How we feel before has nothing to do with during

It is hot. Ridiculously hot. Day after day after day hot. Forecast unerringly predicting an endless string of 30-35 deg C days. I am almost taking the heat personally at this point; I am overwhelmed by a paranoid delusion that it is out to get me. It is claustrophobic, there is simply nowhere to hide. 

I know when people think of Canada, if indeed they think of Canada at all, the iconic vision of igloos and permafrost comes to mind. It does, however, get extremely hot in most Canadian cities. In my city, we will have 35 deg C days with a humidex of 40. But it ENDS! After a week or so there is respite. And there is almost daily respite in the form of a welcome thundershower. Here it is just bloody sunny hot day after sunny hot day. Ok, I'm grumpy and whiny.

So I thought this post was going to be about how lousy my training has been going in the heat. Which it has. But today out of nowhere I had a fabulous work-out despite it being 29 deg C at 5.45 am when I left the house. I expected another abandoned work-out in favour of a slow trudge because my legs were feeling incredibly heavy, stomach incredibly upset - complete and utter lethargy. As I neared the point where I would normally start my 5 X 1 km I decided just to jog, easy and go home. But as I hit the start line my body, unbidden, just started running the first 1 km repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Until all five were done and very fast at that (3:32, 3:36, 3:29, 3:25 (WTF?), 3:31). This is faster than I have averaged for 5 since giving birth. Amazing how transforming a good work-out can be. Suddenly I feel hopeful and on track again.

This episode reminds me of a very important rule, one I always tell the runners I coach but often forget myself. Here it is: the way a runner feels immediately before a work-out or race has very little effect on the outcome. This obviously does not include extreme situations, if a runner is feeling the pain of say a compound fracture (cough, Steve) beforehand, than that might have a little effect on outcome. But lethargy, tightness, heavy legs, upset stomach, etc. etc. these little annoyances often vanish with the crack of the starter's gun so... the next time I am feeling terrible before a race I will remember this work-out and be confident.

A slacker and an overachiever

I have two guidelines when it comes to what I blog about. One, I don't share personal information about anyone other than myself and la cocotte. We have had a ton of family & friends come to visit us over the past 2 months which has resulted in many fun, interesting, wonderful memories and situations which I was tempted to write about but I feel I cannot discuss the other people in my life in a public forum, even for the sake of sharing and remembering good times. Eventually I will stop talking about la cocotte also. Two, I don't share anything personal that I would not comfortably announce to a stranger on the street - because essentially that is that a blog is - an announcement to strangers.

I have been wanting to write this post for awhile in the hopes of garnering some wisdom from other breastfeeding moms however it involves divulging stuff that is a bit more personal than I normally share. I wonder how many current or former breastfeeding moms already know what I am talking about from the title of this post. So, yup... right from the beginning of my breastfeeding "career" I have had one slacker and one over-achiever. Initially the difference was not so pronounced but over time la cocotte and I have come to depend on the over-achiever and come to expect nothing from the slacker and now, like any self-fulfilling prophecy, the difference has become quite pronounced. At this point I essentially have one A or even A-minus and one C which looks strange but whatever... I can live with the lopsidedness while breastfeeding. I guess I just want to know that this is not a permanent condition, that symmetry will be restored once I wean la cocotte.

My other issue is that between marathon training and the 30-35 deg C heat we are having here, I am drying up in general. I always thought that as long as I replaced the fluid lost through sweat and ate enough calories (I definitely do) that I would not compromise my milk supply however production is definitely at an all-time low. I had hoped to breast feed up to 18 months or so to help transition la cocotte into daycare and mitigate some of the daycare colds but I think this might not be feasible. Is there anything I can do to increase production? I am definitely drinking enough as judged by quantity and clarity of urine output. So.... any thoughts appreciated.

