Simple Steps

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Say this Sunday afternoon you're going for a run. You don't need a machine - no gears, blades, sails, or poles. No pucks, caddies, reels, or rules. You don't require instructions. You don't need a ride to a designated place - wherever you are is the place. If you live near grass you can do it without shoes; if your neighbors are tolerant and the bugs aren't bad, you can do it without clothes.

Being good products of a consumer society, we've complicated matters. I remember standing at the Start of the 2009 Chicago Marathon - the inescapable sound of thousands of beeping watches. You can run against an invisible buddy who lives inside your watch; even coordinate heart rate with the tunes playing on your iPod. I, myself, am guilty of wearing a Garmin 405 on ALL of my runs, and recently trying out some new apps for my phone as well. You can download every stitch of information about your run the second it's done, to make sure it lives on forever in the memory of your computer.

The trick is to make it live in your own memory; that's better done by just heading out. By pretending to be the thing you really are - an animal. That means leaving behind the GPS, and the assumptions that complicate your run. The idea, for instance, that you're doing it to get stronger or faster, as opposed to just doing it.It's not a duty, it's a blessing - the chance not to count your heartbeats, but just to feel the blood surge up in you veins.

And it's worth adding that simpler is better in other ways as well. Less stuff means less impact on the environment. It means less time stuck in your car and more time with your family. It means spending less on gear, which means less time spent earning it in the first place. A friend of Thoreau's told him he should earn money so he could take the train somewhere and see something new. Thoreau explained that in the time his friend spent earning train fare, he could walk the 30 miles from here to there.

Of course, if you need some paraphernalia to get you out the door, go for it. Einstein, who was nearly as smart as Thoreau, once remarked, " Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." The most important thing to leave behind is the noise in your head, the endless CNN forever broadcasting your desires, your hopes, your plans. See if you can make it go away for a while - and really step outside.

This thing we do is one of the great and primal joys. If you don't wear your ear buds in church, consider leaving them off when you head out the door today.

It's just a matter of time....

There is a major misconception about supplementation. In this era of medication, people believe that they should notice differences within a few days to a week or two. However, nutritional medicine is totally different from allopathic or traditional Western medicine. Nutritional supplements are simply nutrients the body uses in its normal enzymatic reactions. They are not medicines. They are nutrients from our foods, but supplementation allows us to get them at optimal levels that diet alone cannot provide.

It takes between 6 to 12 months to replenish any nutritional deficiency and optimize the body’s natural immune system, antioxidant defense system, and repair system. If you are over 30 years of age or already have a chronic degenerative disease, it may even take longer. This is why I stress over and over that you need to give nutritional supplementation a minimum of 6 months, or even better a year, before you evaluate the benefits. If you are not willing to try new supplement/vitamin recommendations for at least 6 months, you should not even begin.

Pharmaceutical-Grade Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)

By Dr. Ray Strand

Presently, nutritional supplement companies are not required to follow any standard of quality manufacturing. They are basically unregulated. Even if they follow what is known as food-grade Good Manufacturing Practices(GMP), they are only required to have about 20% of what they say is on the label actually in the tablet. Unless you take supplements from a nutritional company that follows pharmaceutical-grade Good Manufacturing Practices, you really have no assurance that what is on the label is actually in the tablet. Companies that voluntarily (they are not required by law to do this) produce their products in a pharmaceutical-grade fashion like USANA are required to have 100% of what is on the label in the tablet. In fact, some will even guarantee their potency.

I always encourage my patients to take pharmaceutical-grade nutritional supplements. This is the only way I can be assured that my patients receive what I recommend. When my patients bring a particular bottle of supplements into my office and want me to evaluate what they are taking, I must first determine that the supplements are pharmaceutical-grade. If they are not, there is really no need for me to even look at the label. There is no way I could actually know what patients are getting.

Website to debut next week

Keep an eye out for the new YRC website. I will be sending a link out next week. It will include a schedule of runs/workouts.

Very exciting!

Can't I Get Everything I Need from a Healthy Diet?

By Dr. Ray Strand, M.D.

