Horse and Auto Racing

I've talked a lot about biking here, especially my own riding. Today I'm going to talk about the stuff that goes with me on a ride.

Some folks like to equip their bikes with a small computer, that can record their speed and mileage, and sometimes other data. These are battery powered, and connect to the bike by a wire that runs down to the bottom of the front fork, and ends in a small electromagnetic contact. A second, magnetic, contact is mounted on a spoke.

A good, light weight, computer can be an essential accessory, but I prefer something even more powerful, even more light weight, and less expensive: it's called a brain. OK, maybe that's a little pontifical. Let me elaborate.

A long time ago, I bought a small mechanical odometer for my bike. It mounted on the axel bolt (the quick-release, nowadays) of the front wheel, and a small knocker was mounted on a spoke. As the wheel turned, it turned the odometer's wheel, and advanced the mile counter. The odometer I bought was designed for a 27 inch wheel. And so, I knew my mileage after every ride.

The other piece of equipment I had was a $13 Casio wristwatch, with a timer. I set the timer when I started a ride, and turned it off at the end. And so, I knew how long I'd been riding. A simple calculation gave me the miles per hour, or average speed of the ride. That calculation could be made during a ride, too, as long as I remembered not to turn off the timer early.

This worked for a long time. In fact, it still works. A $7 odometer and $13 Casio are providing me with all of the information that a $77 bike computer could provide, at less than half the cost. There is an ongoing cost for pencils and small notepads to record ride data, as I do not have a computer's memory function.

Maybe one day I'll break down and buy a bike computer. Probably not. I'm pretty old-school about my riding. Also, while knowing my time on the ride, mileage, and average speed are good things, I can do without knowing my average blood pressure.

I don't know why, but I bought a pedometer. A pedometer is a device that will count your steps (ped = foot, + meter), and fancy electronic pedometers will also show how far you've walked and how many calories you've burned. Other functions are available, but the price goes up accordingly.

The key to pedometer accuracy, and usefulness, is to get an accurate stride measurement. A stride is defined as the distance you cover in one step; you can measure your stride from any point on one foot to the corresponding point on the other foot. I like to measure toe to toe. Simply stand with your feet together, mark where your toes are, and take one step. Before putting your feet back together, mark where your toes are on the foot you stepped with. Measure the distance between marks, and you have your walking stride length. Stride length increases as your speed increases, so you need to keep that in mind when you set the pedometer. You can find pedometers with memory functions that allow you set various stride lengths for runs or walks.

So I went out, and bought a pedometer. I haven't used it yet. I'm not sure I want to know how many steps there are in a mile, or in a three hour run. I especially don't want to know how many steps I take in a day. Still, it's a good measure of daily activity. It's recommended that a person walk at least 6000 steps each day, to maintain good health. 10,000 steps per day is recommended for an exercise program. That's a lot of walking. I'll let you know how I measure up, after I've given the pedometer a try or three.

Last Sunday, my wife and I went for our regular weekend run together. This is just something that we do. We started it during the summer, as a way to keep up that quality 'spouse time,' and now that the weather's changed, we didn't see any real reason to stop. Not even when the storms started blowing in.

Yup, I, who never liked to run at all until last year, am now out running 5 miles every weekend with my wife, even in the pouring rain. The advent of lousy weather meant that we had to go and buy some good cold-weather running gear, which my wife loved: it meant a shopping trip! I can do without shopping, but we had fun together. And we stayed warm (sort of) last Sunday on our run, so I guess that umpteen gazillion dollars in overpriced running paraphernalia was worth it.

Actually, it wasn't that bad, and as overboard as my wife can go on the running gear, I've sometimes done worse on the bicycle gear, so who am I to complain? What's important is, that even pouring cold rain couldn't stop our friendly run together. Which is what it's all about, isn't it? Running, no matter what?

A few weeks ago, in the late fall, I treated myself to a Midwestern color tour and a bike tour, in one weekend, at the same time.

Color tours are something I always associated with my mom; go 'up north' and drive around looking at the pretty leaves on the trees. Big deal. Oddly enough, as I'm getting older now, I find it relaxing...

The bike club I ride with seems to agree, because they organized a ride to see the fall colors. We went out, with our cold weather gear and our gatorade, and spent two days riding around some federally protected forest lands, admiring the trees, and the way they were changing from summer to fall.

OK, so there wasn't any competittion in this, but I did manage to log 120 miles on the bike. We kept an easy pace through the whole ride. The basic idea was to take some time out and relax, to get away from the rat race. At that, the ride was an incredible success. There weren't too many of us (about 30), and we were able to spend two days in a brisk October riding on empty roads in some of the most beautiful forest land I've ever seen. Sometimes, you don't want to compete. You want to get away.

And then you'll get home, ready to face the world again.

Former athlete Chris Nowinski founded the Sports Legacy Institute at Harvard, and the Institute has a Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. "Traumatic Encephalopathy" is a 10 cent word for "concussion." That an athlete would fund studies into concussions makes sense. He's probably had a few, and watched his friends and colleagues have a few, so I am not surprised to see the source of this research.

The surprising part is how he got is friends to agree to participate. He has lined up 16 pro athletes to agree to donate their brains to science. I would guess that they've been concussed a few too many times, except that they do get to keep their brains until a natural death.

Jokes aside, concussions are a serious matter for athletes. We all could see the public decline of the boxer Muhammed Ali, as he went from a charming wit, and great sportsman, to a degenerating wreck, suffering from the cumulative affects of years of taking head shots by his fellow heavyweights. With any luck, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy will help sports doctors learn how to better treat closed head injuries, and prevent other athletes from suffering the same fate.

That multiple concussions leave long-term effects should be clear to everyone:

The BU School of Medicine has studied the brain of John Grimsley, a former linebacker for the Houston Oilers, who died last February at age 45 after being shot in his suburban Houston home in what authorities said was an accident.

His brain showed similarities to that of an 80-year-old boxer who had dementia for 20 years, said Dr. Robert Stern, co-director of the BU School of Medicine Alzheimer's Disease Clinical and Research Program.

Athletes love to compete, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they are also beginning to see the toll that competition takes on their bodies, and they are starting to demand additional protections. Competition isn't worth a brain injury, seems to be the consensus in professional sports.