June 1, 1987
Running Roundup
OF PIMPLES…AND REAL RACES ON REAL HILLS
In looking back at running over the past month as well as ahead to the months to come, I notice a certain theme emerging. The theme is hills and trails.
For example, the recent Bay-to-Breakers. Almost every story covering the race made mention of the infamous Hayes Street Hill, a worthy challenge to the entrants—but a mere pimple to some of the races just past and on the horizon.
In order to get in a good, hilly workout a month ago, several of us went to Annadel State Park just outside Santa Rosa, a very low-key park that sports 35 miles of fire roads and trails with a low point of 360 feet above sea level and a high (Bennett Mountain) of 1,880 feet.
Our visit coincided with the running of the California 50, a 50-miler (two loops of a 25-mile course) directed by Tom and Nancy Crawford. Tom was training in the Sierra for the upcoming Western States 100 when, 3½ miles from anywhere, he had a close encounter with a rattlesnake. The snake, spooked by Tom’s approach, struck out and got hold of his running shoe, and one fang struck his little toe.
After frantically shaking the rattler loose, Tom walked the 3½ miles out of the canyon and was taken to an emergency ward, where he was given anti-venom. He’s none the worse for wear, but wife Nancy says the shoe still sports the two fang holes—one stained with venom.
Visited with Doug Latimer, publisher of Women’s Sports & Fitness, and president of the Western States 100 for the current year, to get an update on this year’s event, which will be run June 27. Anyone wishing to volunteer at the aid stations or help escort out-of-state runners over the final legs of the course may phone Norm Klein at 916-638-1161.
The race will not be covered by ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” this year, as it was in 1986. Seems the race was not only tough for the competitors, but because of the rugged course, it cost an arm and a leg to produce first-class coverage.
Here’s a challenge for Bay Area hill runners:
- The same day as the Western States 100, we’ve got the 18th annual Double Dipsea. How about running the DD in the morning (9 a.m. start at Stinson Beach) and then driving to the Sierra to pace an out-of-state competitor over the final leg?
- DD entries are a real bargain: $5 for 13.7 miles of unparalleled view of the Bay (if entry is postmarked before June 4). Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to Jim Skophammer, 666 Orange Street, Daly City 94014.
- One of the long-running, shorter hill races in the Bay Area is the Angwin-to-Anguish race at Pacific Union College in Angwin, in the hills above St. Helena. The race celebrated its 13th year on May 3 with typically low-key 5K and 10K events.
In the 10K, Mike Warr turned in an impressive time of 34 minutes 54 seconds; the first female was Kathleen Powell, who registered a 43:20. In the 5K, Patrick Lecourt burned the course in 18:40.
Unfortunately for those of us who enjoy hilly races that offer a challenge, several other worthy, shorter hill races are gone. The 10K Big Basin Redwoods Run was not rescheduled for this year by the folks at Sempervirens Fund because of too many other activities on the schedule.
Last year’s race was challenging, inspiring, and—from a runner’s standpoint—successful. Age-group winners had redwood trees planted in their honor.
Gotta run. Next time I’ll catch you up on this year’s San Francisco Marathon, set for July 19. And on some other less hyped and less strenuous events.
June 8, 1987
Fitness
BERKELEY NEWSLETTER WITH A SIMPLE PURPOSE
You won’t find it among the national weeklies at the supermarket checkout counter, but there’s no doubt that those newspapers could take some lessons from its writers. In less than three years of publishing articles with headlines like “Will Fiber Make You Trim?” and “The Curable Cancer,” this publication has never once been sued.
Oh, it has received its share of irate letters from companies with assets to protect, but none of the companies was willing to back its products in court.
With a circulation heading toward 500,000, this publication has no advertising, and although it was willing to investigate the subject of driving while stoned in its May issue, and the effects of various amounts of alcohol on human performance behind the wheel in its June issue, it doesn’t test cars.
The publication was conceived on the East Coast and adopted on the West Coast. It has an infernally long title: University of California Berkeley Wellness Letter. Its subtitle is also long: The newsletter of nutrition, fitness, and stress management. Its purpose, however, is simple: to make Americans well.
Although the monthly eight-page letter of wellness (a term its West Coast managing editor, Dale Ogar, doesn’t care for at all) is only 2½ years old, its story goes back much further.
