Metrics schmetrics

Last night I joined the Namban Rengo monthly 5 km time trial to conduct, for the third month in a row, a tempo-pace evaluation run. I start out at roughly about 5k race pace, maybe a tiny bit slower, but when my heart rate hits 165, as it inevitably will at this pace, I hold it there rather than allow it to continue creeping up as it would if I was actually racing.

The good news is that I did much better than last month; the bad news is I did about the same as I did in June.

June: 19:18
July: 20:06
August: 19:20

The weather was not a factor. In fact all three tests have fortuitously been run at 24 or 25 degrees. We can probably dismiss the July result because I really wasn't feeling great that night and this was, I think, a precursor to the minor health problems I subsequently had.

At first it looks like I am in the same place now as I was two months ago. So let's look in more detail at the June and August data.

I ran faster at the start in June and slower at the finish, 1:28 for the first lap, 1:37 for the last, and took only four laps to hit HR165 average for the lap. I was also having difficulty keeping my heart rate down to 165 in the last full lap.

Last night it was 1:31 for the first lap and 1:34 for the last. I took six laps to hit HR165, and every lap from six to "13" was bang on 165 average HR except the eighth, which was 164.

I do think that I finished feeling more comfortable last night and in fact just clicked my watch at 5 km and kept running, albeit slower, to add another 5 km at upper aerobic heart rate to complete the night's work (I had done an easy 6 km before the time trial).

So, while the data are not totally convincing, and maybe I need a more taxing kind of evaluation run to bear out the improvements in stamina more clearly, I do think that there are signs of improvement. Phew, otherwise I might have started to lose motivation like my old mate Ingo.

Weekly washup

Mon: 7.8 km easy (4:54/km; HRav=71% of HRmax)
Tue: 14.25 km lower aerobic (4:40/km; 74%)
Wed: 7.8 km warm up/cool down
Wed: 9.7 km upper aerobic (4:40/km; 78%)
(c.f. Tue. This was a hot evening, Tue was a 3-deg cooler morning)
Thur: 10.7 km lower aerobic (4:28/km; 73%) (treadmill)
Fri: 16.4 km upper aerobic (4:30/km; 76%)
Sat: Zero (but 11 hours standing around in a brewery)
Sun: 29.4 km long (5:20/km; 70%)
Total: 94 km

I was pretty happy with this as a comeback after last week's set back. The Thur/Fri combo was a bit tough with Thur being in the evening after work and Fri being up at 5:20 am or so. I think I might have over-reached a little on Friday, but I knew I wasn't going to be able to run on Saturday unless I got up at 5:00 or so (I had to head out at 7:00 to go and join in a brew day of my prize-winning home brew recipe at a brewery out in Chiba).

Several runs, Wednesday night and Sunday in particular, were hot and tough. There is such a big difference between 27 degrees and 30 degrees.

Swoon...

Apparently Paul Keating gave a speech at Sydney University last night. Edited version here.

Australia's vital interests are in East Asia. They are not in North America or Southern Africa or Europe. They are here, where we live, in the fastest-growing part of the world. It is in this region that Australia's destiny lies; it is only in this region that our security can be found and that will only happen when our foreign policies and our economic and trade policies are in appropriate and sensible alignment.

Ahh...ten years. Ten wasted years.

I hope Captain Kevin point oh seven has the wherewithal to turn the good ship SS Australia back onto the right course.

Salvaging something from the week

Mon - 2 km (had to pull up short due to a macerated gut)
Tue - enforced rest
Wed- enforced rest
Thur- 5.6 km easy to lower aerobic on treadmill (feeling delicate and tentative)
Fri: 7.7 km easy in local park (condition still a bit delicate)
Sat: 12.1 km lower aerobic to Komazawa park, 2 laps & home
Sun 22 km trail run with a dip in the river after. Body fine.
Total: 49.7 km

Wow, you'd think I could have found another 300 m somewhere!!

The good news is that I seem to be pretty much back to normal, though I still need to be a bit careful. I guess I will be reverse tapering and will not be chasing a 100+ km week this week...I'll settle for 98 ;-)

Darn Achilles is still yapping.

KER-SplaTT!

That is the sound of egg hitting face.

I cringe when I read my last post.

