December 7, 1987
Fitness
WINTER IS A GOOD TIME TO COOL YOUR HEELS
By this time of the year those critters that spend the winters hibernating are already well ensconced in their lairs.
Although we may think that a bear which spends one-third of its life in suspended animation misses a lot that’s going on in the world, the animal’s patterns have been set for ages. And for bears, those lifestyle patterns work just fine.
In a geography as generous in its temperature as Northern California, good weather leads active people to believe that they should remain outside and score aerobic points at the same rate they do the rest of the year.
What many of us who still feel we’re 20 years old forget is that 40-year-old bodies don’t reproduce cells as quickly as they used to. The body takes longer to repair minute tears and injuries that a long session of exercise can inflict. And because exercise breaks down the muscles in order for them to repair to a higher level, a constant cycle of injury-and-recovery occurs at the microscopic level. Consequently, even though we might not demonstrate injury, damage is present.
Athletic injuries result when too much damage occurs too quickly for the body to repair it, or when too much injury accumulates over a period of time.
Periods of rest for aerobic athletes are imperative and come in one of two ways: voluntarily or involuntarily.
Involuntary rest periods occur when small injuries become serious enough to keep the athlete away from the sport. Voluntary rest periods occur when the athlete backs off from the sport for a period of time.
Brooks Johnson, director of track and field at Stanford University, advises his athletes to cut back to 25 percent of their workload during the winter. “If a runner’s doing 100 miles a week, cutting back to 25 miles a week is going to keep that runner fit,” says Johnson, “as long as you have one tough workout a week.”
Johnson doesn’t recommend just plain cancelling workouts over the winter, however. “When you take off,” he cautions, “bone density drops and the swelling and inflammation that was present in the knees and joints—but that was ameliorated by the release of endorphins and natural anti-inflammations—are no longer covered by your own body.”
He also cautions that an aerobic athlete should not make all winter cutbacks at one. “You’ve got to come down very slowly,” he says, “not stop all at once.”
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December 21, 1987
Fitness
GOLDEN GATE PARK’S PARCOURSE IS NOT UP TO PAR
Few places on earth are so compatible with outdoor aerobic exercise as Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It takes a lot of will power to drive by without stopping for a walk, run, or bicycle ride.
To tourists, the Golden Gate Bridge is the city’s towering achievement. But to many of us who live in the Bay Area, the bridge is secondary to Golden Gate Park.
The Park is one of those things that was believed impossible to build, but Old San Francisco brought it off—and with a great deal of verve, at that.
But the same vision seems lacking today. The Park’s Parcourse trail, for example, is in a state of deterioration. And a burgeoning bureaucracy seems incapable of doing anything about it.
On a recent run in The Park, I made the mistake of traveling the outer rim of the Polo Fields. Mindful of how a decade ago I used to follow the Foothills College parcourse trail in Los Altos Hills for a good two-mile cross-country workout, I found myself following The Park’s Parcourse circuit. I hoped to get a bit of the old cross-country high.
Alas, my concentration was soon broken by the sad condition of several Parcourse stations. The illustrated signs on many had been defaced with spray paint so the instructions were impossible to read. On the Number 7 station (Step-Up), one of the steps protruded from the ground at an outlandish angle.
No instruction board existed for Number 8 (Circle Body), and in fact, the required chains and rings were missing. So even if you knew how to perform the workout, you couldn’t, because the station was literally an archeological ruin of a more enlightened time.
A call to Parcourse president Richard Cunningham in San Francisco only revealed that matters were even worse than I expected.
The Parcourse at Lake Merced, Cunningham said, was just about as bad as the one in Gold Gate Park. Worse still, city residents had called and written letters. They wondered why the courses weren’t repaired and maintained. Cunningham explained that the courses were owned by the city. In fact, he’d been waging a paper war with the city for nearly two years in an attempt to repair damages.
Cunningham’s engineer surveyed the city-owned Parcourses, many of which, by the way, had been donated to the city by companies such as Perrier and Hyatt. A proposal was sent to the city on January 9, 1986. Cunningham offered to do the work at cost in order to restore the courses in the city in which the Parcourse company is headquartered.
(The cost of materials for the Golden Gate course: $3,964.35; for the Lake Merced course: $2,198.85; and for the Mountain Lake Park: $339.73.)
Cunningham encountered a bureaucratic jungle. After reviewing correspondence files, and adding a letter of my own, it appears the repair project is stymied either because no one knows who’s in charge, or the project is so low on the priority list that lip service is merely paid to complaints.
