Alcoholism

 I was inspired to write this post because of my friends. None of them have died because of an alcohol related problem, yet, but they are young.

The Mayo Clinic describes alcoholism as one who depends on alcohol and who loses control over his or her drinking. WebMD describes alcoholism as unhealthy or dangerous drinking habits. The old saying goes, "you're not an alcoholic until you start going to meetings" is a dangerous thing to say.

• Numerous friends of mine have had their stomachs pumped in an emergency room at a hospital. 
• Dozens of my friends have thrown up because of drinking alcohol. 
• One of my friends was unresponsive with a pulse around 30 one of the times he did not go to the hospital after drinking. 
• A slew of my friends have gotten into legal trouble because of drinking. At least one lost her driver's license for half a year.
• Other friends of mine have had sex with someone while they were blacked out drunk. 
• Rumor has it at least one of my friends conceived a baby while black out drunk. 

Where does it end?

WebMD suggests that three drinks for women and four drinks for men is the limit. Here is a suggestion, if you drink twice that much and think you are safe to drive or you feel fine, please think twice. A close relative of mine spend time social working in prisons and she says that apparently most people (at least in our neck of the woods in Wisconsin) are in prison for alcohol related problems.

I'm not saying don't drink alcohol. I'm not even saying don't get legally drunk. I'm saying don't drink and drive. Don't drink so fast that you black out. Don't drink so much that you could actually die. 

I count 15 cans and 9 bottles and at least one underage person, thank you Facebook

How to Acclimate: In General (Part 1 of 2)

I am beginning the fifth extended period (more than six weeks) at altitude (above 6000 feet) in my life and I realized that many of the challenges that once plagued me are no longer issues because I have experience to understand the acclimatization process. So here are a number of things you can do to ease the stress of going to a higher altitude.

1. Do aerobic exercise before you get to altitude. Any amount of aerobic exercise you can do will be beneficial but a month or more will really help. I find running to be a really good conditioning exercise. Biking and swimming also help and cross country skiing if you have it available. This enables your body to transport oxygen better than someone who does not do aerobic exercise.
2. Drink water! Most of the altitude sickness problems that myself and my friends have had I would trace to dehydration. You are breathing out more water in the dry air as well as sweat evaporating off of your body so you will not realize how much water you need to drink. The few headaches I have had at altitude all cleared up by drinking more.
3. Ascend slowly. The traditional method is no more than an average of 1000 feet or 300 meters per day above 8000 feet or 2500 meters. By giving yourself an extra day to adjust to a moderate altitude before going to a higher altitude you can mitigate the drastic changes of a large altitude ascent.

Those are the most basic recommendations for adjusting to a higher altitude. Tomorrow I will address several of the finer points of adjusting to altitude.

Fear

What does the future hold? I don't know. This is a scary time to be graduating. I don't have several job offers like I expected several years ago.

I plan things out in my life. They always change but I still expect things to go a certain way. I always thought I would get a full scholarship to college, I never thought I would be a competitive runner, I never thought I would get out of the direct aerospace business, and I wonder what else I am thinking now that won't go as planned.

How do I deal with fear? Well most of the time I try to think about other things. I mean I really don't have much time to worry. On my run this morning I was thinking about investor repayment strategies and shoe designs, not fear of the future. Things never pan out quite the way we expect but they always seems to work.

Run with Less on Your Feet

I've had my share of injuries. Most notably in terms of bad shoes patella-femoral tendonitis (runner's knee), two broken sesamoid bones, and plantar fasciitis. So now that I am training harder in preparation for the olympic marathon trials I have come across several things that I feel I need to incorporate into my training to take me to the next level (or next four levels, cause I have a long way to go). I have learned that shoes can mess me up. When I ran in high school my 20-40 miles a week I just wore some shoe that I had from a sports store. I usually only had one shoe for the whole year. I had no major injury in high school. In fact when I was 15 and 16 I trained for and ran a half marathon in the winter to try and keep in shape. One year I wore a pair of Nike waffles designed for cross country on the whole 13.1 mile pavement and dirt road corse. No injury and no pain that I remember.

