I’m Moving

If you are as tired as I am of how long this blog takes to load, then you will appreciate the fact that I am moving this blog to a faster server.  I have taken some of the better posts and added them to the new blog and will be a more frequent blogger from now on since I will be spending less time waiting for pages to load, as you have been doing.

Please visit the new blog site by clicking here.  Thanks

TWA Canyon Adventure Run

Sunday afternoons are my time to leave a little early and do a longer or more challenging run. Although quite short distance wise, the run from the Elena Gallegos Picnic Area to Domingo Baca Canyon presents the challenges of a rocky trail, altitude and then the limited “visibility” of the sun shining directly into your eyes on the rocky descent on the way back (before the trail begins heading south back to the picnic area).Starting at about 6,400 feet and stopping to take a picture with my Katana II, I reached just over 7,000 feet in Domingo Baca Canyon before heading back because of time constraints. The actual wreckage of the flight from Albuquerque to Santa Fe which crashed on the morning of February 19, 1955, according to the ASN aircraft accident description, is at 9,243 feet and the trail becomes much more challenging beyond Domingo Baca Canyon. Photos from TWA Canyon are available here.By carrying my Katana II in my Camelbak Alterra pack, I am able to track my runs and have the peace of mind that if something happens on my solo runs, I will have a way to contact someone and also my location tracked on my GPS enabled phone. In addition to GPS tracking, I use the Polar RS800sd with the Polar S3 Stride Sensor, which also performed flawlessly and gave the same exact distance as the GPS. Activity   Route: – Elev. Avg: 6669 ft Notes   Elena Gallegos Picnic Area to Domingo Baca Canyon and back. Map Elevation (ft)

Posted from runtracker.runnersworld.com

Are you BIM Active?

I once was fast and now I’m slow

Why I’m not a blogger

     The first clue that I’m not a blogger is that I never write in my blog.  I’m old, tired and just not in the mood to take on another task in my life.  I used to do a newsletter every week, but then, even though I cherish having so many subscribers, I realized it just wasn’t helping to pay the bills.  That is all that I seem to think about these days.  I used to sell a lot of Polar heart rate monitors, but then that business slowed down and I honestly don’t know why.  If you have any idea why, please email me at howtobefit@aol.com, because I would really like to know.  So I quickly regrouped, apologized to my subscribers and this will be the second week that with no newsletter.  I started to think that maybe I could be a blogger.  I have three blogs and it is easy to write something - if you have something to say that people want to read.  That’s the real key.  I did a search in Google for the best blogs and Forbes had quite a good list of categories.  None of them were health and fitness, so I tried sports and saw that they list five of what they considered the best.  The list included www.badjocks.com - Where COPS Meets SPORTSCENTER - and I could never write the stuff they do.   Another was a Yankee Fan Club blog, but it hasn’t been updated since May 6th, 2007.  Maybe no one really cares about health and fitness blogs after all, so what would be the point of writing one.

I hope that you have seen Field of Dreams.  Rembember the line, “If you build it, they will come”.  Well I decided to use that philosophy and added four message boards to my website - they work for WebMD - but after about a month, no one has come yet.   I am going for a run and will think about whether I am a blogger or not and maybe it will come to me.  I wish I knew what the telltale signs were…

Are we self destructing?

    If news headlines, reports and statistics are true, then one of the greatest challenges that this country and world faces is not from without, but from within. Day after day, we are self destructing - destroying our own bodies and minds by ignoring the fact that we are first and foremost physical beings. Sedentary activities and diversions have robbed us of our robust physical and mental attributes that kept us on the top of the food chain and compromised our ability to respond to the challenges that life presents. In a seemingly never ending downward spiral, we continue to gravitate to the easy and fuel our bodies with the foul.
Today would be a great day to take back control of our lives and realize that within us, the fire of change still burns and that we can take back control of our lives. Rosalyn Carter once said, “”If you doubt you can accomplish something, then you can’t accomplish it. You have to have confidence in your ability, and then be tough enough to follow through.” Being tough and being strong and taking charge of our bodies and our minds can be as simple as erasing doubt which in turn will build confidence and put us all back on a path to success.
This week, I’ve added two new features to the site. One is a compilation of health and fitness news headlines that I will update constantly and that you can use for informational purposes and the other is a listing of fitness success stories. We all need motivation and support and seeing and hearing the success stories of other people, I believe, is a great way to stoke the fire of change and get back our physical and mental superiority.

