Off Their Rockers

This just in from Bob Mionske’s “Legally Speaking” on cycling website Velo News. Minoske got it from Andy Cline’s piece (”Two-Wheeled Wonder”) in Sierra Magazine, March/April 2008. It’s not for the over-50 crowd, specifically, but great for everybody with a bike, so I’m passing it along:

What if there was something you could do to improve your health and fitness, save money, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality, and reduce your carbon footprint, all at the same time—would you do it?

The idea is simple…Draw a circle with a 1-mile radius around your home. Try to replace one car trip per week within that circle by riding a bicycle or walking. At an easy riding pace you can travel one mile on a bicycle in about seven minutes. Walking takes about 20 minutes at an easy pace.

As Cline writes: “nearly half of all trips in the United States are three miles or less; more than a quarter are less than a mile” Short car trips are the easiest to replace with biking or walking, and they are the biggest polluters, per mile: “Engines running cold produce four times the carbon monoxide and twice the volatile organic compounds of engines running hot. Smog-forming (and carcinogenic) VOCs continue to evaporate from an engine until it cools off, whether the engine’s been running for five minutes or five hours.

Cline cites a recent study: “the transportation sector accounts for about one-third of all human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. Within that sector, travel by personal vehicles accounts for nearly two-thirds of those emissions.”

Try the one-mile solution a few times, Cline hopes, you’ll soon be biking or walking to the store twice a week, then ditching your car for most of your trips inside the circle.

Source: VeloNews.com

 

In case you missed it in Sports Illustrated, the latest “too old to be doing this” is doing it anyway: Ken Mink. At 73, he’s the oldest hoopster in college basketball—if that’s not a record, then George Burns didn’t play God. Mink reminds me of Mike Flynt, kicked off his college football team for brawling—what to you expect from a linebacker?

Flynt quit school, bided his time, returned to Sul Ross State 37 years later, tried out for his old position and got it back at 59. He played the whole season (2007) under a coach eight years his junior, all his teammates younger than his own kids. 

Ken Mink, like Flynt, had a gnawing sense of unfinished business, and a bad rap he waited a half-century to make up for. Back in his ancient history, Mink was booted from the basketball team and kicked out of college, for two offensive fouls: soaping the coach’s desk and squirting shave cream in his shoes. He pleaded innocent—still pleads innocent, telling SI: “I wasn’t above pulling a joke, but they had the wrong man on that one.”

He got on with life (newspaper reporter, editor, three grown children), played neighborhood hoops along the way; then, at 72, out on the faux court in the driveway, made 20 three-point swishes in a row. It all came back to him, jock star interrupted, so he emailed a bunch of colleges—seasoned player seeks team—got one offer, Roane State, and took it. Now he’s a celebrity on the court, the six-footer, 192 pounds, with the white hair, the “blow-out specialist” and the Raiders’ “twelfth man” brought into games where the outcome is no longer in doubt. On the rare occasion when he scores, via free throw, the crowd erupts, and the screenwriters keep calling.

The latest thing you thought was good for you, debunked. Stretching. Article from NY Times (Gretchen Reynolds, 10/31/2008) cites various medical sources who say the usual warm-up routines can leave you worse off than if you did stood around and did nothing. Take a short jog, hip-hop around, crawl on all fours and do a spider jig—anything to warm up your cold quads, glutes, etc., will help you in whatever race, game, etc., you’re about to enter.

The popular  “static stretch”, where you reach down or across and hold a pose, does the opposite, making you 30% weaker, on average, if you believe the experts cited here. My favorite, putting a straight leg on the bumper of the car and leaning forward until my hamstrings complain, is a no-no, and may explain why I’m not winning more time-trials on the bike. A good excuse, anyway.

Here’s an excerpt from the Reynolds’ piece:

A well-designed warm-up starts by increasing body heat and blood flow. Warm muscles and dilated blood vessels pull oxygen from the bloodstream more efficiently and use stored muscle fuel more effectively. They also withstand loads better. One significant if gruesome study found that the leg-muscle tissue of laboratory rabbits could be stretched farther before ripping if it had been electronically stimulated — that is, warmed up.

To raise the body’s temperature, a warm-up must begin with aerobic activity, usually light jogging. Most coaches and athletes have known this for years. That’s why tennis players run around the court four or five times before a match and marathoners stride in front of the starting line. But many athletes do this portion of their warm-up too intensely or too early. A 2002 study of collegiate volleyball players found that those who’d warmed up and then sat on the bench for 30 minutes had lower backs that were stiffer than they had been before the warm-up. And a number of recent studies have demonstrated that an overly vigorous aerobic warm-up simply makes you tired. Most experts advise starting your warm-up jog at about 40 percent of your maximum heart rate (a very easy pace) and progressing to about 60 percent. The aerobic warm-up should take only 5 to 10 minutes, with a 5-minute recovery. (Sprinters require longer warm-ups, because the loads exerted on their muscles are so extreme.)…

While static stretching is still almost universally practiced among amateur athletes — watch your child’s soccer team next weekend — it doesn’t improve the muscles’ ability to perform with more power, physiologists now agree. “You may feel as if you’re able to stretch farther after holding a stretch for 30 seconds,” McHugh says, “so you think you’ve increased that muscle’s readiness.” But typically you’ve increased only your mental tolerance for the discomfort of the stretch. The muscle is actually weaker.

