Heading out for the evening walk.
A while back I wrote about some of the night walks we were doing . Well, my partner Douglas liked those night time walks so much , that about 3 weeks ago we started doing something similar on a nightly basis.

No, I’m not trying to turn Douglas into a marathon walker or anything like that. This was totally his idea…I just go along to keep him encouraged. Actually, we both enjoy these evening walks because it affords us time together, while at the same time doing something that’s healthy.

In contrast to my morning training walks, which are much more physically demanding, Id classify these evening walks as more of a casual, pleasurable stroll that we do for fun.The routes are much shorter (2 miles max) and closer to home. They’re also lot more scenic and involve a lot more hill climbing. And because we walk at a really slow pace, I can actually carry on a conversion.

With these evening strolls becoming a part of my regular walking schedule, I’m now putting in a total of 6 to 7 miles per day. That’s a lot of walking, but so far it hasn’t really impacted my breathing, and the extra couple miles are giving Douglas some much needed aerobic exercise in a way that he really seems to enjoy.

I know people lead hectic lives nowadays and don’t have much time for anything, but if they could pull themselves away from the TV for just one hour a day and take a leisurely walk instead, I think it would have a positive impact on their lives as well. Just a thought.

…….Yeah, that’s just about the time I’ll be crossing the finish line at my next race.

For my October race choice, Ive decided to go with the Urban Cow Half marathon, Relay and 5K race.

Held in an area near the state capital of California in Sacramento, the Urban Cow marathon looks like a fun little race. If it’s anything like it’s name, how could it not be?

I’ll be doing the half marathon distance (21km-13.1 miles), though the 2 person relay race looks like a lot of fun too. Hopefully the weather will be nice in the morning. ( Central California temperatures tend to rise quickly during the late summer months).

Some of my racewalking buddies are probably going to be a little ticked at me for not doing the San Jose Rock & Roll half marathon with them ( held the same day), but I really wanted to do a half marathon this year in a smaller venue and a little closer to home. The Urban Cow has a 6,000 person limit for the half marathon, about a third of the size of the San Jose race. It also seems to have more of a local and country flavor to it, which I really like.

Training for the race began for me a week ago with a 7 miler, and will continue for only 4 more weekends. Preparation will consist of long slow distances walks on Saturday mornings followed by short distance racewalking ( 4 miles), 3 times a week.
A month and a half of training is probably not enough time to prepare properly for a fast half marathon distance, but I’m fairly confident it will be sufficient to get me to the finish line in under the time 3.5 hr limit, which is all really all I want.

Btw, This will be my 13th, 13 mile race in 5 years. ( good thing it’s not happening on a Friday the 13th, that would really be freaky!)

Carolyn Scott Kortge’s new book is finally out and guess who’s in one of the chapters?

Carolyn contacted me about year ago for this project. She thought I had an interesting story to tell, and that it would fit in nicely with the motivational theme of the book. It’s really cool to finally see the finished work. She did a great job on it.

Healing Walks for Hard Times, maps a path through life’s difficulties with walks that tap the healing power of movement. She demonstrates how walking can restore momentum in lives that have been jolted by illness, cancer, grief, depression or trauma. With a focus on walking for wellness rather than walking strictly for fitness, it offers a path of resiliency in the steps of a familiar exercise.

More than an exercise guide, Healing Walks for Hard Times acknowledges recovery not only as a physical process, but also as an emotional, spiritual and mental journey—-a journey of Survivorship.

Carolyn lays out a progressive, eight-week walking program that encourages readers to get their feet on the ground and move forward, one step at a time. Included are personal stories from survivors of heart disease, cancer, depression, diabetes, chronic pain, natural disaster, and of course severe lung disease, that inspire and reassure. Week by week, walk by walk, readers regain balance and footing on a path that leads to healing, step by step.

Below are a couple of the pages I’m in…….

( Excerpted from HEALING WALKS FOR HARD TIMES by Carolyn Scott Kortge, (c) 2010)
(Published by arrangement with Trumpeter, an imprint of Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boston)
(www.Shambhala.com)

I hope you’ll check it out.

