Mad Men

 “Advertising is based on one thing, happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”  –Don Draper, Mad Men 

My wife and I have been watching the AMC series “Mad Men” for a while now (we watch it at our own pace on DVD and are only on Season 2, so please, no spoilers!).  For those of you unfamiliar with the show, it centers around a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the late 50s/early 60s, the schemes employed by them to create ads, and the lifestyles of the various characters.  The show is quite entertaining.  One of its funnier aspects (even though they tend to overdo it) is how the writers portray things that were  supposedly commonplace in America in the early 1960s, but that today we would all view as absurd.  For example, drinking hard liquor all day at the office, not wearing a seat belt, the way women are portrayed both in the office and at home, and in every scene almost every character is smoking (including a scene with a pregnant woman presumably very close to her due date having a cocktail and puffing away at a cigarette!).  There was even a scene with the main character and his family having a picnic in a very nice park.  As they were leaving, he throws his empty beer can in the woods, and his wife simply picks up their blanket, shakes off all of their trash (napkins, cans, etc.) and walks away.

I’ve always assumed that the writers are intentionally over the top with their portrayal of just how “stupid” everyone was in the early 60s.  I wasn’t around in the 60s, so I don’t really know, but I doubt we've gotten that much smarter in the past 50 years.  Most of the time I watch and think, “This must be a gross exaggeration.  It couldn’t have been that bad! No one would be that stupid!” 

But then I started thinking of the things that we did just a few years ago (and that a lot of people still do today), and I wondered:  What would a show about endurance sports in the late 00s/early 10s look like forty years from now?  People eating eggs but only after removing the yolk, which happens to be the most nutritious part; eating a gel just before a run because they think they need those extra carbs to make it through their 40 minute workout; adding more and more cushioning to their shoes and getting more and more injured in the process . . . ; the list goes on.

I bring up those three specific examples because, like a lot of you, I fell victim to the false thinking that led to those mistakes.  Mistakes that, looking back, I cannot believe I was stupid enough to make!  What was I thinking!?  I will touch on the nutritional examples in a later post.  Today, I want to discuss shoes. 

I’ve been reading “Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall.  It’s a GREAT book—well written, entertaining, and very informative (Thanks, Ryan!).  If you are a runner, PLEASE (!) drop what you are doing, go to the nearest bookstore, and read Chapter 25 (then you can buy it and read the rest later).  Don’t worry; it will not spoil anything from the previous 24 chapters.  But it will explain some of the problems with running shoes today.

Honestly, it made me angry.  Angry that I spent years running in products that were most likely the very cause of my running injuries.  Angry that I spent thousands of dollars over those years searching for the answer and trusting that the “experts” knew what they were talking about.  Angry that I assumed that those same experts were looking after my best interests.  But mostly, Angry at the Mad Men who came up with these products and swore to me that I would injure myself without them; swore to me that I needed to replace them as soon as the cushioning wore down; swore to me that the more I spent, the more protected I would be; and all along the Mad Men were reading study after study telling them they were wrong on all accounts.

I trusted companies that made money when I bought their shoes, when they told me that I would injure myself if I didn’t buy their most expensive shoes at least every three months.  They never cured my injuries.  But I kept buying.  I cannot believe I actually fell for this.  I thought I was smarter than that.

Thinking back on it, I am in disbelief that I fell into their trap.  All I can think is, “This must be a gross exaggeration.  It couldn’t have been that bad!  No one would be that stupid!”

Fortunately, I now know better.  I've learned from experience, not from a book and not from a shoe salesman.

Consider this: If you put your leg in a cast, the muscles will atrophy and become weak.  Shoe companies have been selling us casts for our feet and telling us that it was a design flaw in our feet that made their products necessary.  The weaker it got, the thicker they made the casts.  We bought it.  And the more we bought it, the more we got injured.

Regardless of your beliefs in God vs. Mother Nature, the human foot is a brilliant work of structural integrity.   When will we stop arrogantly assuming that we can outsmart our creator?

“The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases.”  –Edward Jenner

Injury Prevention – Part 1 – Consistency is Key

This is a re-post (sort of) of a blog I wrote almost a year ago for the Tri-Prosoap.com team site. I never finished what I started, so I decided to try again. I've updated it to reflect my thoughts/experiences in the past year. But for the most part, it's the same. Here goes . . .

When Billy asked me to share my thoughts on injury prevention, my first thought was “But I’m injured all the time!” In fact, I had skipped my run the morning he asked because of lingering pains in my feet since the Longhorn 70.3. But here I am, just a few weeks later, with little or no foot pain, back to a somewhat normal training schedule, and realizing that I really haven’t had to take any significant time off from training in several years. I think this is due to the numerous lessons I learned after the even more numerous mistakes I made when I first started in this sport more than seven years ago. So maybe I am qualified to give advice on the subject. Or to at least tell you all what has (and especially what hasn’t) worked for me.

But first, let me start off by saying that I am not a doctor. I am not a physiologist. Or a chiropractor. Or physical therapist. In fact, unless it is engineering or law related, I have had absolutely no formal training whatsoever as it relates to anything that I will write about on this blog. This is all based on my own reading and personal experiences (which, truth be told, I have probably done more studying of this subject than I ever did as an engineering student! Sorry, Dad.). It’s basically going to be “Here’s what I do and why.”

