There is one hurdle in this running routine however, the weight. Certainly not the weight on my body (still holding strong in the low 140′s!), but rather the weight on my back. I have this awesome Osprey Talon 22 grimace colored backpack that fits everything I need (clothes, shoes, breakfast, lunch, wallet, keys, phone, book, kittens, etc.) and with room to spare, but unfortunately, that degree of weight creates a bouncing sensation that no hip straps paired with shoulder straps is going to tame. I tighten the hip straps only to have the top of my bag swing across my  neck. I tighten the shoulder straps to prevent the swinging, but then the hip straps come up to my belly and the process starts over again. At lighter weights I can minimize any movement and really kick into a more natural stride and speed, but it’s not easy. Hence the title of this post.

There is no way I can keep runmutting with this morning annoyance, especially without the tolerance lifting magic of my friend Joe, and so my brain has been schemeing. Pulling on my other commuting preference, biking, I’ve decided to fashion a run trailer, something akin to a hands-free rickshaw, a…wait for it….Rickroll if you will.

I’m serious. It’s a thought that simply won’t go away, spurned by the frustration I experience every morning on my run to work and fueled by the mental clarity I have on my run back home. The trailer will meld together the commuting accessories of cycling, rickshaws, backpacking and maybe some cross country skiing. It’s all there in my head and it looks and works beeeeautifully. I can almost feel the hip belt securely hugging my protruding pelvic bones, the trailer casually rolling behind me, snuggly cuddling all my necessities for the day and my legs and arms swinging freely as if I’m out for an easy 10′er. It’s a beautiful thing, it really is. But first I have to cobble together all the bits and pieces to start on my prototype, which will necessitate a trip to the disneyland-like hardware stores where I should be able to find everything I need, short of welding equipment. And soon enough, I’ll be cruising to work dragging the fruits of my labor and probably some real fruit too.

It’s an idea that WILL happen, if not because the motivation is there, then because the necessity certainly is. You know there will be photos as this comes together.

Mark my words. Runmutting will be the new black. I’m just ahead of the curve (or so I like to tell myself).

Keep running. Go Vegan.

My new morning routine starts the night before, when I prepare all my belongings and roll them into my backpack properly (poor packing gives you bloody spots on your back from inadvertent rubbing…trust me) and make any sleep-deprived morning preparations unnecessary. The alarm rouses me before the sun has even thought of waking (5:45 to be exact) and I go through the motions to get me out the door by 6:15. My bike light, blinking a false distress call to equally sleep-deprived drivers, is clipped to my bag as I work out the previous days leg tightness by easing my legs into the run. I unnaturally stick to the sidewalks in the pre-dawn dark and work my way through the first mile and a half, suddenly awake, heart beating out a shocked but familiar rhythm.

The sweat begins to make its way outward as I carry my weighted pack, filled with work clothes, coffee thermos, breakfast and lunch and other necessities to the final destination 4.5 miles away. With an increased effort my legs lift the weight as if I’m running uphill the whole way, and I think about the strength I will have built in just a couple weeks time.  I cross the road, work through a long section of protected park green space, through some shady areas where it isn’t uncommon to find discarded bodies and onto the “other side of the tracks” (literally over railroad tracks), where the final stretch of sidewalk brings me further into the city’s urban core. The sun still in shut-eye.

My legs now loosened enough to work away the initial tightness, but stressed enough to harbor more that will show itself sometime around lunch. I blame the weighted pack. I change clothes in secret, air out my mildly sweaty running outfit (costume?) and get ready for work like Clark Kent returning to his desk. Right now I’m clocking 7 minute miles, but with route familiarity and increased strength I have a feeling that will drop. No matter, right now I’m just enjoying the run.

After thinking this through during my runs I have some things I would like to change. First off, I need to get stronger, but I know that will come with continued effort. That will make carrying the pack easier. Speaking of the pack, I need to make some sizing adjustments that are possible in the pack design itself  (Thank you Osprey for being so awesome). I think doing so will really help with the comfort of the run, aid in returning my normal gait and prevent some of the obnoxious shifting and bouncing that happens during the runmmute. Speaking of carrying items…. I’m scheming. More on that later.

To summarize, the first 2 days have been a success. I will be carrying on and looking forward to overcoming the discomforts like I had to do when first bike commuting (rain, ice, flats, hygiene, etc.). If more “epiphanies” that are worth sharing come to light, I’ll be sure to share them in case anyone else wants to try the same or at least discuss the absurdity with me.

Onward!

“If you stay ready, you don’t have to get ready.”

I like that mantra. I like being primed to run even if I’m not training for anything. I like being primed for physical and emotional health even if it’s a touch neurotic. I like not having to worry about calories, indulgences and other common concerns, if only because I work those worries away.

