April 4, 1988
Fitness:THE RUNNING DEBATE OVER THE WALKMAN
When the Sony Corporation introduced the Walkman portable radio with headphones, it created a neo-generation gap and managed to set off the Second Great Philosophical Running Debate.
The Sony Walkman (in its many variations and imitations) provided the means by which young people could privately tune into their favorite music while tuning out the world around them.
The running debate over the use of headphones while exercising is one of the most widely-discussed non-topics of the 1980s. The major philosophical debate of the 1970s, you’ll recall, was where to draw the line between a jogger and a runner. That debate still has to be settled.
Among some long-term and hard-core distance runners, there is no discussion at all where the Walkman topic is concerned. There is first the feeling that people who use headphones are not really runners. Secondly, many of these critics believe that running while using headphones should be against the law, just as it is against the law to drive a car or ride a bicycle while wearing them.
“I have noticed with dismay the ever-increasing numbers of head-phoned runners,” reports Richard Treakle of Los Altos, a runner since 1969 and veteran of 14 Bay-to-Breakers and five Dipsea races. “I’m reluctant to call them ‘runners’, actually, because I don’t think they really enjoy running.”
Craig Robert Reubens of Richmond, who ran in the 1979 San Francisco Marathon, now runs about 10 miles a week wearing an Aiwa HS-T 400 AM/FM and cassette player. He wouldn’t be without it.
“I hate jogging!” he says. “It causes me aches and pains and it’s a major effort for me to do it. I do it only for the supposed health benefit which are alleged to occur after jogging. The jogging itself, however, becomes slightly less boring when I hear loud music pumping through my brain.”
Experiments performed at Ohio State University on the use of rock music while exercising seem to indicate that music reduces mental stress.
On the other hand, the experiment also indicated the music blocked release of beta-endorphins, the body’s natural opiate that alleviates much of the discomfort and pain of aerobic exercise.
Experiments at Stanford performed to measure the effect of various types of music on people performing repetitive, mundane chores indicated that regular, even rhythms helped the muscles fire more regularly, while uneven and discordant rhythms hindered such activities.
Not everyone who runs with headphones listens to music, however.
Phyllis Henning of Rohnert Park, who’s been a runner for 10 years and is the veteran of three marathons, prefers talk shows.
Sylvia Gartner of Palo Alto keeps up with events while she runs.
“I prefer international programs rather than music,” she says. “I particularly like ‘All Things Considered’ or ‘Morning Edition’ on PBS. I’m a news junkie.”
Gartner, who is 44, has been a runner for 11 years. She went through a racing phase the first two years of her running, but has now settled into runs of 45 to 75 minutes every other day. She feels she’s been on both sides of the controversy.
“I used to enjoy thinking and meditating while running. But the truth is I’ve become somewhat bored. The headphones were sort of a breakthrough. If I run without the headphones, I sort of try to go faster just because I’m thinking about running,” she said.
That, in essence, is the hard-core runner’s objection to headphones: they detract from the running experience.
“To me, one of the real joys of running is being out in the early morning by myself enjoying the outdoors with my mind completely relaxed,” says Richard Treakle. “Why anyone would want to clutter their heads with music or news talk in that situation is completely beyond me.”
Treakle goes even further: “Safely alone should be reason enough to leave the headphones off until you have to do something really distasteful like mowing the lawn or washing a car.”
It would be difficult to find an area more inspiring for running than the mountain trails around Lake Tahoe. Treakle would soak up the experience, becoming one with his run. Karen Hoover, who lives there, sees it differently.
“As compared to when I run without music, I just don’t enjoy it as much. The music seems to give me a lift. I get going to the music and I run better, with more energy, or so it seems.” Karen runs 25-30 miles a week, and although she prefers to run with headphones, she admits to sometimes going without them.
“I run these paths through the forest. I take my greyhound and we meet an occasional jogger or dog walker. But there are no cars and it is quiet and beautiful. So sometimes I do not take my music along.”
Kathy Clark runs similar terrain in Lassen County.
“I run a lot of long mountain roads, and when I get tired, the music gives me a boost. I find myself listening to and concentrating on the music rather than on how tired I may be or how painful the run is.” She reports that country and western music works best for her, because of the rhythms and exhilaration inherent in the music. She runs 30-50 miles a week.
Several people contacted for this survey asked back: “Do you ever use headphones when you run?”
I must admit that I do own a Sony Walkman. And I have used it for running. I took it along to the 1985 running of the Redwood Empire 24-Hour Track Race in Santa Rosa so I could listen to music during the night.