Ok, on with the show . . .

It’s important to note from the start that we are talking about the so-called “overuse injuries” not injuries that you get from traumatic experiences such as twisting a knee or crashing a bike. So why do we get overuse injuries? Put simply, we do more than our bodies are ready to handle at the time that we do it. Breaking it down even further, we do more than certain parts of our bodies can handle at the time that we do it. We’ve all heard this, but it bares repeating . . . Doing too much too soon, or going too hard too often, will eventually lead to injury.

I had an engineering professor that used to say that “In a perfect engineering world, all the parts to your car’s engine would completely fail at the same time.” His theory was that if our cars were perfectly engineered, then one day you would be driving along and every part of your car would break at the same time. In his mind, we don’t live in a perfect engineering world because certain parts wear out faster or at different rates than others.

Or more appropriate for this analogy, certain parts of the engine can handle stresses that other parts can’t handle. If you always drive 100 miles an hour, there are parts to your engine that will be able to handle the stress, but others that won't. Unfortunately, because the bigger, more powerful parts of the engine can handle those stresses, you won’t know that the smaller, more delicate parts, can’t handle it until it's too late and they fail.

This is a good analogy to our bodies, and I think describes overuse injuries in an easily understood way. Anyone who has had an extended lay off from training (and especially weight lifting) and then goes too hard or lifts too much their first trip back to the gym understands this phenomenon all too well. Sticking with the weightlifting example, if you haven’t lifted in a while, your bigger muscles will allow you to lift A LOT more than the smaller, more delicate, connective tissues are able to handle. This is why the days after your first weight training session, you generally feel like you've done some MAJOR damage to your muscles. You did too much too soon, but your body didn’t tell you until it was too late. Remember this feeling!

Breakthrough workouts are how we get stronger, faster, and build more endurance. But just because your body will allow you to run 15 miles when your longest run in the past 6 months was only 5 miles, doesn't mean you can pull it off without injuring yourself. It may not happen at first, but don't be fooled. You are setting yourself up for disaster.

I finish almost every workout feeling like I could have done more. There are obvious exceptions, but for the most part, you should not be pushing yourself to the brink of failure a majority of the time. There is a time and a place for this type of training. But not until you are ready for it, and even then, not too often. If you do, there will be muscles that can take it, and you may be able to train this way for a while. But eventually, this type of overload will lead to injury.

So how do we make sure we aren’t overdoing it? Patience and Consistency. Patience to wait until the time is right to tackle that Ironman/Marathon you've always dreamed of. And consistency to gradually build up your body to the point that it can handle the training and intensity necessary for tackling such an event. I'm talking about years, not weeks or even months. The more consistent you are with your workouts, the more consistent you are with your recovery, and the more consistent you are with your nutrition, the less likely you will get overuse injuries, as long as you are also paying attention to your body. And as long as you are patient.

It took me 5 years before I was finally able to attempt an Ironman. I signed up for one just one year after I got into this sport. But injuries kept me from doing it. I was injured more in the first few years of my involvement in this sport than I have been in the last 5. I now train harder, longer, and have raced more and more every year since. Be patient! I'm not saying you can't complete an Ironman or marathon your first year in the sport. But I am saying you will definitely be faster, stronger, and enjoy this sport a lot longer if you are patient and don't rush into racing longer than you are ready for.

Some people say that there is no such thing as "overuse." They argue that in reality, you are under trained for the training/racing you are doing. It's really just semantics, but the point is, you have to train in order to train more and/or at higher intensities. I can handle the 20 hour weeks at the intensities that I put in because I have been consistent for years. The pros put in 30+ hour weeks at even higher intensities because they have been even more consistent for even longer. If I were to go out and put in 30 hour weeks for the next month, I would injure myself (if I could even last a month!). I could handle 30+ hour weeks only if I were to slowly increase my training (and quit my job so that I could spend time recovering properly!). Know your current limits.

As for the here and now, don’t take extended lay off periods (I hate the term "off season" because it tends to make people think they shouldn't be doing anything). Try to do something (even if it’s just a 20 minute easy run) 5-6 days a week (AND ALWAYS TAKE ONE FULL RECOVERY DAY no matter what time of year it is – but more on this in a later post!). Don't try to bite off more than you can chew. You'll get there. It just takes time.

Don't overestimate what you can do in the short term. But more importantly, don't underestimate what you can do in the long term if you are patient and consistent.

Consistency is key. You’ll see this theme throughout my thoughts on this subject. That’s all I’m going to write today. The rest of the posts will be themed around what I do at different times. So I think I’ll do a post on how I prepare for a workout/race; things I do during a workout/race; things I do immediately after a workout/race; and then just recovery in general since that’s all the rest of the times of the day. Of course, like any good training plan, this could all change as we go along, especially if you ask questions, like I’m hoping you will. If what I write doesn’t make sense, please tell me using the comments section, or shoot me an email and I’ll be sure to respond.

Injury Prevention at Tri Pro Soap

The team I race for, Tri-Pro Soap, has asked me to post some articles on the team site regarding injury prevention. I'll put the links here whenever I post on that site. Please check it out, and be sure to support Pro Soap!

http://tri-prosoap.blogspot.com/2008/11/injury-prevention-part-1-consistency-is.html