A quick post today, not a real post but what I might call a ‘mini-post.’  Always a great source for material, Jake Rosen tweeted today about Amy Palmiero-Winters, who made history recently by becoming the first ever amputee to qualify for a U.S. national track and field team.

I owe everyone an update on my injured knee, and I will provide an in-depth one soon.  But in short, it has improved significantly in the last 3-4 weeks.  Perhaps not so coincidentally, in the last 3-4 weeks I also began looking for stories like Amy’s, for viewpoints into how much a person is able to overcome to accomplish his or her dreams.

Placed into perspective, my little knee/hamstring issue, though it has sidelined me for essentially one year, seems like nothing compared to what Amy has overcome.

On Friday, I went for my first run in six months.  It was only five minutes long, on a treadmill, but it’s progress and I know there’s more to come.  If Amy Palmiero-Winters, at 37, can raise two kids on her own, compete in 100-mile races and make the U.S. national team, surely I can overcome this little injury.

Now, it’s back to work, back on the road to recovery.  In the meantime, check out Amy’s story.  If you need a kick in the pants today, her story will give you one.

Happy Easter!

With a little more than two weeks elapsed since my last post I’ve accumulated a somewhat sizable list of items I want to write about, so I’ll try to keep this as focused as possible.

Runners in the men's 1500 meters at the Stanford Invitational, March 26, 2010

But I must be honest.  It has been a tough few weeks.  I have to keep reminding myself, as I wrote a few weeks ago, to take my own advice.  Self improvement is a continuous process.  In fact, it really never ends.  And this is not a bad thing.  Remember when you were younger and you thought there would be a day when you had “arrived?”  Aging seems to me to gradually clarify the actual location of this destination: I do, in fact, believe the day of “arrival” still exists; but not in this life on Earth.

Lately I’ve been focusing on going back to my roots.  Admittedly, I’ve lost touch with them more than I would have liked.  This has happened both recently and over the past few years.

Since adolescence, I’ve done quite a bit and been involved in many things but there have been two defining themes in my life: running and music.  Sadly, I’ve been largely prevented by injury from doing one of these activities over the past year, and the other one I’ve simply neglected.

I’m trying to change that.  On March 26 I went to the Stanford Invitational, one of the biggest invitational meets of the spring college track and field season.  Dan Petty, one of my former athletes, surprised me by coming into town for the weekend to see the meet and visit San Francisco for the first time.

Spending the entire evening at the Stanford track was soul food for me.  There were a few Princeton runners there, and Dan’s former college teammate was competing as one of the top runners in the men’s 10,000 meters.  But other than cheering for those individuals I had no real reason to be there.  Being at a track meet simply felt like home for me.

I took lots of photos (album here: gotta love the pole vault series).  I spent quite a bit of time watching races with Steve Taylor, Dan’s former coach at the University of Richmond, and an overall great guy.  I chatted with Dan, and caught up on how things are going for him.  He’s now loving his job as the social media guru at the Denver Post, a career path that he’s told me is the end result of a conversation over dinner we had at an Applebee’s in Flemington, N.J. the year after he graduated from high school, where I encouraged him, based on my own personal experience, that writing for his college newspaper might be a great thing to do.

It’s funny how things like that happen.  In June of 1998, shortly after I graduated from high school myself, Ned Brazelton, my cross country coach, gave me a copy of Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie as a graduation gift.  I read the entire 192-page book in one beautiful, sunny summer afternoon, sitting next to Lake Huron at my then-girlfriend’s family’s cottage in Bay Port, Mich.  As most who have read it will attest, Morrie is a moving tale of a dying professor’s last life lessons for his former student.  It brought me to tears.

But perhaps the most significant reason I love this particular book is what “Braz” wrote inside:

June 20, 1998

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Phil, use all your potential to make your life worthwhile for yourself and others.  Learn the lessons of life well.

Ned Brazelton

At 18 years old, I read this and appreciated the sentiment.  But I had no frame of reference for really grasping its meaning.  Reading it at 30, it almost knocked me on off my feet.  I’m old enough now to see how Braz inspired me: to teach, to coach, to want to help others, to have a lifelong love of running.  And I’m old enough now to see that I may have had a similar effect on someone else.  Life comes full circle.