This week, rather than continuing to "cruise" and churn out the miles, I have been meekly nursing a delicate part of my male anatomy...and running...well, not very much at all. In some ways that is fortunate as we are having a heat wave this week which has seen the mercury in the mid 30s all week...it even topped 40 in a few places yesterday.

If you don't want a more detailed explanation of my medical situation. Then please close the tab now. But for those with a stronger constitution, feel free to read on.

Originally a couple of weeks ago, I had soreness and a lump in my epididymis. It seemed to settle down pretty quickly but I was put on antibiotics just to be sure. It is a reasonably common thing to happen to the man bits.

Then I had the good running week last week, albeit that some of the runs were in quiet warm conditions and much sweat was produced. During the trail run on Saturday I felt a strong discomfort like I needed to take a pee, only a bit painful as well, and it came back quickly after taking one. It was just like a bladder infection (cystitis), but it settled down when I stopped running.

Then during my running on Sunday the sensation returned, and when I did take a pee, blood came out!! Hell!! I was a bit shocked by that. Things cleared up later in the day after I had a rest. The strange thing was, as I did mention in that last post, apart from that, I felt so good during the run.

I went to the doctor again on Monday and he thought it was probably being caused by stones in my ureters. He got me to have an x-ray, but it didn't confirm anything. So he just said to keep taking the antibiotics and drink lots of fluid (and don't run for a few days). I felt quite doughy on Monday and Tuesday and the epididymis thing seemed to flare up again. I then started improving on Wednesday and Thursday (last night). Thursday I ventured for a short run on the treadmill and this morning (Fri) a slow 7 km around the neighborhood.

So, what was that I was saying about a knife-edge?

Unfortunately the doc also made me keep taking antibiotics and to stay off alcohol. I am almost a teetotaller!

The question that is burning in my mind is whether the attack had anything to do with the running I'd been doing the week before, or simply came on and obviously was exacerbated by the running. Either way, I do need to tread carefully for a while.

110 km & cruising (kind of)

Mon: 7 km easy
Tue: 14 km lower aerobic
Wed: 10 km (Hadd Test) + 7 km easy
Thur: 12.7 km lower aerobic (evening)
Fri: (morning): 6 km easy//9 km upper aerobic
Sat: 18 km trail run in about 2 hours (uphill out, downhill return)
Sun: 26 km @ 5:19/km average

Looking over that list, it would be tempting to say that it must have involved a lot of slow running. But the thing is, that lower aerobic heart rate isn't that slow these days, as demonstrated by the Hadd test on Wednesday night. Each run designated "lower aerobic" was about 4:40 to 4:50/km average. The second half of the run on Friday morning was mostly at sub 4:30/km. And the Hadd test itself involved three rather fast 2-km reps.

A friend talked me into a trail run on Saturday morning. It was pretty steep terrain and the day was promising to be a scorcher, but once we got a couple of hundred meters up, the terrain leveled out and the air became noticeably cooler. Just nice easy running. I surged up some of the hills, but also walked a lot. Afterwards we cooled off in the river and ate watermelon (and drank about a gallon of assorted soft drinks).

Surprisingly, this morning my legs felt absolutely no ill effects from the trail run whatsoever. And then the run just peeled off at a steady pace. I felt comfortable rolling along in the low 5:00/km despite the 29 degrees temperature. But running with others for a while I slowed considerably below that. Then off again. I was waiting for the old familiar hip flexor fatigue to hit, but it never really came. I finished feeling only pleasantly fatigued and could have easily continued except...I seem to have picked up an infection in the downstairs waterworks area. It was quite uncomfortable during much of the run, so I was happy to finish when I did. I am scheduled to see a urologist tomorrow as a follow-up to what I can only think was a related problem from the week before. But that problem aside, with the passive help of Mike's Mystery Coach and Hadd (via Ewen), I seem to have stumbled on a really nicely balanced mix of frequency x intensity that is making me stronger without wearing me out. It is a precarious balance though, and another week of walking on a knife edge starts tomorrow.

Hadd Heart Rate Test No 2

My blogging mate and aerobic heart rate training devotee Ewen recently ran a Hadd heart rate evaluation and posted about it here. This was enough to make me get off my butt and do my second test, the first having been on June 20th. There were about five of us did the first test, but this time everyone else seems to be away or sick or having their nails done...getting the bumper bar re-chromed...anyway, I had to face it on my own.