A Full Morning - Eating Before Your Morning Run

Runner’s World Magazine writer Julie Upton provides us with some insights on why your morning runs can sometimes go bad. She writes, “You are out the door cruising around the neighborhood. Nothing can stop you–except maybe that dead feeling in your legs. And that empty feeling in your stomach.

The alarm sounds, and you roll out of bed and into your running shoes. Within minutes, you are out the door cruising around the neighborhood. Nothing can stop you–except maybe that dead feeling in your legs. And that empty feeling in your stomach. And the fact that no matter how hard you push, your normal nine-minute pace quickly stalls into a laborious 10-minute-plus shuffle.

Often times it’s a mystery why a good run goes bad. But any nutritionist can tell you in just two words what’s going on in a dead-leg morning slog: no breakfast.” Continued…

Got arrhythmias - read this!

I have never understood why people are so protective of what they write. I enjoy sharing with you the wisdom and knowledge that I have gained and continue to acquire. When I saw this article on AOL, I felt that it was important to share it with you - for yourself, your spouse and your children (if that is the case). The article deals with sudden death from arrhythmias and in Italy, they are doing something about it.

My apologies to the Associated Press and to Maria Cheng, but readers will benefit from this article as I did, since I have arrhythmias when I run.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Cardiac problems like an abnormal
heartbeat are exacerbated by rigorous exercise in a way that can be
fatal in athletes, and regular testing for the problem could save
lives, doctors at a heart conference said Sunday.

Italy is the only country that mandates heart screening of all
its professional athletes, Dr. Domenico Corrado of the University
of Padua said at the European Society for Cardiology meeting in
Vienna.

Since 1981, Italian authorities have run heart checks on all
competing athletes. The incidence of sudden, fatal heart attacks
has dropped from four cases per 100,000 to 0.4 cases per 100,000.

Without testing, athletes genetically predisposed to having an
irregular heartbeat might not be aware of their condition until
it’s too late, doctors said. Adrenaline produced during exercise
may overstimulate the heart, causing it to essentially
short-circuit.

“Sport acts as a trigger,” Corrado said in research presented
at the meeting.

Corrado said he had no ties to companies involved in screening
athletes. The research was funded by the Italian government.

Last week, Antonio Puerta became the latest high-profile soccer
player to die while competing.

After the 22-year-old Sevilla midfielder lost consciousness and
fell, doctors treated him on the field and he walked off, but then
had a heart attack in the locker room and another in the emergency
room of a Seville hospital.

He died three days later.

A day after Puerta’s death, former Zambia striker Chaswe Nsofwa
died minutes after collapsing on the field during a training
session with Israeli club Hapoel Beersheba. The 27-year-old Nsofwa
was given electric shocks and an external pacemaker but could not
be revived by paramedics.

On Aug. 24, 16-year-old Anton Reid of English League One team
Walsall died after collapsing on the field.

Because they have been exercising vigorously, many athletes who
collapse during competition do not have enough oxygen in their
bodies to allow the heart to start pumping again, even if a
defibrillator is used to try to restart their heart.

FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, deemed the risk of
irregular heartbeats to be so great that before last year’s World
Cup in Berlin, its medical committee demanded that all players
undergo heart scans. Following the recent deaths, FIFA said it was
considering expanding health checks.

