Getting Into Running

Running is somewhat like the GWB presidency - you either love it or you hate it. For those who love it, running is not an activity but a religion. They wake up in the god-fucking-awful hours of the morning just to run. They run races on weekends before you've had coffee. They bring up how many 'K' they've run in casual conversation. For those who hate it, they hate hate hate it. They eat junk food in front of runners out of spite. They build speed bumps on trails to trip morning runners (true story).

This is unfortunate, because of all the activities I do to stay fit I believe running has the highest exercise density:



If you are trying to get into shape running gives you the most results for the time you put into it. Team sports are a lot more fun and biking and swimming have less impact on the body, but nothing gets you into shape like running does.

Running also has one of the lowest cost's of entry of any activity; all you need are shoes. When people think of running shoes, they think of $200 nike shoes with pumps and and levers and magic fairy dust, but it does not need to be that complicated. Be honest about what you are looking for. If you are just getting started, let the salesperson know that you don't necessarily want to spend a lot of money. Let the salesperson about any conditions that may cause complications (fallen arches, etc) and don't let them up sell you on fancy gizmos. A local running store is a better place to shop for shoes than a mall, as the sales people will probably be better informed about what shoes work best with your stride. Finally, be prepared to spend about $50 to $100 on shoes - yes this is a lot of money, but running with insufficient padding can be very bad on your knees.

I think the main reason many people hate running is associative. Specifically, their first experience went something like this:

1. I'm going to start running! I'm going to train for a Marathon! Yeah!


2. Look at me! I'm running!


3. (Rest of the week) Ow! My body!

Many first time runners set their expectations way too high. The beauty of running for fitness is that you can get a lot of benefit just running 20 to 30 minutes a day. If you're just starting, set your goal to run a 5 kilometer (3.1 miles) race. 5K races are very common in the running world, they usually have fairly low entry fees (around $20), and they give you a tee shirt! The important thing is that this gives you a goal. Make sure to sign up for one a few months away to give yourself time to get ready.

Before you begin your workout, it is important to stretch properly, which I learned this the hard way (It involved headaches caused by tight hamstrings). Now comes the difficult part: actual running. Your body will be very against it. The first time you run, your body will ask you the same question over and over - what are you doing? It will ask this question again every time you go running for the next month - get used to it. Your goal your first week is to be able to keep running for 15 minutes at as slow a pace as you want. During this time you may want to run on a high school track so you can use the number of loops you complete as a measure of how far you've traveled (4 loops = 1 mile). If you can run three times in a week (take every other day off) for 15 minutes you're off to a good start. When you're comfortable with your running routine, slowly increase the amount of time you run. Over time your body will respond.

Many people find it easier to run when they have a running partner. With the right partner, you will find the extra motivation to run on days when one of you just isn't feeling it. A bad running partner can be a demotivater - someone who prevents you from improving. It is very important to find a running partner who runs at your pace and is committed to your goals.

So is it worth it? I obviously think so. I find the time I spend running as a good way to bring myself back into focus, and I miss it when I can't run. When done in moderation it has the most health benefits of any physical activity I know of, and all it takes are shoes and patience.

What do you want me to write about?

I'm now on Facebook! Won't you be my friend?

Over the past few days I've been trying to come up with a list of activities that might be fun to write about for Fitnick. Note, to write about them I'll actually have to do them, so this is basically a list of activities you to watch me embarrass myself doing

Which of the following would you want me to fail at?

• Running
• Swimming
• Road Biking
• Trail Biking
• Weight Training
• Racquetball
• Triathlon
• Marathon
• Soccer
• Basketball
• Golf
• Frisbee Golf
• P90 X
• Wii Fit/EA Fit
• Sprinting
• Scuba
• Other?

Leave a comment about what you want from the fitnick blog.

Are We Learning The Wrong Thing In Gym?

I was listening to a NPR show about bullying in schools on my way back from the airport. The show itself was centered about the tragic suicide of a 15 year old in Massachusetts, but it was relevant to anyone who has been through high school.