Rather than the full 2,400 m, I run five laps, or 2,000 m per rep (five laps of a 400 m track). This makes each rep last about the same time as Hadd's runner, "Joe". The conditions can play an important role. During the first test it was 24 degrees and humid. On Wednesday it was 28 degrees and not so humid. All in all, I don't think the difference in temperature had too great an influence. So, the idea of the test, if you didn't read Ewen's post, is to run a series of consecutively higher heart rates, starting around 70 to 75% of maximum and then 10 beats higher each time with the last one being around 90% of max. In so doing, you should be able to identify your lactic accumulation threshold, where your muscles tip over from being able to clear lactic acid as fast as it forms to a state of net lactic acid accumulation, in other words, unsustainable.

Here are my results given as average pace (minutes per km) for the entire 2000 m:

Date	135 (73%)	145 (78%)	154 (83%)	165 (89%)	175 (94%)
20 Jun	5:08	4:50	4:13	3:52	3:40
8 Aug	5:09	4:41	4:10	3:51	3:40

*Percentages are percent of maximum heart rate.

It is easy to run a little erratically in the first couple of laps as you bring heart rate up to target, so I thought it would also be helpful to look only at the average pace of the last two laps. If there is more fade in one test than another, the data of the last two laps should highlight that.

Results as average pace (minutes per km) for just the last 800 m

Date	135	145	154	165	175
20 Jun	na	4:50	4:17	3:54	3:44
8 Aug	5:15	4:37	4:13	3:54	3:43

There are two main points to take out of these numbers:

1) I have shown a fairly dramatic improvement at the 145 (178% HRmax) level. This is logical because it is where I have been spending a lot of my time in training AND, I think I tended to neglect it in the past, running either harder or easier than the low 140s.
2) There has been no noticeable improvement at the 165 and 175 levels. I attribute this to a combination of a few things. i. It was warmer on Wednesday, so maybe I was starting to get some heat accumulation. ii. I just haven't run enough km or at high enough heart rates to move these limits yet. iii. My aerobic fitness for these heart rates was already pretty well trained on June 20.

By the time of the next test the weather will be starting to get milder and I will have been doing more distance at upper aerobic pace, exhausting though it is. So it will be interesting to see what will happen next.

Hypocrisy of the Most Breathtaking Kind

For those gentle readers who do not like my occasional forays into Australian politics, please look away now. But this one is relatively brief.

In perusing the blogs and the news today, I just couldn't help but notice that in one breath PM Howard is ramming the NT Aboriginal legislation changes through Parliament with barely enough time for consideration, let alone debate or, heaven forbid, consultation with the communities concerned, while in the next breath he is attacking Queensland's proposed forced local government mergers for having a lack of community consultation.

The sheer bald-faced audacity. Consider these two reported quotes from Honest John:

1. From the ABC a couple of days ago

"[Labor] is entitled to see the legislation and to express whatever view it wants, but I want to make it clear, we will not be changing our approach in the Northern Territory," he said.

"We will be going ahead with all of the elements of the intervention plan that [Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal] Brough and I announced, including in relation to the permit system and the prohibitions on alcohol."

In other words, not Labor, which has indicated a willingness to take a bipartisan approach on this issue, not the academics who created the original reports on which Howard and Brough are acting, not aboriginal leaders in general, and not the communities concerned are to be given any voice or influence over the specifics of the legislation. They can all just go to Hell because We Know Best (or will not have Our Agenda meddled with).

2. From today's SMH

"I challenge the Premier of Queensland, let the people speak on your amalgamation proposal.

"Let this be a reminder that if you remove the check and balance in our system and if you have Labor governments at every level, this sort of behaviour will become the norm."

Checks and balances. Yeah, right, you are something of an expert about the abuses that can occur when checks and balances are removed aren't you, Mr Prime Minister. Makes me retch.

Feelin' alright

It finally feels like my body has caught up to the new workload. All leg and health issues are in good shape apart from the left Achilles, which continues to yip away. I now see the great benefit of slowing down a little and evening out to some extent the daily load. I ran 14 km this morning at an average pace of 4:41/km and it was just a steady rolling pace, well within myself. The milder 26 degree temperature helped.