Runners, yeah we're different

Does anyone else remember that Adidas add campaign from the late nineties that features a series of normal runners doing normal runner-type things while being watched by non-runners who clearly found the scene very odd. If not, you can see many of them here. I loved that campaign because my reaction, and the reaction of most of my running friends, was along the lines of "I don't get it, why is that funny?" which was, of course, EXACTLY the point.

I was thinking recently about my own "runners, yeah we're different moment." My job used to entail a lot of travelling for work. One of my running ethics was that I would not miss a run because of work. Family stuff, friends stuff, personal stuff... sure. But missing running because of work really bothered me. This unwritten rule was made challenging to follow by the fact that my days sometimes looked like this:

4.30 am - wake-up.
6.15 am - flight to nearby one of many American cities
8.00 am - arrive in American city
9.00 am - arrive at client site
9-6.00 pm - work with client
8.30 pm - catch flight home
11.00 pm - climb into bed totally exhausted

Hard to find a slot to fit a run in unless I was willing to wake up at 3.00 am. I was not. So when my business trips followed a schedule like that I would often bring a backpack instead of a briefcase. I would hide the backpack as much as possible from the people I was working with so i would walk into the conference room with my laptop already out and immediately tuck the backpack under the conference room table. I would wear the lightest business clothing possible (cardigan instead of suit jacket etc.) and the flimsiest business shoes possible (black ballet slippers instead of heels). After saying good-bye to the client and politely but firmly declining their offer to call me a cab, I would go to the nearest washroom and change, superman style, from business attire into the stash of running clothing I had jammed into my backpack. I would cushion my laptop between the layers of the business clothing and I would be off... running along my pre-mapquested route to the airport, or, in some cases to the subway stop closest to the airport. This worked well in cities like Boston, less well in other cities like Philadelphia where I would just go for a run somewhere nice and finish up at a place where I knew I could grab a cab. I would arrive at the airport sweaty and disheveled. Stretch in line all sweaty while waiting to check in. Get my boarding pass. Find a public washroom, clean up the best possible (this became better once I achieved frequent flyer status and could use the lounges) and change lethargic-Superman style back into my business clothes.

I feel confident that no one reading this blog finds this particularly odd or even extreme. Neither did I. However one time after I had done the superman clothing change in the public washroom of the university I had been visiting, I bumped into the client I had been working with all day wearing short shorts, flimsy tank top and running shoes. It was this incredibly awkward encounter... almost like bumping into someone you know from another context naked in the gym locker room. I also had this feeling that this was somehow stripping myself of my professional veneer. He was completely confused about what I was doing, where my laptop was, the fact that I had a flight to catch. I felt like I had been caught in the act, doing something inappropriate, bizarreness all around. But as I recall, it was a great 10 mile run.

This whole episode also falls well within the realm of normal of other things I have done to make sure I get my run in (running back and forth in the underground concourse at O'Hare come to mind...).

I'd love to hear other people's "runners, yeah we're different" moments.

Right, I'd forgotten

How terribly wheezy and generally out of control my asthma gets as the summer heats up. This is why I rarely race in July and August. My training is going sharply downhill as the summer wheeze sets in. Last week I ran a 38:38 10 km tempo in training without too much hardship. Today I couldn't even manage 3 X 3 km @ 3:55 pace. But it's all due to summer wheeze. So, I guess I have to not get frustrated with my times and liken it to altitude training i.e. even though I might be running slower, because I am doing it with less oxygen, it still has the same training effect. Right? I hope anyway.

Race Report: 3000 m on marathon training

I thought I would take small break from being D&G PPC (Doom & Gloom Piccola Pine Cone) by writing up a quicky race report.

In 2006 when I was training for the Chicago Marathon, which takes places in October every year, I ran an 800 m race in July just for giggles. As it turned out, I wound up running a 2:16.05 which was/still is my 5th fastest time ever. I'm not saying that to brag... okay, truth? I'm TOTALLY saying that to brag because I think running a 2:16.05 800 m on marathon training is probably my favorite running accomplishment EVER - even better than my actual 800 m PB or the Chicago Marathon that came after it. So, bragging aside, I was hoping to pull off the same thing today at a local 3000 m track race.

