Super Challenge 2006

Sorry for the blogging issues the past week - Blogger changed the settings and all postings became Anonymous unless you were a Google member. I think it is fixed now - but I'm not 100%.

13 WEEKS!

I had a pile of notes I have been keeping for this blog - but now that we are days from 2007, I'm not sure how much is relevant.

I realized yesterday I have no resolutions for the New Year. There is nothing I want that I don't already have and I don't feel a crying need to improve very much.

Wally and Kevin are going to think I've gone soft in the head. But the obvious stuff is gone - I don't need to quit smoking or drinking, lose weight or get fit. I have a very loving wife and family, solid friends and some damn fine riding buddies. It's not that I think I'm perfect - I'm just a very lucky and pretty content.

I'd like to ride more, take whole days in the summer and maybe that will be possible. Kevin will have to stop travelling so much to make that happen though because he is a key part of our ride team and he always seems to be away or catching up with family when he gets back. So I hope he has a few more weekends this summer available to him.

Wally's going to be building a house this year and that will keep him busy too. I hope he has a good contractor so he can get away with the same frequency as before.

I hope I get a chance to spend time with others on this blog. It is possible. We tried the experiment with Frank and Cathy this summer and it is possible to see good friends more than once a year. It just takes a little planning.

So Merry Christmas team and I hope all of you have a great New Year.

Russ

The Challenge Challenge!

1) Writing this Blog is a challenge. Cutting and pasting stuff off the Net is easy, but far less satisfying. Some may argue with me but I don't beleive I have enough "opinion volume" to support a weekly blog on my own. How does anyone come up with this stuff on a daily basis? To rant, you essentially need to be unhappy or vitriolic. I am too content.

2) My leadership coach (something the company I work for is paying for) says I am too competitive. And I wrote a test that backs that up. Who would have thought there was such a thing as being 'too competitive'? Apparently competitiveness doesn't drive excellence, only frustration and public displays like the kind seen routinely on YouTube. So I am chilling. Since challenges are all about competition (of some sort) then I need to find a new way to promote my own activity. Maybe I will just be at one with the universe. Forget about trying to beat a time or a distance. Is that possible?

3) I would research that idea about competitiveness in Part 2 but that would mean more cutting and pasting. I'm going with it for now. Being less competitive is more relaxing and far less demanding I've noticed.

4) OK. I took a break after part 3. I felt I needed a rest. In the 10 minutes I dozed, nothing new came to me on this subject. The problem remains. In order to get up off the couch and climb on the treadmill for 45 minutes I need an incentive. I've actually tried ju-jubes. I put a handful on the little treadmill shelf and reward myself with one every 4 laps. Don't attempt this at home - especially when you are gasping for breath. A ju-jube is just the right size to block the human windpipe.

5) I've noticed no one at the Wellness Centre uses this technique but that could be because ju-jubes were invented in the 50's and most of the members were way into their middle age by that decade.

5) So if I can't use competitiveness to encourage my own participation then I'm stumped. I need your ideas. Email me at rsmith@noncompetitiveworld.ca !

Russ

How do you know when you've given 100%?

Did you have a coach in High School asking you to give 110%? Didn't everyone?

World-famous triathlete, Chris Legh, knows what that means. Chris is best known for his painful collapse and near-death experience at the 1997 Ironman Hawaii finish line, and a subsequent Gatorade commercial that aired all around the world. Safe to assume that Chris gave it 100% - with nothing left for breathing, brain function etc. I hate to think what 110% would look like.

I also think this question is related to last weeks blog - is that final 10% you need to dig out of yourself really just 10%? With Wally close on the heels of the 135 Floor Stepper Challenge - how far is he away with his 120? Math tells us another 12.5 % of exertion will do it. But we know that's not how the body and physics in general works. As we move closer to our maximums, we are testing all the links in the chain - transfer of oxygen, muscle effectiveness, energy use both aerobic and non-aerobic - and we face the inverse square rule. We get smaller and smaller returns from increasing effort at the top of the curve. (Just playing with your head, Wally!)

When I started running in 1998, I logged every day in a spreadsheet. After a year I noticed a basic training truth. In the beginning, big improvements were easy but even small increases became more and more difficult as time went by. Eventually I began looking for 1-2% improvements over a month and even those were hard to come by.

On one perfect night, the stars were aligned, I felt great, and I hit my best time for a mile, 7 minutes. Not a big deal for anyone but myself (certainly not for Roger Bannister who was the first person to break the 4 minute mile back in the 1930's), but it was a goal I had set a year before. So I was pretty pleased.

I never got even close to that time again no matter how I tried.

How much of that would be 'heart' or 'spirit' versus pure ability or preparedness? As motivated as you might be, and as pure of heart, you're not going to win the world's fastest 100 Metre without training, coaching, commitment and a ton of natural ability. But if those things are in place, heart will help to get you there. (Are you motivated yet?)

There are hundreds of movies I have seen since a kid which extolled the virtues of 'heart'. If you beleive, you can accomplish miracles. And that's essentially true. Most humans are hampered more by their own perceptions than by real obstacles. But one of the lessons they need to include is that belief has to cover more than just the two hours of the big game. Beleiving in yourself has to happen months and years before the big event and includes all the sweat and tears necessary to prepare one for big challenges.

Congratulations to all of you Super Challenge achievers. You're doing a great job! Vince Lomabardi would be proud.

WOW! Did this week fly by!

And here it is the end of the week and now I need more content to fill this space. So I'm just going to wing it then so all of you bloggers can get your updates posted.