Stretching muscles while moving, on the other hand, a technique known as dynamic stretching or dynamic warm-ups, increases power, flexibility and range of motion. Muscles in motion don’t experience that insidious inhibitory response. They instead get what McHugh calls “an excitatory message” to perform.

Dynamic stretching is at its most effective when it’s relatively sports specific. “You need range-of-motion exercises that activate all of the joints and connective tissue that will be needed for the task ahead,” says Terrence Mahon, a coach with Team Running USA, home to the Olympic marathoners Ryan Hall and Deena Kastor. For runners, an ideal warm-up might include squats, lunges and “form drills” like kicking your buttocks with your heels. Athletes who need to move rapidly in different directions, like soccer, tennis or basketball players, should do dynamic stretches that involve many parts of the body. “Spider-Man” is a particularly good drill: drop onto all fours and crawl the width of the court, as if you were climbing a wall. 

The NY Times weighed in on “older-than-usual” Olympians: some medal winners, some looking ahead to London, 2112. Dara Torres’ exploits well-publicized, and 41 is too young for Offtheirrockers. Same for Constantina Tomescu-Dita, oldest women’s marathon winner, at 38. Ivan Millar qualifies at 61, won silver on horseback for Canada’s equestrians. My first reaction was “big deal, he was sitting on a horse”, but balance, focus, eye-rein coordination favors youth, amazing he’s on top of the game at his age.

 Jeannie Longo-Ciprelli, a tad shy of 50 (49) deserves mention for her fourth-place finish in time-trial racing: going full-speed on a bike, and beating most of the world’s best half her age, there’s a big deal for her and for France.

Israel’s Haile Satayin, 48 or 53, depending on which ID you believe, came in 69th in the marathon, not too bad when you clock in at 2:30.07 and the 68 in front of you are the world’s best, plus you’ve got an injured leg. 

Times’ piece by Tara-Parker Pope. 8/25/2008

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/golden-and-silver-oldies-at-the-olympics/#more-503

We’ve got John McCain falling for the spectacled seductress with the sten gun (not that there’s anything wrong with that). The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker just outed her own husband, “75-year-old scholar and raconteur”, who confessed he was hot for Sarah, making a strong case for old McWarrior having the same hots. Not acting on the hots–just basking in the google eyes (before there was Google)–in McWarrior’s case, hanging on every Palindrone, ageless ploys for which aged men are eternally susceptible. Lately, with vigorous males living longer, more examples of the old guys and young steam clouding their judgment. Warren Buffett and his bomb biography, I’d heard Fortune’s talented Carol Loomis was in line for the ghost write, instead he opted for the comelier, fleshier Alice Schroeder. Result: flop. McCain result: looking floppy. Heard Boone Pickens on his windmill/natural gas lecture tour a couple of months ago, his new trophy stunner in tow. Not that she’s on Boone’s mind much, but he mentioned her almost as much as the energy crisis. So far, no harm in that, except since that meeting, he’s lost billions on his energy bets–what if the windmills are Quixote windmills, part of the courtship?

History is full of men wrecking themselves on the sirens’ landings, but lately it’s distinguished ancients with waning testosterone, or maybe not so waning.  Something to think about, as we keep up our athletics, and feel younger and friskier.

By Nancy Clark, MS RD CSSD 

The new federal “physical activity guidelines for Americans” apply to everybody—old, young, both sexes. This is unusual: most fitness campaigns, going back to the ancients, were inspired by war and designed to toughen up male warriors.

Two famous initiatives launched by Presidents Kennedy and Wilson had a military motive. The egg-headed Wilson did calisthenics in the White House, as prescribed in  “Keeping Fit All the Way”, written by Yale’s high-profile football coach, Walter Camp. Camp’s book became a national bestseller and the basis for Wilson’s campaign to shape up America—GIs in particular.

A study from 1919 concluded that 90 per cent of the would-be recruits couldn’t pass the physical. Wilson’s priority after WWI: train the next generation of grunts for WWII. No mention of women in Camp’s how-to, fitness in the general population was an afterthought.

Kennedy, known for virility and touch football, was the only President to write for Sports Illustrated: two articles coaxing the country to cut the flab. His bad back kept him from heavy workouts—the non-amorous kind at least–but his hyperactive family burned a lot of calories. He created the Council on Fitness and challenged his staff and the nation to take a 50-mile hike. 