So with that in mind I purchased an Osprey Talon 22 for my runmuting purposes and have pulled out all the appropriate cold weather running clothes to begin my mornings with a brisk 4.5 mile run into work. I will bookend that with another 4.5 mile run back home when the whistle blows as well, giving me a 9 mile total for each day. I’m not really interested in adhering to that every day as I don’t think the toll it would take on me would sit will with Michelle, or me for that matter, but it will be nice to “stay ready”, all without the intrusion training had on my daily routines. I’ve always considered the possibility of making running PART of my routine and this works in perfectly. I know it’s not for everybody, but I’ve always stressed the importance of making physical activity an inherent part of your day (commuting the easiest way) in order to keep it sustainable. So many people, especially for a New Year’s Resolution, try to ADD physical activity to their days, seeing it more as a burden than simply a part of their lives…and this just isn’t going to last. Physical activity must be integral if it’s going to last. That could be riding your bike around town instead of taking your car. It could be running/walking your dog at least 3 times a day. It could be running to work or for errands. WHATEVER it is, if you’re forcing it, it’s not going to last. There are countless numbers of lonely basement treadmills acting as dirty laundry racks to prove the point.

Personally, getting up and out the door at 5:45/6:00 isn’t going to be easy, but I know when I make it to the end of my block I won’t regret it for a second. I’m just fortunate enough to have a runmute as an opportunity to keep me ready for what may come. I hope you can find your own way to “stay ready”.

Speaking of what may come…there MAY be an absurd race on my schedule at the end of this month. If I commit to it, (training not withstanding), I’ll make mention of it in another post.

Onward!

I write to you from the other side. The other side of running. Not from the complete opposite, the space of NON-RUNNING, but rather just that other space where running isn’t so all-consuming, so constant and extreme. I write to you from what seems like an entirely different realm of existence, where energy and clarity are plentiful, where perspective is broader, where daily routines are dictated by themselves and not under the ever watchful eye of running’s pressing demands.

I’ll elaborate.

I have gone from an existence that involved running every single day….for years, yes EVERY DAY, and yes, YEARS, to 5 miles every other day, at any pace i choose. And those previous years of running weren’t little jogs here and there. They were at least 1o miles a day, no slower than 7:30 pace. That is the world that is slowly fading into the cerebral compartment of fond memories. I now reside on the other side of that world, where I run to keep my sanity, to keep my health, but without such extreme obligation or striving for definable reward. And let me tell you, dear running friends, it’s NIGHT and DAY. For example…

On “the other side”, there is energy. Energy you can’t understand. It’s an energy that is quite surprising and after so many days of having difficulty walking up stairs, or just not so motivated to move throughout the day, to instantaneously jump from my chair and perform any task demanded of me without fatigue, is, well, it’s surprising. And it’s not what you think. I know you are saying to yourself, “Oh yeah. I know what you mean. I totally feel that during taper weeks. I feel like I’m bouncing off the walls!”.

No. You’re wrong. That is still such an incredibly sacrificed form of energy. You may be recovering from your efforts, but you are still in an energy deficit at this point. Sure, sports scientists have effectively worked out the ratio of fatigue to recovery to allow for a stunning race day performance, maximizing muscle and cardiovascular strength to compensate for overall fatigue, but despite whatever PR you run that day, you are still in a state of fatigue compared to the COMPLETELY rested individual. Sure, that rested individual has a less developed cardiovascular and muscular system, but they make up for it with exuberant energy. Their bodies are at the ready, for whatever physical demands may be asked of them. And right now, I’m there too. It’s crazy. I can bound stairs, run back and forth between buildings at my work all day, jump on my bike and ride around town, play with my 6 year old stepson, HAVE SEX(!), etc. all in one day without having to rest my legs or mind in the process. It’s, oddly, crazy.

And that’s just the beginning.

I now have trouble FALLING ASLEEP at night. Where before my wife was mad at me that I would be snoring under one minute from the time my head hit my pillow (no exaggeration), now I’m struggling to keep my rambling thoughts at bay as I try to get a full nights rest.

And then when I wake up….I’m up! Ok, that’s never all that easy, but it’s a far cry from the zombie induced trance I once experienced every morning before work. And that energy is then carried into work, where I’m not NODDING OFF TO SLEEP every time I sit down and close my eyes….as used to happen.

And yes, there is the sex. The ability and drive to actually have sex! No longer is it only during those rare moments of night time energy, or forced routine. It’s desired, anticipated and sustained (ok…most of the time)!