I told my patients for years that they did not need to take supplements and that they could get everything they needed by eating a healthy diet. When I began to realize that RDA’s had nothing to do with the types of diseases I was trying to prevent, I had to rethink my decision not to recommend supplements. As I mentioned earlier, the optimal level of vitamin E is 400 IU. Why just not have my patients eat 400 IU of vitamin E. They would only need to eat 33 heads of spinach or 28 pounds of butter or 5 pounds of wheat germ each day to get that much vitamin E. The optimal level of vitamin C is about 1000 to 2000 mg daily (the RDA is only 60 mg). My patients would only have to eat 18 large oranges or 80 avocados to get that amount of vitamin C from their diet.

I certainly believe that we must supplement a healthy diet with 8 to 12 servings of fruits and vegetables along with those good fats and good proteins. However, there was no way my patients could receive health benefits from optimal levels of nutrients without supplementing their diet. It became very obvious to me that my patients needed to supplement their diet with high-quality, complete and balanced nutritional supplements for the best protection against chronic degenerative diseases.

Click HERE to find out more about the top rated nutritional supplements on the market - USANA.

Kara Goucher's Mind Gains

Kara Goucher always had huge talent, but she also had crises of confidence that sabotaged her big races. Goucher's admissions about her psychological struggles are rare for an elite athlete, but they will ring true to all of us.

Click here for the full story - Kara Goucher's Mind Gains at Runner's World

The wrong crowd

By Kristin Armstrong

My mom used to warn me about getting in with the wrong crowd, the "fast crowd," she called it. When I went to high school in Atlanta for a couple years, the fast crowd was at autobahn speed. I never could quite figure out how to merge. Then we moved to Minneapolis my junior year and the speed suited me much better.

I hadn't thought about the wrong crowd, or the fast crowd, in years.

That was until yesterday morning at the workout. I am used to waking up at the crack to meet my friends for a run, or even hauling myself out of bed to log some solo miles, but I am not yet used to stumbling into a crowd of strangers at 5:30 in the morning. Paige, Katie, and Amy were with me, so I was not without familiar faces, but it's odd to wake up in a large group of runners, gathered under harsh fluorescent lighting in a training room in the parking lot of Run Tex. We waited, with sticky-up morning hair and beeping Garmins, while Gilbert explained the workout du jour. Then we took off in a giant pack for our warmup. It was here that I began to shake off my sleep, with the movement of the mass and the sound of footfalls surrounding me.

We split up into groups for the meat of the workout. Paige is a faster runner than I am so by virtue of our friendship and my newbie status in the group, assumptions were made and my lot was cast into a group that gave me pause. I never run with shirtless, skinny, fast-looking men. My regular sweat sisters probably look equally imposing, but since I know them, they are friendly territory. The women in this group looked fast and serious. Except for Paige, who looks fast and fun (maybe because I know her?) It hit me there, the thought that I was getting in with the wrong crowd, the fast crowd.

I think the look of doubt and fear must have passed over my face like a shadow. Paige was probably concerned that I was going to bolt, towards my car. She hissed at me, "You belong here, now run." And I didn't have a second to think about it because we were off before I could start my watch. There was no talking, only breathing. We did a long, fast loop around Zilker Park first, maybe a mile, to give Gilbert an idea of our pace. Then we started the workout: 5 by 1,000 meters. Our rest was the jog across the grassy field to return to our start line. The darkness started to lift, so each loop looked different with the light. Loop three was the hardest, as always, without the freshness of the start or the barn sour of the finish. Number four is okay, because you can tell yourself, "Just one more, honey." I chugged a cup of Gatorade before the final 1,000m, hit my watch, and we took off. I was so happy to still be hanging in there that I pushed it towards the finish, Paige and I silently churning side by side, picking up speed. We trimmed over 20 seconds! You know it's humid when you high-five your friend and sweat sprays.

I jogged to my car as my cool-down, not wanting to make my brother Jon late for work. I wrapped my soggy body in a towel before entering my car and drove home, windows open, music on, smiling. Paige was right. I have worked hard this summer, I do belong with the people who intimidate me. She is also right when she reminds me that it's always better to be struggling at the end of a faster pack than leading a slower pack. If we want to get better, we have to deal with being uncomfortable.

Maybe we make too many assumptions about ourselves, our limits, and where we think we belong.