On a cool day

Today dawned cloudy, cooler, with a slight northern breeze. At seven a.m. the park was filled with strollers and runners of all ages, and as our weather heats up, it gets more and more crowded in the mornings. My horse vet and my ENT doctor both say that if they can't get out to run in the morning, then that's it; the afternoons are like Hell's waiting room.

Not to overdo it, I did an easy kilometer trot, then a short walk, then another K trot, then a long walk. These moderate sessions are always entertaining because I have time to watch other people. Today brought home some important lessons which I was fortunate enough to learn before I even began this adventure, thanks to Rodrigo and Hernán:

1-Your tendons, joints, and ligaments train up a lot slower than your muscles and cardiopulmonary system. If you don't start learning to run slowly, you will end fast.

2-If you don't get the right shoes for your feet, you will be injured right out of the starting gate. You can decide whether to spend the money on a sports medicine expert from the outset in order to evaluate your feet, or to spend money and lots of time on the injury you may get by going it solo.

3-You may not need a trainer, but you definitely need some kind of good running book that has training schedules and advice for beginners and advanced runners alike. You need specialized books and support from informed runners if you plan to run barefooted.

The reason I thought about these lessons today was because there was a young man on the running path who seemed determined to destroy every joint in his legs. He was overweight and wearing shoes with no cushioning whatsoever. The shoes did not look like running shoes at all, in fact, and were probably built for some other sport. As he pounded toward me from the opposite direction, then passed me, I turned to look at him and was appalled to see he was wearing a backpack which was obviously loaded. What was this young man thinking? Was he unsatisfied with the large amount of extra weight he was carrying in the form of fat and felt he needed to pile on more? Was he hoping to lose weight faster by torturing his joints this way? It occurred to me that maybe he had begun running to lose weight and had fallen into the calorie consumption perception trap: one tends to overestimate the calories used up in exercise and underestimate the calories consumed. That's because after you have struggled, gasped, agonized, and forced yourself through an exercise session, you just can't believe how few calories you have actually used up.

My running book has some very good advice for people who run exclusively to lose weight: Don't. Find other reasons. Run because it gives you a psychological lift that lasts all day. Run because it increases your immune system. Run because you enjoy the outdoors, the company of others or the solitude of a lone run. Do it because you want to improve your over-all health. Do it because it is the time of day that belongs only to you, an activity that you dedicate just to yourself and to no one else. You may lose weight while doing it, but if that is your only reason, you will miss out on so many other things.