body had its own important priorities to take care of. And my body's priorities for healing are not always in line with my priorities. For instance, amidst last week's physical and existential aches and pains, I also felt like I was re-experiencing some of my spine and shoulder pains from my bike crash of 2006. My sleep was frequently interrupted by spasms in my shoulder and flashes of sharp pain in the area of my spine that took the brunt of my crash. Perhaps my body just had extra healing to do now that it finally has enough nutrients and cooperation from me to re-build.

Still, I didn't have much of an appetite at all for those four days. And like I said, I lost a lot of weight. I don't usually weigh myself, but since August, I think I lost about 15 libbies-- so, down to 135 lbs. For those who have expressed concern, I'm with you...to an extent...or maybe not...

Weight loss is certainly not my goal, and actually runs contrary to all of my vanity. Rest assured, I was actually bracing for a period of weight fluctuations during this transition time to raw. It's not a complete surprise. Most long-term raw foodies speak of the body's initial shedding of gunk and also clumsiness at learning how to get enough calories from high volumes of fruits and veggies. Hopefully, after last week's trip to purgatory, I will very soon be honing-in on a stable body weight that is appropriate for me. For the last two weeks, I've been more mindful of weighing myself regularly and pounding down larger smoothies and have rebounded back up to 145 lbs. 

This awkward phase also has me questioning the whole concept of "appropriate" weight. I wonder if our culture doesn't have a seriously warped sense of what optimum wellness looks like and feels like.

Are these folks an okay image of wellness? I'd like to think so, even though they're kind of skinny. But do we have any real life examples? 

 

Andreas Raelert is a skinny BADASS who will win the Ironman world championships at Kona 2011.

Every time I run/watch a marathon, I'm blown away by how you can just never judge performance by looks. Performance and wellness seems to come in all shapes and sizes. I've seen too many 4 foot tall 65 year old Korean ladies blow by me in the final 5 miles to trust an outward appearance as the be-all and end-all of health.

Jack LaLaane is my brother-from-another-mother.

Exercise does the body good. Jack says "exercise is king and diet is queen". But I wonder if it isn't the other way around. That's definitely something I want to delve into deeply and explore first hand. I certainly haven't met but a small minority of people, let alone athletes, who I consider an example (or even proponent of) eating the following:

a) a diet compatible with the last 10 million year of primate digestive track evolution,
b) a diet with deep moral compassion for ourselves and our fellow sentient beings,
c) a diet that is energizing on its own, (without supplementation from stimulants like caffeine),
d) a diet that makes one feel good/happy about themselves,
e) a diet that is sustainable economically/environmentally,
f) a diet that nurtures a deeper connection with nature,
g) a diet that helps the body cleanse and repair itself,
h) a diet that is delicious, fun, and simple,
i) a diet that can fuel super-powered athletic performance and creativity.

I say I've met "a small minority", but actually I don't think I've ever met anyone, in person. Yet, that's what I'm going for.

I Got Worms

"I got a big package for you." $40 worth of redworms arrive Friday and almost freeze their worm penises off sitting on my front stoop.

"Hurry up! Get their home ready." We don't have newspaper, so we just cut off the colored ink portions of old grocery bags and wet down the worm bedding.

Cutting hardware cloth and (finger cuticles accidentally) to create a faraday cage so there is no way cell phone signals will penetrate the worms' home.

Thunderdome meets Martha Stewart. A worthy worm home that allows castings and "worm tea" to fall to the bottom of the rubbermaid container.

Free Willy!

Dinner time. Worms eat half their weight daily. That's something we have in common.

Get busy making compost and making worm babies, please! I'll supply the kitchen scraps and Barry White music.

Ventilation holes for maximum worm air quality. Worm bins don't stink, but they need fresh air. I suspect I will have to make modifications once fruit flies come back in season.

We'll see how fast those little buggers work. I can't wait to harvest the soil and use it in my planters.

Pre-Season Stride Analysis for Maximum Efficiency and Injury Prevention

Could a sub-2 hour American marathon record really be possible? This youtube video is pretty convincing that there are some surmountable barriers that could lead to super-duper-improved marathon finish times, even among the most elite American runners. If there is room for them to improve, then certainly there is room for me. As a matter of fact, only 10% of Ironman participants finish the marathon portion in under 4 hours . This is a MONSTROUS opportunity where I can improve my time because I'm actually a damn fast white man... on a soccer field, anyway.

Not Michael Jordan.

