Trail Running: Endurance into Nature

I'm getting more and more passionate about running into nature. Running in the city, on the streets or better if in a park, is ok... for training and promoting your health. But if you want to put into real action that endurance you are building day by day, I think participating in events that are different from the normal training routine or races on asphalt, can be a particularly motivating and exciting experiences.

Alternative events can be, in an ascending order of difficulty: cross country, orienteering, trail running, and extreme sky-racing events.

Cross country races are usually around 6-10 K, for women I've seen also 4-6 K ones. There can be steep hills but the paths are usually quite large, maybe just muddy.

Orienteering are also about 6-10 K in general but can be quite challenging in the woods with branches all over the place (I suggest long pants and sleeves!). You need to run with a compass and a map and pinch a paper (or a magnetic chip!) at certain check points, maybe hidden somewhere on top of a hill or behind a herdsman's cottage.

Trail running events are usually organized along footpaths and hiking trails in the mountains. Organizers of such events tend to be more extremish. Not only you must beware of the distance (that can be 20-40 K) but also of the climbing and descending altitude. If you are not an expert trail runner you might not want to submit your entry for an "Iron Trail" starting Saturday night in the dark for 30 K and continuing Sunday with a final marathon from 1200 m to 2600 m and back again.

I want to make this clear: I'm NOT pushing anyone into extreme events and I don't particularly support them. Nonetheless I like the idea of running along trails, in semi wild and new scenarios for an urban man like me. I think it can make the endurance I'm building useful to accomplish fun and touching experiences in nature's beauty.

Do you have any experiences to share?

For those who want to know something about our physiology in extreme situations here's a brief citation of Dr. Kamler's book on Surviving the Extremes - a doctor's journey to the limit of human endurance.

Facebook links: Page on Trail Running. Group on Trail Running.

Charity Race by the Turin Marathon

Just a brief personal post.

A non stop treadmill "charity marathon" was organized by the Turin Marathon crew in occasion of a fitness kermesse that took place from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening.

For each km the organization of the "Winter Park" would give 10 euros to a non profit organization that is involved in helping people who have special needs.

I ran from 6.30 to 7.30 am and managed to add 13 km to the total count, that at the end, with nearly 100 participants, arrived to 553 km.

Before me was a woman who ran 46 km from midnight! Impressive! I admired her "will power" and the enthusiasm she expressed

I'm not sure how effective these kinds of events are in promoting health. All the people, that I saw passing by where I was running, didn't really stop to check what was happening and why, just passed by. Anyways I managed to get involved a friend of mine, who is not into regular running. He signed up for and concluded 30 mins and it was a great success.

In the end it was a good experience. I got out of home at 6 am running in the dark with a temperature of - 9 °C and ice covering all the sidewalks and snow on the sides, which was really unique and will inspire me to run early in the morning also in the future.

Have you ever took part in sport charity events? (*)

(*) I've seen for example that the London Marathon has MANY organizations that offer a reserved spot if you are willing to raise money for them.

Do Medical Doctors Exercise?

Current recommendations are of 30 mins of moderate (note 1) physical activity, at least 5 times a week. This is what medical doctors should tell their patients to promote and maintain health.

note 1: moderate physical activity can be just a walk at a good pace making heart frequency go up. Shopping, just to make this clear, is light activity. We're not talking of running, that would be intense activity.

But what about the doctors, are they exercising or just being gurus? A study recently published on the British Journal of Sports Medicine tried to look into this with a paper entitled: Doctors: fighting fit or couch potatoes.

The results aren't encouraging: only 21% of the 61 trainees interviewed met the healthy lifestyle recommendations of physical activity.

What this means is that 79% of them were sedentary. If these data were applicable to the general population this would mean that 80% of physicians don't do the minimum physical activity to maintain health. Is this what studying medicine brought them to? 80% is even worse than what the general population does.

Is it due to the lack of facilities? Well this study has found that

Conversely, more doctors without on-site gym facilities met DOH-recommendations, than those with (p<0.05).