Now, to deal with a couple of things raised in comments to my last post.

To Ewen: Yes, my lower aerobic runs tend to be relatively easy judging by heart rate, though not necessarily by how my legs feel. Though that is now finally turning around, as per the above note. Thanks for the prod, I added the link to my on-line log over on the right there. That takes you to the summary page and then you can click on Calendar or Workout views to see links to individual runs.

Clairie: "Do you throw in a 'drop down' week after several high mileage weeks?"

My reply: I probably should but haven't specifically programmed it in. I think I will do that if I feel myself starting to get worn down. But the specific strategy behind my current program is to run at distance/pace combinations that stress the system only slightly and from which I can recover from and adapt to and start to feel strong, as is happening right now. So with three 90-100 km weeks behind me, and this will be a fourth, I will try to ratchet up by 10-15 km adapt to that, then when it becomes comfortable, ratchet up again. I will also need to start introducing some hills and small amounts of speed work, moreso after the next four-week block of steady distance.

Clairie again: "I'm curious to hear what an 'easy' pace is for you as most of your runs seem to be tempo or decent pace for someone doing that much mileage."

My reply: I am using two kinds of reference systems for pace. One is the Lydiard "steady state" pace (the fastest pace you can run 10 km every day and recover from for the next day). I judge that to be about 4:30/km for me at the moment. Training paces are based on percentages of that. The fastest training pace is that pace and the slowest is supposed to be about that pace plus 10% (about 5:00/km). The other system is Hadd percent of maximum heart rate zones, which roughly line up with the Lydiard pace guidelines. I wouldn't say that any of my runs (except a 5k time trial two weeks ago) have been tempo pace (defining tempo as lactate threshold). So I guess the bottom line is that anything slower than about 4:55/km falls into "easy" (depending on the overall distance), and that is what I will use for warm-up, recovery and long runs. Just about all other training paces at the moment will be between 4:50/km and 4:20/km and if you did a frequency histogram of recent runs, the distribution would be skewed towards the slower end of that range. (But this will change as time progresses.) Because of the current heat, I am also not at all concerned about going slower than steady state + 10% if heart rate or common sense dictate.

milesandmiles: “Always amusing for us training in Singapore to hear people complaining about a 29 degree day :)”

My reply: yes, yes, I know Arnaud, you Singaporeans have the worst of everything. Almost as bad as Texans, you are :-). At least you have the whole year to get used to those temperatures. We have to go from 4 degrees in winter to perfect conditions in autumn and spring, to boiler house conditions for 6 weeks in summer. And yes, I agree that cross training is helpful. I did use it to some extent during the early part of this build-up.

-17 weeks: 90 km getting easier

That was the third week in a row over 90 km and it was much easier to handle. A combination of improved health and improved fitness I should think.
Mon: Rest
Tue AM: 13.5 km @ 4:51/km, HRav 129 (lower aerobic)
Wed PM: 17.2 km with 15.8 km @ 4:54/km, HRav 133 (lower aerobic)
Thur PM: 11.5 km @ 5:01/km, HRav 133 (lower aerobic)
Fri AM: 14 km with 6.3 easy. Then 7.7 @4:37/km, HRav 149 (upper aerobic)
Sat AM: 12 km @ 4:29/km, HRav 142 (upper aerobic, average lowered by including early part of run)
Sun AM: 26 km @ 5:25/km, HRav 134 (long run) in 29 degrees!
Total: 94 km

Health wise, my body is feeling better than it has for a while. I went to a urologist on Thursday who diagnosed epididymitis for the problem downstairs that I alluded to last week. I'm now on antibiotics and off the drink. It had been feeling better but I decided to go get it checked out to be on the safe side. I'm glad I did because I think it explained a lot of the other malaise I'd been feeling on top of the fatigue from increased mileage. Now all I have to worry about is the normal heat stress. This morning's long run was a bit of a killer, but I survived it OK. Longest for a while and at a better pace than last week (not that that is saying much).

93 km for the week

With work and life crowding in, I seem to be reduced to weekly updates. Probably not such a bad thing.

