Lions, Tigers, and Bears... Oh No!

It's no secret that bears crap in the woods. It's also no secret that Maine has plenty of wooded areas. Lastly, it's no real secret that we live out in some of these said areas. Now, putting it all together, one would expect to logically stumble upon some bear crap, from time to time, if one lived in the woods. And so it has come to pass...

Well, I didn't actually stumble upon bear crap (more accurately, "scat"), but I did learn that some hunters had tracked a bear to a nearby farm, treed it with their hounds, and killed it. All perfectly legal, as it's bear hunting season here, and they were with a registered guide. In general, I support all kinds of hunting, even though I usually don't do any hunting myself. It's a choice each person should be able to make for themselves, it seems to me.

Anyway, back to this bear situation... So, logically I understand that I live in habitat suited to bears, but until these hunters showed up, I had not put theory into practice, as it were.

Black bears are not terribly aggressive to humans. Most actual attacks are due more to hunger than to them being territorial. Because of this, it is actually best to fight back with a black bear attack, rather than "play possum" as you should do with a grizzly attack. So, how to fight back? While out for a run?

Enter the Gerber LMF II Infantry Knife... relatively small, but plenty tough, a well placed shot between a bear's shoulder blades would do the trick if worse really turned to worst.

This is my knife, there are many like it, but this one is mine... I've added some 550 cord around the sheath, because I'm a complete and utter 550 cord geek... love the stuff. Combined with duct tape, it's hard to imagine a fastening job that couldn't be done with panache.

So I decided to try it out... I put a carabiner on the sheath for easy attachment to my shorts, and just shoved it in a pocket. Today I walked/ran 2.4 km, with the knife, and it didn't really bother me at all... so it will now be a permanent addition to my regular walk/run routine.

Not to say I'm going to go out and antagonize a bear into attacking me... nay nay! This is just for that amazingly slim chance that I'll ever, ever, ever get attacked by any kind of animal while out on my little course, and in particular, by a bear. But, a little preparedness never hurt anyone, I say.

Oh, almost forgot... in the 2.4 km I did today, a full 1 km was done at a jog! I actually ran a whole kilometer... brings tears to the eyes... and I sprinted the last 40m just for fun. I had mostly given up hope that I would ever use the concepts of "running" and "fun" in the same sentence... but here we are.

End of Week 1

Well, the first week ended on a high... Walk/ran the course last Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and then again today, Sunday. Those three days (S, W, F) will work as something I can do week to week, which means it will be easier to keep up with the program.

So, the big excitement for me was getting a sub-three minute... 400m! Haha... It's nice that the "progress" can be mixed so effectively with "humility." But, progress is progress... I also added a bit more distance during the Friday walk/run, and changed the order to alternate walking and running each 400m loop, which I duplicated today.

The other thing I'm incorporating doing the walk/run on an empty stomach (e.g., see this article). One of the things I learned in long distance bicycling is that I'm usually good for about an hour of endurance work before I need to eat something. Since none of my walk/runs are going to push that time, there doesn't seem to be the need to worry about carrying water or eating before hand. Apparently, by working with low blood sugar, the body is encouraged to dig into fat burning mode... and this is a very, very good thing.

Lap Times
Loop 1 (walk) : 4:26.2
Loop 2 (jog) : 3:11.2
Loop 3 (walk) : 4:35.2
Loop 4 (jog) : 2:59.8       Woo hoo!
Loop 5 (walk) : 5:06.5

Total distance: 2 km, Total time: 20:19.8, Best mile: 15:12.4
Weekly weigh-in: 326 pounds
Average power: 602 Watts

Power Calculations

Power is the term we use to describe the rate at which energy is used. Or equivalently, it is the rate at which work is done (in this case, work means mechanical work, gravitational work, etc.).

You hear all the time about power settings on exercise equipment... Set the bike for 200 Watts, and so on. Well, that just means it's going to take a certain amount of energy on your part, spread out over some amount of time.

Mathematically, Power = Energy / Time. So, if you expend 100 Calories of energy over 1 hour of time, you would describe your average power output as 100 Calories per hour. I say "average" here because we're only interested in the TOTAL energy and the TOTAL time, not the instantaneous values (the values at a single moment).

However, Calories per hour is not a standard unit for power. We typically use the Watt to represent power, and just as you might purchase a 100 Watt light bulb, you can do 100 Watts of output on a walk, run, or bike. Or, just sitting around, too. But remember that TIME is part of the equation... the longer you spend expending some fixed amount of energy, the lower your power output would be. You end up dividing by a larger number, since time is in the denominator, so that makes sense.