So will the advice they have to give be followed by their patients? Imagine a chubby doctor telling a chubby patient to start a fitness program. Will he obtain a good compliance from the patient? The Healthy Living Blog, which has touched this issue too, states:

Previous research has shown that doctors who exercise are more likely to counsel their patients to do the same, and that patients are more willing to try exercising when their doctors disclose their own personal workout habits.

Commenter DR from Health Habits Blog conclusively comments:

Western medicine is based on treating disease. Not preventing disease. And certainly not promoting health.

Should doctors promote healthy lifestyle and prevention or just try to fix patients up when something goes wrong? What kind of doctor do you want?


Reference: Gupta K, Fan L., Doctors: fighting fit or couch potatoes., Br J Sports Med. 2008 Dec 4. (pubmed link)

Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feastoffools/2293487220/

Brief Update on Muscular Strength and Mortality

I have opened a discussion on the Fitnessrocks Social Network on the Association between muscular strength and mortality which I talked about yesterday here.

To my great surprise Dr. Monte had already featured a Fitnessrocks episode on this topic interviewing one of the researchers of the study.

Here is the reference:

Fitnessrocks podcast 111: Muscular Strength and Risk of Mortality

I'm a big fan of Dr. Monte and as time goes on, I am realizing how precious his podcasts are, a huge resource of knowledge on fitness and healthy lifestyle.

I found this particular episode really interesting and very pleasant because:

- it explains how the research study was conducted

- the conversation touches further enlightening points such as benefits of training at an older age

- and how people are concerned of losing weight to become thin but the crucial point is that the health benefit you get it if and because you are fit, not because you are thin. Thin people can get sick anyways and those who do are more probably the least active, least fit. This might be a complex issue to explain, hope to get back on this topic soon.

A Study on Muscular Strength and Mortality

I came across a very interesting paper from an international multicenter study published on BMJ with the title: Association between muscular strenght and mortality in men: a prospective cohort study.

Researchers from Sweden, Spain and USA have studied for nearly 20 years a group of about 9000 men aged 20-82.
What have they done? First of all the researchers assessed baseline characteristics of every person with a physical examination, measured body mass index, blood pressure, levels of cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose and investigated any family history of disease, smoking status, alcohol intake and physical activity. Unfortunately, no information on drug use and diet was collected.

Having assessed all these parameters, every participant was challenged with a strength test for the maximum weight at the bench and leg press to have a parameter of upper and lower body strength. Cardiorespiratory fitness was determined taking a treadmill test.
The statisticians collected all these data and adjusted them for age, smoking and all the other parameters, and drew conclusions.

The major issue that this study suggests is that muscular strength in inversely and independently associated with death from all causes and cancer in men, even after adjusting cardiorespiratory fitness and other potential confounders. In specific those in the lowest third of muscular strength had a 1.4-2.2 fold and 1.5-4.3 fold higher rates of mortality from all causes and cancer than those in the upper third of muscular strength.

I would like to underline that these are statistical association studies, which doesn't necessarily mean drawing conclusions on cause-effect mechanisms.

The suggestion that this study gives is that muscular strength can be an independent factor from cardiorespiratory fitness when we look at the risk of death from all causes and cancer.
But what about the risk of cardiovascular disease? In this case the association was no longer statistically significant, which suggests that, for cardiovascular disease, cardiorespiratory fitness (which means efficiency in running on a treadmill in this study) plays a major role.

The above graph was published on the online version of the paper. Graphically I notice how the cardiorespiratory fitness (white vs blue bars) lowers dramatically the mortality rates in all muscular strength groups, maybe not as much as the difference between the lower, middle and upper third groups of muscular strength.

Conclusions are hard to make and the risk is to be arbitary while doing so. The statistics have told us about the association between muscular strenght and mortality. Strength training is therefore excellent. Anyways, having seen the data regarding cardiovascular disease risk and the table, I think it is important not to forget the importance of cardiorespiratory efficiency in a fitness routine program.

I encourage you to read the original paper which can be found for free at the National Library of Medicine. Here's the pubmed link.

Picture Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonandkehly/2483823350/