We remember him as the sportiest of leaders, but his fitness campaign had a Wilsonian subplot: toughen us up for the Russians so they didn’t get the better of us in space, the Cold War, or WWIII. Again, a male thing, though stronger biceps and abs wouldn’t count for much in a nuclear holocaust.

Europe has a much longer history of exercise crazes and sports programs with a military angle—the two most famous inspired by humiliating defeats. Friedrich Jahn, the “father of German gymnastics” traveled the country in the early 1800s, a Johnny Appleseed of exercise bars and floor mats. Jahn taught a generation of children to tumble and balance—prepping them for the Olympics, perhaps?

No chance of that, the Ancient Games were out of business since 394 A.D. Napoleonic backlash, not Greek revival, set Jahn on his manic mission: his country overrun by Napolean, he gymnified it to give the future defense department a better crop of recruits. 

Eighty years later, thanks to aggressive pestering by a civic-minded Parisian baron, Pierre Fredy, the Olympics were revived in 1896. As a global visionary, Fredy saw how friendly competition could promote understanding and international goodwill. As a Frenchman, still smarting from his country’s pathetic showing on the Franco-Prussian front, his subtle objective was to glamorize athletics to the French youth, so they’d improve their physiques and give the Army better raw material.

Going deeper into history, a society that promotes exercise for humanity’s sake is a rarity. Famous examples can fit into a couple of paragraphs: Yoga, conceived by Buddhist monks 5,000 years ago for discipline and meditation; Cong Fu gymnastics, promoted by Confucius and his followers as preventive medicine (Confucians noticed that sedentary types got sicker more readily than active types).

Athens, which franchised the world’s first physical trainers (paidotribes) and, for a time, touted fitness on Confucian principles; Hippocrates (Greek) and Galen (Roman) prescribed exercise for mental and corporeal health; Renaissance Italians, retro Greek in vogue, taught phys ed in schools; opinion makers from Luther to Locke, made the connection between sound bodies and sound minds.

Meanwhile, strong-arm civilizations come to a bad end–their ruling classes wining, dining, reclining—softening themselves up to be overrun by leaner, meaner foes. Low points for civilization (the Dark Ages) were high points for muscle tone and gritty conditioning among the conquering hordes. 

All the more reason to celebrate fitness for health’s sake, now popular worldwide—for how long, it’s hard to say.

Can somebody help me out with this? Looking over the over-50 world records for the mile, the marathon, and half-marathon, I see numerous records that have stood for years–more than a decade in some cases. As senior athletes get stronger and train smarter, records should fall accordingly. Or so goes the conventional wisdom.

Why hasn’t it happened here? Any track experts out there who can explain this?

Thanks

John R

BY MICHELLE KAUFMAN

Your 56-year-old mother tells you she plans to swim 2,100 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, from the Cape Verde Islands off the African coast to Barbados. She will swim behind a sailboat, in a giant cage to ward off sharks. She figures she’ll be in the water six to eight hours a day, which means it will take her just over two months to fulfill her mission.

She’ll dive in Dec. 1 and reach her destination sometime in early February 2009.

Your reaction?

If you’re race-car driver Alex Figge, you smile, shrug your shoulders, and say: “Way to go, Mom. Be careful out there. We’ll miss you at Christmas.”

Jennifer Figge has been doing multistage endurance events since her only son was in elementary school in Davenport, Iowa, so he was ”not shocked at all” when she told him of her latest intention. ”I know it sounds weird, but everyone in our family expects stuff like this from my mom,” said Alex, 27, who races in the LeMans series. “I’d be surprised if she wasn’t doing something extreme.”

Her first challenge was a 300-mile, 12-day run across Iowa in 1989. Alex’s third-grade teacher put up a map in the classroom that read: ”Where is Mrs. Figge today?” The children moved pushpins across the map to chart her course.

It would take many, many pushpins to chronicle Figge’s adventures since. She has run 400 miles across France, 350 miles across Romania, 450 miles across India, 576 miles across South America, 300 miles across Thailand (north to south), 300 miles across Iceland, and 180 miles across Mexico (the final 60 miles in a leg cast). She swam across the Straits of Gibralter, from Tahiti to Moorea, from Turkey to Greece, across the Cozumel Channel, and through the heads of Sydney Harbor. Last year, she battled eight-foot-swells as she swam 52 miles from Cay Sal Bank in the Bahamas to Marathon in the Keys.

In all, she has traversed more than 3,300 miles on land, and done roughly 25 channel crossings by sea. But nothing she has done compares with her latest endeavor, a stunt that, as far as anyone knows, has been conquered by only two people, and never by a woman.

http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/story/726223.html