Middle Toe is Asking Me to Free Willy

My physical therapist, Eric, made me take two weeks off from running, suggested I buy new running shoes, and put me on a multi-vitamin for dudes. Yuck to the first, cha-ching to the second, and "Lordy, my pee is neon," to the third.

So, at the stroke of the fortnight, I hit the tarmac pretty hard last week, logging 35 miles in my brand new shoes. It was bliss to finally get off the stair-climber and move through actual space with not one smidgen of pain in my toe. Then, today happened.

 

I was out for one of my favorite neighborhood loops. About four miles in and in a matter of three seconds, my middle toe got reallly hot and then the next instant it was pulsating with lightning bolts of black magic torture. I dropped to the ground, took off my shoe and sock and started the ol' deep tissue foot massage. Sometimes this works like a charm, but when I got back up to continue on my merry way, the toe hissed back, "No deal!"

For some bizarre reason, when I'm walking in my shoes, my toe continues to twinge. But when I walk or run barefoot or in my Vibrams, there is no issue whatsoever. So, there I was, about 4 miles from home, having to either walk in the cold with an annoying toe-twinge, but well dressed in my cool new shoes, or... run lopsided on the hard, damp, muddy, pavement with only one shoe like some kind of Quasimodo. It goes without saying, which one I chose. And the weird thing is, I was totally stoked that it would be great practice for my overly-hyped first annual barefoot snow run that still hasn't happened due to this winter's snow drought. 

My sock was a life-saving technology today.

My sock is dead. But this man will live to tell another tale.


It's a mother-fracker on my achilles doing any distance in the Vibrams. I'll really have to work my way up to it gradually since there are only 16 weeks until the year's first big race-- Triple T. I think I'll have to use the injury as an opportunity to adopt a more stair-based training regimen while I slowly transition to becoming a barefoot runner.

Also, on the topic of unnecessary exposure to cold, I have a cool opportunity to do a polar plunge for Special Olympics next weekend. My goal is to raise another $999,999,975 by next Saturday, February 4. Any it$y bit$y amount helps, if that's your thang. Or if you need to cool off from this winter heat, come on out!! Click the link to donate and get into heaven free.

Bowling Alone

Have you ever read an absolutely amazing story by Cliff Notes, then felt inspired to read the full length 600 page version only to find the story's potency diluted by all the boring details and your short attention span? We all have. I just read an amazing, but not very readable book, called Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, by Harvard Professor of Public Policy Robert D. Putnam. The story is powerful but the book was painful. And for the reason above, I don't recommend it-- just finish reading this blog post. So let me try to curdle out the gist, warp the context, and then make it apply whatever I felt like applying to my life these days.

Bowling is the number one sport in which Americans participate. But people don't join bowling leagues like they used to. Instead, they bowl alone. And they save cash by not buying beer and pizza. They're in; they're out. And it is precisely the beer and pizza sales that keeps the bowling alley in business. So, bowling alleys are forced to close down and thus, fewer people will be joining bowling leagues...and believe it or not, societal team morale weakens.

Since the 1960's, participation in community life in America has been tanking! With a few exceptions, most community activities and organizations, formal and informal, follow a harrowing trend that looks like this:

It's hard to read the graphs but the point is they mostly trend downward when the book was written.

Putnam argues convincingly that the social ties established, from Euchre clubs and PTA meetings to bowling leagues and wine tastings, is essential to America's sense of reciprocity, trust, optimism, democracy, equality, and even physical health. The networks of relationships formed are both bonding and bridging-- essential to democracy's proverbial glue and WD-40.

I've tended to resonate with Putnam's chapters related to health and well-being. Consider the following excerpts:

"The single most common finding from a half century's research on the correlates of life satisfaction, not only in the United States but around the world, is that happiness is best predicted by the breath and depth of one's social connections."

"In study after study people themselves report that good relationships with family members, fiends, or romantic partners-- fare more than money or fame-- are prerequisites for their happiness."

"Dozens of painstaking studies from Alameda (California) to Tecumseh (Michigan) have established beyond resonable doubt that social connectedness is one of the most powerful determinants of our well-being. The more integraded we are with our community, the less likely we are to experience colds, heart attackes, strokes, cancer, depression, and premature death of all sorts."


"The positive contributions to health made by social integration and social support rival in strength the detrimental contributions of well-established biomedical risk factors like cigarette smoking, obesity, elevated blood pressure, and physical inactivity."


"People who are socially disconnected are between two and five times more likelly to die from all causes, compared with matched individuals who have close ties with family, friends, and community."


