Michael: What's Thirst?

The spider web cloud
Catches the rays of the sun
In a deadly grip.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

In order to prep myself for the long summer workouts that should begin any day now, it’s taking forever for the rainy season to end this year, I decided to refresh my enthusiasm and increase my knowledge for training and racing by reading Runner’s World’s The Runner’s Body. However, after having just read the chapter on hydration, I feel a bit confused and unsure of what I should do when it comes to fluid intake.

According to RW I should let thirst be my guide, but after years of conditioning myself to drinking a few ounces of water every 15 minutes or so, I’m not sure I can or want to think about when I’m thirsty. Training and racing are hard enough and the less I’ve got to think about the better. I’m pretty happy with just setting an alarm on my Timex and drinking on the quarters and eating in the halves.

With that problem set aside, the question then becomes what to drink? According to the book our sweat is less salty then our plasma so it would follow that to edge the body back toward stasis and optimize fluid absorption we should drink a fluid that has less of an electrolyte/water mix than the plasma coursing through our veins.  Thankfully, that seems to be in tune with my new favorite racing drink - Skratch Labs. I know Dr. Stacy Sims (I’ll get to her book Roar soon.), and others are also proponents of throwing in just a touch of sugar, and Skratch Labs does include a dash of sugar.

Skratch Labs’ individual packets are a bit on the expensive side though and not readily available here in Panama, so here I sometimes flavor my water with just a splash of coffee and on runs and rides over two hours carry salt chews with me.

The one big carry away that I took from the book on hydration is that, from a performance standpoint, it’s far better to error on the side of drinking too little than drinking too much, which is a huge stress reliever for me as I always lose a good few pounds on long runs and no longer feel a need to try to drink as much as possible while I’m moving along.

Michael: Consistency, Endurance, Novelty and Improvement

Lemon tail feathers,
Black body and yellow beak-
Oropendola.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Today we were suppose to return to the Quetzal trail for the first time in a couple of months. The rainy season should’ve been over and the trail decent enough to make it a challenging run instead of a warrior slog through mud, slippery rocks, broken stairs and downed trees. But it hasn’t stopped raining just yet. In fact it rained hard last night and is still at it right now, so we decided to reschedule for next week.

So instead of sliding outside I’ll be sliding inside on my slide board then do a kettle bell workout. With the rest of time that’s freed up from not spending 5 or so hours away from home, I’m going to think about working out hard and what I need to do to improve my  performance for next year.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on the adage, “Only a fool expects to obtain different results by doing the same thing over and over.” As that pertains to distance running, I believe that means just going longer and longer at the same pace is only going to take me so far.

So this year I’m going to mix it up, but not with a grab bag of random workouts. The way to go, I feel, is to throw in some novelty that’s anchored by a consistently progressive framework.

To that end I’m going to do speedwork twice a week; once on the flats and the other on a hill. Each month I’ll do progressively longer pick ups beginning with 1 minute hard efforts increasing a minute per month. Within the month, however, as a way of measuring my improvement and determining the effects of my training, I’ll alternate between one week of the increasing speedwork with a week of one minute flat/hill workouts whose parameters won’t change except, hopefully, I’ll be able to eek out a little bit more distance per minute every month within that hard minute of running.

Regardless of the value of mixing things up once in a while, it’ll still be a joy to get back out on our old reliable trails, like the Quetzal, if and when it ever stops raining here.

Michael: The Outside Solution

Beautiful white sky
With luminous blue holes
Letting in the moonshine.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Every year, as the rainy season approached it’s long end, we’ve had plumbing issues if you know what I mean. Our first two years here we went the chemical route and at least twice a month dumped a canister of Potasa down the toilet. This year we decided to see if there was a more natural way of solving our septic woes. There was. It worked, and the irony is it would also be a good fix for when we move back to water thirsty S. California. But, I’m afraid, due to social constraints, it’s no longer a viable option either in water soaked Volcan or back in drought prone Los Angeles.

The fix was to water ration by only flushing after taking our morning constitutional, then having Kimme use the toilet to urinate during the rest of the day and not flushing, while I went pee out in the garden during the day and used the bathroom sink at night. Using this system we didn’t have any problems with the toilet all rainy season.

However, we now have neighbors so the weed killer solution is no longer viable. It’s back to indoor plumbing.

In drought conditions in California I bet using a sink would save a great deal of water, but I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable going that route. It would be interesting though to get an estimate on how much water would be saved by people using that option.

If we ever build a house, we’re going to avoid that dilemma completely by installing compost toilets and perhaps a urinal or a have a yard with a very tall and private fence.

Michael: Trials and Trails

Beautiful white sky
With luminescent blue holes
Letting in moonshine.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Due to various injuries and a long rainy season, yesterday was the first time in two months Kimme and I have run any single track. Boy, was it good to be huffing and puffing out there again.