On Aug. 13, 1986, Eugene Friend, president of the Recreation & Parks Commission, anticipated repairs in September of 1986.
On Nov. 4, 1986, Mary Burns, general manager, wrote that a new bid was needed.
On Nov. 24, 1987, Phil Arnold, assistant general manager, assured me, “I anticipate receiving a proposal to correct the repair needs of these facilities in the next two or three weeks.”
(If you would like to write to someone about the situation, try Mary E. Burns, general manager of The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, McLaren Lodge, Golden Gate Park, 94117, or Mayor Elect Art Agnos, City Hall, 400 Van Ness Ave., Room 200, San Francisco, CA 94102.)
December 28, 1987
Running Roundup
SACRAMENTO MARATHONERS’ RACE AGAINST MOTHER NATURE
For four years running Bay Area marathoners used the California International Marathon in Sacramento as a speed course. It was terrific for runners who wanted to qualify for Boston, for people who wanted to lower their personal records, and for first-timers who wanted a positive experience. The race has always been well-organized, well-run, and well-attended.
This year’s race, held on December 8, was doubly important. Besides the usual number of runners after a fast marathon, a group of very serious racers had come to Sacramento to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. Would-be Trials competitors would need a sub-2:20 for men and a sub-2:50 for women. The race seemed ideal.
Then, nature stepped in. The night before the race the winds increased in intensity, until they were 40 mph at the 7:12 a.m. start. And 10 minutes before the start at Folsom Lake, it began to rain. What had been the perfect marathon turned into a grim march for 2,000 runners, through no fault of the promoters.
Peter Maher of Canada, a 1:12 marathoner, won the race in an astonishing time of 2 hours 16 minutes, 49 seconds, an effort that would have been a 2:10-2:11 any other day. It was his fourth marathon win of the year. The wind was so bad that when Maher turned a corner at 13.5 miles and once again faced the bruising headwinds, the force of those winds ripped his singlet right off his chest; he improvised by putting his head through one arm of the shirt.
It’s difficult to recall when so many runners worked so hard to get nowhere. My favorite quote on the race came from Bay Area runner Herman Cohen: “The conditions were so terrible I should have dropped out. But it was all so ridiculous that it was humorous; I decided to finish so I could tell stories about how ridiculous it was.”
The next local opportunity for marathoners to qualify for Boston or the Trials is Napa on March 13. (Send entries to 1325 Imola Avenue West, Napa, 94559). When it appeared for a few months that the well-organized Napa Valley Marathon might not make its 10th season, an increase in entry fee to $20 allowed the very tired volunteer management to hire a part-time secretary to handle calls and mail entries.)
The Davis Marathon & Half Marathon scheduled for February 7 (contact Fleet Feet, 132 E. St., Davis, 95616) has been revised downward and will not offer a marathon distance for 1988; instead, it will feature a half-marathon and a 10K.
For those who like to plan their training schedules far in advance, Big Sur is on April 17 (contact P.O. Box 222620, Carmel, 93922) and Boston is on April 18 (B.A.A., 17 Main Street, Boston, 01748).
Closer to home, the Dolphin South End Club will hold its annual Hangover Run at the civilized time of 10 a.m. on New Year’s Day. The cost is $1, the distance is 3.53 miles, and everyone is meeting at the parking lot at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. It promises to be a real eye-opener, and a nice way to leap into the next leap year. For more information, call 415-994-5727.
January 10 will see the—take a deep breath so you can say it all—Fisherman’s Free Sawyer Camp Trail Bayfront 12K Run and 5K Run/Stride. (You’d better request an XL T-shirt if you want to get all of that on it.) The run will benefit the Sawyer Camp Trail that skirts Crystal Spring Reservoir. Local bureaucrats want to charge runners $1 each to run the asphalted bike trail along the reservoir.
The folks at Runner’s Inn (415-872-3805) in San Bruno are attempting to head off that eventuality. The race begins and ends at the Fisherman’s Restaurant in Burlingame along the Bayshore (not to be confused with Highway 101’s alias). The race starts at 8 a.m.; entries are $10 in 1987, or $12 if you enter in 1988. It’s a good, flat, scenic out-and-back course, with a worthy cause.
Another good cause that’s had its own race for a dozen years is the San Francisco Zoo. The annual Zoo Run (7 & 3 miles) is scheduled for January 24 (8 & 9 a.m., respectively). Adult entry fee is $12. Children under 16 with an adult pay only $6. The goodies are noteworthy: a T-shirt, poster, refreshments, and admission to the zoo. The start is at Herbst Road at Skyline Boulevard. The contact number is 415-661-2023.