That experiment was occasioned by the first 24-hour race I did in Huntington Beach in 1979 when all night long they played the same John Denver album over and over on the public address system. I vowed after that fiasco (they also forgot to turn off the timers for the sprinklers), I’d run to a drummer of my own picking.
Treakle’s closing comments on the controversy put the whole matter into proper perspective. “You’ll not often see anyone running faster than eight or even nine minutes a mile (while) wearing them.”
Perhaps, in a roundabout way, we’ve finally stumbled upon a dividing line between jogger and runner: joggers wear headphones, runners don’t.
April 11, 1988
Fitness: SKIER’S EDGE: AN INDOOR EXERCISE MACHINE FOR DOWNHILL BUFFS
In the wake of a winter that gave way to an early spring, most Sierra downhill ski resorts have closed for the season.
If it’s up to Scientific Sports Systems of Redwood City, however, people will be able to reap the exercise benefits of downhill skiing all year long. No more calling ahead for reservations, no more five-mile lines to pay tolls at the Carquinez Bridge, no more long drives and no more expensive lift tickets.
Scientific Sports Systems has a new product called the Skier’s Edge, an indoor exercise machine that simulates the side-to-side rhythm of downhill skiing. The Skier’s Edge is an evolution of a product called the Stein Erikson Sky Way machine that was marketed some years ago by AMF.
Joel Loane, an avid skier, saw the opportunity to combine the principles of the Ski Way with modern design and component technology. The resulting Skier’s Edge is a space-age product that a bear couldn’t break but that a child can master in less than 10 minutes.
The Skier’s Edge has been in development for two years. It has been adopted as an integral training tool by the U.S. Ski Team, both Alpine and Nordic divisions.
Although the Skier’s Edge, which burns about 200 calories for 15 minutes of work, is designed to simulate downhill skiing movements, and will work wonderfully getting skiers’ legs in shape for the upcoming season, it has numerous other applications.
Most indoor exercise equipment, such as the stationary bicycle, is oriented toward forward motion, The Skier’s Edge takes the opposite tact, however. It builds the lower body with a lateral orientation.
The advantages are obvious for anyone who plays tennis, handball, or other sports where lateral movement is a mainstay, and where building quickness, timing, balance, and rhythm are important. In that regard the machine is also good for speed skating and the modern racing style used in Nordic skiing.
The Skier’s Edge is essentially a set of parallel rails in the form of a mound. A platform equipped with rollers rides on the rails, atop which are two footpads upon which the exerciser stands. The moving platform is restrained by two powerful flexible straps, which also provide resistance. The exerciser stands atop the moving platform, using two extra-long ski polls for balance, and then begins moving from side to side; the more vigorous the effort, the greater the resistance.
There are additional settings to add further resistance. By varying one’s rhythm and by adjusting the resistance, the exerciser can work out either aerobically or anaerobically, or can move back and forth between the two.
The machine was unveiled last month. Loane feels the potential for sales in the first year is between 20,000 and 30,000 units. (Selling for $495, The Skier’s Edge comes partially assembled. A video cassette with assembly and use instructions is included. All components are manufactured in the United States, and the kits are assembled in Redwood City.) There has been considerable interest expressed in the machine by foreign companies specializing in sports equipment.
Barrie Houston, the company’s manager of marketing services, feels that one of the greatest potential sales areas is in rehabilitation. The Skier’s Edge is low-to-no impact and, with its lateral orientation, should offer substantial benefits to strengthen knees, ankles. And feet recovering from injuries suffered in tennis, basketball, football, and other sports that require fairly violent lateral efforts.
Of course, there also is a direct benefit for the ski fanatic. On the hottest day of the year, the ski nut can turn up the air conditioner, put a Warren Miller video on the TV, and ski to oblivion while wearing a swimsuit. Information: Scientific Sports Systems 415-363-8880.
April 18, 1988
Running Roundup: ESPN SCRATCHES LIVE COVERATE OF THE BOSTON MARATHON
The Boston Marathon will be run today, starting in the town of Hopkinton, Mass.
But don’t expect to see live coverage on national television. ESPN, the all sports channel, has decided not to cover Boston, the world’s oldest running marathon.
Why? It’s not simple.
The Boston Athletic Association, which oversees the race, granted ESPN exclusive rights to the race, with the understanding that local TV stations could pick up ESPN’s camera feed and do their own voice-overs.