Most of you have heard about Sir Isaac Newton. He's the British scientist born in 1643 who was apparently inspired by a falling apple to invent the concept behind gravity. More important than that discovery was his famous book, the Principles of Mathematics where he basically laid out all of the basic principles of science still in use today. And this was 400 years ago.

My favorite is his Inverse Square Rule, a matematical rule that governs almost every action in the universe. I first heard about this law in Grade 7. My teacher told us that if we were twice as tall (like one of my favorite comic book heros, Giant Man) our bones would have to be four times as thick to hold us up. So Giant Man wouldn't look quite so dashing anymore in his size 48 super hero boots. BTW - that's why elephants have those industrial strength looking posts for feet.

This same rule of nature shows us that if we drive 10% faster, we burn almost 20% more gas. Friction goes up exponentially and so does gas consumption. So driving a little faster is a real pain for the environment and your gas mileage.

Newton's rule also explains another problem - people taking flash photography at a rock concert. Everytime we double the distance from the flash to the artist, we quadruple the loss of light energy. (Inverse Square - get it?) So stepping back just a few feet can ruin a good picture.

So what does this have to do with our activity blog?

Well, weight training is a good example. Let's say you've geen working with 15 pound weights and you decide to move to 20. They seem so much heavier than the 5 pounds or 25% increase would indicate. Well, to your muscles and bones that's a big increase. By Newton's law, you have more than doubled the work required to move that weight.

Injuries are another factor. People who are even a few pounds overweight are putting incredible strain on bones and muscles not designed to handle the load. A physiotherapist told us that being 25 pounds overweight will increase the strain on an active knee by 40 times the normal.

Same thing applies to any physical activity. Adding just a few minutes to your workout may not seem like much, but it can add dramatically to the results. Just ask Sir Isaac.

How would you like to add 9 productive years to your life?

Exercise like your life depends on it (cause it does).And do strength and flexibility training too. Who says? The Real Age Institute (see www.realage.com). You can complete an online quiz on their site which will tell you your real statistical age. Consistent intense exercise, like the kind being done by our Challenge team, has an impressive effect on your lifespan.


How about another 5 years?

Use the Magic 66 number. Have a flexible heart? Do energetic exercise for 2 minutes and count your heart rate. Then stop. Wait two minutes and count again. A difference of 66 will add 5 years to your life span.

How about another 3 years?

Eat fruits and vegetables like crazy. It's proven statistically.

How about another year?

This one is even easier. Don't use your cell phone while driving. Tests have proven that people using their cell phones while driving do a worse job then people who have been drinking.

How much work do you have to do burn a candy bar worth of calories?

CALORIES IN COMMON FOODS -

Tim Hortons Muffin - 340
Breakfast sandwhich - 450
Candy bar - 200
Donut - 250 – 375 depending on type
Large buttered popcorn - 1045
Apple - 50


ONE HOUR OF THE FOLLOWING BURNS -

Aerobics, general - 354
Basketball, game - 472
Bicycling, <10mph> - 236
Bicycling, vigorous effort - 590
Bicycling, stationary, general - 295
Bicycling, stationary, vigorous - 620
Bowling - 177
Circuit training, general - 472
Cleaning, house, general - 207
Cooking or food preparation - 148
Curling - 236
Dancing, aerobic - 354
Farming, baling hay, cleaning barn - 472
Frisbee playing, general - 177
Frisbee, ultimate - 207
Gardening, general - 295
Golf, carrying clubs - 325
Golf, using power cart - 207

Not sure why sitting in a golf cart burns the same calories as playing ultimate frisbee (?)

Stretching, cramps and the GTO.

One day before an exercise class at the Wellness Centre, Wally was giving Kevin and I some stretching advice and mentioned something called the‘GTO’. GTO, believe it or not, stands for Golgi Tendon Organ and has nothing to do with classic Pontiacs.

Having become a recent fan of all things ‘stretched’, I Googled the term hoping to gain some inside knowledge. Results? Dense medical research papers aimed at Sports Researchers, Medical Students and/or Dr. Frankenstein. So pay attention – it may turn up in a future CSI episode.

The GTO is a bundle of nerves on every muscle that protect those same muscles from ‘blowing out”. They sense when a muscle is going too far and stop further extension. They act like governors, which is a good thing. But they also get in the way of stretching a muscle fully.

You can use your knowledge of how GTO's work to enhance your stretching exercise. Stretch a muscle, for example your hamstrings, as far as they want to go (before pain, of course!). Then (here comes the Sports therapists lingo), contract the muscle ‘isometrically’ to increase tension in the muscle. To do this for your ham, press your heel or whole leg onto whatever surface you are sitting on. Press hard, without moving, and after 5-10 seconds, gently but completely let go of the contraction, again without moving.

This ‘isometric’ stretching is the same kind used when stretching calf muscles by pushing against a wall. It refers to stretching a muscle against something fixed or immovable, unlike a free weight (although they sometimes feel immovable).

Now slowly resume your stretch, and see if you go a little further! You may already have heard this referred to as "a PNF method" or "hold-relax. It’s this kind of training that claims to be able to turn middle-aged men into contortionists. And I’m not making this up.

So what does GTO and stretching have to do with cramps?

This is all new and based on recent studies by Bentley and Schwellnus. When you over exert yourself, the GTO for an exhausted muscle is itself inhibited and therefore stops working, and becomes a direct causes of cramping. The theory implies that routine stretching is preventive medicine for cramping.

We also now know there are two very different kinds of cramps.

The first is caused by over-tired muscles. These can be worked out with stretches and/or ice in a fairly short period of time. A second type of cramp is caused by the loss of sodium through sweating, generally in hot conditions. These are called ‘heat cramps’ and can only be treated by restoring sodium levels in the body. And they hurt more too. Gatorade anyone?