An Old Man Jogs

Something different today.  I am 71, almost 72 years old.  In my twenties, I started running in an effort to get my weight down.  I was then around 200 pounds.  I read a book, can't remember by whom, but some Australian guy made the claim that if you could run a mile in 10 minutes, you were fit.  That got me thinking, and while I had not run much before, I started jogging, and within a month or so I was running 1 mile in 10 minutes.  I went on to running 3, then finally 5 miles in 8 and change minutes a mile. Of course I wasn't going to win any races, but I lost weight in the process down to 165 pounds.  Today I find myself wanting to get down to 200 pounds, and running again seemed like it might help.  

Now, all this running was done without any coaching or technology of any sort.  I wore Addidas indoor training shoes, because that is what we wore on my high school track team, rather like the one on Jim Fixx's book The Complete Book of Running.  I realize that the shoes Fixx is wearing are not Addidas, but my Addidas were very similar in the amount of cushioning.  Namely, there ain't much there.  I quit running and started cycling.  But quit that as well to concentrate on motorcycling and other pursuits.  In the process, I gained weight...a lot of it.

After my cancer surgery last October, which I admitted took a lot out of me, I have been slowly recovering, but Mrs. PolyKahr has noticed that my balance was less sure than before.  I noticed that climbing stairs was now requiring that I hold the railing.  What to do...what to do.  I started walking, since balances is largely an issue of muscular strength.  Now one of the great things I have today, that I didn't have 50 years ago is the interwebs.  One can find pretty much anything on the internet if you go looking for it.  There is now something called Zone 2 training. 

The various zones, there are 5, are defined by the amount of effort that is required to operate at that zone.  Zone 1 might involve very light exercise.  Zone 5, by contrast is an all-out effort that taxes the body at close to the maximum heart rate.  Zone 2 is enough that you can carry on a real conversation, but you work up a sweat.  The benefits of zone 2 are:

a) As you jog in zone 2, you slowly build up the speed at which you can run and stay in zone two.  In other words it has excellent effects on cardio-vascular health, building out the vascular system and cleaning out the arteries.

b) As you jog in zone 2, you build up the number of mitochondria in each muscle fiber.  Mitochondria supply the ATP that powers the muscle.  You slowly get faster up to a point.  Your muscles also become more efficient at oxygen uptake, so you can run faster and stay in zone 2.  You also build up the strength of the bones.

c) It trains the body to use fats as a fuel source, which becomes really important once you begin running really long distances, say 10 miles to the ultra-marathons.  Yes, people run continuously as much as 100 miles!

d) You are unlikely to injure yourself if you stick to zone 2 religiously.  You can get fit and not suffer injuries that competitive runners often suffer and sideline them like knee injuries, shin splints and various fractures.

None of this is really new.  Joe Henderson first coined the term "long slow distance" in 1969 which is the same as zone 2.  80% of a runner's efforts should be at a pace that fits in zone 2.  More recently, in Japan, Professor Hiroaki Tanaka has written a book called Slow Jogging though I think Tanaka is being too kind. I call it the "old man's shuffle" though it seems to be working. When I started a month and a half ago, it was very slow going. But the speed is creepy up, imperceptibly.

For Father's Day, Mrs. PolyKahr got me a heart rate monitor, a Wahoo TICKRfit that you strap on your arm as you run, and you can keep track of your heart rate as you exercise.  I can keep my effort in the zone 2 range pretty easily with this technology and it has been an eye opener.  I start with a quarter mile walk, at the end of which my heart rate is only 96 bpm.  Then I start the "old man's shuffle" and my heart rate slowly rises to 135 at which I start walking again until it is down to 120 bpm, where upon I start jogging again.  I do this for a total of 1.25 miles. 

As for the problems I mentioned at the start, those have both improved.  I am more sure footed and am having less problems with balance.  In addition, I can now climb the stairs again while holding grocery bags in both hands and do not need to hold onto the rails.  Maybe the young can walk faster than I can jog, but I haven't felt as well in a long time.  Oh, and I am losing some weight too.  So I tip my hat to the young and keep on jogging.