So the standard unit is the Watt, and that is defined as 1 Joule per second. A Joule is the standard unit of energy. We're more used to thinking in terms of the Calorie, though, as a unit of energy. A banana has 100 Calories of chemical energy stored in it, for example. Well, one Calorie is the same as 4,200 Joules. So if I burn 200 Calories in 2 hours of exercise, then my average power is P = 200 C / 2 h  = 200 C * 4,200 J/C / 2 h * 3,600 s/h = 117 J/s = 117 Watts. As you can see, if I burned the same number of calories, but spread it out over 4 hours of exercise (by exercising less intensely, or by taking lots of breaks, or whatever), then my average power would be P = 58 Watts.

It turns out that lots of physiologists have done studies to figure out how many Calories we burn while walking and running. As you might expect, this depends on your weight... great. It turns out that running burns 0.63 * Weight (in pounds) number of Calories per mile, while walking burns 0.3 * Weight (in pounds).

I should mention that the values above are to calculate your NET Calories burned... meaning, those above and beyond your Base Metabolic Rate (BMR) Calories.

So, if you weight 100 pounds, you'll burn roughly 63 Calories per mile while running, and 30 Calories per mile while walking. This is for "medium" speeds (3-4 mph walking, for example).

Using all this information, and given my current weight of 326 pounds, by doing three walking loops and one running loop (for a total of one mile), I burn 0.75 * (0.3 * 326) + 0.25 * (0.63 * 326) = 125 Calories. Now, the faster I do that mile, the greater my average power output must be. Since I only time myself once a week, and I've only been doing this a week... I'll use my first set of times. My total exercise time was 17:08, or 0.28566 hours.

Therefore, I burn 125 Calories / 0.28566 hours = 436.6 Calories per hour. Converting this to standard units (remember 1 Calorie = 4,200 Joules, and 1 hours = 3,600 seconds) yields: 509 Watts.

My average power output is 509 Watts over the 17 minutes it takes me to do my mile.

What should be obvious is that since I'm capable of maintaining 509 Watts over 17 minutes, as I loose weight, I should be able to see improvements in my times, even if my fitness doesn't improve at all. Simply by weighing less, I could go much faster... If I weighed 200 pounds, I'd only need 77 Calories to go a mile, then my 509 Watts would get me around the course in 10:31. Now, that's still not really a world class mile time... but in reality my fitness (and therefore my ability to generate a larger average power output) will be increasing as well, so by the time I've lost all that weight my average power might be closer to 750 Watts, which would give me a mile time of 7:08. Still not world class, but that would be damn acceptable to me!

Dark Matters

One of the things I learned in the Marines was what we called "night movement." Of course, back in the 1990's, when I was in the Corps, the kinds of night vision devices in use today were much less common. Instead, we simply learned to place our feet carefully and keep our biological night vision strong.

I remember one particular training evolution down in Georgia... my Fire Team was tasked with moving quickly, quietly, and with violent purpose up the flank of a suspected enemy scouting party. It was probably close to midnight when we slipped into the trees to parallel the road under full cover of both night and the forest. Somehow, though, we got disoriented and ended up bypassing the scouting party and continuing deep into the Georgia woods... After several misadventures, we made it (finally) back to our company's position by 06:30 or so. Our Fire Team leader was forever known, after that night, as Corporal Compass.

So, why tell that story? Because tonight I got home later than I wanted to, but felt the need to get out on the course for some walk/jog time... The sun was fully down, and I'd say we were well into dusk, if not the tail end of dusk when I set out on the course. I had a small flashlight in my pocket, but I found that my night vision came in pretty well, aided by a fat waxing gibbous moon. I did a walk loop, a jog loop, then two more walk loops. It felt good, actually... I never felt like I would lose my footing, although I did get smacked in the face a couple times by low hanging pine and spruce twigs.

The nice thing was that my run felt a little stronger than the last time... not faster necessarily, but I didn't have to stop on the steep part! These are the "mini victories" that I need to stay motivated, so it's important to find them whenever I can.

Wooden Shoe Like to Know!

Ah, shoes.

My wife has unfortunately caught onto my fascination with shoes. As I sit on the side of the bed, taking off my shoes for the night, I will occasionally pause, shoe in hand, and stare. She'll ask, "What are you doing? Are you pretending rocket ships again?" And it's true... the sleek oblong-ness of a well made shoe seems, to me, as if it were meant to be a Space Cruiser, speeding to Aldebaran with a load of emergency supplies and the 4th Marine Expeditionary Force... meant to bring relief to the beleaguered pioneers on humanity's most distant space colony.