Then comes college and I began to up my mileage and take an interest in what went on my feet. First it was what felt good in the store. Then it was what felt good three months later. About that time I was upping my mileage even more and it was what got me through 500 miles without an injury. I used stability shoes for a long time then switched to motion control and stability for the last two years.

We begin in January of 2006 while wearing a cushioning (women's) shoe (NB 1060) from New Balance I developed runner's knee. While clearing that up I moved to stability shoes. I went through two pairs of the NB 766, two NB 767, one NB 768, one ASICS 2110, one Nike I don't know the model, one Saucony Progrid Omni, one Brooks Adrenaline 7, and two Brooks Adrenaline 8. During that time I had a few flats that I used now and then like the NB 901 and Saucony Grid Tangent 2. Unfortunately I tried a more motion control type shoe and once you move up it is hard to move back down. I went through the Mizuno Wave Alchemy 6, Brooks Addiction 8, and Saucony Progrid Stabil. The thing is with that much motion control my feet are forced to move a certain way and I end up with knee pain or hip pain if I run too many miles. Basically the same thing as the cushioning shoe of yesteryear. So recently I moved back down and I'm on my second pair of Saucony Progrid Guide, a stability shoe.

My junior year in an indoor 5000 race I was wearing a pair of Nike Ventulus leopard print spikes and I smashed my sesamoid bone. At least I had never had pain there before but I had several problems after that. I took a month off and did some moderate to light training and ran a decent half marathon that spring. That summer I tried to incorporate barefoot running for the first time by doing strides. Bad mistake. Take that broken sesamoid bone and smash it at five minute mile pace into the ground. It really flared up and the doctor said I should take six months off from running. Yeah, I did that once it won't happen again if I can help it. Instead I put an L shaped patch under my foot in my shoe that took the pressure off. Needless to say I have been quite hesitant to take the shoes off since then. I have since learned that the key is to start by running slow and running short distances.

In my efforts to make my feet stronger the past six weeks I have been trying to do a few runs of about a half mile barefoot at the end of my regular runs. I've worked my way up to a mile. It is kind of humbling because a half mile or one mile is so short. Anyway a strange thing has happened: my stability shoes hurt a little. I have some orthotics in the boots that I wear during the day and they are starting to hurt as well. I have started to run more in flats. I bought a pair of Saucony Grid Fastswitch 3 and after only 40 miles in them I want to wear them all the time. My feet hurt more in shoes now than anytime I can remember. This recent obsession led me to buy two more pairs of flats a few days ago. The experience the last several years going through a pair of $90 shoes every two months makes me want to design and sell a $40 shoe, a flat, that is good enough for 500 miles. We don't need all of this motion control. The problem is that the rubber they use for trainers is designed to last 400-600 miles but in flats the rubber is often only made to last 100-200 miles so you can actually wear through the sole much faster in flats.

Has anybody really good ever gone barefoot you might ask? Yes in fact Abebe Bikila won the 1960 olympic marathon in Rome barefoot on cobblestone streets in 2:15 and set a world record in the process. That's all the information I need. If he could run 2:15 on cobblestones barefoot nearly 50 years ago I should be able to run a 2:18:xx under better conditions. Note: then he set the world record at 2:12 and won another gold medal in 1964 at Tokyo wearing shoes.

So what is my plan? Build slowly to get to the point where I can comfortably run one of my morning runs (3-7 miles) barefoot on the turf or on grass. This process should take two or three months. Right now I am at one mile comfortably barefoot near 8:00 mile pace. I also plan to run much more in flats because they keep the heel low to the ground similar to barefoot running. Wearing a shoe with a higher heel allows the calves and Achilles to get tight. I will still keep a few pairs of my stability shoes around for runs if my feet are tired or for technical trail runs. I would also like to try a pair of Newton shoes if I ever had $150 to spare. I will also continue to do foot stability, flexibility and strengthening exercises several times a week. These I will try to do for the rest of my running career because 20 minutes a week spread out over four "workouts" is completely worth the time that it will save me from being injured.

