April 6, 1987
Fitness
SANTA ROSA’S 24-HOUR RUN AGAINST CANCER
Many runners feel that most heart disease—the largest killer of adult Americans—is preventable, and have taken their own steps toward protecting themselves by fashioning tremendously efficient hearts through their running programs.
The second most deadly disease is cancer. Although there are obvious ways of cutting down the chances of acquiring lung cancer, there is no clear-cut method of preventing most forms of the disease. Feeling safe from heart disease, runners tend to support research against cancer.
One of the most impressive examples of that support comes each year in Santa Rosa, where runners do what they do best to raise money for the American Cancer Society. They run. And run. For 24 hours. Around a quarter-mile track.
Before they run, though, they browbeat family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers to sponsor them for so much money per mile.
This madness with a method has been going on for four years. The latest edition took place last week at the Santa Rosa Junior College track. Thirty runners from as far away as New Jersey lined up for the 9 a.m. start under warm, sunny skies. There were four women and 26 men, and each had a support crew that would record laps, hand the runner water and other nourishment, and administer to blisters and aches.
Among the 30 runners taking race director Carol Witwer’s starting command were five who had been in the three previous editions of the 24-hour classic: Chris Storey, 44, of Washington; Steve Jaber, 35, of Texas; Marche Booth, 55, of Santa Rosa; John Vanhof, 39, of Fremont, and Dick Collins, 53, of Oakland.
Collins, who placed ninth last year with 111 miles, 1,170 yards, was in a unique position for this year’s face: It would be his 100th career ultramarathon. An old back problem recurred last fall and he had to cancel his attempt at that time. Dick went into the hospital to have the problem corrected, and was in shape enough to make his ultramarathon comeback at Santa Rosa.
Also in the field was David Lygre, 44, of Ellensburg, Wash., who two years ago was diagnosed with testicular cancer. After more than a year of radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery, David was making his ultramarathon comeback.
As the 30 runners took the low-key start, the heat of the day increased. The runners held themselves in check, pacing against the 80-degree heat, holding back reserves to get them through the night. The sun hadn’t even started going down before Collins passed the 50-kilometer (31 mile) point in the race, which officially accounted for his 100th ultramarathon. (Collins has the further distinction of never dropping out of an ultramarathon he started.) By 5 a.m. Sunday Lygre had reached his goal of 100 miles.
When 9 o’clock rolled around, and the signal to stop came, Charles Ferguson of Idaho Falls had won the event with 137 miles. It was his first track event; he said he favors hills and trails.
Nancy Crawford, 40, of Santa Rosa, had finished third overall, with a personal record of 116¾ miles. John Vanhof placed as the third male with a PR of 111¾ miles. Vanhof also set the record for the most money collected: $5,428.
In all, the event raised more than $50,000 for cancer research. The race has raised more than $170,000 during its four-year run.
April 13, 1987
Fitness
TRAILS THAT ARE WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD
There have been several guides to running trails in the Bay Area, and numerous guides for bicyclists. The wealth of guidebooks to roads and trails is easily explained by the athlete-to-population ratio in the Bay Area (surely one of the highest in the world) and the treasure trove of wonderfully challenging and stupendously scenic areas the landscape has provided for training.
My favorite such guide is Tony Burker’s 55½ Running Trails of the San Francisco Bay Area (Heyday Books, Berkeley, $7.95). I’m partial to Tony’s guide for a number of reasons:
- It takes pains to provide courses that are essentially free of automobile traffic. Besides the fact that automobiles are dangerous, their pollutants are vigorously absorbed by the runner or walker who is exchanging oxygen at four or more times the rate of a sedentary person.
- Although the guide includes several courses that are almost run to death (Lake Merritt and Lake Merced, for example), it refrains from including some of those whose use has become almost mundane (the 5-kilometer loop in Golden Gate Park).
- The course descriptions are extremely well done, as are the directions to get to the starting point of the course. There is also a wealth of additional information provided for each course , including phone numbers of park or ranger offices.
- The maps, which are often the single worst characteristic of similar guides, are excellent in Burke’s book.
- No truly obscure trails or courses are included. Every trail in the book is tried and true, and none overwhelms the moderately good runner or the ambitious walker.
The importance of such a guide is profound to walkers or runners who have either just moved to the Bay Area, have just recently taken up outdoor aerobic sports, or are looking to expand their training horizons. One of the best ways to undermine a training program is to repeatedly do the same course; besides being psychologically demoralizing, such a practice can ultimately be physically debilitating.
The quickest and best way to bring around a stale training program is to lay in a set of new courses. If the courses happen to be scenic, free of vehicular traffic, and varied in typical weather conditions, so much the better.
The 56 trails included in this book provide variety at its best: everything from four different trails on Mt. Tamalpais (4, 4.5, 6, and 12.6 miles) to the relatively undiscovered Huddart and Wunderlich parks in San Mateo County (5 and 4.6 miles, respectively). Each course also features a brief description.
You may have a question rattling around in the back of your head concerning the “55½” in the title. What’s the “1/2”? As the final course in the book, Burke takes you on a course where you do not begin at one spot and end at that spot under your own power.
