{"id":10784,"date":"2021-02-09T15:36:48","date_gmt":"2021-02-09T15:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/?p=10784"},"modified":"2021-02-09T18:43:56","modified_gmt":"2021-02-09T18:43:56","slug":"profile-running-and-the-theory-of-relativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/winter-2021\/profile-running-and-the-theory-of-relativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Running and the Theory of Relativity … Taking running to a new level<\/h2>\n

By Fred Brill<\/p><\/p>\n

S<\/span>ince 1985, I\u2019ve been running with my pal, Ken, every Saturday, between eight and fifteen miles (when one of us isn\u2019t injured or out of town). It\u2019s like going to church each week, with Mt. Tam being our favorite sanctuary. Whether a 10K, half marathon, or marathon, the races we compete in are like different holidays that give us something to look forward to and offer extra motivation to run further and faster.<\/p>\n

\"\"When I first moved to California from Chicago, it took a while to adapt to running the hills, but I became a gazelle out there before long. With a pace of eight minutes a mile, Ken and I would reel in ribbons of trails while chatting away.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my reference point, frozen in time. Forget pedometers, GPS devices, or apps to track time and distance. We didn\u2019t want to distract ourselves with data.<\/p>\n

We preferred the religion of LSD: Long Slow Distance, promoted by Joe Henderson back in 1969, a training philosophy that held more appeal than the more traditional PTA: Pain, Torture and Agony.<\/p>\n

As the decades passed, we maintained a profound joy when heading into the hills for a nice slow slog. After every run, we enjoy a leisurely breakfast, look at our old-school Casio watches, and calculate how far we\u2019ve ambled. I assumed we were averaging nine-minute miles \u2026 much faster when blazing downhill!<\/p>\n

After 35 years, Ken and I have probably run more than 24,901 miles together (equivalent to running the earth’s circumference).\nAs the leaves of the calendar fell to the ground, racing lost its allure. This may have been correlated with my slowing times. For a while, I attributed the results to a poor night\u2019s sleep, a sore Achilles, or a pre-cold, but eventually, I ran out of excuses.<\/p>\n

I now find pleasure in discovering new trails and successfully avoiding the roots, ruts, and rocks that threaten to take me down. While Ken and I once had a need for speed, our goal has become more primal: We try not to get hurt! After completing my tenth marathon, battling rain and sleet in Redding, I shivered across the finish line, fell into my wife\u2019s arms, and quoted Forrest Gump: \u201cI\u2019m pretty tired. I think I\u2019ll go home now.\u201d Then I added, \u201cDon\u2019t ever let me do this to myself again!\u201d<\/p>\n

Without races to provide official measures of time and distance, I\u2019ve relied exclusively on my perception of how fast and how far I\u2019ve been running. It\u2019s like describing that fish that got away. It was a monster!<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I recently learned there might have been an error in my calculations. After breaking an ankle on a trail run, my wife convinced me to get one of those slick Apple watches … just in case (I refuse to lug around a cell phone).<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long for me to dive into the data and discover something was wrong. Terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

My wife must have gotten me a defective watch because it reported that my five-mile runs at nine minutes per mile were actually four-mile runs, registering a slug-like 11+ minutes a mile.<\/p>\n

When did this happen? How could I have deceived myself for so long?<\/p>\n

Sadly, there\u2019s no way to deny this new reality. The maps plot my every step with a color-coded line: green when I\u2019m flying; yellow when I\u2019m going pretty fast; orange a little slower; and red when I stop to pee (Why so many times? Is it too much coffee or an enlarging prostate?).<\/p>\n

\"\"Ken was so incredulous when I shared the data that he bought his own watch. Maybe his device would be more accurate. Nope. Same results. Same colors. Same story.<\/p>\n

I became obsessed with the notion of bending of time and space, so I Googled Einstein\u2019s Theory of Relativity. I learned that in 1905, Albert determined, \u201cThe laws of physics are the same for all non-accelerating observers.\u201d I couldn\u2019t get past the first sentence.\nIs this what I\u2019ve become?<\/p>\n

Admittedly, at 59 years of age, it\u2019s been some time since my sinewy legs exploded with rocket-like acceleration to break the spirit of a competitor. But there\u2019s nothing wrong with being a non-accelerating runner. I refuse to get demoralized when youngsters dart by me and shout, \u201cGood for you!\u201d Translation: Good on you, you old, slow man!<\/p>\n

Over the years, Ken and I have taken LSD to a whole new level. We even stole a phrase uttered by the codgers in the Tamalpa Running Club: Start slowly before fizzling out altogether! But we\u2019re still out there on the trails. Every Saturday. Logging our miles.<\/p>\n

So what if it takes a little longer to circumnavigate the earth. Our breakfasts after each epic run become more and more satisfying each week.<\/p>\n

Fred Brill is a retired school superintendent. He now serves as an education consultant\/coach and freelance writer.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Running and the Theory of Relativity … Taking running to a new level<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134,136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2021","category-winter-2021-columns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10784"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11063,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions\/11063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}