I've decided to take an analytical look at my stride to see if I can access some of these speed/efficiency gains, BUT I want to balance these adjustments with the success of my newly-adopted injury-prevention running form. The video had me wondering, "does speed necessarily come at the expense of a sustainably safe form?" After analyzing my form, I am hopeful that, yes, they can coexist.

RUNNING INJURY HISTORY
After the 2009 Ironman, I would suffer sharp knee pain any time my runs exceeded 10 miles or so. My brother-in-law is a physical therapist and discovered that I had wimpy hip stability and weak gluteus medius. I also read Born to Run and Chi Running and became convinced of a more natural way to run than my body has adapted to over years spent playing soccer and running in whatever running shoes were on sale/in style when I needed them. Thus, my recovery strategy became 4-fold:
1) butt/hip/IT strength exercises
2) Pilates 2-3x/week
3) minimalist running shoe that mimics barefoot running
4) technique overhaul

MY CURRENT TECHNIQUE
What I took from Born To Run and Chi Running as far as practical application to my stride were the following:
1) quick, light steps
2) land on mid-foot
3) excellent posture, leaning forward at the ankles (not the waste) to go faster (rather than spinning legs faster)
4) upper body should remain quiet, starting at T12 vertebra and up.
5) speed? I simply haven't been tested yet. (I ran the Flying Pig Marathon in excruciating knee pain last spring, and I just didn't get the preparation I needed while we spent our evenings and weekends planning and constructing Studio S.)

ANALYSIS SUMMARY
If you watched the "2 hr marathon" youtube video, then you saw the breakdown of some of the important body metrics. Here are mine:
1) Bounce Height- 2.2"-2.9"
2) Stride Angle/Stride Length- 64 degrees
3) Over-stride Angle- 0-1 degrees
4) Toe Lift Angle - 0 degrees
5) Cross-over Angle- 6 degrees

I set the treadmill to 12 mph, which is the speed the top Americans run when they compete, so, I felt this a fair way to compare my metrics to their metrics. (I realize that at lower speeds, my metrics might be way different. Also, this whole exercise may be as irrelevant as measuring my butterfly stroke. This type of 12mph running just doesn't happen after cycling 112 miles. But, if nothing else, it was kind of fun using a protractor for the first time since 8th grade.)

Maximum stride angle - 64 degrees. Note the height of my nose.

At minimum, nose height is 2.2-2.8 inches lower than at max height.

Right foot crossover angle ~ 6 degrees.

Left foot crossover angle ~ 6 degrees

At first glance, it almost appears that I am way over-striding, but my foot has a long way to go before landing on the treadmill.

Here's a snapshot of the first frame of my video where I can tell that my foot touches the treadmill. I land my foot almost completely parallel with the ground and with my ankle directly beneath the knee. That would be an over-stride angle of 0-2 degrees and a toe lift angle of 0 degrees. (I really need a better image to draw reliable conclusions. )

ANALYSIS (LENGTHIER)
BOUNCE HEIGHT-- the wasteful vertical height traveled each stride. Multiplied by ~1000 strides per mile x 26+ miles = extra miles traveled upward, requiring more energy, and downward falling of several miles' worth of impact (yuck). If you watched the video, then you realize how big of a deal this for someone like Ryan Hall. His bounce height is supposedly 4", adding up to over 3 miles of extra climb and 3 miles downward impact. My bounce height is about 2.2"-2.9". The Kenyans? More like 1"-1.5"


STRIDE ANGLE- the angle formed between the two legs as the leading knee comes up. The greater the stride angle, the greater the stride length, and the fewer the steps taken over the course of the race. One degree of increase in stride angle turns into ~2% increase in stride length. My stride angle is about 64 degrees. I am going to work to increase this.


OVERSTRIDE ANGLE- Most runners compensate for a small stride angle by reaching their planting heal ahead of their knee. Heal bone stores no elastic energy compared to an achilles heal. So, it's like throwing on the breaks. Mine is tough to measure due to the image quality, but appears close to 0 degrees, maybe slightly over-striding by a degree or two.



TOE LIFT ANGLE- Occurs when shins are flexing the toes upward when impact occurs. Very risky for stress fractures and is exhausting! This is the metric that I have had no problem working on since using the minimalist shoes and doing more and more barefoot running. I am pretty sure I land on the imaginary line that crosses my foot at the bony knob on the outside (5th metatarsel) rather than the heel. However, after cycling 112 miles, the calves are kinda sore, so running "on the toes" hurts. This may be more of a cycling fitness issue than a running technique problem.