"By many objective measures, including life expectancy, Americans are healthier than ever before, but these self-reports indicate that we are feeling worse. These self-reports are in turn closely linked to social connectedness, in the sense that it is precisely less connected Americans who are feeling worse."


"Generally speaking, as one rises up the income hierarchy, life contentment increases. So money can buy happiness after all. But not as much as marriage...In round numbers, getting married is the 'happiness equivalent' of quadrupling your annual income... Four additional years of education-- attending college for example-- is the 'happiness equivalent' of roughly doubling your annual income...Regular club attendance, volunteering, entertaining, or church attendance is the happiness equivalent of getting a college degree or more than doubling your income. Civic connections rival marriage and affluence as predictors of life happiness."


"If one wanted to improve one's health, moving to a high-social capital state would do almost as much good as quitting smoking."

Some days, we wake up with tremendous drive to save the planet, raise a family, or close a deal. Other days we feel crippled, solitary, and weak. I know I can't save the planet. But Putnam has really helped convinced me that we can bowl our butts off as if we're saving a country and that's almost as important.

Now, bowling is not my sport, but I feel like I've bridged and bonded over the years with more people than previous years by taking up cycling and triathlon-- one sport whose participation levels are rapidly rising.

The most efficient form of transportation on planet Earth (and an awesome rush) is a cycling peleton, especially with big black dudes...except when it's lost.

Riding the mountains of Townsend, TN in the spring with the Major Taylors cycling club. Major Taylor was the first African-American world champion (cyclist). There are Major Taylor cycling clubs all across America. You don't have to be black, but white people don't look as good in jazzy colors.

Putnam tells a cool story that I'm just going to cut and paste right out of his book to conclude:
Before October 29, 1997, John Lambert and Andy Boschma knew each other only through their local bowling league at the Ypsi-Arbor Lanes in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Lambert, a sixty-four-year-old retired employee of the University of Michigan hospital, had been on a kidney transplant waiting list for three years when Boschma, a thirty-three-year-old accountant, learned casually of Lambert's need and unexpectedly approached him to offer to donate one of his own kidneys. "Andy saw something in me that others didn't", said Lambert. "When we were in the hospital Andy said to me, 'John, I really like you and have a lot respect for you. I wouldn't hesitate to do this all over again.' I got choked up." Boschma returned the feeling: "I obviously feel a kinship [with Lambert]. I cared about him before, but now I'm really rooting for him." This moving story speaks for itself, but the photograph that accompanied this report in the Ann Arbor News reveals that in addition to their differences in profession and generation, Boschma is white and Lambert is African-American. That they bowled together made all the difference. In small ways like this-- and in largerways, too-- we Amercians need to reconnect with one another. That is the simple argument of this book.

It's Go Time!

 Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. -Theodore Roosevelt

Two weeks ago, my body finally told me, It's go time!  The 2012 training season has begun, baby!

I was wondering and longing for when it would happen. For the past three months, I've struggled to wake up to my alarm, put on my running shoes or do anything with any gusto. I've tried to just roll with that, being compassionate and respectful to my body's needs. I still have some injuries I'm diagnosing and nursing, but at long last, it feels like someone threw gasoline on the tiny embers inside of me, and I just exploded with readiness.

From the outside, my rebound appears to have coincided with the new year, but I actually launched my 2012 season back in October by deliberately resting my butt off. You've never seen somebody working so hard to accomplish so little.

The downtime and darkness has especially lent itself to reflection over the past year and setting goals for the coming one. We also had our company retreat this week, so in a comprehensive work+play way, I'm excited to launch 2012 with new visions of an integrated life.

As a four person architecture firm we strategized about how to balance all of our off-the-wall-pie-in-the-sky projects with the day-to-day normalcy and even occasional downright tedium. One outcome of this exercise was to create a more tangible rallying point in the office-- a kind of shrine (aka bulletin board) to our collective psyche and all of our dream-projects.

Due to something called "time compression diseconomies", visits to the shrine, whether consciously or subconsciously, reinforce our intentions with collective focus. They build up mutual trust and support for each others' dreams through small-dose long-term exposure that could never be garnered through a single, intense, large-dose exposure. Think Chinese water drip torture versus electric chair.

In the same way, I've tried to make mini-shrines all over my house and within my subconsious for the many things I hope for from 2012. As Steve Pavlina says, "Some of the best goals will require you to shift your vibe in order to achieve them. It could be said that the vibrational shift is an even greater accomplishment than the external goal. For example, aligning your vibe with abundance can be a greater accomplishment than earning some specific sum of money. Once you’ve integrated the vibe of abundance, your whole life is transformed, not just your finances."