The local stations revolted, because they are all union shops, while ESPN is non-union. The resulting backlash was too much for ESPN and it told the BAA to forget it.
On the lighter side, it was 220 years ago today that Amby Burfoot became the only American to win the race during the 1960s. Burfoot, who won the race in 1968, now is executive editor of Runner’s World Magazine. After covering the race from the sidelines for the past seven years, Burfoot will be lining up with the pack today in Hopkinton.
In 1968, it was speculated that Mexican runners would dominate Boston, especially when Patriots Day dawned and the temperature shot up to 72.
But Burfoot and a Californian runner soon put an end to that idea. At the Heartbreak Hill portion of the race, Burfoot and Bill Clark were running side by side. Having faced Clark on the indoor tracks, Burfoot knew that Clark would be faster if the race came down to a sprint in the final minutes. So Burfoot turned up the screws on the hills, but Clark kept up with him.
“He was a half step behind me, and I could hear his breathing,” Burfoot recalls. “I knew I was in trouble.”
It was the downhills that slowed Clark, tying up his quadriceps. “It became a race of the running wounded,” Burfoot says. “I was getting side stitches and Bill was getting leg cramps.”
Burfoot finished in 2 hours, 22 minutes, 17 seconds. Later that year Burfoot ran his personal record at Fukuoka, Japan, finishing in 2:14:28.8—a time .8 of a second off the then-U.S. record. “If it weren’t for the Japanese mania with precision to the tenth of a second, I’d have tied the U.S. record,” Burfoot laments.
Speaking of spectacular runs, one of the best [age group] marathon performances of the year occurred at the Napa Valley Marathon last month. Marcie Trent of Anchorage—age 70—finished in 4:11:54.
April 25, 1988
Fitness: THE BOSTON MARATHON—A CHILLING EXPDERIENCE
There were lessons to be learned when Kenya’s Ibrahim Hussein overtook Tanzania’s Juma Ikangaa in the final yards last week to win the Boston Marathon.
The duo had left all the other runners out in the cold—in more ways than one.
While the laurels were being placed upon the winner’s sweaty heads—Portugal’s Rosa Mota defended her title—more than 6,000 runners were still struggling toward the finish line.
A startling number of the pack was suffering from cramps, chill, and hypothermia despite what many marathoners consider ideal weather: 52-58 degrees, low clouds, occasional light rain, and a light tail wind.
Unfortunately, a surprising number of marathoners ended up finding the elements more an enemy than a friend.
The preponderance of problems common to cold weather were due to a number of factors:
The Course. Boston is an extremely challenging course. The first two miles are downhill and can lure a runner into a too-fast pace. The famous series of hills at Newton (topped by Heartbreak Hill) come at a time when the runners are drawing upon precious body reserves. But worse still are the downhills that await runners beyond Heartbreak Hill.
The calves are stressed on the uphills and the quadriceps are battered on the downhills. The hamstrings are beaten on both. Between Heartbreak Hill and the finish line, some runners limped along on cramped muscles. The cold temperatures and occasional rain proved a potent enemy.
Physical Effort. The elite marathoners at Boston are the nation’s best. Such athletes, even though they are amateurs, are dedicated. They don’t go to Boston to sightsee. They go to compete. Consequently, they have a tendency to push themselves to their limits.
This tendency is aggravated by the tremendous support of the Boston crowd. The race is run on Patriots’ Day, a local holiday; consequently, Boston office workers have the day off and either attend the Red Sox game or the marathon, or both. Fenway Park is only a block from the course.
This tendency, to push oneself beyond one’s ability, however, often leaves even the best runners struggling near the end of the course.
At that point, the body can weaken, and the body warmth that provided an envelope of protection against the cold is turned off. The runner is faced with two to four miles of walking in chilly weather while dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.
Time of Exposure. If a runner burns out at 23 miles and then must slowly jog the rest of the race in chilly conditions, his chances of coming down with hypothermia are increased. For the runner who is sucked into a too-fast pace in the early miles, disaster awaits at miles 17 or 18. Impaired judgment and the encouragement of the crowd make the runner even less willing to drop out.
Improper Clothing. Despite the raw conditions, a surprising number of Boston’s field wore flimsy singlets and shorts. Under chilly conditions, it is wise to wear a thin turtleneck that can be discarded along the course if the body temperature rises or if the weather conditions get warmer. A racing singlet can easily be worn under the turtleneck. If the runner wants to keep the turtleneck once removed, it can be tied around the waist and re-used if conditions worsen later in the race.