Jack and Jill ran up a hill . . .

So I decided to re-write the classic nursery rhyme to be a little more... ahem... personally applicable:

Jack and Jill ran up a hill
So they wouldn't get any fatter.
Jill now rides
On a bike beside
Jack who busted his knees because he didn't know what the heck he was doing.

So I kind of lost the rhythm and rhyming at the end there, and it probably won't compete with the centuries-old version, but it definitely feels more believable.

So I have been trying to be health conscious for a year or so now. I say trying, because I don't think I have ever achieved true "Health-nut" status. I can't point to any week out of the last 52 weeks and say that I lived a healthy lifestyle that week. There are just too many variables that go into that kind of a title.

That is not to say that I haven't done good things or made progress of any kind. One of my recent endeavors is to train for a long-distance race. You know, the old fashioned kind where you use your feet rather than a car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle, horse, ostrich or rocket-powered roller skates. I found a training plan that seemed like a good fit for me, and along with a few friends I committed to The Race. Ironically, it is 6 weeks later and we still haven't actually decided which race is The Race, but that is just logistics.

So I started training. The first couple of weeks were the same. I would get home from my new job, mentally destroyed, and my wife would beat me with my running shoes until I put them on and ran around the block a time or two with her. After that I started to enjoy it a little more and the roles reversed a bit. My wife discovered medical issues related to having 4 children by C-section that made the idea of running for more than 20 minutes a little unpleasant. I was coasting along with my training plan, so we came up with an alternate solution. I would continue to run and she would come along on a bike. That way we would both get out and get some exercise, but the activities were better suited to our bodies.

It turns out that for me, running with your partner on a bike is similar to getting chased. For the next week and a half I posted my best times yet. Of course in the beginning the agreement was to not worry about times at all, but you can't run for 5 miles and not wonder how fast were, and whether or not you improved over the last time. So I kind of over extended myself I think, especially on Friday.

It was the day after a holiday, January 2nd. I had stayed up until 3AM the night before working on a project for work and then gotten up to be in to work at 7AM. I was burning the candle at both ends, so to speak. We all know how healthy holiday food is, so I was feeling groggy from too much fat, too much candy and not enough clear liquid, and that day at work I didn't eat much, but just drank water to clear out the junk-food feeling. So I got home at 5:30 PM, planning on immediately hitting the sidewalk for my longest run yet: 6 miles. I got home to find my running shorts still wet in the washer. I had learned earlier (thankfully on a short run) that those shorts are essential to my happiness after the run, so I stuck them in the dryer and had dinner with the family (holiday leftovers.) It was 7:30 by the time I got out the door, low on sleep, sloshing with heavy food and an energy level to match.

Retrospectively, I will say that I had gotten away with a lot of bad habits up to this point. In fact here is a link to 10 common mistakes new runners make. I was regularly committing 9 out of 10 of these. Well, they all caught up to me that night. I was tight by the third mile, and by the time I stumbled home after the 6th mile I felt horrible. I won't go into all of the details, but I can give you a hint to how it went by mentioning that today I spent time researching how to run properly, the importance of stretching, doing warm-ups and cool-downs, and how and why you should buy the right running shoe.

So I am still planning on running The Race, but I am revising my plan ever so slightly. For instance, I think I might bother to stretch in the future. Also, it is probably a good idea to sleep for some reasonable time period the night before you run, as well as eat something other than left over fried beef, Dr. Pepper and a package of Peanut M&Ms. (Never mind that those cover most of the food groups.) And my 6 year old tennis shoes that we recalled from being "Painting shoes" to become running shoes? Lets just say that they got their two-week notice. I'm actively looking for replacements.

All in all, I love the feeling that I am doing something to counteract time and genetics when it comes to my health. I had a physical today for new life insurance and it is great to hear positive comments about my blood pressure and heart rate. I just need to get a little smarter when it comes to the process and, whether I like it or not, life is an insistent teacher.

It's About[.com] Time!

So I am really here to write a post about running, but I am going to first take care of a tangential topic, starting with something that I used to consider to be a plague to the Internet: About.com. For years now I have continually run into About.com in my Googling, and no matter how many times I clicked on that link I found it to be a wasted click, my only solace coming from the knowledge that there is a fair chance that the About people had to pay for my click. The content was watered down and didn't answer my need. The advertising was over-abundant, over-bearing and under-relevant (yes, I just coined several new terms there. Use them free of charge.) I reached the point where I would check URLs in my searches and if the word "about" was anywhere to be seen I withheld my click.

Somehow, despite that history, I ran into the About.com running page (no pun intended) and for the first time I was satisfied. Ok, I was more than satisfied, I was excited, overjoyed, etc., etc. I found the information well targeted and concise and in short, exactly what I was looking for. Related information was linked to in intuitive ways, the answer to my next question at the bottom of every page. The ads were obviously labeled and relevant, which actually made some of them appealing (I can't even believe I said that.) Anyway, while I still can't endorse About.com in its entirety, I give a hearty hats-off to who-ever made that page happen.

So after that awesome introduction, here is a link to this topic on About. It isn't page that I like to start with, which is different for each person, but a general page on the topic of running for beginners (like me!): http://running.about.com/