Saturday, December 29, 2007

Lucho is Right! We are Made to Run


And Discover magazine says so here. The other day I was sitting in a chiropractor's office an hour outside of town. I'd heard this guy was special so I decided to see what it was like to be in the presence of a "true healer." But that is a story for another post.

Needless to say while in a waiting room decorated with a tomahawk, some antlers and a four foot tall wood carving of a bear begging for food, and underneath a mountain of hunting and fishing magazines, I found an old Discover magazine. My synchronicity must have been working overtime because it literally fell open to an article entitled, Born to Run. And since I've been doing this run every day experiment, my interest was peaked.

Basically the article explains that humans are actually more efficient runners than horses, or gazelles, or even cheetahs. While all of these animals are faster than we are, humans have evolved to be able to run for longer periods of time at slower speeds. We can run for days apparently. This made us good at running our food down even though it might have been faster than we were. Quite a bit of scientific evidence goes into this but even things like our spines come into play allowing our heads to counter balance the movement of our arms. And our skin is one huge cooling system supplementing our cardiovascular systems ability to shunt heat from our core to our skin via the blood while our sweat and air flow carries the heat away from our bodies. It is a really good article. Be sure to check it out. Then stop by Lucho's blog because Discover is just saying what he's been saying all along.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

"Born to Run" - probably why I love it so much.

I am curious to see how your running strategy pans out.

Anonymous said...

Hey Ace

I've been following you Nick and Sheshard par P90x

Any final thoughts? day 1/90 pics? day 1/90 weights and reps?

are you doing a 2nd round?

By the way I started to practice handstands using a wall

Do you have any advice?

Should I be doing them every day/every other day to allow for recovery?

And how long/ how many times?

I'm doing p90x as well and just passed day 70

-David

http://p90xing.blogspot.com/

ace said...

I'm in the process of writing the final blog. I've been trying to find time to do that last assessment and take the last set of photos. I hope to have it all posted soon.

I'm still doing P90x 3 times a week (just chest/back, arms/shoulders, legs/back) and will probably leave it at that until my racing season ends next winter. I'm moving into flexibility focused phase now so, I'll be substituting Yoga 5 days a week into the time I was doing p90x previously.

As for the handstands, what I've noticed is the more you become comfortable being upside down and balancing that way the easier it is. I think what threw me off at first was I was trying too hard to control my legs for the balance. What I've noticed lately has been the balance seems to come from the palms of your hands. Just be patient with it. Try to take your feet up to wall as lightly as possible. Ultimately, that is a pure core strength move. What I'm shooting for is to be able to lift both feet from the floor simultaneously without bouncing. Anyway good luck and thanks for commenting.