CROSSOVER ANGLE- by twisting our shoulders and trying to over-stride we tend to allow our forward leg to cross our bodies' mid-line-- the sagittal plane. The Kenyans plant their right foot on the right side of the sagittal plane and their left foot on the left side. My disappointing crossover angle of ~6 degrees is possibly contributing to my lingering knee/IT pain. It may also be due to an improper application of the Chi Running T12 pivot point or it might be residual baggage from years of running however the heck I felt like it. Then again...how natural is it to run on pavement? And how natural is it to NOT run however the heck we feel like it?

pARTy Walls & Artworks in OTR: More Than Wall. More Than Party. More Than Art.

They used to call Cincinnati's Over The Rhine (OTR) neighborhood "the Paris of the West". It was once a thriving community of about 50,000 people and hundreds of clubs, bars, beer gardens, and theaters on the north side of the Erie Canal (Central Parkway). Now there are only about 5,000 residents. Many of the homes have fallen into disrepair. About 500 buildings are vacant. But many are but a hop, skip, and a jump away from becoming high-performance energy-ass-kickers in a great neighborhood. I've been lucky to be a part of some very cool energy renovation projects in historic Over The Rhine. OTR is home to the nation's highest concentration of urban homes on the national historic registry and is the funkiest place in Cincinnati! But this blog is about my petition to the universe to help me join some of my energy work with some of the city's public art bandwagon. 

My OTR wish for 2011 has three parts: 

1) stop tearing down non-obsolete buildings in OTR;

2) where buildings have already been torn down, exposing old party walls, install exterior insulation/plaster systems;

3) then request Artworks come and do what they do better than anyone-- beautify--like they did at Jackson St.(see pic below)

4) then stand back and watch, not only the beautification of the neighborhood, but MAJOR ENERGY SAVINGS 

BEFORE

AFTER

It's not immediately obvious why this Artworks project is associated with any sort of energy savings. It is because this wall was never meant to stand open to the elements. This building wasn't originally designed with an adjacent parking lot, but another building that is no longer there! Now, these old party walls are leaking energy like sieves. Since OTR's heyday, about half of the buildings have been torn down. That leaves a LOT of accidentally exposed party walls with super-soft brick, failing mortar, and high utility bills. 

Energy is lost not just by conductive heat transfer (molecular vibrations) through the dense brick (poor insulator), but more importantly, energy loss occurs via air ex/infiltration through the porous brick and mortar. We need to be making a big friggin' deal out of this!-- for there is a multiplicity of benefits that come from one very elegant (and artsy) solution. 

TRUE STORY

In one of my projects in OTR, a 16-unit condominium/retail LEED renovation, the owners wanted to leave some of the brick walls exposed, to maintain the historic "urban/loft/chic" character. They also wanted to spray foam all of the walls before framing and drywalling for maximum energy savings. In order to get the best of both worlds (historic preservation and energy performance), we ran a little experiment to see what the energy penalty would be from leaving a single brick wall exposed (former party wall). 

Exposed brick wall in a condo in historic Over The Rhine suffers tremendous air leakage as was shown by my experiment-- taping plastic against the wall and sucking the air out of the home with a huge fan and watching the plastic sheet fill up like a balloon. 

THE TEST RESULTS
We conducted a blower door test and infrared inspection after foam spraying and drywall three out of four walls, but leaving one brick wall as is. The results were shocking. The unit suffered 12 ACH@50. That's 12 air changes every hour on a windy day (~22 mph). As a reference, most new homes that don't get spray foam insulation and air sealing suffer only about 5 ACH@50. The funny thing was, we couldn't find any holes because we just weren't looking for the problem to be in the brick EVERYWHERE. But then we taped sheets of plastic all over the wall and de-pressurized the unit again, and the plastic came balloonin-ing and was even torn right off the wall. Sure enough, if I stood next to the brick wall while the blower door was running (or on a windy day), it would feel like I was in a wind tunnel.

THE SOLUTION
The problem could easily be remedied by painting the brick. But because the exposed brick "look" was so important to the owners, several units were painted with a transparent sealant. The bricks and mortar were so porous, they just drank that sealant right up. It took four coats and several dozen tubes of transparent caulk! This method finally reduced the whole unit air leakage to just under 7ACH@50 (~42% improvement) in all 16 units. This is one solution. An equally effective solution would be to seal the brick from the outside...