Shoes are meant to hold things. Of course, those things are our feet, not the 4th MEF. But my feet are pretty messed up... they started very flat, and only went down hill during my time in the Infantry... so it's hard to find just the right shoes to make anything comfortable. I believe I have finally found such shoes, thanks to the good folks at New Balance and their willingness to produce 4E widths!

Behold, the size 12 width 4E MT910... Things of beauty.

Photo by me, MT910 Trail Shoes on Woodpile

These bad boys are trail shoes, so they're meant to be a little more rugged, which is a plus for the plus sized gentleman about town. They are the perfect width; my feet don't spill over the inserts one bit! (That's the quickest way to tell if a pair of shoes will fit: pull out the inserts and stand on them...  if the edges of your feet go beyond the insert, the shoes are too narrow).

They even perfectly fit the orthotics I just received from the VA, little miracles in themselves... they're carbon fiber with a shallowed area under the second metatarsal joints to provide relief for some nerve damage I acquired in the Marines. Plus, there's a carbon fiber "rib" that runs the length of the orthotic up under the big toe area to support pushing off from that joint (and therefore reduce the chance of gout). They're pretty effing high tech, and they match the shoes brilliantly.

No, by the way, I don't work for New Balance... :) I'm just lucky to live near a factory store, so fine pieces of footwear can be had at a discount.

So, if these shoes don't help me work up to 5K, no shoes ever will. We're off to Aldebaran! OoRah!

New Course and First Run!

We live out in rural western Maine... I know, I'm repeating myself there. Notwithstanding, we live on a dead-end dirt road on old farmland. We pasture the horse and two ponies up in a couple acres of meadow. We're building a new barn. We're surrounded by pine, spruce, birch, ash, and maple. The occasional stand of black locust trees make great fence posts...

The point is that I have very easy access to the woods, and therefore, to running trails. A neighbor has been allowed to put 4-wheeler trails all over the place, so I figured the fastest way to set up a simple running course would be to leverage what he has already done, coupled with the horseback riding trails I cut this year for my daughter.

I now have a lovely 400 meter "loop" marked off in 100m intervals. Because I'm newly returning to this running thing, I figured I shouldn't jump full force back into it, injure myself, then give it up and have nothing to do with these cool new trail running shoes...

The loop leaves our property, near the west end of the new barn, and heads into a stand of pine. Going up a light rise, it proceeds through a bunch of scrub (cleared for horseback riding) and brush, but then turns through a small opening at the edge of a large field and heads into maple-land. Downhill for the next 100m, with a rocky left turn, bending back through small poplar. Finally, there's a steep-ish climb in the last 20m toward the final marker.

Today is a crisp fall day, the ground is softened by maple and birch leaves, and I did four turns around my loop, for a total of one mile (1.6 km). I walked the first three, then ran the final 400m.

Okay, a one-mile walk/run is not the Boston Marathon... I know this. But it's my starting point, and I'm oddly happy to be here.

Lap times:
Loop 1 (walk): 4:48.0
Loop 2 (walk): 4:40.3
Loop 3 (walk): 4:32.9
Loop 4 (jog): 3:07.3

Total distance: 1.6 km, Total time: 17:08.5, Best mile: 17:08.5

Nice. A seventeen minute mile... :( Haha! Well, here we go! Hard to get worse than that, so I guess improvement is inevitable.

The plan is to slowly add additional loops and to slowly change the walk:jog ratio. The goal is to get back up to a three mile (5K) run, which is 12 loops on my little, wooded course.

W minus 100 and Counting

Here are some fun fact numbers: 42, 326, 100, 1996.

The last time I ran in any way was 1996, at my final Marine Corps PFT. My three-mile time was 21:10. Not terribly impressive, but wait...

I'm now 42, and really, really need to drop about 100 pounds from my current 326. Yikes.

It shouldn't have gotten to this point, I know... I did Nordic skiing in high school, fencing in college, all the sundry physical activities that US Marines do, rode my bike from Maine to California in 1995... I have the ability to do aerobic work. What I lack is the internal motivation to do it any more.

So, a couple guys at work started running recently (one fellow who ran XC in his past, one fellow who never really ran), and I found myself wondering what was keeping me from doing it again. One of the problems of not being stupid is that you get good at rationalizing. I can come up with very good excuses very quickly... bad knees, sore feet, painful back, too tired, didn't eat right this morning, too hot, too cold, solar flares, the moon isn't in Taurus for Christ's sake how am I supposed to go exercise?!?

Well excuses be damned. I went down to New Balance, got a pair of trail running shoes (they had the MT910 in 4E width... so there goes the sore feet excuse), and began running... WILL begin running...

As soon as I set up a course.