(Warning: There is absolutely no talk of religion or Mormonism in the post)
I bet you all think that Bishop Bill sits around listening to Mormon themed podcasts and reading Mormon history books all day (besides talking about himself in the third person). I do read other books, and last week I read a book called “Born to Walk” by Mark Sisson. The subtitle pretty well sums up his book: The Broken Promises of the Running Boom, and How to Slow Down and Get Healthy—One Step at a Time.
Sisson’s background is he did a pre-med degree in biology, then instead of going to med school he went into competitive distance running. He ran a 2:19 marathon and was 5th at the World Ironman in Kona Hawaii. That marathon time is world class level, and the Ironman is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run, all in under 8 hours to finish in the top. But Sisson realized he was not healthy: his knees and hips hurt, he caught colds frequently, and he was diagnosed with heart problems directly related to his running.
He is now 73 years old, and has not run over a mile in the last 30 years, and says he is in the best health of his life. The major premise of his book is that humans were never meant to run long distances. Through out the history of homo sapiens spanning hundreds of thousands of years, there was never a need for endurance running. We did not evolve to run long distances. We did need to be able to sprint from time to time, to either catch some food, or escape from becoming food. We evolved to walk. Our feet, legs, knees, and hips are built to walk, not run.
He goes into great detail and is very passionate about how the running shoe industry is actually hurting us with the fat heals and high elevation heal vs the toes. The thick heal promotes running with a heal strike, which we have been doing since the mid 1970’s and the invention of the first shoe specifically build for long distance running (we’re looking at you Nike). Since for most of human history we didn’t wear shoes, or if we did there was little or no cushion in the heal, we had to run with a with a midfoot strike. After I read the book I wend outside barefoot, and ran down the sidewalk. It was intuitive to run with a fore/mid foot strike. He promoted either running barefoot, or with one of the minimalists shoes available. This part I took with a grain of salt as he has his own minimalist shoe company.
Sisson talked about how running causes stress on the body, in the same why that a stressful day of work or a fight with your spouse would. It raises cortisol in the body which leads to inflammation. Why would you do that on purpose? Also with this he recommended to never let your heart rate get out of the fat burning zone and into the glucose/lactate burning zone. The body switches from fat to glucose at about 60-70% of the max heart rate. For example, max heart rate is 220 minus age, so for old Bishop Bill, my rate would be 220-69=151. 60-70% of that is 90-105. I can usually get that with a brisk walk.
Speaking of walking, Sisson’s recommended exercise is walking every day (30-60 min), weight lifting twice a week, and doing sprints once a week. The sprints can be running, bicycling, swimming, or anything similar. He recommends jogging for a few minutes, when sprinting as hard as you can for 20 seconds, then back to jogging until you are fully recovered (5 min or so). This is not High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), as you take longer to do a full recovery before your next sprint.
So what do you think of this?
What are some of your exercise routines?
Are any of you endurance runners? What is your rebuttal to Sisson’s ideas?
I have run many marathons and in fact ran the St. George Marathon just yesterday. I find running to be very beneficial both physically and mentally. But I won’t bore readers with the details.
But since this is an LDS / x-LDS reader board let me share something that some of you will find humorous about the St. George Marathon. It always takes place the first Sat. in October a.k.a. General Conference Saturday. And when I was a TBM my annual routine was very simple. I would run the marathon in the morning, get back to the hotel as quickly as possible to listen to most of the Sat. AM session, watch college football from 12-2, then watch the afternoon session from 2-4, then more college football, then head over to a local stake center for the priesthood session, then back to the hotel for late night college football. As a TBM and college football fanatic, this was one of the true joyful days of my year (especially if I did well in the marathon). (my wife stayed in SLC to run the kids to soccer games, etc. so the day was mine)
My routine has changed a bit. My wife travels to the race to support me so we spend time eating lunch out, etc. but there’s still plenty of college football but not a whole lot of GC (i.e., none) and of course the priesthood session doesn’t exist. Tuns out that my running has outlived GC in terms of its utility in my life. Who would have guessed?