So in no particular order, here's my list of goals for 2012:

1) Visit a national park I've never been to

2) Learn Portuguese and Dvorak

3) Run a 50 mile trail race

4) Qualify for Boston

5) Bike to work 3x/wk

6) Eat a big ass salad with dinner daily

7) Do my vision exercises daily

8) Renew my passport... and use it

10) Build a living hedge

11) Inuslate my house

12) Go to a nudist resort (or become one once my house gets warm from insulation)

13) Build a food forest with my family

14) Learn one magic trick and teach a kid

15) Find a cool organization to volunteer with

16) Write a stand-up comedy routine

17) Donate blood/marrow

18) Read every book recommended to me personally

19) Take nieces and nephews on adventures to new places

20) Convert my anger and anxiety into opportunity and peace

21) Start working on my PhD

22) Learn how to identify the 110 Messier objects

23) Design a zero-energy home

24) Do the American Triple-T

Having the courage to be myself continues to be one of my main challenges in life. It's almost more difficult for me to have shared this list than it is to imagine accomplishing the items. But I feel like if I put these intentions out there, while I may drive some folks away, I am drawing out others who may be able to help me. If 2011 was my "year of soil", 2012 will be my year of "bridges and bonds".

Have a bodacious new year everyone!

Barefoot Snow Running

Before winter is over, I will run barefoot through the snow. I don't mean a run through the front yard to pick up the mail, but a fo' serious run of six or seven miles. I'm not really sure why. I think I just despise winter and need to walk all over it.

In preparation, I've gone on two outdoor runs in my new Vibrams. The first was a frigid night in the high 20's F. It was against my physical therapist's instructions. (Sorry Eric). I didn't feel like doing anything, let alone run in the cold. I was all laced up in my normal running shoes, hopping in place in the kitchen to get warmed up. Every time I planted my left forefoot, it was like lightning bolts through my middle toe. I said to myself, "Screw this. If it hurts playing it safe in my normal running shoes, then I'm going to see how it feels in the Vibrams." As soon as I put them on and started warming up in place, the lightning sensation was gone. Yabba dabba doo! Then I took off, into the night.

For the first two miles my toes were painfully cold. Then, mile two to three my toes had gone numb. There was no lighting bolt sensation like usual, but I wasn't having fun and I decided to end the run and head home. All of a sudden, by mile four, my toes felt fine and were actually warm. My feet felt really friggin happy, actually, like new muscles were getting tickled. I ended up doing six. (We're telling Eric, three).

The next day my feet were sore in strange new ways--on the tops and my achilles.

Tuesday of this week, I was feeling unmotivated again when I got home from work. So, I decided the best thing would be to get what I call "grounded as hell". I put on the Vibrams and took off into the darkness.

I only made it five miles this time before my feet and achilles tendons were really tender. I ran to the studio for some sadistic weights and Tabata to finish off the workout.

My calves have been sore for the last four days now, so today I did my 9-miler in my regular shoes. They were much gentler on the calves, but mid-run I collapsed to the ground with toe pain. I took off my shoe and sock and gave my toes and foot and big True Movement massage. From then on, they were happy again.

Hunkered Down for the Winter

Many years ago, I was a novice in a religious seminary that always seemed to be under construction. The bathrooms had 1950s aluminum windows that wouldn't shut all the way and bricks missing in the wall, open to the frigid New England air. Since I was the main breakfast cook, I had to wake up at 5am and take the first shower in the dark, so as not to wake up the other brothers and fathers. "Dark, cold, silent, early, wet, poverty, chastity, obedience"-- the worst words in the English language and,  coincidentally, concepts loosely associated with winter triathlon training.

Hanging out and meditating with the seminarians.

I last raced in September and now it's almost St. Nick's Day, but I still haven't done a whole lot to speak of blog-ably. It kind of feels like the last few minutes of sleep before the alarm clock goes off-- when your body is revving to wake up, but you can still squeeze in five extra minutes of pure do-nothing rapture. My body is still in off-season mode, but it's juuuust about ready to wake back up and start training again. I can read the signs and I'm excited to be turning the corner on the funk of lo-mo (low motivation).

In the meantime, I've been finishing up some good books and doing body/home repair projects. I thought I took care of the source of the water damage above the fireplace with my brother, Matt, this fall. We rebuilt the chimney, supposedly saving ~$5000. I've earmarked that magically materialized $5000 for a trip to Kona one day, but I'm not quite convinced the water issue is solved, so the house resembles a New England seminary. I just need a dry weekend to finish up more chimney work.