Got my finishers certificate and the official results book for the 2010 Boston marathon in the mail today.

Out of the 23,177 people who started the race, only 22,721 actually finished it. And yours truly has the distinction of being the 22,721st person to cross the finish line. In other words…. I finished the race DEAD LAST! (Pretty cool eh?)
I mean if you’re gonna be slow at something, you might as well excel at it, right? But hey, last place or not, I still finished 15 minutes faster than last year. And who knows, maybe I’ll shave yet another 15 minutes off next years race.

( First place— Cheruiyot, Robert Kiprono 2:05:52)

( Last place— Stephen Gaudet 7:17;47)

And in case you’re curious to see what it looks like to come in dead last at the Boston marathon, here’s the last 6 and a half minutes of me doing just that.

Looks like I jumped the gun on this one. After polling my family, friends and doctors, and after reading up on high altitude hiking, Ive decided to heed some good advise for a change and will not be participating in the Mt Evans COPD Challenge hike.

The elevation just makes it too risky for someone with lungs like mine. There’s just too great a chance that I could get really sick. My travel schedule wouldn’t have allowed me enough time to acclimate to the higher elevations of Colorado anyway, so that would have put me at an even greater risk for high altitude complications. I would hate to ruin it for the other participants if something were to happen and I needed to be taken off the mountain for emergency medical care.

To say I’m a little disappointed would be an understatement. I’m the type of person who thrives on mental and physical challenges, so making the decision to withdrawal from this event was tough for me. I was really looking forward to pushing my body to the limits on this one and to see this magnificent mountain range up close and personal. I suppose I’ll just have to get my kicks in a safer , more familiar fashion.

Though maybe not as challenging or as memorable as doing a walk two and a half miles up in the air, later this year I’m planning on doing back to back half marathons ( 4-6 weeks part). I haven’t chosen the exact races yet, but Ive narrowed it down to the San Jose Rock &Roll , the Spirit of Pittsburgh and the Las Vegas half marathons, taking place in October, November and December.
Training for the those races begins for me in less than two weeks.

To the wonderfully wacky people who haven’t chickened out of the Mt Evans Challenge, Good luck up there!

How’s this for a view!

In just a few weeks , if all goes as planned, I hope to be standing on that very same rock with a half a dozen of my COPD friends.

The brainchild of my Boston marathon walking partner Mike Mc Bride, the “COPD Mt Evans Challenge” as he calls it, is simply about a bunch of friends with severe lung disease, getting together for a day and hiking to the summit of one of the tallest mountains in the Rockies of Colorado…. just for the heck of it! No, we’re not going to scale an entire mountain, but we will be walking up the steepest portion of one.

Starting in Idaho Springs,elevation 8,700 ft, we’re gonna drive up the mountain road 9 miles to Summit Lake, which is situated at the 12,800 ft level. From there we’re gonna hike the last 5 miles on foot up to the summit of the mountain, which sits 14,220 ft above sea level. My COPD friends will be using high -flow oxygen @ 15 lpm to make the trek up the mountain I hopefully, will not need supplemental O2, but I’ll be closely monitoring my O2 sats just in case.

As you can see in this photo taken earlier this year during a race up the mountain, the grade along certain portions of the road is pretty steep. The part that we’re gonna be doing, gains approximately 1600 ft in elevation in just over 5 miles.

( Mike Mc Bride and Roxlyn Cole testing out their oxygen equip)

What makes this particular walk such a challenge for me (and for the other lungers), is the altitude and the steepness of the climb.
Excluding being a passenger in a pressurized airplane, this will be the highest altitude my body has ever been exposed to. The last walk I did that involved a mountain, was back in 2008 when I did the ET midnight marathon in the Nevada desert. And while it was a much longer walk ( 13.1 miles) , we only reached a maximum elevation of 5,500 feet during the race. The summit of Mt Evans is almost 3 times higher.

My lungs are not a big fan of climbing hills. I can barely walk uphill the two blocks it takes to reach my house, let alone 5.5 miles up the side of a mountain. Putting the physical challenges aside though, the main reason I wanna do this is, is to take in the sheer beauty of it all. I think Mountains are awesome.