Am I learning the lessons of life well?  Well, some come easier than others, but I’m learning them.  The one I’m learning now is that roots matter.  They ground you.  Sometimes your roots come in the form of places.  Sometimes they are people – family and friends.  Sometimes they are activities, like running, that have always held a special meaning for you.  Often, these overlap.  But they always help you to remember who you are when you lose your way.

So even though I can’t run, I’m taking every opportunity to be around runners.  I’m committed to my physical therapy more than ever.  Every day at the gym, for my 20 minutes on the stationary bike, I’ve been reading all of the back issues of Runner’s World that have gathered dust in my apartment over the past few months.  I’m making plans.  I’m dreaming again.

And it all feels wonderful.

As for the music?  Well, that topic will take up an entire post or more, so I’ll have to save it for later.  But needless to say, I’ve been picking up my guitar a lot more frequently lately…

Yesterday I received an e-mail that made my day.  Jake Rosen at Broken Hearted Runner contacted me to let me know that Running Buddy has been named to his list of “Best Running Blogs in the Blogosphere.”  Though broken hearts are painful (this I know), the title of Jake’s blog comes from a broken heart of another sort: he was diagnosed with an aortic insufficiency at age 14 that so far has required two heart surgeries, one after his first year of college and one at 23.  Yet Jake keeps on running. He’s even finished marathons.

He has a great blog that you should check out, and his story helps to put life in perspective.  Yes, we all face challenges every day.  Some of them seem insurmountable.  But we also have a lot to be thankful about.  My knee problem (better yesterday but so-so today) is dragging me down, but it’s hardly a trifle compared to what Jake has overcome.  I’m healthy, I have a family who loves me, friends who care about me.  I’ve been blessed in so many ways.

I set out to inspire people with this blog, but didn’t expect it to strike a chord, or to be inspired myself, so soon.  Sometimes, if life has you down, take a look around.   Chances are, you’ll find you have a lot more to be thankful about than you thought.

Thanks, Jake.

Sometimes the most important advice you can take is your very own.

Part of the reason I took such a long break from the blog before Sunday was that I just wasn’t “feeling it.”  Several other distractions had intervened in my life over the past few months, with my knee injury serving as a major catalyst for my lack of focus.  It seemed to bleed over into every part of my life.  I was becoming frustrated with things at work.  My relationships suffered and I didn’t see my friends as often or keep in touch with the ones who live far away.  I was short on the phone with my parents, who live 2,500 miles away and who I know value the time they get to spend on the phone with me.  I stopped watching what I was eating after making great progress on a healthy diet this summer (more on that in a future post).  Usually a consistently forward-looking person, I stopped looking to the future.  I was stuck in a rut.

All of this was not due to my knee injury per se, but rather the fact that the injury keeps me from running, and when I don’t run, problems like the ones listed above tend to creep into my life.  I’m discovering how amazing it is that one activity, or the lack thereof, can have such a significant, dramatic effect on my quality of life, but looking back over the past 18 years since I began running, I have always been happiest when I’m either running or around runners (coaching).

So, as I occasionally did in idle moments over the past couple months, I visited RB this weekend just to make sure it was still here (it is ).  I checked the site traffic and would note the occasional passerby, reconfirming (positively) that there was still interest.  And then I came across my post from December 12: When You Can’t Run, Write.

Of course!  So, I sat down this weekend and started writing.

And I’m glad I did. Like I mentioned in the December 12 post, writing is again giving me the opportunity to get thoughts out of my head, to get my ideas down, to dream and plan again.  In fact, in just the last 10 minutes I brainstormed a list of topics I’m looking forward to working on and writing about in the coming weeks, such as:

• Reducing the clutter in my life and living space
• Prioritizing my physical therapy and knee rehab
• Developing additional streams of income
• Aggressively paying down debt
• Making the most effective use of my time, both inside and outside of work
• Sticking to a low-fat, high-protein diet
• Eliminating caffeine from my life
• Seeking avenues in which to serve my community and country
• Increasing my opportunities to travel
• Restoring friendships and professional relationships that have been dormant in recent years
• Being the best friend/brother/son that I can be to those who mean the most to me
• Playing piano and guitar frequently again like I did in my early 20s

…And I’m only getting started.   So when you’re going through a tough time, or facing a difficult decision, sometimes the best thing you can do is look inside. You might find out you’re a lot wiser than you think.