Without fixing the water problem, we can't insulate the walls, so it's pretty cold in the house. The dang bananas just sit there like big green popsicles and the stone-hard persimmons tease me to death. It makes me want to kick Old Man Winter right in his stones. Luckily, we treat our bedroom like a winter fallout shelter.  We pretty much get home late from work/workouts and hunker down in our warm little cave. The walls have poster paper on them and we're busy dream crafting as we do once per year, talking about bucket lists and goals and dreams for the future. So, it's also most wonderful time of the year.

You've heard of breakfast in bed. Well, now there's dinner in bed and compost in bed. Date pits anyone?

I've been using the winter downtime to stay on top of my vision exercises every night.

Unfortunately, in my quest to resurrect elementary school flag football glory over Thanksgiving weekend, I pulled my hamstring while sprinting back for a failed interception attempt. It's close to being healed, but superfluous injuries certainly weren't on my bucket list. And in other bodily misadventures, my physical therapist homeboy, Eric Oliver, finally evaluated my pestering toe problem. He's narrowed it down to nerve damage from last season. Supposedly it's a long and annoying route to recovery. It was all the excuse I needed to go ahead and pamper myself to my latest footwear purchase-- my Vibram naked shoes.

So far, I and black women LOVE them.

I'm not exactly allowed to wear the Vibrams on dates with my wife, but I continue to negotiate what constitutes a "date." Apparently, a trip to the gas station constituted a date the other day. I am allowed to wear them to work (between construction site visits) and around town. They are much cozier than being stuck in stiff dress shoes or steel toed boots. Since I keep my toes wiggly all day, they are prepared to wiggle even harder at night if I feel like going for a run. Otherwise, I am occasionally stopped dead in my tracks by throbbing pain of cartoon-toe-throb-proportions.

As an experiment, I ran two miles on the treadmill with the Vibrams, and quickly took them off to run another two in my favorite (supposedly "minimalist") shoes-- the Saucony Kinvaras. Night and day! The regular running shoes felt clumsy, like running on half-inflated balloons. There's just no way I can believe that long hours of training in one shoe or another won't effect my mechanics. So my goal is to build up my treadmill mileage in the Vibrams and do my pavement runs in the Kinvaras, pending Eric's approval. Hopefully, before the last snow of the winter I can run at least a couple of miles barefoot in the snow. It's not necessarily the ultimate rush, but it will put hair on my chest and it supposedly feels like running through fields of cotton balls. Or maybe piranhas. We shall see.

Better Vision part 2

For those of you reading this, it means you're one of the lucky ones-- not blind and not frozen dead from movember. And as a celebration, here's some eye candy:

Tom Sellick fractal-- self similarity

It's not that I support prostate cancer, but this is as far as my mustache is allowed to go.

But just because you can see doesn't mean you have good vision. You may have good eyesight, but vision is something beyond eyes. For the last year I've been working hard at improving both of mine-- eyesight and vision. Unfortunately this past month has been particularly rough on my eyes and vision. If you've ever experienced a winter in Midwest, then you know how my soul feels come winter and daylight savings' darkness-- motivational skills be lacking. It's dark. It's hard to see past the cold. Vision becomes myopic.

I had my ass served to me hard this week when I went in to see Dr. Powers, my optometrist. His office is inside the left testicle of Satan himself-- Walmart. I know, I know, I'm so ashamed. But at least I know him by name and he knows mine. My glasses have gotten all scratched up and mangled from visits to construction sites. So, I thought the time was right to get examined for new hardware.

My brilliant plan was to get the prescription from Walmart and then, just to piss-off "the man", order my frames online for like $10. (If you know a local fair trade free range organic lens grinder, I'd love their card). The bad news is that Dr. Powers told me my astygmatism has gotten worse. That means that my eyesballs are morphing from European futbols to American footballs. I said, "Doc! This can't be, I've been trying to be really good to my eyes."

I felt like I got the wind knocked out of me. You see, I was totally convinced by the book I read last year, that it was possible to cure my sight and improve my vision through a variety of physical, mental, attitudinal exercises and mega-nutrition. Honestly, I didn't really devote myself to my vision exercises, but I still didn't expect to be moving backwards. I was damn good about my nutrition (probably because it was the closest thing I could get to a delicious magic pill). 

I wasn't quite sure how much enbrightenment I could expect from a man of the ivory tower inside the big box testicle, but I decided to put it out there, "Hey Doc, yunno, I read this book a year ago about how to improve your eyesight naturally...do you think there's anything to that?" I really laid my soul out to bare...and if Dr. Powers would have answered differently, I probably would have renounced my entire belief in the power of the plasticity of the mind...or my mind anyway.