If you’d like to read more, or maybe even join us, check out at Roxlyn Coles blog

For 5 years now, I’ve been heralding the benefits of daily exercise in people who have severe lung disease. That message is plastered all over this blog, and I believe is the reason that Ive lived so long. But wait, just as with every other facet of this frustrating disease, there’s a catch 22.
While there’s no argument that exercise can make a huge difference in the lives of people suffering from lung disease, Ive long suspected that too much exercise also carries with it, the potential for some not so pleasant side effects. Namely, dynamic hyperinflation, aka…. air trapping.

Here’s the deal…. if you have an obstructive lung disease and are prone to air-trapping (which is usually the case if you have severe asthma and to a greater degree if you have COPD or Emphysema), you need to be aware that any physical activity that makes you breath faster and deeper for prolonged periods of time, can also cause you to trap more air, which in turn can make your dyspnea worse and can even trigger a serious, life-threatening exacerbation. That’s right, you heard it from the king of asthmatic marathon walkers… If you exert yourself too much for prolonged periods, you can actually make yourself sick(er)…at least in the short term. The severity of ones lung disease and the propensity for air-trapping (as indicated by TLC and FEV1 ), probably adds to the likelihood that these negative side effects will occur. It also appears that this increased “air trapping”, at least in part, contributes to the delayed onset of symptoms that sometimes follows strenuous activity.
(Btw..the symptoms of air -trapping should not be confused with exercise induced asthma, which is totally different).

Now that’s not say that you shouldn’t exercise. In that regard, my message is the same as it’s always been, and that is….If you have asthma or any obstructive lung disease, you need to get out there and exercise your butt off regularly! Just don’t over do it, and always be aware of your breathing pattern.

Oh..and I should also point out, that it doesn’t seem to be how much exercise you do, but rather, how intense the exercise is , that determines how severe the air-trapping will be. If you participate in a sport such as running or jogging ( and yes, that would include racewalking), you’re probably going to be much more prone to developing increased air trapping than you would with regular fitness walking or from milder forms of exercise.

So for me, does this mean I should stop training and/or stop doing marathons? Probably. Will I follow through on my own advise? Probably Not.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bad habit of over do it. But, out of the 19 races Ive completed in the past 5 years, only 2 of those landed me in the hospital. And don’t forget, non-asthmatics end up in hospitals too from “over-doing it” too.

Hey, I’m short of breath 24/7 anyway, so if pushing myself to the brink is what I need to do to really feel alive, then regardless of the consequences, that’s what I’ll do. I’m willing to take that risk because Id rather be sick and feel happy , then to be healthy and feel miserable. Sounds contradictory I know, but it’s really not. We all deal with our afflictions in different ways.

Ok, so I look really strong in some of my finish line photos, but believe me.. looks can be very very deceiving. I’m an expert at hiding what I feel inside (I think most asthmatics are, to some degree.) Behind those smiles were waves of excruciating pain shooting down my legs. My breathing was really labored at times and my calf muscles felt like they were going to explode, but I told myself at the start of this race that if I made it past mile 21, that no matter how bad my breathing was, or how much pain I might be in, that I would push on with positive thoughts in my head and a smile on my face….And that’s exactly what I did! And if for no other reason, that’s why I’m so proud of myself for finishing the race in style.

If you look really deep, you can see the pain starting to come through
(Finish line photos)

I don’t care how healthy you are, even if just walking a marathon, when you get to a certain distance in a race, your body starts to hurt really bad (I think that’s what they mean by “Hitting the WALL”). The problem is, you can’t really stop moving or you run the risk of your whole body cramping up. It’s happened to me before, and I’m telling ya..it ain’t a pretty scene. A full body cramp would end the race for you , right then and there. So after 20 miles, you do whatever you can to stretch out those muscles while you’re moving, but you never stop.

So what did it take to get this 55 year old severe asthmatic across the finish line at the Boston marathon?
Well, how about lot’s of training, lots of medications and a ton of determination and willpower! Having a good friend walking along side of you , who makes you laugh constantly, probably helps as well.. Thank goodness for Lizzy.

