The old running guys

This has been a week to think about growing old.  I'm not talking about myself, at present anyway, despite an aching knee and limited mobility.  Considering that I won't have a "real" job for about a year and a half, I feel young and ready to get started.  That aching knee will be healed in another few months, if I play my cards right now.  What I mean is that a series of coincidences in reading and observing have made really think about aging, both in terms of the future and in terms of how those thoughts might change my present actions. 

In my neigborhood there are a group of men -- old men -- who seem to be out running constantly.  One is so thin and his skin so slack that he is nearly cadaveric.  He runs every day, shirtless in the summer, wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt at other times.  I see him walking with his wife and dog at other times, and he seems to be enjoying himself although I've never seen him smile.  Another lives only a few houses down, not so thin, but is even more dedicated.  He shuffles, hunched over, for hours at a time.  He often runs with his son, who slows his pace to allow the father to keep up.  He's not so old, perhaps, but he runs like it, so in this context it counts.  There is a white-bearded man whom I see less frequently, because he lives in a different part of the neighborhood.  He seems really old, and although his gait is steadier and stronger than the other two, his muscles hang from the bones.  You can see traces of what must have been a strong frame.  There is the still-very-fit but aging man who runs bolt upright with a dog tag on.  His flesh is in no way slack, and  I would like to have him on my side in a fight, if the idea of me in a fight weren't so patently ridiculous.  Finally, there are dozens of other old men who run in and around my neighborhood, whom I don't know but I'm sure have running stories just the same.


I read a fantastic article in the New Yorker (the link is not to the article but to a poorly written "abstract" of it), an essay by the poet Donald Hall, as he considered his own aging from his armchair looking out of his window.  I also came across a great how-to-live-your-life-from-the-perspective-of-the-deathbed essay by way of a Facebook posting.  The subject is trite but I was touched.  It wasn't about aging, per se, but was about the regrets that people have before they die.  Aging is a bit of a foreign territory for me; although I am a physician and have helped people through the processes of aging and dying, the vast majority of my training and experience are with children.  I suppose as anyone's parents age this becomes a little more familiar, but for me it is only just starting to really seep into my everyday consciousness.

Where does this leave me?  Certainly not thinking about mortality yet, but thinking a little bit more acutely about how I want to live life.  As my faithful readers will know, creating and inhabiting a home has been at the forefront of my mind, especially as we (my wife and I) are still recovering from too many moves in too short a period, and as our children grow into personhood and develop their own sense of home.  I realized today in the car that up until now I have been framing this as a question of living in the present -- i.e. if I could only live in the present more fully, none of the moving around and uncertainty about the future would matter so much.  But perhaps I should frame it in the opposite way:  I am focusing so much about living in the present that I lose sight of thinking about the future in a meaningful way.  Watching the old men run brings the future back into focus, for a time.

Life from the couch

It has been a week since my knee surgery. The operation went pretty much as planned (I will scan and post photos sometime soon), with some degeneration but no actual tear of my meniscus. The whole problem was that the meniscus was abnormally shaped to begin with ("discoid" - a flat disk rather than a wedge or saucer shape), leaving it more susceptible to injury and more biomechanically abnormal than most. Could this explain the longstanding pattern of right-sided injuries in my past?

In any case, I have progressed from spending most of the day on my couch with occasional crutch forays about the house, to spending most of the day at work with plenty of couch time at home and occasional walking without crutches. It is a bit of a struggle to keep the knee rested when not doing PT, but frequent icing and elevation have helped. It is satisfying to have tangible and daily progress in how much I am able to do and tolerate, although the slow and incremental nature of the progress makes it very hard to picture a return to "normal" activity. As a friend said to me yesterday, though, I do have the rest of my life...

The side benefit of being less active at home is twofold. First, I have had some of the most pleasurable reading time in recent years, including a bicycle repair manual, journal articles for work, and luxuriously long New Yorker articles on random topics. I have to grudgingly admit that there has been some attenuation of my attention span due to Facebook, Twitter, the iPhone, and other information streams; so now it is nice to be able to (or really, to be unable to do anything but) read. Second, the current situation has opened up new ways of interacting with my children. Today we spent some truly fun time just lounging on the couch and watching a movie together. Less fun is when the three of them squeal as they run off with my crutches, brace, ace bandages, ice packs, etc.; even so I secretly revel in being able to watch them have so much fun.

Finally, I have to point out how generous, caring, and wonderful my wife has been through the process. The first few days after surgery I could do almost nothing, so I got to be there for whole days to watch and listen to Jess as a mother: a patient, creative, effective, and energetic parent. This, in addition to taking care of a fourth "child" who just happens to be her poor postoperative husband.

Not exercising is a challenge, but the longer I am able to make peace with limitations now, the sooner I will be back out there.

Retrospective and Resolutions

I conceived of this post as a 2011 retrospective, with some 2012 resolutions thrown in.  Having looked back on the year through iPhoto, Facebook timeline, and this blog, I came away with a few surprises and a few memories.  Current state probably influences memory more than the past events themselves, so I will say that after a wonderful few days at home, a great afternoon, and a cold beer in the backyard while the kids played, the year's memories seem pretty darn good.  I don't think that's far from the truth.

