June 2008 Archives
Fate or Fitness?
Russert: No guarantees
I was back in the gym last night for a pretty rigorous, fast-paced workout: 10 miles on the bike (average heart rate of 114) and a good half-hour of upper body and (a little) ab work on the machines. Worked up a pretty good sweat. Felt pretty good about myself.
Then, this morning, I stumbled across a piece in The New York Times that was trying to explain the sudden heart attack that killed NBC political guru Tim Russert, a guy who had apparently shown no symptoms of heart disease and then simply keeled over and died at his desk.
As Denise Grady explains, Russert's death has raised serious questions about the efficacy of heart disease treatment options. The 58-year-old Russert was taking drugs to lower his blood pressure and cholesterol, rode an exercise bike regularly, had annual stress tests and was doing his best to lose weight. All these behaviors seemed to be working; according to his doctor, Russert had about a 5 percent chance of dying of a heart attack in the next 10 years.
So much for those odds....
Now, of course, anyone who's been seeing their doctor regularly and who's been doing what they think they should be doing to prevent cardiac arrest is going to start wondering whether they're just wasting their time and ought to just get back to eating donuts and fried chicken like they used to do because they like donuts and fried chicken a lot more than they like to exercise. I mean, a lot of good all that stuff did Tim Russert, right?
Doctors like to point out in cases like this that medicine is not an exact science; you can do everything your doctor tells you to do to stay healthy and you're still going to die at some point -- maybe tomorrow, even if you've got important stuff to do. There are no guarantees.
Every one of my father's siblings suffered a heart attack at some point in their lives. Most of them died. A couple of them, like my dad, survived the heart attack and succumbed later to cancer.
So, I'm pretty well-versed in this whole heart disease thing. And even though none of my siblings have keeled over from myocardial infarction yet, we're not taking anything for granted. We've all given up smoking (except my little brother, who's just stubborn) and everybody seems to be getting at least a little exercise from time to time, and we all know a lot more about healthy eating than my dad did back in the '50s.
A friend of mine likes to point out that you can eat well, get plenty of exercise, live a low-stress lifestyle ... and then get hit by a bus while crossing the street to get to your yoga class. And she's right. There are no guarantees. Maybe Russert would've died five years ago if he hadn't started exercising and taking drugs to lower his blood pressure, etc. Or maybe not.
My grandfather lived to be 93 and he smoked a cigar everyday and liked to drink whiskey and favored rocking chairs over exercise bikes.
So, you never know.
I'm about a year younger than Russert was at his death, and I'm doing everything I can to keep myself vertical for the long haul. But, it's not really about avoiding the Grim Reaper, who we all know lurks around every corner and can maybe pluck us out of this earthly realm pretty much whenever he chooses (who really knows?). It's about feeling good right here, right now.
After all, that's all we've got, isn't it?
Swimming Upstream
I've been comparing notes recently with Hodding Carter, the 45-year-old writer whose new book, Off the Deep End, chronicles his manic pursuit of a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic swimming team.
Carter, who 20 years earlier won Division III All-America honors for his alma mater, Kenyon College, uses his pursuit of Olympic glory as a vehicle to escape a nasty mid-life crisis.
It's an insightful and often hilarious read, and it contains some lessons for geezers who turn to exercise as a way to relive/revive their former athletic prowess.
Primary among these lessons would be the following:
• Don't blow up your marriage while you're trying to rebuild your body/self-esteem. Carter has no sense of balance -- he's all about full-on training and he treats his wife and three kids like they're obstacles between himself and his fitness goals. This is not a good idea.
• Don't live in the past. In his obsessive drive to cut his time in the 50 freestyle by two seconds, he actually goes back to Kenyon and lives in the dorm and trains with his old coach. Not surprisingly, he finds he doesn't fit in very well.
• Don't assume that just because you're trying harder, your performance will improve. On multiple occasions in his quest, Carter clearly is overtraining -- and it shows. In one classic anecdote, he arrives at a regional masters swimming meet feeling better than he's felt in years, and finishes last to a bunch of guys even older then he is.
The good news is that Carter eventually gets it -- not the spot on the Olympic team (the trials are looming as the book ends), but the real reason why he began his quest. At one point, he's offered the job of coaching young swimmers at his local YMCA. He takes the gig because he figures it will give him more pool time (and he really needs the money), then gradually realizes that maybe he's found a niche that allows him to embrace swimming in his middle years.
All three of his kids are swimmers suddenly under his clumsy wing, but he finds that their interest in the sport mirrors his own. And maybe that's enough.