Listening to the show threw me back to memories of my own high school experience. Like most teenagers I had pretty low self esteem, but the class I dreaded the most was gym class. I was the kid who was always picked last and who couldn't catch a ball if his life depended on it. Every day it served as a reminder that I was a failure. One of the hardest parts of getting into physical activities was I had to unlearn the fear gym glass instilled.

It got me thinking - how many other people went through the same thing? Gym class is supposed to make physical fitness a central component of the education system. It's supposed to teach kids to be fit. What if it is teaching the opposite? What if gym class is teaching our kids that physical fitness is for other people?

Just a thought.

Who Needs A Bike Rack?

Not me I say!

My beef with BMI

I had my yearly checkup today. Overall it went over very well, with the usual problem areas: because I'm hyperglycemic my blood sugar always is borderline high, and according to my BMI I am almost overweight. While I choose to manage the first one through exercise and diet, the second one annoys me to no end because, as anyone who follows @fitnick knows, I work out a lot! So what gives?

The Body Mass Index (BMI) is defined as follows (thanks Wikipedia!)



The table to interpret the result is as follows:

Category	BMI range – kg/m2	BMI Prime	Weight of a 5 ft 11 in person with this BMI
Severely underweight	less than 16.5	less than 0.66	under 53.5 kilograms (8.42 st; 118 lb)
Underweight	16.5 to 18.4	0.66 to 0.73	118 and 130 lb
Normal	18.5 to 24.9	0.74 to 0.99	130 and 180 lb
Overweight	from 25 to 30	from 1.0 to 1.2	180 and 210 lb
Obese Class I	from 30.1 to 34.9	from 1.21 to 1.4	210 and 250 lb
Obese Class II	from 35 to 40	from 1.41 to 1.6	250 and 290 lb
Obese Class III	over 40	over 1.6	over 290 lb

At 5'7'' and 158 lbs I come in at 24.7, which from my engineering perspective barely in the normal range (Wii Fit agrees, always showing me as borderline overweight. It also likes to puff my avatar out like a marshmallow). My friends who do marathons, bike races, and other generally "fit" people also end up in the high-normal to overweight range. Why is that? Reading from the NIH

BMI is a reliable indicator of total body fat, which is
related to the risk of disease and death. The score is valid for both men and
women but it does have some limits. The limits are:

• It may overestimate body fat in athletes and
  others who have a muscular build.
• It may underestimate body fat in older persons and
  others who have lost muscle mass.

BMI assumes that all people have the same distribution of muscle and fat. Because muscle is heavier than fat, having more of it (from, say, exercising) throws the BMI numbers off skew. When I first heard that I thought that you'd have to be a bodybuilder to have any real effect, but even muscle from long distance running can skew your result. The BMI is trying to find a way to make judgments about a large population, but people come in all forms - tall, short, big boned, skinny - and they defy this sort of grouping.

So keep in mind that if you exercise a lot, trust yourself over the BMI (or Wii Fit) if you are overweight or not. The BMI is a metric to help you find health, and that's it.

God's Country Duathlon and Brew To Brew 2010

It was a busy weekend for Kansas City sporting events. First, the God's Country Duathlon took place in Lawrence, KS. Duathlons are races that involve a shorter run, then a bike ride, and finally a longer run. God's Country adds the challenge that much of the run and the bike ride are on the Lawrence river trail. Trail riding and running is trickier because the terrain is so varied, but that's why the racers like it so much.




Also taking place was the annual Brew to Brew, a 44 mile run from Boulevard Brewery in Kansas City to Free State Brewery in Lawrence. While you can run the entire run by yourself, the run is broken up into ten legs between four to five miles that can be split between a team of two to ten people. Plus, at the end, you get beer!




Congratulations to all the racers!

Toys!

Honestly, I was going to take today off. I've worked out a lot in this week and I don't want to overdo things, the weather is terrible, I had a bad day at the office, etc. When I got home, I found a wonderful package on my doorstep that changed my mind.




