My New Home

Three years of brain smashing and a truckload of debt.  Should be fun!

I came across an interesting piece in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding brain injury as a result of severe head trauma:

"The ones with brain swelling, that's diffuse axonal injury, and that's bad news," says Rosenfeld, who steers the National Trauma Research Institute's neurotrauma evidence translation committee at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. In diffuse axonal injury, he explains, the whole brain is shaken up, creating many little tears in its inner structure.

Such patients undergo personality change, can contract epilepsy, and have difficulty controlling their anger. They might become unemployable. Depression is a common accompaniment to brain injury. Rosenfeld sees patients' families shattered, too. "They're never the same. It often leads to marriage disharmony and family breakdown."

This is no joke. Having spent time with someone suffering from this, I can say that it's more damaging than you could possibly imagine.

RUN!

This evening marked my first ever participation in a timed running event, a 3.5 mile run on the Embarcadero in the Shitty. The event was put on by JP Morgan Chase as a charity event for somethingorother. The race provided me a convenient training goal to work towards with the Vibram FiveFingers.

In the months and weeks leading up to the race, I had some concerns that I wouldn't be able to complete the event because I was unable to run the full 3.5 miles in training. However, as the race grew nearer, my body started to finally adapt to the shoes and the running, and mileage and pace started to pick up at a fairly rapid clip. I did my first non-treadmill run two weeks before the event on a rubberized track and managed to only complete 3 miles at a pace just under 9 minutes/mile. The soleus in both legs basically cramped up after mile 1 and gave me much concern.

I rested up for the next week, getting in some easy rides and a good massage to flush them out and promote good circulation. I returned to the track a week later and was able to complete 3.25 miles at a pace just under 8 minutes/mile. Even though I was still having problems with my soleus, they didn't act up until mile 2, and the cramping was far less severe than a week before. The distance and pace were also very encouraging.

The week before the event (this week), I got back into more aggressive training on the bike but didn't run, allowing my soleus to heal in both legs. I had high hopes that I'd be able to achieve my goal of 30 minutes for the event. I also acquired a new event objective: better the time of one very competitive and athletic co-worker.

The event has come and gone and I can say I am very pleased with the result. I achieved both goals: to finish faster than my co-worker and to finish within 30 minutes. The co-worker target was achieved within the first mile with him having gone out far too fast and having to back off considerably so as to not completely blow up. I far exceeded my expectation with regard to how long it would take to finish, beating my target time by over 5 minutes. I crossed the finish line in 24 minutes, 12 seconds, giving me an average speed of 6.53 minutes/mile. For me, this is a fantastic result as it again bested my pace by 1 minute over what I ran last week, and 2 minutes faster than two weeks prior.

Just last week I was telling my massage therapist, also a runner, that my long term goal for running is to be able to regularly pace at 6 minutes/mile. To be within sight of this goal after only 5 months of once per week treadmill torture is fantastic.

It should be noted that my pace today was under race conditions and It's pretty unreasonable to expect that I'll be able to regularly put myself through that level of pain and exertion in normal training. For now, I'm content and confident enough to look at my target pace as a completely attainable goal. Only time will tell how long it takes me to get there.

Some people will tell you that slow is good – but I’m here to tell you that fast is better. I’ve always believed this, in spite of the trouble it’s caused me. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. That is why God made fast motorcycles, Bubba…

— Hunter S. Thompson

Insecurity and Death

Hey Dingdong, I told you so! Love yourself before you kill yourself.

3 Miles

Ran my longest session ever last Friday...three miles done at 8:49/mile. Everybody says that's a good time, but it's nowhere near my 6:00/mile target. The good news is that my HR is nowhere near threshold at my current pace and RPE is maybe at a 5. The only limiting factor is my soleus in both legs. Running in the FiveFingers is a tough go, and has taken since Feb to build up from 0.5 miles at 10:00/mile to the current distance and pace. Each week I'm able to go a little further and a little faster without the soleus locking up. I'm gonna pick up some New Balance 800's for next week's charity event cuz the reviews have these as close to barefoot as one can get without using the FiveFingers.

I was once told that one MUST run with a very deliberate heel-toe footstrike. Oh how wrong she was. The worst part about it was that this advice was dispensed and insisted upon to her eager sibling who followed it like the gospel and ended up further trashing her already injured knees. I guess different stroke for different folks, but for me, the mid/fore foot strike has eliminated all my knee pain (which was significant when running), and allowed me to carry on for the past 6 months.

Eu não falo português.

Probably best that I learn it BEFORE I go this time.