On the other side of running there is a clarity. A mental clarity you just won’t understand until you are on this side with me again. We’ve all been here before….before we started running, but so quickly we forget what it’s like when we are all consumed with the act of progression. It is a clarity of mind and heart, where my thoughts are focused on the task at hand and not constantly interrupted by concerns about the workouts to come, considerations about how to run further and faster, and not drug down by the heavy, hazy cloud that weights upon us during the most strenuous points of training.

The clarity is also emotional. My emotional state is much more tempered, even, not as subject to such drastic swings from either a deficit or surplus of excitement or frustrations. I can step back and process everything without such exaggerated reactions, because, precisely, I’m rested.

Let me give you a real world example. A story I haven’t shared with anyone but  my wife I believe. Before Chicago ’10, I was called into the Principal’s office (I work at a school) and basically told I was being put on a temporary contract with the school until I turned my act around. I was slacking. Not intentionally mind you, I was just tired…and didn’t realize it. I simply couldn’t work up the will to do my job, no matter how simple the task. I always had some sort of excuse about why I couldn’t get to a job right away, that seemed logical at the time, but now I realize was just a way of avoiding the effort necessary for the job. Again, I was just tired. Physically and emotionally. Then a few months after Chicago, when I “retired” (for the first time), I was called back in and was told I was doing “a great job”. She asked why, and the answer was obvious. “I quit running”. Suddenly, after a couple weeks of regeneration, I was able to perform my job to my expected capabilities, and it was nothing more than allowing my mind and body to develop the energy and focus to do so.

See, when you are in the throws of training so heavily, running 100+ miles a week, you slowly wear yourself down….but you just don’t realize it. I mean, you know this to a degree, but it’s all relative. You don’t know just HOW MUCH you’ve worn yourself down because it happens so gradually, and when you’ve been running for YEARS, that gradual decline becomes unnoticeable. It’s only after taking a massive break and allowing your body and mind to regenerate do you understand how deep in the hole you actually were. It’s pretty amazing to consider how you even functioned in such a deep, relatively dark place.

Now, of course, I’m not saying being in that place is a bad thing. Absolutely not. Those years of effort were some of the most rewarding and exciting times of my life. There are few things in life that I am more proud of than my accomplishments during all that training and effort, but I also think it would do those of us who are so incessantly driven to take a step back, a huge step back, every once in awhile to gain perspective. Ultimately, we’ll all get to that place sometime whether willingly or forced by the limitations of our bodies.

And here I am, writing to you from the other side of running. The side consisting of 5 mile runs every other day, keeping my body and mind fit, and retaining a clarity I haven’t felt in so long. I respect you, elite running friends, immensely, but I’m here to tell you that when you come to this side as well, it is not depression, gloom and weight-gain as we tend to think, but rather quite awesome in its own right. For now, keep keepin’ on.

I’ll meet you for a run when you are ready. Just a run. Not a workout. Not a recovery. Just a run.

I always said when I quit running I’d cut my hair…deluding myself into going underground. Separating my identity from my personhood, so the painful reminders of what I could no longer do wouldn’t have to be addressed. It doesn’t work. Others still register shock when I tell them I didn’t run the local marathon they just asked about. They still recognize me. The only person that doesn’t recognize me is myself. The shadow that bounds along side me in the woods is a stranger. A well groomed poindexter, enacting the feel good ritual the rest of conservative society loves to embrace. I don’t say hello to that stranger…he repulses me, so I try to outrun him. The pounding lungs signal the necessary transformation, cutting my identity from that “runner”….”jogger”. I don’t know who he is with that closely cropped hair. He looks stupid. Nothing signals his speed. He could be out “taking in the sights” for all I know. That’s not me. Not when I’m running anyways.

I hit the parking lot and my legs are filled with the weight of effort. The pain begins to creep into the deepest muscle fibers, entering and hardening almost immediately. It feels good to hurt, because poindexters don’t hurt. I do.

The shadow catches up and the stranger’s silhoutte begins to come back into focus. I think I know that guy. He has a lot of ambition…but he doesn’t really know what to do with it right now. I should probably sit down with him and have a long conversation about focus and perseverance, hardship and endurance, accomplishment and satisfaction. He reminds me of myself a little..if he’d just grow out that stupid looking haircut.

I knew it was going to hurt today and I didn’t care, because I also knew I wasn’t going to run today. No time…truthfully. Ok, there is time, but an hour I no longer care to meet. The 4 am wake up call can keep silent from now on. I have work and family and the need not to be a pendulum of emotions. I need sleep. I also need running.

So I ran to punish myself for not running…well, it just feelst that way. I knew running hard for 2 hours was going to get me the next day and the next, but I don’t care anymore. There is no race to train for. There is no need to manage pain. There is no need to recover. There are only minutes wasted on the doldrums of daily life and the opportunites to break away from them.