The latest in the fitnick video arsenal, a waterproof camera case for the Contour HD, arrived in the mail! I was so excited to test it I forgot to bring my goggles and earplugs with me. I took it to the swimming pool to test, and I can already tell this is going to be a good learning aid. No wonder my butterfly feels so terrible - my butt never leaves the water! Thank goodness you never use that stroke in triathlons!

What's all this twitter nonsense?

I'm going to start tweeting my workouts on the @fitnick account, but before I start, I think I should explain a few things. I'm trying to get ready for some triathlons that are two months away. Triathlons come in many categories, but the most popular are olympic and sprint. An olympic distance triathlon has the following components:

• 800 - 1200 meter swim
• 20 mile bike ride
• 10 kilometer run

A sprint distance has the following components:

• 300 - 600 meter swim
• 10 mile bike ride
• 5 kilometer run

The "sprint" is named because the people who do the olympic distance races should be able to do the entire race sprinting. I hate those people. I've almost always signed up for sprint triathlons and have been happy with my "just finishing" philosophy, but this year I've decided to push a little harder and sign up for two olympic distance races: The Kansas City Triathlon on May 23rd and the Shawnee Mission Triathlon on July 11th. Since December I've been trying to do at least two "indoor triathlons" a week, composed of:

• 400 ~ 800 meter swim
• 5 ~ 8 mile bike ride
• 1 ~ 2 mile run.

Obviously I'm not even doing sprint distance, let alone triathlon distance. Now that nice weather has finally come to KC, I'm working on trying to improve my speed and distance in all three categories. Because there are only so many days a week, this means I have to often do two activities a day: swimming and running, swimming and biking, or biking and running.

I've never read too much about the proper way to train for these races. I follow the pyramid method used to train for marathons, where your training week centers around a long run, where the days before build up distance and the days after bring the distance back down. The long run distance is increased every week until you've reached your goal. In my routine my intended long day is Sunday, where I hope to do a triathlon (swimming pool, biking, and running). The days before and the days after pyramid up and down from that. There are probably other good approaches.

So, if you see the twitter feed and think, "what is that guy doing?" Yeah, that's what I'm up to. I hope to post data on the main blog just so I can track my own progress.

Welcome To Fitnick!

Hello! My name is Nick, I'm 32 years old, and I want to blog about fitness.

I'll start out by saying I have no real qualifications. I'm not a personal trainer, a doctor, and the only athletic award I ever won was "most improved bowler" in the company bowling league (I was up for "best attendance" as well). I don't have a book, a program, or a magical way to give you the body you've always wanted in ninety days. If that's what you're looking for, there are many many places on the internet to find that.

What I do have is a real interest in the topic. Growing up I was what is commonly known as a "98 lbs weakling." In fact in junior high gym class wrestling, I actually weighed 97 lbs.



In college and afterward I started trying new activities - running, cycling, weight lifting, racquetball, swimming, soccer, and a few others. Currently I'm focused on triathlons, but I try to work other activities in to maintain balance.



That's me on the right with my work peeps at the 2009 Corporate Challenge. Disclaimer: I do work for a certain GPS company, but not in their fitness division. I'm doing this blog on my own time.

While I don't have explicit qualifications, I do have an interest and a desire to learn more. I'd like to use this blog to explore this in the following ways.

• Getting Started Guides - The first time you start any activity is tough, and a lot of the advice out there is written for people trying to improve their skills, not get started. I'll try to write advice about trying out new sports and activities.
• Be A Guinea Pig - There's a lot I haven't tried, but I've always wanted to. Most people would not be stupid enough to do it while they have a camera running. I am not most people.
• Tweet - I'll try to keep my twitter feed up to date with my workouts, so you can see what I'm up to.
• Report On Local Events - Look for occasional reports from the Kansas City area.
• Cook - Diet and exercise go hand in hand. Trying out healthy recipes goes with being a guinea pig.

I hope this makes for interesting reading, and hopefully you do too.