Photo by R’eyes.

If you’ve been following Running Buddy over the past few weeks you know that I’ve battled a knee injury since April and have been pursuing a recovery that has kept me out of commission entirely since the beginning of November.  This has been hard on me because I’m usually at my best as a person when I’m running.

Much research has focused on the positive mental, emotional and physical side effects of running, and many runners will tell you that it opens up your mind and clears your thoughts – that it’s a time when you can do your best thinking.  I certainly believe this.  The oft-described “runner’s high” is an endorphin-induced state of joy and feeling of invincibility reached during the middle of a long run that no drug could ever create.

I’m under doctor’s orders not to run, nor to work out until my knee injury progresses.  The side effects of this prohibition on me have been challenging.  I have less energy.  I am not as consistently happy.  I am eating worse than I used to eat.  And I’m motivated less to excel at the things that I do every day.

I’m not in a great place, and I don’t want to stay here.

One of the worst side effects for me is that my injury has stolen my thinking time. On an average day, I have a million thoughts swirling around in my head: “Where am I going to be in one year?” “Should I drive into work today?” “Why is that person looking at me like that?” “I really don’t think there are enough losing adjectives to describe the Lions,” etc. and you get the picture.

Often, the only time I’m able to bring clarity to this amorphous blob of brain waves is when I’m running.  I’m astonished, sometimes, that I’m able to continue putting one foot in front of the other on some of my runs.  Because I kid you not, plans for world domination (okay, perhaps not that ambitious, but you get the idea), have been hatched more than once on one of my loops in many places across the country.  And after my run, I have a clear picture of the road ahead: the next project I want to undertake, my next self-improvement mission, or a solid picture of my one-, two-, or five-year plan.  Or I simply just feel good.

My injury has robbed me of this.

So I’ve been blogging.  It was during one of my runs (before November, when I could still run), in fact, that I decided I wanted to start this blog.  But the motivation to start it didn’t arrive until I found myself not able to run.  And it has proved therapeutic, to a degree.  There is still nothing that compares to the physical and mental release provided by a good run, but when you can’t sort through your thoughts during exercise, doing so in front of a computer (or a notebook, for the old-fashioned types out there) is a great alternative.

In a future post I plan to talk about logging information in general and the fact that we tend to monitor more closely those items that we actively measure (this seems obvious but trust me, there’s merit to the discussion).   One of the positive effects of blogging about my recovery is that I’m becoming even more invested in seeing it through to the finish.   And the thought-sorting that previously took place during my runs now plays itself out in front of a screen (and I’ve found myself writing everywhere – on the bus, on the ferry, in coffee shops, at home, on my BlackBerry waiting for all forms of public transportation, you name it).

So if you’re currently sidelined, unable to run or exercise, I recommend writing down your thoughts. It will get you motivated for the next step on your challenge, give you a record by which you can look back at your progress, and perhaps most importantly, clear some space for the other thoughts that are fighting for some room in your constantly active mind.  You’ll feel much better for it, and at the end of the day, it will make your road to recovery seem just a little bit shorter.

Photo by dbdbrobot.

For many obvious reasons, Tiger Woods is all over the news right now.  What is unfortunate, I think, is that the salacious nature of the unfolding story is masking a broader lesson here that few people are bothering to consider.

Hero? Or human?

One of the dangers of putting all of your hopes and dreams into the hands of one person is that inevitably, at some point, that person is likely to let you down.  It may be a small letdown, as in a ‘you weren’t there for me when I needed you’ situation, or it may be a rather large one, as in Tiger’s case.  But none of us is perfect, which is a reality some have a hard time accepting.