Luckily for the human race, Dr. Powers had this to say, "That's funny you ask. I get asked that question about two or three times a year. For most of my patience, if I told them their vision would get better if they did these five or six things, they'd go home and do nothing about it. I do believe it can be done. We all fall into bad habits that can make our eye sight worse. I have a colleague who was getting great results from it himself. It's actually a hundred year old method, called the [some name I can't remember]." 

The fact that this exchange happened in Walmart was enough to restore my faith in humanity. And let's not forget our faith in the effect of the placebo. Countless studies are showing that not only do placebos work, but the more powerful the placebo, the more effective the results. For instance, a syringe-administered placebo is more powerful than a pill placebo. And a higher dosage of placebo is more effective than a lesser dosage.

Not that eye exercises and vision meditations are purely placebo, but I have to wonder, does my head ache go away because I take an asprin or because I made a decision to take an asprin? Probably both.

So, as Lady Gaga would say, "Scheiße be mine."

Biking to Work

I've been meaning to start biking the eight miles to work everyday, but I've always got a good excuse not to. The past two weeks, I shot 3-for-10-- it's a start!

Now that construction and holiday traffic are everywhere, I can beat my average car commute time pretty easily. Door to door, it takes about 30 minutes there (downhill) and about 40 minutes up the hill home.

I've also met a bunch of friendly commuters (more women than men), and now I'm convinced that if you can transport frozen sperm on a bike, then you can transport anything and anyone. My problem is that I've always been able to transport frozen sperm-- it's the non-frozen kind that I need help with.

Sperm bike transports frozen sperm around Copenhagen. Is that a frozen yogurt store?

So I went into Element Cycles for a consultation with my buddy Brett. He's the kind of guy who thrives all winter long, riding in the snow. I knew he would have all kinds of handy advice for not ending up frostbitten. "Basically, it's as simple as keeping your face, hands and feet warm. Then you should be fine. And if you ride in your small chain-ring, you'll enjoy the scenery more and not end up all sweaty and stinky." I should have asked for a guarantee about that stinky part. But so far, he's been right.

I guess the inner-triathlete in me was disappointed that I didn't need to throw excessive money at hi-tech gizmos that offer marginal improvements. So, I convinced Brett to recommend a USB-rechargeable head lamp. It attaches and detaches easily and it has an 8 hour battery life. I use this on the front handlbars, while I have tons of $3.99 red flashing clip-on lights lying around the house from years of running group swag. I make a point to use multiple flashing lights on my rear so drivers can gauge their distance and approach speed better.

Urban 180 LED head lamp

What the sperm bike has that I don't is a fender. That was this week's harshest lesson. It was drizzling when I left home at 7am last Thursday. And by the time I made it to work, the tush of my khakis had been sprayed black by my back tire. The reverse-skunk look was a big hit with my office mates and clients-- embarrassing! Even more embarrassing-- fenders. I'm sorry, I'm just not ready to take that leap.

The other harsh lesson I learned is that cotton undies just don't dry.  If you like sitting on wet smelly sponges all day long, then cotton undies are the apparel for you. "Riding Comanche" is not the fix-all you've grown up thinking it is, either.

I decided to tackle this problem from a non-sporty angle-- seeking the consult of the hippiest person I could think of-- Dan Korman, owner of Park + Vine, the green general store near my office. Dan doesn't own a car nor spandex and always wears flannel, so you know he's legit. I thought for sure, he would be selling some kind of fair trade water proof hemp coated flannel knickers at least. Nope. Dan's simple advice, "I don't really wear anything special-- just utilitarian." Thanks for tearing down my excuses, Dan!

I'm still honing in on my ideal routine. But having a routine is probably THE most important factor in whether or not I ride to work. If my tooth brush starts on the right side of the sink rather than the left, my whole routine tailspins into defcon 6 crisis mode and I end up driving. I'm like Rainman, and I need my K-mart underwear, dammit! Whether I ride in regular undies or bike shorts under my pants I simply have to put on a fresh pair once I get to the office. I'm wondering why I'm so sweaty if the ride is downhill in the cold during my off-season. Balance is the king I'm still looking for, so if you ever find someone in your attic that looks like this, you'll know I've taken the commute to work too seriously.

Russ and Chris before a pre-dawn ride around Cincinnati, the morning of our first frost.

Russ and Chris' frosty view of Cincinnati from Devou Park. The fog is rolling into the city and Ohio River from the Licking River to the south.