Here are couple photos I left out of the main photo set. I think you know why…

(Had to stop to sneek a neb treatment about every 7 miles along the course… this eats up a lot of time )

( Needed 3 neb treatments back to back after crossing the finish line. )

Here are a few other things you probably didn’t know

*To control my asthma during this 26.2 mile race, in addition to the neb treatments every 7 miles, I took appx 24 hits off my inhaler ( about 3 puffs per hour). On top of the inhaled drugs, I swallowed 10 mg of prednisone every hour , chased by an antacid to control the stomach burning that the prednisone causes in the first place . Thank You Jon ( our spotter who went and got me some TUMS in the middle of the race.

*To control the pain in my calve muscles and the metatarsalgia pain in my feet, I took 2 Motrins every 2 hours along the course, 6 in total.

*For energy and hydration , I consumed 2-4 oz of plain water every mile, alternating with Gatorade every other mile. I did this for the first 20 miles, then switched to a 50-50 blend of electrolytes and water (2 oz) every mile for the rest of the race. In addition, I swallowed one Powerbar gel ( tangerine with double caffeine) every 6 miles.

So as you can see, doing this race ( or any other for that matter) wasn’t as as easy for me as most people might think. I just make it look that way:-)

As they say in the movie making business…That’s a Wrap!

Training for my 2nd Boston marathon (and my 7th full marathon to date), has officially come to an end. Ive trained and prepared the best I can what with little time Ive had. In total, I trained for 10 and half weeks in the rain and sun, racking up appx 250 miles in the process. This is about hundred miles less than I put into last years training for the same race. I hope it’s enough.

Every time I train for one of these things, I always seem to be hit by at least one over-use type of injury. Last year it was a plantar facsciitis , the year before that, it was persistent calf cramps and hamstring issues. This year it’s metatarsalgia ( ball of the foot pain). Probably brought on by old age ( arthritis) and over-pronation. How much this will impact me at Boston remains to be seen, but if yesterday’s 10 mile walk is any indication, I’m not feeling very confident. I can tolerate a lot of physical pain, but I don’t feel like limping my way through a marathon. I’m going to try to stay off my feet as much as possible between now and next week. Hopefully this will make a difference.

As far as my lungs go, they’ve held out surprisingly well during the actual workouts, but not so good afterwords. Even after some of the shorter walks (5-8 miles) I find myself getting tighter and more short of breath than in previous years. And after the really long walks ( 10+ miles), I’m experiencing more and more full blown flares (the whole delayed symptom onset pnenomina thingy). Fortunately, these mini exacerbations resolved on their own which allowed me to complete my training.

The big concern now is, how bad will I flare up after the race? That’s assuming of course, that I’m luck enough to actually finish the race given my foot problems. To try and stave off a potentially serious flare-up following the race, I’m going to prophylactically bolus myself with a one time dose of 40mg prednisone the morning of the race. Timing is going to be critical here, because if I take the drug too early in the morning, it could make me really nauseated, if I take it too late, it won’t have time to kick in. This is the first time Ive ever increased my pred during a race, so I have no idea what the effects will be. Hopefully it will keep me out of the slammer.

On Thursday I did this……..

for this many miles
⇩

in the blazing California

and I used this

6-8 times

After I finished the walk, I did this……..

AND THEN THIS
⇩

Holy S**T !

Intense exercise actually causes microtrauma, or tiny tears in muscle fibers. This muscle damage not only stimulates muscle cell activity and helps repair the damage and strengthen the muscles ( muscle hypertrophy), but it is also linked with delayed onset muscle pain and soreness (DOMS) , which occurs between 24 and 72 hours after exercise.

By taking an ice bath after a long walk or run, it’s believed that you slow down this metabolic process, which in turn, reduces swelling and tissue breakdown. It helps release lactic acid and soothes aching muscles.

Then, with rewarming, the increased blood flow speeds circulation, and in turn, improves the healing process. Although there is no current protocol regarding the ideal time and temperature for cold immersion routines, most athletes or trainers who use them recommend a water temperature between 12 to 15 degrees Celsius and immersion times of 5 to 10 and sometimes up to 20 minutes.

