Thirty five year running!

Today, I completed my 35th year of running 5 days a week; this already represents some 29,097 miles (46,788 km)! It all began in New York, in July 1977.

While I remember that I began out of concern that I was going to get fat without exercising, I also remember having discussed the merits of running with Tom Leroy, during a sales meeting in Aspen, earlier that year.

He had then suggested I pick a copy of “Aerobics” by Kenneth Cooper, which I purchased and subsequently read. My first running course was about 3 mile long and meandered between Scarsdale and White Plains where we rented a small apartment.

This morning, as I completed another daily run in the company of my wife, I can certify that all my joints and muscles were in perfect order and still looking forward to running for many, many more miles!

Getting traction in mountain biking

There are two ways of getting familiarized with mountain biking: The gentle one, which consists of taking asphalt bike-paths and initially staying on flat terrain, and what I would call the “full-immersion” program that takes rank-beginners into the heart of the matter, the mountain and its crazy trails.

The first one is good, but can quickly become boring and let's face it, isn't much different from riding a road bike, albeit a much heavier and clunkier one. After purchasing a nice mountain bike, some folks do this at first, but don't stay with it for long; they get bored and don't see the excitement.

Another way is to get directly into the world of mountain biking, either through the avenue of lift-assisted, downhill biking or ease into the single-track cross-country side of the activity (the thing we do.) The age of the participant also plays a crucial role. Teenagers and young adults can ease into mountain biking by learning with buddies and thanks to a combination of grit, good balance, athletic abilities, pride and lots of practice, can learn the rudiment of the sport and improve remarkably fast.

For adults, and particularly those over forty, it's a different matter as time isn't as easily available, falling always hurts, is never a good option and mountain biking it's not the kind of sport that can be easily practiced by the entire family. So most folks get into mountain biking either by accident, special circumstances or just because they want to try something new.

In this group, the best would be to start by taking lessons as there definitely is a technique to be learned and this can save a lot of grief to the newcomer. Also, it's always a smart idea to err on the side of caution when choosing a new trail and practice as often as possible, in my opinion, no less than 20 to 30 times a season.

What got us so much enthused about the sport has been the fact that we could access the trails directly from home, we were retired and had all the time in the world to do it, and since we don't play golf, the only summer alternative for us would have been hiking, but is more time consuming. The morale of a successful foray into mountain biking as an adult is to take lessons, stick to it and do it as often as possible. Enjoy your ride!

Our long and winding trail into mountain biking

Our first experience with mountain biking can be traced more than a quarter of century ago, when we moved from New York to Park City, Utah. The early 80s was the beginning of the sport and we bought two Scott mountain bikes, with fat tires, 24 speed and zero suspension. We used them on the asphalt a few times and I may have tried mine on a real trail and found that it was too much work. From that moment on, the bikes stayed in our garage.

Fast-forward to 1990, our move to a new home and the advent of some form of front suspension; we got rid of the first bikes and purchased two Kästle mountain bikes with a semblance of front suspension. Same scenario. We used them a couple of times, I even flipped over the handlebar in the area where the St. Regis hotel stands today, and through divine intervention didn't kill myself then.

After that, the bike remained hung-up, high in our big garage. We subsequently sold the house, including the unused bicycles. Finally, in 2005, I relapsed and purchased two state of the art mountain bikes (front and rear suspension, disk brakes, the work...) My wife gave me the kind of look that said something like “you'll never learn...” The first Fall season we got our new bikes, we began to use them on the easy stuff, like the rail-trail and made a few timid forays into single-track territory.

We were clumsy but we seemed to like it (failure didn't seem to be a valid option...) The following summer season, I am now retired and we have much more time available. We become more attracted by the world of single-track and – unbeknownst to us – began to pick up more technique and start enjoying it more. Each subsequent season, we added more days, more challenges, more skills and much more fun.

Make no mistake, this is a hard sport and I bet that there are a multitude of mountain bikes out-there that, like our first two sets of bikes are hanging indefinitely in some garage, even though they were purchased with the very best of intentions! In some next blog, I'll try to explain why getting “traction” in mountain biking is so hard; stay tuned...

Overblown Olympics

I didn't watch the Olympics opening ceremony last night and don't plan to watch much of the two-week events. Reason: I've got Olympics fatigue and I'm less and less impressed with more and more “stuff.”

I've never been a huge fan of the Summer version of the event, except for the marathon and a few other foot races. I'm convinced that the Olympics have become overblown. Too costly, too pretentious, too pompous and too monetized.

Strange, I feel like I'm about to have an Olympindigestion. Excuse me, I must go to the bathroom!

The art of shutting up

Just like fine carpenters who measure twice and cut once, great leaders are generally able to think twice before they speak. This wasn't the case for Mitt Romney who couldn't control his delivery and evidently put his foot in his mouth when he saw himself basking in Olympic glory in London yesterday...

This goes a long way to showcase two undeniable flaws about the presidential candidate: The first one is that being rich doesn't makes you smart. The second is that thinking before speaking comes in handy on the campaign trail.

Enough said.

Is mountain biking mostly mental?

Most sports claim their share of mental influence. The best example that comes up is golf; I can buy that argument and as a skier, I have gone as far as saying that skiing too, was around 80 to 90% mental. Today, I'm asserting the same value to mountain biking.

Yesterday was my first foray in my last unexplored segment of the Park City Mid-Mountain trail that connects Canyons Resort to the village of Pinebrook. So with a thirst for adventure and great eagerness for discovery I saddled my bike to make that trek. As I explained on a recent blog, knowing a trail well is essential for mountain biking fun, so when one ventures into unknown territory, there's a lot of apprehension going on.

When conditions are tough, when more concentration is required than usual, the brain and the rest of the body tires really fast and soon good judgment can be severely curtailed. For instance, I once got lost, making the wrong turn up into the mountain (I wanted to save my momentum, so I didn't stop to read the trail sign), at some other time, I was just scared for no good reasons by the huge drop below me. I missed also a bunch of tricky but not technically impossible hairpin turns; in other words, I was, at times, riding like a genuine begginer.

The end of the trail was no piece of cake either, as it ended up into private properties and with a map that wasn't that good, I had a hard time figuring where I should be going, resulting in more anxiety and more strain on my system. At the end of my ride, I was exhausted, even though I only covered less than 10 miles of single trail. This show how the mental side of the activity had drained all juice out of me!

Time for a break...

Like anything else, all things are good in moderation... This season, in addition to running much faster than ever before and still five days a week, we've also been walking more often after dinner under the pretense of digestion and to top it all we've never mountain biked so much.

So, it was no surprise to us when, a few days ago, we suddenly realized that we were exhausted. That's right, we're not in our twenty anymore and we need to save whatever energy is still capable to powering us. We promised ourselves that from now on, we'd be more careful with our batteries and take some time off.

Our problem however is that in trying to do so, we've discovered that we've become exercise junkies!