Bone loss science

One of the reasons I enjoy poring over certain types of sports training books is the reems of odd scientific studies they usually discuss. 

I'm reading "Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100" by Roy Wallack and Bill Katovsky.  At first, it had lots of funny stories of their crazy ultra-cycling escapades with high elevation climbs from hell.  But then an offhand comment sent me ahead to Chapter 9 on the discovery of widespread prevalence of developing osteoporosis in male elite cyclists, even young ones.  Female too, it turns out.

The chapter gives an interesting tour through the vagaries of scientific method, such as doing a ton of studies on impact and resistance and diet but not considering calcium loss in sweat content. 

But Bill "Bagman" Gookin, a marathoning biochemist who puked up green Gatorade during a failed Olympic trial, back in the day taped plastic sandwich bags to his back, chest, and armpits while running to gather sweat samples.  He found calcium as well as potassium, sodium, magnesium, and all the usual things sports drinks are concocted to replace.  Yet most drinks do not include calcium, or did not.  I looked, the increasingly popular Nuun fizzy tablets do, though not in the All Day version.

So then they do the maths: 200 mg calcium lost in 1 hour x a seven-hour century ride = 1,400 mg.  12 hours a week amounts to 2,440 mg lost.  Two day's RDA a week, year after year...

Triathletes, however, have strongass bones because the impact of running,  and resistance training for those who also lift weights.  Turns out cycling is like a mild version of spaceflight- weightlessness causes bone loss from no impact or resistance, causing weird workout machines (or plain old resistance bands) to be concocted and used up there.  Another argument for cross training besides over-development of specific muscles.

Then there's the resting when not riding, so less walking, running, jumping sports, and weight lifting.  Why studies and education make a difference in training: what you don't know could drastically thin your bones.  I read a lot of cycling books and magazines in the eighties, but they did not know this yet...

Plus, phosphate from soft drinks leaches calcium too.  They harp on the sugar and obesity, but, man, even diet drinks have the phosphorus that sucks out calcium... Easy to forget, like all the individual little pieces.  What I love about these types of discussions in training books is the sheer number of interacting and sometimes contradictory factors at play.  (X is good, but detracts from Y, which you also need.  And Z is just bad, but who wants to give it up?) 

In the end, we do need science, not just doing what feels right, or trial and error...  Except... 

Cute as hell

Berlin Zoo's baby spiny anteater.

The Voting Rights Act was gutted by the SCOTUS today.  I'm not in the mood to read it or the ICWA case yet.  Yesterday's decision was weird.  I'm not looking forward to the next release- think they will deny standing on both.  But who knows. 

I hear Alito was very unprofessional listening to a Ginsberg dissent.  In AZ they make you take a course where you learn not to make faces when opposing counsel or party speaks.  Not the worst idea.

My online workout log is looking more like triathlon training.  Little biking guy and swimming guy alternate with running guy on the display.  It's the sweating season.  Everyone was dripping on the paths tonight, and at the Y yesterday, where the fans cool the weightlifters only.

Writing is up next.  I actually got a new idea today.  Hallelujah.  It's been a while.

Storm damage

From around the Longfellow neighborhood, on my run home.

Athletical

It's slightly demoralizing living around an elite athlete.  Especially when she's amazingly cut, can jump six to seven feet straight up in the air from a standstill, and can catch bunnies.  But no squirrels.  And honestly, I can catch a ball more consistently.

I did a cutback week run yesterday, taking time to pick up branches.  And do a lot of gawking.  I got super lucky, and the GF had minimal damage despite many large branches falling on her roof and being flung from the trees above her house in the storm we had Friday night.

Then I did swimming and biking today, consisting of biking to the lake and enjoying the water with half the city's kids and delinquent teenagers, doing vague drills to improve my crawl, and biking back.  It was fun.   Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

This was a far cry from yesterday, which was blocked roads all throughout the neighborhood, the sound of chainsaws everywhere, and lots of people calling insurance companies and tree trimmers, and the power company running around trying to restore electricity.

With the help of ART man, my body seems willing to let me train slowly for a half marathon and sprint triathlon, so I am keeping on. 

We got really excited yesterday about the idea of going to the Gay Games, what with their "everybody gets to play" egalitariansm that would allow us to compete, but then realized that was the one weekend of 2014 we have confirmed responsibilities that make it impossible to travel to beautiful Akron, Ohio.  (I went to college nearby, with folks from Akron.  It has pros and cons...)

At least I'll be in a new age group in 2018.  But so will all those fast wimmin...

Speaking of which, for Pride Month I brought home the docos "Before Stonewall" and "After Stonewall."  Well worth watching, or revisiting, for random bits of history and mini-interviews.  Hiding in the basement for an hour in the middle didn't make it less interesting.

Happy Pride month.

Exercise science

So I'm reading a lot of sports nutrition and training books, which have cheesy covers and read like pop psychology tracts.  Except for the sciency studies they discuss in passing.  Lou Schuler's The New Rules of Lifting for Women, in particular, has pages of footnoted studies that explain why women should lift weights hard and heavy like dudes. 

It's interesting reading, and makes one wonder how much stronger and more capable women would be without all that advice to tone and shape instead of pumping iron.  Some athletes are showing us, and more are in the pipeline.