Ice baths are not for the feint hearted. It helps to be a gluten for punishment like I am. If you do try this, make sure you ease in to the water gradually. After the initial shock it actually feels good!

Wait a minute…….. what the heck happened to weeks 1-7?

Well, weeks 1 and 2, (January 1st-8th) I was in the hospital(on a ventilator). Week 3, I was too wiped out from said hospitalization to do any exercise. Week 4, I actually managed to pull off a 10 mile walk. Weeks 5&6 , (January 27th- February 4th) I was in the hospital again. Week 7, I was still recovering that hospitalization. Which brings us to week #8.

Week #8 ( Feb 13th) I did a 17.7 km ( appx 11 miles) training walk. This is the longest walk Ive done since my half marathon race back in October. I was able to get a couple shorter walks in earlier in the week, but it’s a huge leap going from 4 miles to 11 miles! Considering I’d only been out of the hospital for 9 days, I think this first long walk was a success. I did experience some pretty nasty abdominal cramps, but that was totally my fault. The combination of prednisone, energy gels, too much sweating and not hydrating properly, was just too much for my system and well……let’s just say, thank god there was an open restroom out there in the middle of nowhere.
I completed the walk in 2:55 min ( 16min/mile pace), which is just about right for an LSD walk. My lungs fared much better than I thought they would. During that walk I only used my inhaler about 6 times. I started wheezing a little at the end, but it quickly reversed after a couple of neb treatments. I kept the racewalking to a minimum, not so much because of my breathing, but most because my legs were sore from being bed bound a week earlier and I just couldn’t get a good rhythm going .

This was the same day the Maverick Surfing competition was going on (about 25 miles south), but even here in San Francisco, the waves were crashing pretty high near Golden Gate.

Week #9Trying to play catch up with my training, while also trying to dodge the bad weather has been a real challenge. So, on Feb 17th, just 5 days after doing the 11 mile walk, I did a 23km (14.5 mile) walk. I know it’s crazy to do two long walks back to back like that, but I really needed to get another long walk in before the next rain storm hit the region. In just a 7 day period, I clocked something like 38 miles. Way too much, but I had to take advantage of the dry days when they came. Needless to say, I’m pretty sore from last weeks walks. My lung are paying for it too, as I haven’t quite healed after spending half a month in the slammer. I pre and post medicated with neb treatments and used the inhaler about 8 times during this walk. At the time , I was only on 15mg of pred, vs 30 mg during the previous walk.

Week#10 Starts this Saturday with a series of really long walks LSD walks, which I refer to as my “REALLY LONG WALKS”. They are the 16, 18 and 20 mile( 32km) walks, and are the most important training walks in building the endurance and fortitude required to complete a full marathon. These long walks are basically mini-marathons in themselves, complete with all the not-so-pleasant after effects you can expect when doing a real marathon i.e. muscle cramps, blisters on blisters, joint and body aches, dehydration side effects and in my case, potentially severe respiratory problems.

In addition to the long endurance walks, Ive also been doing three 5 mile tempo walks per week. With most of those I try to incorporate at least a little racewalking.

Ah…. the crazy things we put our bodies through in the name of fun!

Whatever IT is, I must still have it, because today I walked 10 miles. And I couldn’t be happier about IT!

Now, I’m not going to say it was easy, cuz it wasn’t. In fact, it was one of the most difficult training walks Ive done in a long time. My lungs got tight right off that bat, and by the time I got to the 6 mile mark, I was hitting on my inhaler every 5 to 10 minutes (12 puffs in all). Did I mention that a bunch of thunderstorms erupted and it poured down freezing rain almost the entire 2 hours and 43 minutes that it took me to finish the walk? ( shame on you weather man) Yup, I was soaked to the bone and wheezing like a punctured set of bagpipes, but I pushed on, and man… did I feel alive!

Note to myself: I will definitely need to take a couple neb treatments during Boston and also during my longer training walks, because the inhalers just don’t cut it when I’m over exerting myself.