Among many others that I will share in due time, I have two strong beliefs: 1) that man is fallen, and 2) that the world is not a perfect place, and no activist, actor, politician, or athlete will ever make it that way.  Tiger Woods was advertised as the savior of golf, and a saint of professional sports.  But that’s a lot of weight for a mere mortal to carry.

There’s nothing wrong with having heroes.  I certainly have mine, and they have inspired me to do positive things I would otherwise probably not have done.  But there’s a distinct difference between inspiration and worship.

Runners can fall victim to hero-worship, just like other athletes.  As a coach, I often told my athletes what Ned Brazelton, my high school cross country coach, often told me: “in this sport, you have to believe in yourself.”  The fact is that running is a solitary sport.  You can form some of the strongest friendships in your life with people with whom you regularly run, but at the end of the day, they will never run your race for you.  You have to want it for yourself.

In team sports, you win as a team, and you lose as a team.  Thus, no one can accept all the glory; neither can anyone shoulder all the blame.  The fact that running makes you responsible for your own letdowns is a scary thing.  But I also believe it’s one of the most empowering experiences in sports.

Running has a long history of heroes who have made the sport, and its adherents, proud:  Jesse Owens, standing up against the forces of fascism in the 1936 Berlin Olympics; Roger Bannister, becoming the first man to break the 4-minute mile; Steve Prefontaine, capturing the hearts of and inspiring an entire generation of Americans to put on their shoes and start running.

But none of these people were perfect.  It was Charles Barkley who, in a Nike commercial from the early 1990s, said: “I am not a role model.”  I remember seeing that as a high schooler, thinking it was an arrogant thing to say.  But there’s some wisdom in the remark.  Barkley was warning his audience: don’t put 100 percent of your faith in me, because I might just let you (and your kids) down.

Remember that as a runner, you can turn to others for inspiration, and some can even motivate you to do great things.  But at the end of the day, it all comes down to what you have in your heart.  Do you have the will to succeed?   Do you have confidence that you can tackle anything that comes your way?  Trust yourself, and you’ll be amazed by what you can do.

Runners climb a Marin Headlands trail, December 5

Trail Heads, the trail running blog over at Runner’s World, has a post today about the North Face Endurance Challenge Championships, held this past Saturday in the Headlands.

This past weekend saw over 1,000 trail runners pushing their limits in championship races, and a small handful of those runners winning large paychecks for their efforts.

The North Face Endurance Challenge Championships took place on the trails of Marin County, California, just north of San Francisco, with a 10K, a half-marathon, a 50K and a 50-miler. All four races sold out, with almost 900 runners hitting the starting line on Saturday morning.

The 50-miler was the premier event, with a whopping $10,000 prize on the line for the winning male and female, with a total of $30,000 cash purse. This is big money in trail running, and a competitive field assembled to chase it down.

After reading I had to let out a big <sigh>.  Last year in December, I ran the Endurance Challenge Half-Marathon, finishing my first trail running 13.1-miler in a middle-of-the-pack 2 hours and 18 minutes.  While I would likely not have been anywhere near contending for the five-figure prize money this past weekend (perhaps someday though!), from the beginning of this year it was my goal to run the 50K (31-mile) race at the 2009 NFEC.

So I assert, with enthusiasm (yes, with enthusiasm), that one of my goals for 2010 will be to run the 50K race at next year’s Endurance Challenge. I’m adding it to the list of goals that will be going up on this site soon.  And with that, I’ll head off to do my stretching and icing for my knee, taking one more step on the road to recovery that leads back to Rodeo Beach in the Headlands the first weekend in December, 2010.

Photo by The North Face.

Snow fell here today -- notice the palm trees in front!

A request from Running Buddy reader KN came in this week:

“You need to talk about running when it is cold out.  Once the warm days are done I have a problem going outside and running.  I don’t like not being able to sweat and getting all itchy…..”

On the occasion of the coldest day this winter in the Bay Area (it dropped into the 30s last night and the Marin mountaintops even received a rare dusting of snow), I thought today would be a good opportunity to answer the question: How do you force yourself outside to run in conditions only a polar bear could love?