It Makes Your Blood Boil

 I have taken a break for commenting in part to have more time for other parts of my life that I have neglected.  As Mrs. PolyKahr has noted, I am an old man, and my influence has faded.  My life has become small, and there is very little I can do about anything.  For me, I will eventually leave this earth.  Still, I must at times alert gentle readers to dangers and lurking situations that may affect the lives of people in the prime of life.

I don't remember who said it first, but it is true that the cause is never the real cause of all the commotion.  That is just a convenient excuse.  The real cause is the revolution.  The real cause is grabbing power.  J. B. Shurk, at the American Thinker yesterday nailed it for us at Our Fiery but Mostly Peaceful Invasion. Before I get into Shurk's piece, however, I must make some explanation about the term "Democrat." Mrs. PolyKahr is concerned that the term paints everyone who votes for the candidate with the "D" behind his name with the odious Communist/Socialist/Marxist label. I don't mean to do that. People have all kinds of reasons for voting as they do. My concern is with Democrat politicians, who darn well know what they are doing. Mrs. PolyKahr also likes to make the moral equivalence argument that there are some "good" Democrats and some "bad" Republicans. While this is true, the difference lies in party platforms. The Republicans still give God and country at least lip service.

Shurk starts out by explaining how our government, other Western governments, in coordination with globalist elites and others (think CCP) have brought about "color revolutions" all over the world. The Los Angeles riots follow the same playbook but are different in that this is really a foreign invasion.

Across the West, the Establishment wages war against national populations that reject the politicians and bureaucratic tyrants running their countries into the ground. Western “elites” undermine democracy in the name of democracy and throw anybody who objects into jail. It’s insanely totalitarian...and entirely predictable.

For months, every American with two brain cells and a pulse has understood that Democrats were preparing for a 2020 “summer of love” reunion tour now that President Trump is back in the White House. Just as they took advantage of fentanyl fanatic George Floyd’s death by railroading four Minneapolis police officers and kicking off a months-long rampage of arson, looting, and murder in Democrat-run cities across the U.S. five years ago, violent Democrats have been salivating at the chance to turn the summer of 2025 into a bloody, fiery nightmare for law-abiding Americans. It’s what Democrats do.

This season’s production of the NGO-financed, Intelligence Community–choreographed, Chinese Communist Party–supported, and Democrat party–organized “color revolution” has a new theme. Instead of bringing back Black Lives Matter for an encore performance of its widely acclaimed 2020 race riots (despite five-star reviews from the Establishment, that “fiery but mostly peaceful” theatrical production turned off much of the public), 2025’s murder spree will celebrate criminal illegal aliens’ war against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Forty million foreign nationals will prove why they should be allowed to break America’s immigration laws and bilk America’s taxpayers by burning down American cities, attacking America’s law enforcement officers, and endangering American lives. California governor “Gruesome” Newsom sure is excited. The same tyrant who sent armed enforcers after Christians who refused to mask toddlers over two years into the COVID pandemic (another Democrat-sponsored theatrical production that the press and politicians adored but the public despised) is doing everything he can to help illegal aliens set his state on fire.

It is teeth grinding to realize that the taxes paid to the government have been used against us. Shurk puts it this way:

First, powerful government officials conspire to aid and abet a foreign invasion. Then those government officials cover up the dangers and injuries to American citizens. Finally, the same government officials whose actions have caused real harm to Americans denounce Americans as “immoral” for daring to oppose the government’s malicious, criminal, and damaging conduct.

It’s as if the people who have been “running” this country for decades hate the people whose families have long lived here and love the foreigners who just sneaked in. Perhaps we Americans are a nation living inside a nation being constructed around us! That would certainly explain why the Constitution (and particularly the Bill of Rights) seemed to stop operating sometime over the last century.

But we know why this is happening. Too many Americans have rejected the Marxist globalists and their borderless “New World Order.” So we must be made to pay.

I don't want to be the only one whose blood is boiling, so go ahead and read it for yourselves.