At the state meet, he writes how his youngest, Eliza, beams after swimming her fastest time. "[It] . . . made me realize the weekend wasn't only about the drudgery and unending chaos. I'd been enjoying the days' races but Eliza's happiness made everything complete. I felt blessed to have three of my own kids deriving joy from the same sport that had been, and still was, such a large part of my life."
It's a sweet moment in an often cynical chronicle, and it reminds me that my own fitness quest could actually use a goal or two (I know, I know. . . You told me so.), but I refuse to pretend that I'm going to suddenly get back out on the asphalt and go one-on-one with some twentysomething who would break my ankles with his first killer crossover.
I'd love to be able to play hoops again, but I have no interest in reconstructive surgery.
What Carter learned throughout his quest, and I what I ought to someday admit, is that a little guidance isn't a bad thing. He sought out coaches and like-minded athletes; it probably wouldn't hurt me to do the same.
A Presidential Moment
I've been riding my bike into work recently, but today, which promises thundershowers after work, I decided to hoof it. My lovely wife will drive me home after the gym if the forecast holds true.
I had almost forgotten how delightful it is to walk. Indeed, a couple of blocks into my trek, I realized that I'd almost forgotten how to walk. My gait was uneven and I actually felt a bit off-balance as I navigated the sidewalk and curbs on my way to the park. I was trying to slow down and enjoy the sights and sounds of the morning, but it seemed like my legs wanted to move at a faster pace than my eyes and ears.
Anyway, by the time I crossed Hiawatha Avenue and entered the park, I had settled into a pleasing rhythm. The falls loomed near, and I was curious to see how high the creek would be after all the rain of recent days.
Normally, I can hear the falls by the time I enter the park -- maybe 50 yards away -- but today the rushing water was drowned out by some ear-splitting mechanical noise coming from somewhere beyond the creek. So, my moment of quiet contemplation at the falls (at the spot where President Lyndon Johnson stood in 1964; his shoe prints are in the cement -- really) became more of a micro-moment.
Until I realized that my calves were tightening up.
This is the thing that always kills me when I try to run (well, that and my recalcitrant left knee), and I try to remedy it by stretching it out. So, there I am: standing in LBJ's footprints overlooking majestic Minnehaha Falls, 100 decibels of industrial noise destroying my already poor hearing, leaning into the rock wall to stretch my calves.
I'm never sure how to stretch most parts of my aging body, but I generally am able to loosen my calf muscles with very little effort. Apparently, they get tight because of micro-tears in the muscle, which inhibits blood flow.
Anyway, they feel fine by the time I leave LBJ's little square of concrete, though my ears are still ringing from whatever machine was making all that racket. Don't these people have any respect for the urban wilderness experience???
(Wilderness addendum: I saw two caterpillars on the asphalt path in the park and a Cooper's Hawk soaring over the river, a perfect blend of the pedestrian and the glorious.)
The Heart of the Matter
I'm getting more accustomed to the new machines at the gym, so I can't use that as an excuse for blowing off my workouts until recently (Monday). I did play 18 holes of completely humiliating golf last week, and I've been on my bicycle some, but I have to say I'm kind of out of my preferred routine.
I hope to be back among the sweaty machines (sweating machines?) tomorrow. Meanwhile, I've been a bit vexed about my seeming inability to quickly ramp up my heart rate on these machines. The other day, I climbed on the Elliptical Death Machine and dialed up the "interval" workout. So, I was shuffling uphill at a pretty good clip. Five minutes passed, and my heart rate was still mired in the 80s. Ten minutes passed, and I was barely hitting triple digits. I had to get a good 20 minutes into my routine before I was in the neighborhood of 120-130, which is where I think I'm supposed to be in order to get the most benefit from all this flailing around.
I'm thinking that it's a good thing that I'm not out of breath right away, but I'm not sure, so I check in with SW, my fitness guru, who says that, indeed, if it takes awhile to get to that sweet spot, it's a sign that I'm in pretty good shape. Plus, he adds, it's a good idea to take my time ramping up the old ticker, because my body and heart need to adjust to the work they're being called upon to do.
The real value of all this heart-rate stuff, says Fernando Pages Ruiz in this 2005 piece in Experience Life, is to use it to guide you through your workouts and on to your specific fitness goals. If I was trying to lose weight, for instance, (ha ha...) I'd exercise in the range of my aerobic threshold (114 to 124). Above that point, Ruiz explains, my body would stop burning fat and start burning carbs.
I'm really not trying to lose weight (I do seem to be holding steady about 162; maybe I could stand to get a bit leaner. . .), but I am trying to gain muscle mass. (That's another story.) So, it appears I need to be a little more strategic.
Of course, that would mean I'd have to have some goals.
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