August 4, 1986
Fitness
‘THE MOLLEN METHOD’ LOST IN EGO-BOOSTER FLUFF
In the 1960s, fitness in America took a giant stride forward when thousands of Americans discovered “Aerobics,” a book and a fitness program developed by an Air Force doctor, Kenneth Cooper.
In the 1970s, Nathan Pritikin’s teaching of less fat in the diet combined with a modest amount of aerobic activity produced positive results in thousands of Americans.
Now along comes Dr. Art Mollen with “The Mollen Method” (Rodale Books, $15.95), promising that he can make you into a new person in a mere 30 days with a paltry 10 minutes of exercise a day combined with some dietary manipulation.
Mollen, founder of the Southwest Health Institute in Phoenix, Ariz., is privy to the basic scientific knowledge concerning fitness. Unfortunately, his book is formula self-help; the underpinnings of the formulas are barely disguised: lots of cheerleading with many promises and exclamation marks, nifty graphics, and so on.
Then there’s the fact that the book reads as though he invented fitness. Substitute “The Mollen Method for Medicine.” “A Personal Dose of Mollenium.” “Mollen Heart Disease Risk Index.” “Eating—The Mollen Way.” On the last chapter head, I was hoping to find a method of eating that doesn’t require one to chew of swallow food, but I was disappointed. Mollen apparently invented the way humans eat, too.
It is unfortunate that the few kernels of solid information are so difficult to extract from the ego-booster fluff. And on the other hand, it is unfortunate that Mollen makes statements to the effect that he can get a person positively addicted to exercise in 10 minutes a day and fit in 30 days. It takes more than 40 days just to get into basic aerobic condition, and 10 minutes of exercising hardly allows the initial anaerobic start-up phase t kick over to aerobic.
August 11, 1986
Special to the Chronicle
AGONY OF THE FEET
California is a land of contrasts and superlatives.
One of its most striking contrasts is the proximity of Badwater, at 282 feet below sea level in Death Valley, to Mount Whitney, at 14, 494 feet the highest peak in the lower 48 states. The two are separated by 80 miles as the jumbo jet flies.
For the earthbound mortal, however, the road from torpid sinkhole to snowcapped peak is 146 miles long. In terms of air temperature, during summer there can be 124 degrees Fahrenheit of difference between lowest and highest point.
The proximity of these points on the map has tantalized runners for years.
In 1973, a two-runner relay team made the trip from low to high point. The following year Walnut Creek’s Al Arnold made his first attempt to do the run solo; he quit after 22 miles. He tried again in 1975 and was waylaid by an injury. But in 1977, Arnold succeeded. It took him 84 hours.
The challenge of running the 146 grueling miles has lured many over the past decade. More than 80 attempts have been made, thought only four men have claimed success. It’s not surprising that no one’s done it twice, though Arnold has tried.
Inspired by Jay Birmingham’s 1981 assault on the record (he made the trip in 75 hours), two Santa Rosa running pals, Mike Witwer, 44, and elementary school principal Tom Crawford, 40, spent 18 months trying to organize a race on the course. Both are veterans of several Western States 100s. In honor of Birmingham’s book on his run, “The Longest Hill,” the race was billed as the Longest Hill Endurance Run.
Witwer and Crawford lured 22 experienced ultrarunners to take on the challenge, and managed to secure all necessary clearances. But the run was scrubbed in May when they were unable to find liability insurance.
They decided to go ahead and run the thing themselves.
“I like to live my life to the fullest,” Witwer said. “I express myself through running. All the input we received was that it couldn’t be done. I don’t like other people telling me what I can and can’t do. If I listened to what people said couldn’t be done, I’d never leave my barbecue.”
Ignoring the attempts to undermine their resolve, they proceeded with training and preparations.
“My average weekly mileage was 60 to 90 miles,” said Crawford. “We did lots of hills some days and just flats for four days a week. We did several 30-45 mile runs and some 50-mile races. We did 30-40 miles on Saturday and came back with that again on Sunday and spent the rest of the week recovering and doing the sauna.”
To become acclimated to the anticipated extreme heat anticipated, both men spent increasing amounts of time in saunas set at increasingly high temperatures, until they reached 60- minute sessions at over 160 degrees.
Since maintaining fluid levels is a necessity for extended exercise at high temperatures, both men trained in the sauna until they could process a quart of water every 15 minutes.
To enable their feet to withstand road surface temperatures in excess of 180 degrees, Crawford regularly soaked his feet in tea, so the tannin in it could toughen his soles. (On the day of the attempt, both men had their feet wrapped by a podiatrist, Dr. John Hollander, to add insulation. Hollander was part of the support crew.)