Harvard University has a newsletter dealing with health and fitness topics. Although successful, it is written primarily for medical professionals and tends to bore the socks off regular folk. Rodney M. Friedman of New York felt the country needed a Harvard newsletter written in engaging, easy-to-follow English. He approached UC Berkeley about the concept; Berkeley was cautious, and not much happened.
But Friedman persisted. He had an ally in Ogar, who worked in the School of Public Health. Ogar felt the public was ready and even eager for a simple vehicle for the dissemination of health information. Friedman and Ogar and others at Berkeley took the concept to the regents. And finally I got a tentative go-ahead.
Now all the newsletter needed was a name. Friedman and his colleagues in New York called Ogar with what they believed was a new word that would differentiate it from the Harvard letter. The word was “wellness”; they would call it the Wellness Letter.
Whoa, said Ogar. She explained that “wellness” was already invented and that it was a word Californians were only too familiar with. She expressed her opinion that the word had connotations that would undermine the newsletter’s serious medical nature. She was outvoted.
A team of experienced medical writers was set up in New York, and a blue-ribbon board of medical experts associated with Berkeley was set up in California to review everything that was proposed for the newsletter.
The first issue came out in October 1984; 25,000 copies were printed. The print run, woefully inadequate, was gone within days.
The newsletter’s accessible nature has been winning supporters at a rate undreamed of by its creators. The best barometer of its success is its mail, which comes from cities and hamlets throughout the country. The other indicator is in phone calls asking for information, like the one wanting to know how to buy 1,500 subscriptions for the employees of a Midwest company.
(Subscriptions are $20 per year: Wellness Letter, 48 Shattuck Square, Suite 43, Berkeley 94704.)
June 22, 1987
Fitness
IT’S TIME TO STIFLE THE OLD-AGE STEREOTYPES
The way Peter Wood sees it, there is a vicious cycle that nourishes a plot against fitness in older people. Wood is the associate director of the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention.
The plot goes like this: It has traditionally been inappropriate in our society for mature people to engage in voluntary physical activity that raises a sweat. Neighbors are appalled. Adult children begin suspecting senility. Older people, after all, are “supposed” to act dignified, stiff, appropriate to their age.
Consequently, most people above age 50 do little if anything to break a sweat unless it is somehow associated with their job, with remodeling the house, moving furniture, or getting caught in a heatwave. And what happens?
As they age, people become fatter and more out-of-shape and they subsequently look—and feel—even older than they are. Then, since they look and feel older, it becomes even more inappropriate that they do any physical activity that might break a sweat, and so they age even faster.
Wood, all 132 pounds of him, is the guiding light behind the Fifty-Plus Runners Association (P.O. Box D, Stanford 94305). Wood has been running most of his life. The members (currently about 1,500) of the Fifty-Plus group provide a pool of fit research subjects from which Wood and other scientists can draw.
A recent study involving members of the group was published in the April issue of the American Journal of Medicine. The conclusion? “Musculoskeletal disability appeared to develop with age at a lower rate in runners than in community control subjects, and the decreased rate was observed with lower extremity and lower extremity functions.”
In other words: the body ages slower if it is regularly exercised.
Surprisingly, the great majority of the Fifty-Plus Runners have been plying their aerobic fitness for only 8-10 years, which means they started in their 40s and 50s. Obviously, this is testimony that the benefits accrue no matter at what age you begin pursuing aerobic fitness. Fifty-Plus member Paul Spangler, 89, didn’t start running until he was in his 70s.
“We’ve done this to ourselves,” Wood said, referring to wholesale acceptance of old-age stereotypes. “Madison Avenue projects to us an image of how the world is, but that’s not really how it is at all. We’ve accepted the image of a doddering old age. Someday we’ll look back and see that our age’s treatment of age was vile and unfair.
“If someone at age 50 sees himself as old and finished, it’s criminal, because he’ll typically live another 30 years. Place the quality of those 30 years to come against the quality of the 30 years from 20 to 30 and it’s very sad.”
Wood says one thing that makes people look and feel old is creeping obesity: the process of adding one extra pound of fat per year for 30 years until the typical 50-year-old is staggering around with an excess 30 pounds—all of it in the wrong places. No wonder they feel old. This process, Wood points out, is not common to primitive societies, where old people are as lean as young people.
It’s long past time to stifle the stereotypes. The benefits of fitness fit well into any age group, but have their most dramatic impact from 50 years of age and beyond. Remember: The human body declines only as fast as you allow it.