The nutrition study data is interesting too, as it debunks the fad diet bandwagons our friends, coworkers, celebrity role models, and media keep trying to get us to jump onto, mostly.  What I found most eye-opening was simply how many studies had been done, as well as what people made of the results in a piecemeal fashion vs. taking the data in more holistically and sorting it out.  Matt Fitzgerald takes a good stab at this in Racing Weight.  Plus he has some good recipes.

I feel like I should be able to get a science fiction story idea out of it, but no luck yet...

Triathlon/ Half marathon training

I'm making up for seven months (or was it eight?) lost time by training for a half marathon yet again.  Hopefully third time will be the charm.  I'm trying to stave off repetitive motion injuries by simultaneously though slowly training for a triathlon farther in the future.

So I need to learn to swim freestyle/crawl with actual breathing instead of popping my head out, gasping for breath, and going off track.  I also need to get over my... Er, dislike, in lieu of a stronger word, cyclists, specifically the mobs that take over the entire path and act like a cyclist or, gods forbid, runner who is headed the other way, hugging the farthest edge of the trail, is somehow wrong.  And refuse to cede any ground, making you jump or swerve off the path.  Or get aggressively angry when you don't and they have to duck closer to their pals who are taking up the rest if the path.  It's not just guys, either, middle-aged women do this with a look of pure outrage that someone challenged their ownership of the whole road.  Then there are the trailing lines.of little kids and careening bike trailers to dodge, but that's a different animal than whatever makes Minnesotans in packs feel so entitled to taking over the WHOLE road, or park, or whatever. 

I suspect it's the same personality training that makes them so legendarily terrible at merging.  Packs of bikers and runners don't do this in all other states- maybe some, but definitely not all.

...so yeah, I have to find some way to get the cycling training in without becoming a total jerk as a kneejerk response.  The gym bikes have been one such option, but I've got to go outstate, I think...

We went trail running last weekend, and got covered in wood ticks.  Forgot about that part.  DEET next time...  It was fun, though.  Pix above.  I've never been to Harmon Farms in spring.  It was green and cool, perfect weather, and we managed to be there between two groups of mountain bikers, avoiding danger for all of us on the single tracks.

I ran six miles this weekend and although very slow, and waiting for a thunderstorm that did not materialize, it did not kill me.  I'm waiting to see if the tight spots in my glutes, where I was injurec, are bad pain in formation or manageable soreness.  Hopefully not...

Next up is joining the Clarion West writethon to add some writing goals to the madness.  It must be early summer, cos it feels manageable.  Right now, anyway...

Privacy

Real question: Does the interest in privacy change substantively when technological changes have us blabbing about everything from our daily eating to sexual preferences in minute detail?  When 'selfies' is likely to be added to Webster's, if it hadn't already?

Are there going to be different categories of coverage for people depending on how public they are with their bizness, kind of like libel law?

I'm curious.

I like this quote from Roxane Gay: "The Scrabble game I’m playing online knows I recently visited Home Depot to buy metal shelving and keeps displaying Home Depot ads. If that’s possible, then yes, it’s not a reach to see that the government is probably in my business, too."  (From her Tumblr )

Quote of the day

"There are mornings when it feels as if you rise up to the surface through a mud bath. With your feet stuck in a block of cement.  When you know that you've expired in the night and have nothing to be happy about except the fact that at least you've already died so they can't transplant your lifeless organs."

-from Smilla's Sense of Snow, Peter Hoeg

Not how I feel today, but a great line, particularly for the character, who was difficult to like until that.

Pictures at a Revolution

I've been busy, but more quiet because I've been reading mostly books about athletic training and swimming, trying to put together a weight training regimen and running/triathlon training schedule.  I have to take a class to learn how to crawl/freestyle properly, as I never really learned how to breathe on both sides and all that stuff.  I figure that's all boring, and no book has been a real stunner...

I did spend three weeks listening to Mark Harris’s “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood,” which was much more interesting than I guessed when trolling through the crappy library ebook app.  (Overdrive's new interface sucks so bad, it makes me hate having to search the catalog.)

It's chock full of interesting facts about the making of "The Graduate," which I love, "Bonnie and Clyde," which I admire, and other big hits of the late 60s.  There's actually a lot of discussion of race and Hollywood, and Sidney Poitier's career, and the riots, which the GF experienced vicariously in the womb in precarious circumstances.  There's also discussion of homophobia, especially since Clyde was bisexual IRL and the original draft of B&C was more of a love triangle.  Hepburn and Tracy are examined thoroughly, as is Dustin Hoffman's big break, and Warren Beatty's ego.

It's a good look at how politics really works to dumb down movies, which the internets do not always understand well in terms of logistics, as opposed to outcomes.  I recommend it as a history and collection of movie trivia but also as a look at the thought processes of Hollywood movers and shakers.

Every time I hear people at cons talk about why movies and tv fail and what should be being made and how, I want to make them read about the industry from the production side.  And interviews with the people who've tried to make things happen.  Yes, but... That's what is wrong, yes, but how it happens is more complex and yet simple.  Let's look at just *how* money talks and ignorance wins again...

Not the chicken I usually see

In my neighbor's yard.

Here's a little science for ya:  Eye spots are for fishing.  Or bugging, I guess.

I was trying to figure out if these were destructive sort, but got nowhere.  Vague memories, but mostly of gypsy moths.