The course is one that the ancient marathoner, Walt Stack, made famous over the year as an out-and-back course. It runs from San Francisco to Sausalito, but instead of turning around and coming back, Tony guides you to the ferry terminal in Sausalito where you can catch the ferry back to the Ferry Building. A perfect weekend expedition, the course provides a little bit of everything, concluding with a bay cruise. The course is 10.3 miles.
Tony came to the Bay Area a dozen years ago, and has run in his share of local races. Born in Southampton, England, in 1949, he is a free-lance advertising and marketing consultant in the East Bay.
April 20, 1987
Fitness
PUTTING THE STRESS ON FITNESS AND DIET
Much like the word “diet,” the word “stress” has received a bad reputation over the years.
To most of us “diet” means the regulation of food intake in hopes of reducing body weight. The word is almost never used anymore to refer simply to the sum total of food intake.
The word “stress” has evolved over the years into a negative physical and emotional condition associated with tension, pressure, and pain.
In actuality, there are two kinds of stress: good and bad.
Stress is the adaption of the body to change If we have just enough of both types of stress in our lives, we approach what Dr. Peter G. Hanson refers to as the Joy of Stress.
Without some stress in our lives, we would never grow. We would all remain infantile: a race of human slugs.
Hanson’s book “The Joy of Stress” is published by Andrews, McMeel & Parker of Kansas City, one of the country’s foremost humor publishers. Hanson’s book is no laughing matter, although Hanson would throw his support on the side of humor as a release from negative stress.
Hanson makes the excellent point that without stress, we would accomplish nothing: The Olympic athlete would not break a world record; the performance of an actor would be dull and lifeless.
He also outlines the very real physiological effects negative stress can have on the human body: everything from shutdown of the digestive system to increased cholesterol production from the liver.
He creates a scale of stress resistance, deals with the role of nutrition (“diet” in the old sense), and offers some effective methods and examples of how to turn the tables on bad stress.
His latest assault against bad stress is a 60-minute cassette called the “Power Nap,” which does what the book cannot—lead you through a much-needed pitstop in the middle of the day by talking you down much the way an air traffic controller would talk down a novice pilot whose instructor had stepped out for a moment.
The “Power Nap” can be selectively inserted into the busy day for a few seconds duration or for up to 20 minutes.
Hanson’s methods are straightforward and easily-followed. He leads you through the procedure in plain English, albeit with increasingly relaxing inflection (or lack thereof) of the voice, and soothing background sounds.
The technique doesn’t knock you out. It merely allows you to, as Mark Twain used to say, “refill the tanks.”
The only drawback is that the technique should be experienced under somewhat controlled circumstances, a rare commodity at, for instance, a newspaper office or at home with three kids to shepherd.
Nonetheless, practiced under ideal conditions the tape…well…tends to…zzzzzzz.
April 27, 1987
Fitness
WALKING AWAY FROM THOSE BIG-CITY BLUES
While attending college in Pennsylvania, I frequently hitch-hiked to Manhattan for the weekend. I found it exciting and stimulating, at least for the first day. But I soon discovered that I was the victim of a strange phobia. I cannot remail comfortable for more than 24 hours in a city that I cannot escape comfortably on foot.
And it’s very difficult to escape the cityscape of New York as a pedestrian. The same applies to Los Angeles. These cities are just way too big to escape comfortably.
Cities like Boston and San Francisco, on the other hand, are more civilized in size, and lend themselves to walking—although someone in Boston should mention that to the drivers and the jaywalkers.
San Francisco is a walker’s paradise.
Whoa! Hold on there! What about all the hills?
The hills, believe it or not, add to the city’s walkability. They’re there if you want them, and if you don’t, there are ways to avoid them.
Walking vigorously (which includes swinging the arms with some authority) is the simplest and safest type of aerobic exercise there is. And it’s one of the least expensive.
Because San Francisco lends itself to walking, it’s possible to park your car at the cheapest available lot (even if it’s well south of Market) and explore.
Walking vigorously uses up almost as many calories as does running (about 100 per mile, depending on your body weight), while generally heading off injuries common to runners.
The best place in the city to walk, of course, is Golden Gate Park. In the daytime, that is. It’s also the best place to run, to bicycle, to roller-skate, and to do just about anything but eat, unless you bring your own picnic lunch.
The numerous course combinations you can create from the roads and pathways that crisscross the park help keep it always fresh.
For those who want a little more vim in their vigorous walking, the city’s hills provide some of the best vistas and some of the best calorie-burning in the country. The walk (even a casual walk) from City Lights bookstore, north on Grant, and then right onto Telegraph Hill Boulevard, around Coit Tower and back down is a fitness test that separates the doers from the talkers.
The breathless view from the top of Telegraph Hill quickly dispels that closed-in feeling that insinuates itself in New York City, even if you happen to be outwalking muggers in Central Park.
For the downright audacious, there’s always the challenge of Twin Peaks. It’s the ultimate realization of the advice to walkers and runners to always do the difficult part of the run/walk on the way out, so that the terrain or the tailwind will help you get back to your starting point more easily. From atop Twin Peaks you can survey any number of escape routes from the city, should they become necessary for your well-being.
The irony, of course, is that the easier it is to walk away from a city, the less inclined one is to do so.