For me, just about every trail run is both an adventure and a chance to test out either some new equipment or hydration/nutrition process. Yesterday I got lucky and struck pay dirt on both accounts.

On the adventure side, toward the end of my jaunt on the Baru trail, I heard a substantial rustling in the bushes off to the side of me and got a quick glimpse of a tayra, a medium dog sized all black weasel like creature. It’s one of the few large wild animals still hiding out in the cloud forests around here.

On the experimental side, I tested out a new nutrition snack; a bite sized peanut butter and jelly chew wrapped in a half of a small white tortilla. I took two with me wrapped in foil and ate one each the first two hours of the uphill run. I figured if they didn’t bother me on a hard uphill at the beginning of the run, I could start rotating them in on a regular basis on my long ride and trail runs. Success, no aches, no pains, no gagging or snorting, and no bonk.

One disappointment was my hardly used Nike Terra Kiger 3s. It seems the soft nubs under my forefoot are wearing far more quickly than I had hoped. I’ve only got about 100 mostly trail miles on them and I doubt they’ll hold up for another 100 without going completely slick under the balls of my feet. I was really hoping these would hold up as a trainer for the entire year, but now I’m probably going to be looking for a new shoe in a couple of months. They are very comfortable, but I’m sure glad I waited until they were on sale.

On the brighter side of the trail, Panama has invested in few new trail markers that should relieve some of the “Am I on the trail?” anxiety to any newcomers out there.

Michael: Kicking the Resolution Tires

The clouds and the stars
Restless in the dark morning
Waiting for the dawn.

Saturday, December 2, 2017

This year I’ve decided to get a jump on a few new year’s resolutions by trying them out in December. That way if they don’t take hold I won’t have to claim them on my resolution deduction form for 2018.

On the dietary side, I’m going to go without cheese and yogurt and see what happens. I’m also going to stick to 5 mini pieces of chocolate a night. If I can hold to those, this might actually turn out to be the first December where I was able to lose weight.

On the exercise end of the scale, I’d like to start doing one long ride and run again every week. That should also help with the body fat percentage which I’d be overjoyed with I could ever get it to dip under 11% again.

Those are the easy resolutions to think of and implement. I do have some work related/ mental challenges in the works, but I haven’t solidified them into concrete performance statements or result standards as of yet except for my resolution to do daily deep breathing and posture exercises to replace the 5 minutes of daily meditation I gave up on a few months ago.

And on the spiritual front, I haven’t ever been very successful at developing, let alone implementing, any resolutions worth mentioning. And maybe that’s not so troubling as it’s hard to think of spiritual resolutions to be as visceral as physical challenges like not eating cheese. Like would it make sense to say that I’m going to withhold 10% of my sarcastic thoughts at least until the president has completely finished whatever mangled message he’s trying to convey?

Michael: Healed?

Beautifully quiet;
The darkness of the morning
Is a surrender.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

It was exactly two months ago that I fell off  my bike and had to have 30 stitches to close the gash that ran from my upper lip up through my nose. The doctor at the time told me that it would take this long to heal. He was 90% correct.

Initially I thought it was going to take much less as the swelling all pretty much went away within the first three weeks and I pretty much looked back to normal except for a small scar above my upper lip. However some swelling inside my mouth and a lump in my lip and under my nose were still present. The swelling has now completely subsided but the lumps remain. They don’t prevent me from doing anything. I can now finally drink from a water bottle without drooling like my I had just come out of having a filling, and I can eat an apple again, though not with quite the uninhibited vigor I once enjoyed.

I’m hopeful that the lump under my nose will still slowly heal, but I’m a bit more pessimistic about the lump in my lip and though I had secretly believed the scar on my lip might go away, that’s not going to happen without further intervention.

Sadly, as a bruise to my ego, that doesn’t seem like it will be necessary. That’s because as I’ve been out and about the past few months and run into people I know, no one has said a word about my change in appearance, or even looked at me in a puzzling way. So either they never took much notice of my looks in the first place, or the scar isn’t as visible as I think it is. Regrettably, I’m assuming it’s the former.

Michael: An Old Fashioned Barn Raising

A perfect darkness
Without any birds calling
Or crickets chirping.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

One good thing I’ll say about the new neighbors is they gave us our first live experience of what we’ve only experienced through watching Witness; a kind of old fashioned group of religious people getting together to fix up a neighbor’s new home.

There was a young guy on the roof applying goop to the bolts on the roof to water proof the metal roof, an older woman on the porch preparing food, some dudes have been working on the pvc water pipes, another dude cutting the grass, and I presume a bevy of women and the few children cleaning inside.

And this all starts with a few prayers and a couple acapella hymns. Not as techno as the background music in Witness but, nevertheless, just as inspiring to watch.