Although the past attempts were made in late August, to take advantage of the summer snowmelt on Mount Whitney, and although they had scheduled their proposed race for early August, Witwer and Crawford arrived in Death Valley in early July, the hottest month of the year. The air temperature was 124, three degrees above normal.
At 7:30 p.m. on July 3, Witwer and Crawford posed for photos at the Badwater sign. With them were Hollander, Witwer’s twin brother Sam, and Witwer’s son, Mike, Jr. At 8 p.m. Witwer and Crawford looked at each other, said, “Let’s go,” hit their watches, and started off.
Their crew drove the two support vehicles two miles ahead and waited. In the days that followed, one car was used as immediate support, leapfrogging two miles ahead, while the other car traveled for supplies and scouted the terrain.
Every two miles, Witwer and Crawford drank the obligatory quart of water, were sprayed with cold water, and were quizzed by Hollander concerning their general condition and potential blisters on their feet.
On the frying-pan road, the feet on both men swelled so much that Hollander was forced to cut the fronts of the shoes away in order to relieve the pressure.
On the valley floor, distances were deceptive. A mountain range might look a mere five or six miles away, but after four hours of running, they seemed no closer. Veils of heat rose from the asphalt, distorting the view. Both men admitted to hallucinating almost continuously after the first hours—especially at night, when the canopy of stars above the mountains and the long, straight road made it seem as though they were running in an aqueduct.
The runners recall that the first few miles after Whitney Portal (11 miles from the summit) were relatively mild. There were easy trails to follow with excellent switchbacks.
But after four miles the landscape began to change drastically. Trees became scarce, the air thin. By the time they reached 10,000 feet the temperature had dropped radically. The trails—what there were of them—were ice-covered, and the scenery was rocky and dismal.
At 2:30 p.m. Sunday, the runners reached Trail Camp at 12,039 feet. It seemed impossible to make the summit before nightfall. Their clothing seemed totally inadequate for the worsening conditions. The relief provided on hot asphalt by cutting the fronts off their shoes was now negated by freezing temperatures that numbed their toes. Yet, so near to their goal, and obsessed by the feeling they could break the American record of 74 hours (set by Gary Morris in 1984), Witwer and Crawford decided to go ahead.
The next several hours became a nightmare of crossing ice bridges while holding onto rock outcroppings. Avalanches during the spring had destroyed portions of trail. At one point, just about a mile from the top, they encountered a fully equipped rock-climbing party, on its way down. They offered the climbers $100 each if they’d stay put for the hour and 15 minutes it would take Witwer and Crawford to get to the top and return. Witwer hoped they then could speed their descent by sharing ropes with the climbers.
But the climbers refused, deciding they wanted to be off the mountain themselves by dark.
Witwer and Crawford continued on over rock and ice, covering the final mile in just over an hour. Arriving at the top of Whitney at 6:27 p.m., they succeeded in knocking four hours off the American record.
Unfortunately, there was no way of getting back down before utter darkness.
Still scantily clad, the two men crawled inside the stone hut at the top, and shivered their way through the night. They left at 5:30 the next morning to begin their descent. Ironically, due to the dangerous conditions, it took nearly as much time to get off the mountain as it took to climb it (more than seven hours).
Despite the hardships and challenges, both men said they had sufficient energy coming down that—had they done the run during this month and planned more carefully—they could have returned to Badwater and accomplished a round trip of the course.
“It seems a bit crazy to walk about it as this point, so soon after our making the run one-way,” Witwer said, “but there’s always that next challenge.”
August 18, 1986
Fitness
CORPORATE COMPETITION TAKES TO THE STREETS
When the clock on the Ferry Building hits 7 Wednesday night, pandemonium will break loose across the Embarcadero at Justin Herman Plaza as 4000 runners representing 300 corporations break from the starting line for the fourth annual San Francisco installment of the Corporate Challenge.
Teams in three categories (men’s, women’s, and co-ed) will be racing 3.5 miles for an all-expenses-paid trip to New York for the 10th annua Corporate Challenge, to be held November 23 on Park Avenue. The defending S.F. champions are Chevron, Richmond, in the men’s; Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, women’s; and Lockheed, Sunnyvale, co-ed.
Corporate fitness is a concept that has been evolving over the past decade to the point where a major corporation in America without some sort of fitness program is viewed as suspect—both in concern for its employees and in business savvy. Research has proven that corporate fitness programs are worth several times their weight in gold in bringing down the spiraling cost of health insurance.
Ironically, a principal athlete-spokesman for the Manufacturers Hanover Corporate Challenge is a New Zealander, Rod Dixon—one of running’s renaissance men. He has broken four minutes in the mile (3:53.6) and 2:10 (2:08:59) in the marathon.