ARTWORKS TO THE RESCUE
I have the good pleasure of getting to ride at Spinning class with the director of Artworks-- the very talented and humorous Tamara. She tells me that she gets many requests from building owners, wanting their very own Artworks mural. It sometimes comes as a disappointment to them, that the owners would have to bring the surface of their old party walls to a minimum standard of preparedness--sealed with a skim coat of cement, and it would cost the building owners some money. They opt not to beautify, oblivious to the energy savings in store.

It would be very good news to these same frugal building owners that the prep work itself, to make their walls even mural-worthy, would deliver more than enough energy savings to pay for their beautification project. And while my 16-unit condo project realized a great benefit by merely installing an air barrier to stop the leakage, the BEST case scenario would be to ALSO install an exterior thermal barrier (rigid insulation) to reduce the conductive heat transfer across the party wall. By installing the insulation on the exterior surface of the wall, the brick becomes integrated into the inside of the building, adding a huge thermal mass. Thermal mass is thermal inertia-- something that is hard to change the temperature of. Brick is so heavy and has a high heat capacitance, so it is hard to heat it up and it is hard to cool it down. But once it reaches room temperature, it stays at room temperature and keeps occupants quite comfortable.

To request a mural contact Artworks HERE

Mama Nature's Got a "Nice Package"

I've decided to make 2011 my "year of soil" and really learn how to build my garden's organic matter. I don't have a lot of sun on my yard, but by God, I have a butt-load of fruit scraps. Between Christmas and New Year's, my wife and I wolfed-down all this fruit and much more that isn't shown (grapefruits, persimmons, cucs, toms, zuchs).

Fruit stash for the Christmas/New Year's week.

The key to this spring's soil health will be our food scraps, which, since going raw, are kind of out of control. We fill up these two bowls 2-3 times per week.

Kitchen scraps after two days for me and Sus.

30%-40% of my whole bananas' weight is in the skins. That means that at $.50/lb, I'm spending about $.15 per pound on what many regard as "packaging". Yes, but...it's nature's package and Mama Nature  has a nice package. (It's not food to me, but it's good for other members of the food chain who, in turn,  can help me grow my own food-- how amazing is that!)

When these two bowls fill up, I take them out to the back yard. I currently have two compost piles...1) the pile of random $#!x behind the garage that has been accumulating for 3 years and looks like the prank of an urban beaver, and 2) the new and slightly improved compost.

Compost #1 behind the garage-- the work of a trickster urban beaver? Where's the reset button?

Ever since the city stopped collecting curb-side "yard waste", we've had to get creative with what to do with our hundreds of pounds of oak leaves that fall all winter long. Now, with the addition of our kitchen scraps, I thought we'd have the perfect source of browns (leaves) and greens (kitchen scraps). The new compost is supposed to be a strategically ratio-ed-- 3 parts brown matter : 1 part green matter, well-watered, micro-organism-rich pile of hot fertile humus. But, it's been struggling.

New and improved compost still decomposing slower than dirt.

One explanation for the slow decomposition is that Cincinnati's December has been consistently well-below freezing and the mirco-organisms don't like the cold or just aren't that numerous to begin with in our yard's clay-like soil where I chose to hide this compost.

So, I've got a two-pronged solution. From a local company, Garden's Alive, I ordered 1) compost starter bacteria (~$10) and 2) a batch of vermiculture worms (~$40-- I once had an energy audit client offer to pay me in worms. I had no idea they were so valuable! I should have agreed.) I'm hoping that I can run two simultaneous experiments to compare the soil quality of the indoor worms' castings against the outdoor compost pile (no worms). It'll be a battle royale-- worms vs. micro-organisms! My money is on the worms.

Once I've got some rich humus created, I will use that for planting some pots in my equator-facing windows and planting this spring's garden, too. I don't have a lot of sun (~200 SF of mostly-driveway/deck), but I am hopeful that I can find enough friendly neighbors that will let me use their yards. Who knows, maybe I can recruit them as partners/sponsors in my venture and we can "compound-it-up" together.

Some folks that I've been talking to for compost help have such good organic matter in their composts that they claimed they would take their humus with them if they moved to a new house. And why wouldn't they? Most people's yards are essentially urban deserts of mono-cultured grass, better suited to Great Britain circa 1700, where it can be watered by rain, "mowed" by hungry sheep, and frolicked-on by stiff-collared croquet bad-asses. While I may be a croquet bad-ass, I don't yet have any interest in sheep or mowing my yard. So, really, what's the point of keeping my grass?