Horse and Auto Racing

I have a little niece, she's 4, and we get along great. One of her favorite games is, "Come and get me!"

That's the game where we're walking along, and she'll yell, "Come and get me!" as she takes off running. Of course, she's only 4, so even a clumsy, awkward runner like me can catch her, but she gets away half the time. I hafta admit, it's a lot of fun chasing her, but even more fun watching her run. She holds her hands up, takes as large a stride as she can, and tries to go fast! Sometimes, she even does go fast.

I don't say that to knock her. Toddlers need to learn everything, even competition, and if they're learning competition, then it should be friendly competition. We need to teach them how to run, and how to compete, and how to want to win, without teaching them to sacrifice everything to set a record, beat an opponent, or win a race. Kids need to learn that competition is fun before they can learn that competition is serious.

And so, I chase my little niece. Sometimes, I let her win, and sometimes, I pretend that she smoked me. Either way, she giggles until she's out of breath, and says, "Let's race again!"

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.

When I watched the 2008 Summer Olympics, I noticed something during the gymnastics competition that perplexed me for a while.

No, I'm not talking about the underage Chinese athletes. I think that's been talked about enough online already. We all know that China cheated, and they got away with it because China is a rapidly growing powerhouse of a country that was able to bully the International Olympic Commission.

I'm talking about the honey.

Go look at some taped coverage, and you'll see it. There were jars of honey somewhere near the gymnasts' chalk buckets. It was subtle and understated, but it was almost always there. Why?

The chalk we already know about. The athletes use it to keep their hands dry, so that they can get better grip on the bars, the rings, the mats, and the pommel horses. Honey, however, is tacky...

...And then it hit me: in pro-football, receivers want hands of glue, but adhesives are outlawed. They use gloves with slightly sticky rubber palms and fingers. Gymnasts can't use gloves, but they can't use adhesives, either. So they resort to honey. A kitchen staple that won't violate the rules or dampen their hands, but will make their grip just a little more sticky.

Personally, I don't think this should be outlawed in competition. Honey is not some "miracle glue" that's out of the budget reach of small teams. A majority of competitors can get it from their own kitchen. So make it available to everyone, and even out the playing field of grips. Besides, it'd be pretty sweet to shake the winner's hand afterwards....

So, the 2008 Summer Games are behind us, but the Olympic action isn't really over. It never really ends, because the 2010 Winter Games are ahead of us. Around the world, athletes are getting ready, training, entering qualifying heats, and basically gearing up for the big even in winter sports.

Sometimes, however, I have to wonder about the quality of the Games. The Olympics are supposed to bring together the world's best athletes, to compete in world class competition, to see who emerges on the top as the world's best. It sure sounds like a good idea.

And then you get the Jamaican bobsled team. Or the Bulgarian women's hockey team.

I don't want to knock them for wanting to compete, or for heading to the Olympic trials, but I think it's fair to wish that some competitors, no matter how hard they try, just don't deserve to reach the Olympics.

The Bulgarian women's hockey team played 4 qualifying games, and gave up 192 goals. That's more goals in 4 games than the Detroit Red Wings, last year's Stanley Cup champs, gave up in a whole season (184). During those 4 games, the Bulgarian ladies managed to score 1 goal, against Croatia during their final game. The Croatian team went home, and is currently training hard on defense.

I don't think the Bulgarian team is headed for the Olympics. They met their debacle in a qualifying tournament, and a performance like theirs simply doesn't qualify. And I know that Bulgaria is not one of the world's hockey powerhouses.... but still, despite ambition and national pride, couldn't they see beforehand that they weren't in the same league as their potential opponents? What kind of chumps were the Bulgarian champs playing, before the tournament, that led them to believe they had a chance?

I think there needs to be some better kind of monitoring or regulation of Olympic qualifiers, if only to make sure that the performance at the games is truly world-class.

This past summer, the 2008 US Olympic Swim team treated the world to not one, but two, examples of excellence in the sport.

The first, of course, was Michael Phelps. I had to watch him compete; like him, my family is from Baltimore and I attended the University of Michigan, so it felt like treason not to watch. Phelps is know to everyone now: 4 years ago, he won 6 gold medals and 2 bronze, in a feat of swimming prowess, power, and versatility that hasn't come around since Mark Spitz won his 7 golds in 1972. This past year, Phelps broke Spitz's record, taking home 8 swimming golds, and reaching a career total of 14 gold medals.

Phelps won for the obvious reasons: like Spitz, he was bigger, stronger, and longer armed than his competition, attributes which, combined with his natural athletic ability and his drive to win, made him unstoppable. Fortunately, he's also a decent-seeming guy who didn't get all arrogant about winning. I think the world will the get the pleasure of watching him compete again in 2012, and that'll be a great show.

The second great American swimmer at the 2008 Olympics was Dara Torres. In some ways she was less impressive than Phelps: she competed in 3 events, and took home 3 silver medals. In other ways, however, her performance was truly amazing.

Torres has a career record of 12 medals (4 each in gold, silver, and bronze), won in 5 (yes, that's 5) Olympic games. Her best Games performance was in 2000, in Sydney, when she won 5 medals. She's one of a very few athletes to have won medals in 5 Games.

The longevity of her career says something about her performance this past summer. She was 41 years old, nearly 20 older than the average Olympic swimmer, and she'd given birth less than two years previously. As a parent, I have seen the physical toll a pregnancy takes on a mother, and I know that my wife would never perform at her best just 20 months after giving birth.

Torres, however, has a competitive streak and a giant urge to win. She showed that 8 years ago in Sydney, when she was 33 and the oldest member of the US womens' swim team. She was also the most successful member of that team. With this recent comeback she wanted to make some statements about age, motherhood, and capabilities, and I think she made her point quite well. She didn't win gold, but how many swimmers her age can compete, with a real chance to win, at the Olympic level? Even Mark Spitz, swimming's living legend, failed in a comeback bid at the age of 41.

There's no real way to end this. Mostly, I was just a little bit awed by what these athletes did, and how far they showed it's possible to push the human body. I hope we see them again in 4 years.

Lance Armstrong is coming back to the world of competitive cycling. Wow.

If I were in half as good physical condition as Lance Armstrong, I'd be one happy camper. And he survived testicular cancer and a shotgun wound to the gut.

For those of you who don't know, Lance Armstrong is the guy who won the Tour de France, the world's most grueling bicycle race (and possibly the most grueling race of any sort, anywhere, The Great Race notwithstanding) seven times.

That's right. He won a 2200 mile race seven times. He rode 15,400 miles to victory. On a bicycle. At an average of 25 miles per hour. In the Alps and the Pyrenees Mountains.

Armstrong is 37 years old, and "retired" from competitive cycling after his 2006 Tour win. That race was his 7th Tour win in a row. He'd dominated the Tour since 2000, and some wags had started calling the race the "Tour de Lance." He's said that he wants to come back, and he'll be competing in the 2009 Tour Down Under in Australia, to see if he's ready for the big race in the summer. This being 2008, he has also volunteered for anti-doping testing of every sort imaginable.

Personally, I wish Armstrong well. I'd like to see him with the Tour de France again. And for the record, I think that he'll pass the drug screens and doping tests. He's a natural athlete, who takes good care of his body and trains hard, and is also possessed of an enormous drive to compete and win. That drive my very well propel him into the history books again. And it'll be great fun to watch.