Dixon has lived and trained in Menlo Park since 1980 and has had a long association with corporate America. He was one of the prime spokesmen for the Pepsi Challenge 10-kilometer series.
As one of the primary sponsors of the New York City Marathon, Manufacturers Hanover folks took to Dixon’s manner and his understanding of where corporate fitness fits into the scheme of things.
Dixon, who is training seriously for the mile at this point in his long career, feels there is a need for corporations to provide access to fitness facilities for employees, but they should not have to take employees by the hand to use those facilities.
“The company does not have to supply everything,” Dixon said. “If it can provide the facilities, the employees should be expected to provide the interest. There has to be a commitment made by the individual.”
He is also strong in his feelings on goal-setting in fitness: “You set yourself a program that you can realistically hold for the rest of your life. A lot of people suddenly say, ‘Well, I’m 40 pounds overweight, I haven’t jogged for six months, I haven’t really done anything—bang! They get into a seven-days-a-week program straightaway, and you know you’re going to see them 14 weeks later back to what they were.
“It’s just common sense to set up a program. When I go in (to a corporation), I’m selling them on the concept of fitness for life. It’s not what you do for the next two weeks, the next three weeks. So let’s set realistic goals. And just because you two guys work next to each other doesn’t mean you’re going to do the same program.”
Dixon’s own goals are more modest than they once were, but relative to most of us they are still mighty formidable.
“At 36 I’m not over the hill,” Dixon says. “I’m not racing as much, but I’m racing almost as well as I was 10 years ago. I expect to do miles in the low 3:50s this year. I’m the tortoise rather than the hare now… Running is now only one segment of the pie. You find it becomes a part of your life instead of being your life.”
August 25, 1986
Fitness
ASMUTH GOES AFTER CHANNEL SWIM MARK AGAIN
One morning this week, San Franciscan Paul Asmuth will lower himself into the cold, choppy waters off the southeastern coast of England and begin to swim toward France, some 22 miles away.
He’ll be accompanied by a pilot boat that, mindful of currents and wind drift, will lead hm across the English Channel along a route shaped like a side-heavy arch—the path of least resistance on that particular day.
A year ago Asmuth went to England to attempt to set a world’s record for the swim, but was stifled by a strong wind.
After a frustrating swim that mapped out more like a snake sunning itself than a bloated arch, Asmuth came ashore on French rocks in the dark of night, far to the south of his proposed landing site. The landing was doubly dangerous because the pilot boat’s spotlight was broken.
Despite the problems, Asmuth set a men’s record of 8 hours, 12 minutes.
Penny Dean holds the world record at 7:42, which is why Asmuth is in England this week. “I’m a faster swimmer than Penny,” Asmuth said two days before departing for England, “and I feel that, with a good pilot, I’ll be able to go under her mark.”
Asmuth doesn’t look like the classic marathon swimmer. In fact, last year when he arrived in England to make his attempt at the record, he was the butt of constant ribbing from the English Channel veterans.
“They felt I had too slight a build to be a good marathon swimmer,” the 165-pound Asmuth said. “The typical Channel swimmer carries more fat that I do. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind having about five more pounds of fat on me, but I can’t seem to gain any weight.”
Asmuth’s attempt at the English Channel record will be something of a sidelight; his wife, Maura, is expecting their first child next month. His strongest supporter and favorite handler, Maura stayed home to wait out the delivery.
“After this year, I’m going to back it down pretty much,” Asmuth said. “Starting a family and all, I owe them some of my time.”
Asmuth, a certified public accountant, takes three-month leaves of absence from his job each summer so he can compete. That creates something of a strain on the family budget, since he gets little sponsorship.
“Each spring, I send out about 50 proposals in an attempt to get some financial support, but since there is little exposure for marathon swimming in this country, companies just don’t seem interested,” he said.
A partial sponsorship for the Channel swim fell through a week before he was to leave, so he was left with a plane ticket for himself and his brother (who replaces Maura as handler this year) provided by an airline, and little else. He’ll end up paying for the pilot (more than $1,200), food, lodging, and incidentals.
His two hours of training in the bay each day—he does repeats of roughly 12-minute loops of the lagoon in front of Aquatic Park—have provided Asmuth with a well-developed sense of equanimity.
“When you swim in the bay, the water is so dark that you can’t see your hand at the end of your arm,” he said.
“It’s sort of the ultimate sensory depravation. Some people would find the training very boring, even frightening. To me, it’s relaxing and peaceful. It’s two hours a day of complete peace.”