Friday, November 16, 2007

Core Support

The NY Times has a good article in their Play Magazine section about the prevalance of back injuries among high torque/high impact athlete groups. The article touches on various causes behind back problems among athletes, gives a glimpse into young, elite level tennis players and what their backs look like (do not let your children get involved in elite level tennis. Ouch). The article also provides three core strenghtening exercises to help build a solid back support system:

SUPPORT THAT LAZY SPINE: Entire books have been devoted to workout routines for the back. But you can save yourself some trouble by focusing on these three exercises, which work most of the large muscles in the body’s core. Do them four times a week, breathing slowly and steadily throughout.

CURL UP

Lie on your back with your knees bent. Slide your hands under your lower back to provide support; you don’t want your spine flat against the floor. Straighten one leg. Then, while keeping your neck and lower spine straight and unmoving, lift your shoulders and chest off the floor. Hold the position for about eight seconds. Repeat 10 times, then switch legs and do another 10.

SIDE BRIDGE

Lie on your side, with your legs bent at the knee and your upper hand across your chest. Bend your lower arm so that your elbow is pointing away from your chest. Slowly raise your shoulders, keeping your spine straight, and hold for 8 to 10 seconds. Repeat on the other side. After a few weeks, do the exercise with your legs straight.

BIRD DOG

Start on all fours, then slowly lift your right arm and left leg until each is parallel to the ground. Hold for eight seconds. Repeat with the opposite arm and leg. Do 10 reps on each side. Keep your spine straight, hips level and abdominal muscles slightly contracted. And don’t forget to breathe.

Med School Stairs


Portland is a great city for running; a lot of urban parks, a lot of trails and a lot of ways to work in both pavement and trail running in the same outing. The city also has a variety of great urban features that can add immensley to a good workout.


For a more intense leg builder I rank Terwilliger Boulevard and the Medical School Stairs (as I call them) at the top of my list. Terwilliger winds from downtown all the way to Tryon State Park, and along the way passes some great scenery. A paved path parallels most of the road, which is itself rather hilly. About 2 miles from downtown (starting at SW Washington and Broadway to 6th Ave to Terwilliger), or about 4 miles (starting from Tryon Creek and Boones Ferry Rd) lay the Med School Stairs. They start on Terwilliger and descend up to what I thinki is the Veteran's Hospital. I am not sure how many stairs there are, but its enough to get legs burning. It is the closest I've come to a stadium run in Portland.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Mapping Runs

A friend sent me a link to this cool website from USA Track & Field. The site provides a tool which allows you to map your runs. Basically, you set way points on a Google Map image, and the program calculates mileage, and lets you designate start/finish points and even where water breaks are. They system also lets you save your map and search others maps. Great for traveling. From the homepage, the feature is under "America's Running Routes" (look for the blue United States map).

Map your runs!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Council Crest Climb


Geographically, Portland would seem to be great city for watching the 4th of July fireworks, which are launched from downtown, near the Willamette River. Because of the city's numerous hills, quality viewing points abound. The big problem is that the trees in the Northwest are ridiculously tall, resulting in little actual firework watching. We found this out when we tried to go to Council Crest Park, where we joined about 200 other eager spectators. Everyone was sitting, eating and drinking, waiting for the show to start. And when it did start, everyone rose to their feet, rushed to the edge of the park....and realized that the trees where in the way. From that point, it was literally a mad dash back to the cars to head back down the hill in an attempt to find a better spot; 200 people trying to make their way down the narrow and windy hills of West Portland. Probably drunk. Good times.

But, as the result of the madness, I found a great quick ride up to the park. Supposedly Council Crest Park is the highest point in Portland, and the ride up to it is therefore pretty short and steep. The start (in downtown Portland) is about 50ft. above sea level while the ride's highest point is 1,073ft. about sea level, reached in less then 4 miles of climbing. The ride is goreous; some amazing views of the city and of the Cascads, and the neighborhoods you ride through have some amazing houses. Aesthetically, it's one of my favorite rides in the Portland area.

I've used the ride as a quick workout before heading home after work or up to school for the day and as a warm up for longer rides, which are easily accessible from the area. Traffic is usually fairly moderate, and most people are aware that cyclists frequent the area. The somewhat sketchy part of the ride is through downtown, which is where I usually start. Generally the roads are wide enough to not be too much of a problem, but there is definitely some high traffic urban biking required.