“Athletes may have a silent but important heart disease that’s
not … manifest,” said Dr. Douglas Zipes, a cardiologist at
Indiana University School of Medicine. Though little data exist,
Zipes said that a genetic disorder may cause some athletes’ hearts
to get abnormally big when they train.

Corrado estimated that the cost of Italy’s heart screening
program is about $82 per athlete. Other countries are not convinced
that screening is worth the cost, given how few athletes are at
risk. Concerns have been raised about the effectiveness of the
scan, which relies largely on echocardiograms, a test that shows if
the heart is pumping normally.

“As a screening test, it’s very imperfect,” said Dr. Gordon
Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University and
spokesman for the American Heart Association. “It can pick up many
of the things that cause sudden death, but not all of them.”

Doctors said that more awareness about the potential dangers is
key to preventing future deaths, though not all athletes with
suspicious tests will collapse on the field.

“Coaches should pay more attention to their players’
symptoms,” Zipes said. “If an athlete is complaining about chest
pains or shortness of breath, those are warning signs that should
not be ignored.”

Associated Press sports writer Chris Lehourites in London
contributed to this report.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

Oh that stings

I went for a run along the Rio Grande on the Bosque Path yesterday afternoon and was thoroughly enjoying my run. Perhaps because it was 88 degrees, I didn’t see another runner in my 40:00 run, but saw plenty of cyclists. Cyclists and runners have a tenuous relationship because we share the same training areas and that can cause unwanted contact - either figuratively or literally. The rule is Albuquerque is “run right” and that seems to work just fine, so for the most part, we are like ships passing in the night.

Bikers rarely acknowledge runners and when they do, it is hard to know if you know them because helmets, sunglasses and colorful attire make them look almost alien. One guy on a Pee Wee Herman bike, riding in shorts and a shirt completely unbuttoned and blowing in the breeze, smiled and nodded. That was unusual and the only person out of the 20 or so that I saw to make any gesture of friendship and I smiled and nodded back. I would have loved to have seen lots more people walking, running and cycling and all of them showed some sign that, yes, we are out here working out, benefiting ourselves and our families and being good fitness role models.

But instead, believe it or not, for the rest of my run, I wondered if I had, by being friendly, made some gesture to an undercover APD officer and that I would be caught in a sting. Let’s face it, last week we learned more about what goes on in men’s rooms in airports than we should ever need to know. I travel little now and frankly it would have to be a great emergency before I pooped in an airport bathroom, but I have learned some hard lessons and wish that Senator Craig had known what foot movements can mean. I don’t know anything about him and don’t share his political affiliation but hope that he will be remembered for how well he served his electorate and not for what happened in his life last week. His family was on Good Morning America defending him and that had to have been terribly humiliating. My life could have been ruined yesterday because I nodded the wrong way to someone on a bicycle in a simple gesture of friendship…

30 Days

Although that sounds like a very long jail sentence for a celebrity, what it is actually is how long it took for me to develop a habit. No, not the type of habits celebrities have, but rather my habit of working out (in my case running) seven days a week. Whether I was tired, stressed or faced successive 100 degree + days, I still worked out. Rather than being a “sentence”, I am thrilled that I was able to make a small adjustment in my schedule and bring more balance into my life. It was really just a 30:00 difference from the time that I was working out, but it also was a realignment of the priorities in my life. I was putting my family first and myself last. Now I am putting my family first and myself second and feel better physically and psychologically and am much more energized and able to devote the rest of the time that I have to my passion for helping others.

I did a search on the site and quickly found these diverse articles on habits. I will continue to look for more so that if you are trying to develop a good eating habit or an exercise habit, or to get rid of a bad habit, you will have more information to use to help you reach your goal.

The Power of Positive Habits

Change Your Mind, Your Body Will Follow

Habits Not Diets - Developing Better Eating Habits

An Ounce of Prevention in a Child’s Diet

Running Training Habits - Do The Right Things