I’ll probably keep punishing myself. I’ll probably keep savoring the two days later reminders that I still did something awesome for a couple hours. I’m now doing it “for the love”, but maybe more truthfully as a reminder that I’m incredibly not dead.

Printed matter is a manner of permanency and I etch short stories into my legs not to forget my history.

5 flavors, 18 grams of protein, 13 grams of sugar

I was contacted via email about receiving a sampling of PureFit bars for review. I had just read about these on a friends blog – www.thenailthatsticksup.com – and was curious to try them as he hyped their protein content of 18g’s and I couldn’t find any in the stores around here. I don’t know if it’s a distribution issue or if I’m shopping in the wrong places. Now, I’m not one to judge a book by it’s cover…wait, yes I am….regardless, the packaging for this product tells me it’s probably more at home in a GNC store than  my local health food store, yet at the same time it is hyped as being “vegan”, “gluten free” and made of “all-natural” products. Whatever the outward appearance of the wrapper may be, the important part is printed in the nutrition table on the back and then contained within the product itself.

Regarding the nutrition…in my last review of energy bars (Clif products), I mentioned my little obsession with Builder Bars, not just because I love their candy-like taste, but also because they have 20 g’s of protein which I use after hard, hard workouts. So when I saw that PureFit had 18g’s, I was curious if this was going to be a suitable replacement to Builder Bars as their one drawback is a sugar quantity that is a touch high 25g’s. It looks like PureFit bars come out on top in this category for sure as they match their 18g’s of protein with only 13 g’s of sugar, nearly half of Builder Bars. The calorie content ranges 210 to 220 per bar and is on par with Builder Bars with 6 – 7 g’s of fat. Nothing varies too much between the bars and PureFit holds its own throughout, but shines by offering so much protein with much less sugar.

Nutritional content

Let’s get to the selfishly important stuff though, the taste. I’ll admit, when I first opened the package I thought, “Oh no…it’s a Powerbar”. I had the original Powerbars way back in the Mid-90′s when they forced them upon us at our high school cross country camp. We jokingly called them meat bars, as the texture and appearance was not too far off from eating a slab of meat. They were super dense, flattened and pale in appearance, and many got tossed in the trash. So when I opened the package and saw a similarly flattened and dense bar staring me in the face, I was quite skeptical of what I was about to try. Here is the thing though, maybe I’m just too coddled by all the other candy bar and cake-like energy bars from other companies and am not used to the basic nutrition squeezed together presentation. Sure, it’s not drizzled in various patterns of icing, but that also accounts for the low sugar content represented on the packaging…so I would say that is a positive.

The taste follows the same pattern as the appearance. It tastes relatively bland at first, but that is because it’s not loaded with sugar, but after a little more time with it the sweetness of the brown rice syrup, agave and fruits starts to come through a little more. There is a little bit of crunchy texture to them from the soy crisps, so you don’t feel like your chewing on a soft strip of jerky. They are denser than most bars I’ve eaten, but I grew to like the texture and felt like I was eating something more substantial than what I’m accustomed to.

As a runner, I would eat these after a run for the protein/carb replacement, but also during the day as a quick snack as they are relatively filling without an overly high calorie count. However, I also think these would be ideal for a cyclist DURING an effort, whether that is training or a race. The bars hype themselves with the line, “They don’t melt!”, which sounds a little creepy, but ultimately isn’t and is actually a great selling point. I’m not a fan of licking the icing off the Builder Bar wrappers when they have melted from just being in my pocket and even after having these bars in my backpack for a couple days, they truly didn’t melt. As a cyclist, if you stuck one of these in your jersey pocket and rode for hours, you could still easily take one down without any mess. I also think the density of the bar would be great for eating on the go during training as well, so maybe that’s a good athletic niche for them.

The flavors they offer are Peanut Butter Crunch, Granola Crunch, Chocolate Brownie, Berry Almond Crunch, and Almond Crunch. The all-natural, vegan ingredients vary with each bar, but are primarily Soy Protein Isolate, Brown Rice Syrup, Fruit Juice, Grain Dextrins, Fructose, Chicory Extract, Dextrose, Rice Flour, Agave Nectar, Soy Nuts, Soy Flour, Textured Soy Flour, Inulin, Natural Flavors. The variations of ingredients are more in what creates the specific flavors.

Ingredient list

Overall, if you are looking for a bar that will satisfy your sweet tooth, I would look elsewhere, but if you are looking for something nutritionally sound with a high protein content and something that will work both after and during a workout for fueling (maybe not so much for running), then these are a pretty good option.

www.purefit.com

So onward we go. Hopefully stronger and smarter than ever. Keep keepin’ on as the temperatures drop and I’ll see you out there soon enough.