I have not, of course, been training for short distances. I have been working my butt off to get ready for the Montreal Marathon but I am naturally better suited to 1500-5 km than I am to anything longer so I hoped to pull off a 10:10 or so... During a run this week I threw in 1 km in 3:22 that felt awesome and easy and I figured, maybe even sub-10:10 for the 3 km.

Then the heat sheets came out, or, as they are called here "battle sheets". First, the women and men were being run separately. Argh! Why? Why? This isn't national championships or even regional championships, it's just a local fun 3 km on the track, why not organize people by speed instead of gender. Anyway my seed time of 10:30 was the fastest in my heat by 50 seconds. There were three women between 11-12 and everyone else was over 12 minutes. Did this make me feel like a super speedy runner? No! Not at all. It made me feel like this race just didn't happen to attract women around my time and that the organizers should have mixed the heats especially since the first men's heat had a fastest seed time of 10 minutes and a slowest time of 12:30!!

Okay, grumbling aside, I did find it very interesting that this 3000 m race attracted 3 heats worth of women with 15 women in each heat with an average age of about 40! Talk about cultural differences, in Quebec it is rare to find athletes over the age of 18-20 running middle distance. A typical women's 3000 m race will have fewer than 5 athletes in it or will be cancelled altogether due to lack of participation. Given that Trieste (yes, I live in Trieste) has 1/10 the population of Montreal, this is a startling difference.

So, on the the race itself. I felt great during my warm-up, I had to hold myself back from running too fast. It felt fabulous to be on a flat, softish surface again. It has been 4 years since my last track race! I went out in what I thought was a conservative 3:29 first km (I had thought my self chosen seed time of 10:30 was probably a good bit slower than I could run). By the end of the first km I was already lapping women, not a great experience for me or them. I tried to pick things up in my second km but only managed a 3:30. Then the asthma took hold in full force and I remembered why I had put aside middle distance for longer distances. However I was able not to panic or give up - I really have become mentally tougher this year. I told myself to "float" for 600 m and then try to kick. I ran the 600 m float section in 2:11 (or 3:38 km pace) but was feeling far from fiesty at the bell lap. Nevertheless I managed to bring it home in 82 seconds for the last lap, 3:34 last km, 10:34 total time.

What can I say. Eh. A so so race, 37 seconds slower than my personal best. I am not training for 3 km of course, I did not taper for this race and I did have breathing issues. Yet, I am still dissapointed, I was hoping to pull a great one out of the bag. Oh well.

[Update] The race was chip timed and I just noticed that there are splits on the website:

200 m: :42
600 m: 2:07 (85)
1000 m: 3:30 (83)
1400 m: 4:53 (83)
1800 m: 6:18 (85)
2200 m: 7:44 (86)
2600 m: 9:12 (88)
3000 m: 10:34.48 (82)

Here's a photo of me looking awfully tired for being only 100 m into the race :)

800 m to go, feeling bad

 

Are we really running out?

As I continue to read and learn about the specter of peak oil, my first step is figuring out what are the fundamental questions to ask about this situation. It seems to me that they are as follows:

1. How many years are we from peak oil or are we indeed past it?
2. Are there feasible energy alternatives and if so, how close are they to coming online?
3. What can we as individuals do the alleviate the situation?
4. What will life in a post-oil society be like?
5. What can we as individuals do to prepare for living in a post-oil society?

Ideally I would like to answer all of these questions in a series of posts through my reading for my own peace of mind, scratch that because I don't think there is any peace of mind to be had on this topic. I would like to find answers to these questions for my own mental health but some of them, I fear, are unanswerable.

The first question, which I would like to deal with in this post, addresses a comment that mmmonyka left for me yesterday essentially asking if she was the only one who thinks our oil reserves are underestimated. So I thought I would start with that.

