Hello my friends, it's great to see you. As I look across the Calgary skyline I see darkness as the south gets doused with rain. It must be a long weekend.
Long weekends are meant for fun and I think Joy and me are starting off right! Tomorrow we will miss the usual 8 am trot as we are off to Winsport and the first ever "Color Me Rad" (how un-Canadian of the organizers). We promise not to be quick over the five kilometre's and Joy hopes to keep her blonde hair blonde. Should I apologize to her now or after the streaks of rainbow attach to her locks?
.bmp) |
| Willie, Peter, and Jodi ready to tackle Nose Hill last weekend. |
For those not joining us please do the usual Eau Claire default. If you are lucky like some you will meet Keifer, Matthew, or Demi. If you don't know who I mean you will have no chance getting lucky tomorrow morning.
-----
We will continue our fun on Sunday as we join a plethora of Joy's boyfriends (I am merely the driver) at the Halo High Water fundraiser at the Jubilee. Paul (swoon) Brandt, and Jim (ahhh) Cuddy will keep my happy wife looking forward and for sure dancing in the aisles. Unfortunately the truly loved John (Johnny Reid) is playing the 'other' even on the 15th. Sorry Joy.
 |
| Joy tried to catch him but the crutches slowed her down |
-----
I received notice that one of our friends has fallen to an injury bug. a repetitive injury has bit the leg once again. I suggested one cause but know the real reason...a missed OJ's Thursday night with the crew.
It reminded me of another friend who fell off the wagon but has found happiness once again. Thanks to April for sharing this many moons ago. From the New York Times...
 |
| get well PK. |
When Repeat Injuries Can’t Dim an
Athlete’s Passion
When Dr. Michael Joyner, an exercise
researcher at the Mayo Clinic,
heard I’d gotten a second stress fracture, high on my fibula, less than
two years after recovering from my first one, in a metatarsal bone in my foot,
he sent me some advice by e-mail.
“I
would urge you to take a year off of running,” he wrote. “Stop trying to
rope-a-dope this. Cycle and do the elliptical and take some swimming lessons.”
He added, “I did — took 10 years off of running and my perspective is
different.”
Right. He’s
got to be kidding. I am one of those people who seem to lurch from injury to
injury but keep coming back to my sport. I also am a serious cyclist, but
running is my true love.
I’m not alone.
Margaret Martonosi, one of my running friends and an electrical engineering
professor at Princeton
University, is a runner and a competitive swimmer. Last year, she
injured her Achilles’ tendon. She took a month off and finally saw a doctor,
who told her that her running days were over and that at age 45, she really
shouldn’t be running anyway.
That was “a
bit incongruous,” Margaret told me, because she had just had her best times
ever in the New York marathon and in a half marathon she ran while training for
it.
She changed
doctors.
What is the
difference between Mike Joyner and athletes like Margaret or me? Or between us
and the legions of others in the Joyner camp — people like Dr. Michael Weiner,
an Alzheimer’s researcher who told me he used to
run marathons but took up swimming when his back kept bothering him. Now he
belongs to the Dolphin Club in San Francisco. He swims with them every morning
at 5 a.m. in the San Francisco Bay — without a wet suit — and never looks back.
Or Dr. Jason Karlawish, an associate professor of medicine and medical ethics
at the University
of Pennsylvania. He reluctantly abandoned running after he tore his meniscus, a crucial piece of cartilage in the
knee.
“I was
frankly demoralized that I’d be one of those people who ‘used to run’ and
athletics would slowly become part of my past,” Jason said. It took time and
effort to learn a new sport, he added. But now he loves swimming, especially,
he says, the meditative aspect. “For 45 minutes, I can see little, hear only my
thoughts, and talk to no one.”.
At least one
expert, recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine for this
column, would say we stubborn athletes have a psychological problem.
Our
behavior, said the expert, Dr. Jon L. Schriner, an osteopath at the Michigan
Center for Athletic Medicine, is “compulsive”: we let our egos get in the way,
persisting beyond all reason.
But another
expert recommended by the college, David B. Coppel, a clinical and sports
psychologist at the University
of Washington, has another perspective. There are several reasons
some people find it hard to switch sports, he told me. Often, their friends do
that sport, too; it is how these people identify themselves, part of their
social life. And then there is another, more elusive factor.
“There is
something about the experience — be it figure skating or running or cycling —
that really produces a pleasurable experience,” Dr. Coppel said. “That
connection is probably not only at a psychological level but probably also
something physiological that potentially makes it harder for these people to
transition to other sports.”
Jennifer
Davis, a physical chemist who is my cycling, running and weight-lifting
partner, adds another reason. Often we stubborn athletes — and Jen, an ultra
runner who competes in races longer than marathons, includes herself in that
group — have found that we do well, get trophies, win at least our age group in
races. That makes it hard to stop.
My doctor,
Joseph H. Feinberg at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan, says it’s
not always necessary to give up a sport because of injuries.
“Some will
say you need to stop,” he said. “But often correcting faulty mechanics, the
right exercises or rehab, or just changes in training techniques are all that
is needed.”
He knows
what it’s like to have a passion for a sport. Dr. Feinberg, a runner, swimmer
and cyclist, has had two stress fractures yet keeps running.
Meanwhile,
Margaret Martonosi says her tendon has improved enough that she can run two
miles five days a week. It’s not much, she said, but “I’ll take it.”
I too am
starting to run again. I also did so much rigorous bicycling when I could not
run that I am considering entering my first bike race, a 35-kilometer time
trial, which means you ride as fast as you can for 21 miles. But running is
still my passion.
And Mike
Joyner? He went from running to swimming and is now doing triathlons. And he’s
glad.
“Whenever I
have switched sports it has been energizing because it is a new set of
experiences and challenges,” he said. “There are new opportunities to P.R.”
(The initials stand for personal record, the best time you’ve ever had.)
“Now that I
am doing more running again it feels fresh, too,” he said, “and by essentially
skipping 10 years, I did not have to deal with the existential death spiral
associated with progressively slower times. I came back with a blank slate.”
Margaret understands
that — her swimming times had leveled off, but with running, she says, “I feel
in ways like I just started, and that I have a lot more to get out of the
sport.” She says there might be a day when she gives up running, but she is not
there yet.
But Mike
will never convince people like Jen and me.
“I could give up cycling,” Jen said. “But I could never give up
running.”
