Watch this: I love that clip from Will Ferrell's film Anchorman, and it fits tangentially into today's post. Summer in the Midwest is a time of wretched, smothering humidity and baking heat, the combination of which usually makes you sweat without exerting any effort. If you dare to move around while outside in this sweltering stew, you take on some very real health risks. These risks should not be ignored, but they are completely manageable. With the State Fair right around the corner, we've got the two-mile Parade Run this afternooon (Get registered!) and the 6-mile (10k) Abe's Amble on Aug. 22 (Get registered!). It will be in the mid-90s today during the Parade Run, so anyone planning to run it would be well-advised to prepare. Here's a quick list of things you can do to make sure you cross the finish line on your feet instead of on a stretcher.
1) Dress for success. Just like any other area of life, running has a certain wardrobe. That stinky, pit-stained old cotton T-shirt you wear to the gym may be your favorite, but if you wear it while running in 90-degree weather, you might as well be wearing a garbage bag. You will become drenched in sweat, and the cotton will hold onto the moisture for hours. Instead, wear one of those newfangled mesh running shirts that wick away sweat like a personal towel boy. They're lighter than cotton, less prone to stretching, more breathable, and allow faster evaporation of sweat. Plus, they make you look like you really know what you're doing, so you can act all nonchalant when someone comments on your race attire. "Yeah, I run so much I had to get a special shirt...it's no big deal."
2) Baste yourself like a turkey. One of the benefits of running outside is getting a sweet tan that lets everyone know how active and "with it" you are. But when that sun is raining down fire with all the intensity of the Roman army in Western Europe, you're going to want a few tribes of Scotsmen to beat back the UV rays. Okay, that was a bad metaphor. Just wear sunscreen.
3) Go all Niagara on yourself. I can't state this enough: Drinking enough water is absolutely imperative. Dehydration can drop you like a bare-knuckle boxer, and a poorly-watered person can experience tiredness, headaches, dizziness, rapid heart rate and even constipation - none of which is helpful while running. Luckily, it's easy to prevent. Just drink plenty of water. Don't wait until you're thirsty. Do it now. Seriously. Get up and grab a bottle, glass, mug or shiny metal canister of water. I'll wait. Slurp it down. All of it. Now do that about 10 more times throughout the day. Be sure to drink during and after the race as well. Bonus: Drinking lots of water can also help curb appetite, since the body sometimes confuses thirst with hunger.
4) Bring your Siamese twin. Running with a partner not only offers motivation and support, but it gives you a safety net in case you start feeling double plus ungood. You can always hope a stranger notices when you collapse in an exhausted heap, but a good friend and running buddy will likely see warning signs of heat stroke or other heat-related maladies before you pass out. That's what friends are for - picking up your gross, sweaty body, hoisting you onto their back and finishing the race in record time. Okay, that might be a tad unrealistic, but it would be pretty cool. If your running buddy does that, you at least owe them your first-born child. (A second or third child is acceptable if you're only work friends.)
That's all I've got. Anyone else have any good tips? Leave a comment below or email me at pyeagle@illinoistimes.com. Have a great day and a great run!
Drugs. In the world of fitness – and by extension – sports, they have become an issue impossible to ignore. Even though most of us amateur runners, cyclists and other athletes will never deal with steroids personally, we are constantly barraged by allegations about or confessions by the names we admire: Lance Armstrong, Mark McGwire, Florence Griffith-Joyner, Bill Romanowski…the list goes on for miles. If we think about it, we realize that these are names not of gods and titans, but of humans just like us – straining to hit the ball harder, pushing to top that hill faster, struggling to shave an extra second off that lap time. Those who use steroids want to be the best and make for themselves a name to surpass the heroes they admire.
Author and extreme amateur athlete Stuart Stevens began taking steroids in 2003 as research into the mental and physical effects of steroid use, and he wrote about his experiences in Outside Magazine. (Read it here.) Stevens relates how his body changed into a muscle-bound machine that wouldn’t quit, but more interesting than the effect it had on his body was the effect it had on his mind.
“You confuse what these performance enhancing drugs are doing to you and yourself,” Stevens told NPR’s Michele Norris in Oct. 2003. “You start to think pretty quickly, ‘Well, this is me. I can ride three hundred miles and the next day, I can feel just fine. Aren’t I impressive?’ ” (Hear it here.)
With steroids, we could all be bigger, faster and stronger. So why don’t we? For me, it’s a combination of reasons: the prohibitively high cost, the dangerous health risks and the lack of any real need. But there’s another reason I’ve chosen to take the hard road to fitness: to me, using steroids defeats the whole purpose of being an athlete.
“Sport is about individuals competing against individuals, not about individuals competing against other individuals’ doctors,” Stevens says. “… There’s something about it that is tremendously dishonest. The athletic endeavor should be one of the purest endeavors that we engage in in life.”
I have been running and watching my diet for about five years, and I’ve lost more than 70 pounds in that time. I’ve run two half-marathons, gained self-confidence and greatly lessened the health risks I’ll face later in life. Sometimes I imagine just what I could have accomplished if I had taken steroids. I could have done two full marathons, and I could have a chiseled physique to show off. But I’ve come to realize that wouldn’t have been me. I may be slow, weak and a bit pudgy, but I’m better off now than ever before. And I’m proud to say I did it the hard way.
Let’s take a break from fitness for just a moment to discuss “The Decision.” I happened to catch hoops prodigy LeBron James’ announcement that he would play for the Miami Heat, and I just have to make a few things clear to the world of sports:
1) Professional athletes are a bunch of overpaid clowns. Basketball players throw an orange ball through a metal circle suspended twelve feet in the air and get a brazillian dollars for it because it’s entertaining to watch. I spent five years in school learning to analyze politics, build computer databases and write professionally so that I can perform a vital public service. No one offered me millions of dollars, and I sure as heck didn’t have a press conference to announce my acceptance of a job offer. I can’t dunk, though…so that might have had something to do with it.
2) It’s
not the end of the world,
3) Just
because LeBron was good at
I really do wish LeBron the best, though. He’s got an
amazingly bright future ahead of him, and he seems to have worked hard to get
where he is. Let’s just hope it all works out for the best. Come on,