The question of how much economically viable oil remains is a difficult one to answer mostly because any given country's oil reserves are essentially considered a state secret of that country. There are published oil reserves from the major oil producing countries however one must bear in mind that there is heavy incentive to exaggerate one's reserves because greater oil reserves = greater power for the country. Saudi Arabia, which is by far the most important oil producing country in the world with approximately 1/4 of readily extractable reserves, has not published any data on their reserves since 1982. This, of course, has raised concerns that their wells are past peak. I cannot think of any incentive for them to hide the fact that they have far MORE oil than the global community thinks they do. A study done by an energy investment banking firm concluded that Saudi Arabia's production likely peaked in in 2004. In addition, there have been no major discoveries of giants fields in that country since the 1970s. Those three facts together i.e. that Saudi Arabia has 1/4 of the world's proven oil reserves, that they likely peaked 6 years ago and have had no new discoveries in 40 years are enough to convince me that no... the world's oil reserves are not underestimated, quite the opposite.

Here is a widely cited figure which I swiped along with the analysis from here that is disturbing on a few levels:

As you can see there is a step increase in reported oil reserves in all the countries around the mid-eighties. This happened despite there being NO major discoveries during this time. In addition, the reserves plateau after 1988 or increase... despite the fact that the world is drinking up 85 million barrels per day - nowhere on these graphs is any depletion shown! How can we trust data that does not reflect the depletion of oil caused by consumption in the absence of new oil discoveries?? These numbers are largely based on figures from oil companies and oil producing countries both of whom have strong incentives to bloat their figures. Again, no, I don't think the world's oil supply is underestimated.

So that is my reading on the proven, economically viable reserves of traditional reserves. There are tons of peak oil debunkers who optimistically allude to various rosy scenarios such as abiotic oil (oil that originates from reactions in the earth's crust, not from organic decay) and the Bakken formation in the western US with its 3 trillion barrels of untapped oil (more than the rest of the world combined). Unfortunately these are essentially bedtime fairy tales being told to reassure the human psyche which is programmed to reject bad news. The Bakken formation  is far from the dream solution that people want to believe in. The very best case scenario is that if it can be fully exploited, it would reduce US imports of oil for one year (source). As for abiotic oil, this seems to be complete and utter nonsense though I have to admit I have not read on this topic yet.

In a sense it is a little ridiculous to talk about how much we have left. For one thing, it is not the amount left that impacts our life as much as the timing of  peak production, as I stated last time, once production peaks prices go up, economic downturn and all its accompanying hardships results on some time course yet to be determined. For another thing, we know that we have finite oil left, 5 years worth, 10 years worth, 50 years worth... yes it makes a difference from the selfish perspective, essentially is this going to be a problem in our particular lifetimes or not. But it is going to be a problem for some people sometime in the not too distant future. Yes, if we have more time rather than less it gives us time to conserve and adjust and find new solutions. I guess I am just not optimistic about people's abilities to make changes especially to solve a problem of which most people are ignorant or deluded. I am especially not optimistic about the abilities of politicians to legislate to address an issue that may occur outside of the time frame of their term in office. I am just not optimistic. Not about this.

Peaking

This deliberately, deceptively titled post is not about peaking for optimal race performance. This has nothing to do with running, babies or Canadians far from home. In fact, the original title of this post was going to be "Terrified and Depressed". Cheery. Anyone still reading?

The peaking in the title of this post refers to peak oil theory. Previously I thought that the largest problems facing humanity were dwindling clean water and global warming. However, I have recently started reading about peak oil. I haven't been living in a cave, I did know that our fossil fuel dependent society was destined to run out of its primary currency sometime before the end of this century depending on which source you trust. What I had never understood was the concept of "peak oil" and its potentially devastating impacts.