There are plenty of practical tips out there for cold-running safety, which you can find here.  But rarely do these articles address the number one issue: getting out the door in the first place.  So, in no particular order, here are six tips to help turn you from Brr-some Billy into Toasty Tom (or, from Frigid Frieda into Balmy Betty):

1. Don’t run outside. This one might seem obvious, but it’s a great tip.  If you don’t want to run outside, run at your gym.  Or on a treadmill in your house, if you’re lucky enough to have one.  Trust me, I hate stationary running as much as the next guy, but there’s something liberating about running in a tank top and shorts while the poor souls outside trudge by your gym in their hats, boots, and scarves.   If you don’t listen to music when you run outside (and I don’t), I certainly recommend doing so inside.  People-watching in your gym is only entertaining for so long – after a while, the silent 24-hour news channels on the TVs hanging 30-feet away and the guy in the corner with the weird dumbbell technique get old.  Bring your iPod!
2. 

   Run with me!

   Bring your dog. Ninety percent of the discomfort of running in the cold comes from your brain constantly thinking about the fact that it’s cold, not the actual fact that it’s cold outside. Bringing your dog with you takes your mind off the temperature.  Who can’t resist laughing at Fido when he bounds a few feet ahead of you, slides into the snow, and then turns around and looks at you with a newly snowed-on Santa’s beard?

3. Run with others. “But Phil, I don’t have a dog!”  Okay, it’s a lame excuse, but I’ll accept it just this once.  Perhaps you don’t actually have a dog.  Then find a person!  While your best running buddy might not be keen to dive headfirst into the fluffy stuff and show off his new Santa’s Beard, he’ll be the perfect conversation partner, doing a great job of keeping your mind off how cold it is.
4. Avoid running when it’s snowing out. While running through snow on the ground can be fun (though you need to be careful when doing so), running while it’s actually snowing out isn’t the best idea. The situation that actually makes running in the cold noticeably uncomfortable is being wet while doing so, and falling snow melts on your hat and clothes while you’re running. This helps to ensure you’re always encased in wet clothing.  Not only is this uncomfortable, but it can be dangerous.  If you’re running outside in cold weather and get too wet, you’re at risk for hypothermia and should get inside as quickly as possible, and follow these hypothermia safety tips.
5. Don’t wear clothing that is too heavy. Instinctively, when we hear it’s cold outside, we know we have to bundle up, piling layer upon layer to keep our body heat inside.  When you’re running, this is only partially true.  Yes, you need to keep as much of your skin and head surface covered as possible to keep your warmth inside.  But as you run, and especially when you’re running, your body does an incredibly efficient job of generating body heat.  So much so, that too many extra layers can cause you to sweat excessively, which makes you wet, and therefore cold, as we pointed out in Tip 4.  So while it may be counterintuitive to do so, staying warm while running in cold weather actually means wearing fewer and lighter layers.  That doesn’t mean you should head out into 25-degree weather with nothing but a long-sleeve t-shirt to cover your top, but you should make sure that you have a breathable inner layer, like a Dri-Fit shirt that will wick sweat away from your body, along with a weather-resistant outer shell that will keep the biting cold wind and any precipitation out.  It may take a few tries with a few different options in your running wardrobe, but you will find the right fit!
6. Move. Okay, this might be a cop-out tip, but I followed it, and it’s been working wonders!  It did drop into the 30s here last evening, but all winter long our high temperature only occasionally fails to reach 50 degrees, and when the sun is out, it’s positively delightful.  If frequent Abominable Snowman sightings during your daily run are not your cup of tea, move south!  The extra doses of vitamin D from the surplus days of sunshine will also be a boost to your spirits, helping to fight against Seasonal Affective Disorder.

With these five tips, you should have a new arsenal of motivation to get your butt out the door when all you want to do is curl up inside by the fireplace and take a nap.  What are some of your favorite techniques for motivating yourself to run when it’s cold out?

Snow photo by the Marin Independent Journal.  Puppy photo by jcptalbot.