Directions: I always start in downtown, near the Hawthorne Bridge, on the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. From there, head west on Taylor (toward the hills), cross over 405 and then take a left on SW 15th Ave (PGE Park should be right in front of you), and then a right on SW Salmon St. Salmon Street climbs fairly steeply up a short hill (this is a narrow road, be careful here) before it deadends at SW King Ave. Take a right and then an immediate left onto SW Park Place, west 2 blocks and then a left onto SW Vista Ave. You are going to stay on Vista as it runs through an "S" curve and then climbs up a relatively steep hill. Near the top of this straight stretch you will come to a light (at Spring Street and Vista); continue straight where Vista will veer slightly right up another relatively steep hill (be careful staying on Vista at this point, there is a lot of traffic). Remain on Vista until you eventually wind to a stop sign (the interesction of Vista and SW Broadway Drive). Take a right at the stop sign, and then an immediate left onto SW Greenway Avenue (this is a sketchy intersection, lots of traffic, so be careful). SW Greenway will basically take you the rest of the way up to the park (it turns into SW Council Crest Drive right before the summit).

Wooo!! Lots of directions, but you only need to do it once or twice to get pretty comfortable with it.


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Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Laird's Laws

Laird Hamilton: water god. You have to listen to a guy whose wife is a former pro beach volleyball player and model. Below, his rules to live by, from Outside Magazine's June 2007 issue.

1. I base everything on how I feel. You can tell me, if you're 43 years old and six foot this, that's going to do that to you, this will do this-but your body is the best instrument for reading how things affect you.

2. You want strength that you can actually control and apply. When you sit down on an exercise machine, with your back against a chair, you tend to shut down the rest of your body. When you stand up and your body has to hold a position to actually support the weight, you'll have a hard time. So you need to incorporate other elements. I'll do machines where I hold my legs up, or stretch while I'm on them, or add leg lifts while I'm doing presses.

3. It's really about keeping in shape for life. Think about your body like a car. Once you park a car, it might not start again. But if you just keep driving it, it'll keep going. It likes to be driven.

4. If it's potato chips in, it's potato chips out. You eat garbage, you're probably going to perform like garbage.

5. Vacation is an opportunity to get in a good routine. It's like mini-boot camp. I just got back from a heli-snowboarding trip in Alaska. I'd been wanting to work on my legs, so I go up there and board all day for 12 days. If we didn't get enough, we'd chip firewood or take hikes in deep snow. I come out of that and my legs feel strong.

6. This is something I'm trying to learn; how to rest. Going full steam ahead all of the time is not always the most productive approach, because then you're always trying to play catch-up with recovery.

7. You have to go an try different stuff. The thing is, when you reach a certain level in any sport, you become so efficient at it that the effort level is really diminished. Your body has adapted. So what are you getting? Snowboarding has helped my surfing. Windsurfing has helped my surfing. Biking, for sure, has helped my surfing.

8. Above everything, sleep. I'm an eight-to-ten-hour guy. Not that I can't operate with less, but for my overall well-being, I gotta have at least eight.

9. I like espresso. It's good stuff.

10. I have friends who eat healthier than anybody, but it takes them all day. And if they don't have their sprouted bread, they go into a seizure. I can eat a Big Mac. I'm not going to love it, but it won't put me into toxic shock. It's like if a car is too high-performance, then it's sensitive to any kind of fuel. I like being more like a truck. If a little diesel gets in there, maybe a little water, it'll cough and burp a bit, but it's gonna get through it and keep running.

11. Chew more. That'll probably do more for your ability to absorb nutrients from your food than just about anything.

12. It's always more enjoyable to train with other people. It's going to be more stimulating, but it also pushes you because you have accountability. You can't just think, Oh, that was enough. Your partner will say, "That was only 29. I thought we were doing 30."

13. Fear is an unbelievable motivator, but it also makes people freeze in their tracks. Once you start to understand it, fear becomes something you can tap into. Fear comes from the understanding that you can die. It usually makes me make really good decisions and gives me power.

14. If you aren't able to be scared, you either haven't been hurt or you're completely ignorant.

15. We are each our own greatest inhibitor. People don't want to do new things if they think they're going to be bad at them or people are going to laugh at them. You have to be willing to subject yourself to failure, to be bad, to fall on your head and do it again, and try stuff that you've never done in order to be the best you can be.

16. In the end, if you're still just there, doing it, you win.