What I have read over the past few days has completely floored me. I always thought that... well actually never mind what I always thought about peak oil and global energy; I was ignorant and naive. In case I am not the last person on the planet over the age of 18 who was/is uninformed about peak oil theory here it is in a nutshell:  Peak oil is defined as the moment at which the maximum rate of petroleum extraction is reached after which point oil production enters terminal decline (from wikipedia). Once oil production starts to fall, prices continue to go up until oil becomes unaffordable and, to be blunt, the world as we know it is completely altered.

The global economy is frighteningly dependent on cheap oil. This is not just a matter of paying a few extra bucks at the pump. The food we eat is produced using oil, the fertilizers - oil based, the energy to run the farm equipment -oil based, the energy to transform the raw components of food into more refined food - oil based, its transportation from producer to market - oil based. A little factoid, the average piece of food is transported 1500 miles from producer to consumer in the US and 5000 miles from producer to consumer in Canada. We need oil to eat, move, clothe ourselves, have access to clean water, build infrastructure, power cities, hospitals. We use oil in almost every mundane aspect of our lives. Most of our high tech gadgets like the laptop I am writing on are produced using oil. This morning on my run I was imagining the world around me and trying to imagine how many of the little scenes unfolding before would be affected by a lack of oil - the truck delivering food to the supermarket, the cars driving by, the woman drinking clean water out of the community water fountain. It's staggering.

Of course this oil dependence means that not just the individual person will be affected. Companies will go bust as the cost of acquiring the resources they need to produce their product drives them out of business. This could lead to global recession and depression. Ultimately all of this will lead to a massive re-organizing of society. Our globalized economy is notoriously sensitive to small fluctuations in supply - I don`t remember the oil crisis in the 70s but apparently oil prices tripled. We have no way of knowing how precipitously the oil supply will drop after peak oil but some geologists are suggesting annual declines in production grave enough to send the economy into a tailspin.

So of course there are alternative energy sources, the infamous oil sands in Canada, biofuels, wind, solar etc. etc. The problem with these, as I have been reading, is that their EROI (energy returned on investment) is far lower than traditional oil and some of them, depending on how you do the math, actually have negative EROIs, in other words the energy invested into them is greater than the energy extracted. In addition, we currently do not have the major infrastructure needed to generate, store and transport energy from these sources. We could build this infrastructure but that requires, you guessed it, energy. If we don't start making the switch to other viable sources of energy soon we are going to run out of the oil needed to do so.

There is a lot of speculation regarding WHEN peak oil will occur and some people speculate that we are already past it. The "peakers" seem to think we passed it in 2005 while others talk about 2020 or 2030. Regardless of whether this happened 5 years ago or is happening now or will happen in 15-20 years, this seems to me to be an intractable problem because its solution will require people to think ahead something humans are notoriously bad at and somehow overcome the classic tragedy of the commons dilemma (I don't think we've ever managed to do this in the past). Meaning is EVERYONE pitched in and drove less, switched to diesel cars (one aspect of European life I really appreciate), switched to LEDs for lighting etc. etc. we could conserve enough energy to perhaps buy us time to implement solutions (this sounds very vague partly b/c I am still reading and learning) but to be blunt this requires humans to act in a way that history shows is not very human.

Some of the descriptions I have read of a post-oil world are straight out of a hollywood, block buster movie about armageddon. Famines, fresh water shortages, wars, desperate people in desperate situations... I have no idea how sensationalistic some of the scenarios are but there can be no doubt that there will be suffering and a massive lowering of everyone`s standard of living.

There is no shortage of well-written, well-researched information on this topic available on the web. I highly recommend Matt Savinar's well researched, well written summary can be found here. For a think-tank summary look here, there are also various articles on the topic from this network of European scientists to name just a few. It would not be an understatement to say that these readings have fundamentally altered my outlook on life and in all honesty I have spent the past few days in a state of dazed and stunned disbelief. I am still reading and learning about this topic so I apologize if I have done a piss poor job of summarizing the issue.

Yup, I'm depressed. Scared. And avidly reading on this topic.