As far as fitness goes, this was an odd year.  My knee has been "acting up" since October 2010 (and was probably injured about a year before that), so my running has been just weird.  I had a good training cycle through the fall of 2010 despite the knee, and this paid off big time in February 2011 with a P.R. marathon here in town.  Running since then has been spotty, and I am in fact having surgery on my right lateral meniscus in three days.  I do think there is a good chance it will help, and look forward the the post-rehab "Don't call it a comeback..."  The beauty of an injury, in truth, is that it helps you focus on other things.  In no particular order, I have spent a lot of time on yoga, lifting, and road biking.  A highlight of the year was traveling to Georgia with my good friend Gary and riding the Three Gap Fifty, the mini-version of the Six Gap Century.  Yoga has acted as a semi-spiritual bridge between working out and meditation (a need previously fulfilled by running).  Lifting continues to feel good.  Currently, I have also sprained my right wrist, so all my activities are limited, but that, too, has its place and time.

Food has been another focus of the year.  As with most of us, I have been trying to get ride of that "last" 5 or 10 pounds for quite a while -- don't worry, I don't think I'm fat, but I know my weight and body shape when I've been really fit.  After some unsuccessful and perhaps fairly insincere attempts to eat better or less, I finally gave the "Paleo" concept a try, and holy shit, it worked.  For six weeks, six days a week, I ate only meat, vegetables, fruit, beans, and nuts/seeds.  Beer was allowed.  The seventh day was "cheat day."  By the end of the six weeks I had lost 7-8 pounds, was fitting into pants I haven't worn since 2004, and definitely noticed an improvement in energy level.  I try very hard to avoid proselytizing diets (or anything, for that matter), and I am still working to integrate this into my everyday, permanent life -- perhaps cycling the diet for six weeks on and two weeks off -- but it has been quite a good thing for me at this time.

Although this has been primarily a "fitness" blog - a little more varied than in 2010 since I haven't been able to run much, there are more important things in life than fitness.  What else has happened this year?  I continue to enjoy and treasure my family - my wife and our three children - as we grow and develop a sense of internal home-ness. Slowly but surely we are moving forward from the utter shock (and awe) of raising young children after a fairly active and free single and early married life.  We are fortunate to be living near my parents, and to be involved in a wonderful church (not coincidentally, the church I grew up in).  It has been challenging to continue moving around while I complete (slog through?) medical training:  challenging to develop a true feeling of home, challenging to nurture friendships and relationships, andchallenging to feel settled.  We do have wonderful friends here, wonderful friends elsewhere, and a large and loving extended family.

Our major vacation this summer was a long road trip to visit old friends and see family, and it was a true highlight of the year.  This was actually an awakening to what adventures we are capable of in this (still) new phase of life.  While the road trip may have been a crystallizing event, gardening has been the slow-burn, everyday reminder of family togetherness, growth, creativity, and fun.  We are fortunate in Florida to have two growing seasons per year, and although the productivity may not have been high, it has been a tonic to prepare the earth and plant with the children, to eat fresh herbs every night with dinner, and to go and inspect the rows every evening.

Looking forward by first looking backward:  how did the resolutions for 2011 hold up (the first list was of general goals, the second list was fitness-related goals)?
1) Presence.
   --> sometimes2) Develop the less cynical, humbler, and less judgmental self.
  --> still needs to come out3) Meet Jess's needs and wants before my own.
  --> I hope this happened enough, but I want to make it happen much more.4) Garden and eat the food!
  --> Yes!!

1) Maintain consistently healthful diet - devise a sustainable way to deal with temptations, convenience, etc.

  --> Finally, yes.

     - This includes reducing caffeine intake to a reasonable level.

          --> A cruel joke.
2) Regular yoga to lead to meditation alone.

  --> Not yet, but working on it.
3) Real periodization of training. (i.e. approach it like real training!)

  --> Some success

3) Regular cycling and leg strength training to begin after February marathon, to prevent recurrence of knee injury

  --> Happening

4) Regular speed/tempo training (running).

  --> For the future.

6) Repeat p90x with Jess!! (Start date: mid-March)

  --> Not interested for now.

7) Plan +/- train for ultramarathons to progress to 100 mile run.

  --> For the future

8) Less drama about getting up for pre-dawn workouts - just do it.

  --> Unsuccessful.

So what about 2012 resolutions?  Here is what I had come up with as of New Year's Eve:
1. Bike to work consistently.
2. Less caffeine.
3. Regular time of day for exercise.
4. Focus on injury prevention
5. Tolerate more "chaos" at home -- a combination of being present and controlling anxiety!
6. Continue cycled paleo diet.
7. Make a career decision (i.e. get a job versus further training) and don't look back.


But, just today I saw that a friend had posted Woody Guthrie's 1942 New Years Resolutions, which summarize the heart of the matter far better.  So, I leave you with that.