For more information:

Runner's World article by Amby Burfoot. He talks about Abebe Bikila some.

Barefootrunner.com, it's pretty self explanatory.

Anton Krupicka wrote a good, down to earth, blog post about minimalist running. For those that don't know he came strait out of college and set all sorts of ultrarunning records.

Born to Run by Chris McDougall is about a tribe of Indians in Mexico that run hundreds of miles at all ages nearly without injury. They wear thin sandals to protect their feet from the elements.

Mountaineering Deaths Summer of 2009

This was a pretty devastating summer for mountaineers and I'm not talking about people dying on Mt. Hood wearing jeans. First Pakistan: A very experienced skier died on K2 while skiing down from camp 2. Anyone with the experience to attempt skiing K2 or even climbing it has to be experienced. Next on Nanga Parbat a very experienced woman died with I think 11 8000 meter summits while she was descending. I believe a HAP also died on the same day. The fouth victim of the summer was on Broad Peak and she had four or five 8000 meter summits. Then most recently a Spanish mountaineer died on Latok II, which is not a walk up mountain. I believe him and his partner were trying to put up a first ascent. Elsewhere in Asia the season killed a number of other experienced people. Three American mountaineers died in an avalanche in China. I think they were trying to put up a first ascent. A very experienced Polish mountaineer died falling into a crevasse in Nepal. In the US a very experienced American rock climber died while free soloing in California and another very experienced climber died in Washington state just recently. In Europe Ricardo Cassin, a famous mountaineer, died at the age of 100 which doesn't sting as much as the people in their 20s and 30s that died this summer but none the less it's one less person that understands us.

I didn't know any of these people personally but I had heard of several of them. These were not weekend warriors these were people who climbed during the week and pushed the sport. There are things to learn from every accident but the major trend as I see it is that one mistake is enough. Just one mistake.

When I started climbing I was told of the risk and severity box. There are two perpendicular lines one with the label risk from high to low that something will go wrong and the other the severity of a accident from bearable to deadly. Everyone has to decide where they fit within the box. In high altitude mountaineering the chance that you will have some sort of accident is maybe only a few percent but for the most part if something goes wrong it goes really wrong. Free soloing is an extreme example. Once you're above 30 feet off the ground a fall = death. While you're hiking the Appalachian Trail the chance that you're going to hurt yourself is low and the consequences are a sprained ankle. Everyone has to decide their acceptable level of risk and you should not let anyone make the decision for you. This sport is definitely not for everyone.

Overtraining

Now I've read about overtraining and I've watched it happen. It is not the number of miles you run or the number of hours you train. You can most likely train a whole lot harder than you ever have before. When I have seen it or experienced it in the past it has been from several recurring themes:

1. Never taking it easy. As a runner when your off day is an hour of biking or swimming and then a little lifting and your off season is less than a week you are flirting with burnout. Many very dedicated athletes train 40 hours a week but have a serious off season where their cortisol or adrenaline or whatever really gets a chance to rest.

2. School or work or personal life drama consume you. Attending a difficult engineering school caused my friends and I to stress out about important projects several times and performances to just plummet. 

3. Ramping up training too fast. Injuries happen this way too. One week you're running 30 miles a week, the next it's 50, and then 70 and then you get injured or feel tired all the time.

So train hard and take it easy! 

Rope Soloing instruction of the week: Tethers

Often when free climbing I use a dedicated runner to attach myself to the anchor at the belays so that the entire rope can be used for belaying and I do not have to attach myself to the anchor with a clove hitch on the lead rope. Rope soloing does, in general, not twist the rope as much as typical pitched climbing with ATCs or other belay plates so the need for a separate tether (runner, daisy chain) to the anchor so that you can untie and get the twists out (like on long routes) is not necessary. Rope soloing is heavy and awkward enough that any mess on the front of your harness you can safely avoid is worth avoiding. 

Recap: At the anchors clove hitch yourself to the anchor instead of a tether.