Started last week feeling tired and lacking in energy, empty legs, and sore back. Slight tummy discomfort. High temperatures and humidity added to the challenge. I scaled back distances and intensity on Monday (easy 8.4k) and Tuesday (12k). Still not feeling great on Wednesday evening, but jumped into the monthly 5k time trial with a view to run it at HR no higher than 165, which is the same thing I did last month. The 20:06 turned out was somewhat slower than the previous month, but the heat and feeling poorly surely contributed. Ran home from work on Thursday night (12.7k) and found energy levels slightly better. Friday (12.6k) I ran back from home to work and finally starting to move more freely. Saturday morning I was up and out the door reasonably early to try and beat the heat (ha!) and actually had a decent 12 k, fastest of the week, not counting the 5k of the time trial. In the shower later I noticed that I am tender in my right nether region, so might have an infection down there, which would go some way to explain my doldrums. Might have to get it checked out. Sunday (yesterday) morning I got going quite early and headed out to try and run 2 hours, I didn't mind how slowly. Ended up making it to 22 km on the nose in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

I recovered pretty quickly from yesterday's slow run, but with the stomach and abdomen discomfort this morning I have decided to take a day off. There was a cool change overnight and it would have been lovely running weather this morning. Plus yesterday was my 20th day straight. That was something I really would have liked to have continued and it took quite a bit of will-power and mental struggle to resist the urge this morning from about 5:00 as I woke and dozed fitfully, got up, went back to bed, changed my mind about four times ... finally accepted I had to try and do what is best for my body... damn, it will be a low mileage week now ;-)

End of a solid week

Well, running and work have both been conspiring to make it difficult to find time to blog. But this past week I set about trying to apply the principles of the Lydiard running approach while mainly using Hadd's heart rate prescriptions to control my efforts. The principle of the Lydiard approach, as I understand it, is to run as much as you can while keeping the distance and exertion up near, but below, the limit of what you can recover from each day. And the aim is, then, to run every day. Every day. Like all runners, the biggest threat I pose to myself is to go over the edge and head into a slow death spiral of increasing fatigue. Work pressures this week almost caused that to happen through a few nights where I didn't get as much sleep as I needed. But somehow I have got through and logged 97 km as 12, 12, 18, 13, 7, 12, 24. At this stage of the game, 18 weeks from tomorrow until the marathon, this is a pretty good place to be, but I still think that I might have over-reached slightly and will simply be trying to consolidate this next week rather than add on any more distance. At least I kept the intensity down on most of these runs, easy or lower aerobic, and haven't felt any major physical difficulties backing up each day. The only exception was Friday, when ideally I should have been doing 10 to 12, but the efforts on Wednesday and Thursday had left me feeling tired, so I backed off for an easy lap of the Palace with Ms Uchida from my office (she continues to progress and ran a PB for the course!). Today's long run, at 24 km, was a few more km than I should have done, but then it was also a bit slower than it should have been too. The temperatures are staying mild so far (low to mid 20s), but every day is overcast and humid. Bring on WM-18! (=marathon week minus 18 weeks).

Lining up Hadd and Lydiard-cum-Mystery Coach

Before I get to the title of the post, I'll just fill in the last few day of running. A typhoon brought a very rainy old weekend. On Saturday morning I visited a sports club and got in an upper aerobic 10 km on a treadmill. I discovered the incline function (all the controls are in Japanese you see, so I'd never known what that button was for) and found that it can really help you get a decent workout without constantly feeling like you are about to get thrown off the bloody thing. I still don't like them.

On Sunday the typhoon had set in properly and rain was falling constantly, but there was no wind and it was warm, so I headed off into the rain. I had discussed my intentions with Gareth and tehre was a chance I might meet him in Yoyogi Park. (Colin and others were all off at a race in Nagano.) At the designated meeting time of 9:00 in the park, the rain was growing steadily heavier and not a soul was about bar a few soggy crows. I gave Gareth the customary 5-minute allowance, still no signs of life so I headed off. With a couple of minutes I bumped into Mika T coming the opposite way and so we shared a very wet but warm 10 km together and I turned for home. A soggy but satisfying 20 k. That brought up a satisfying 77 km for the week.

Yesterday (Monday) was a public holiday (Ocean Day). I met up with a friend who has a predilection for speaking Spanish and all things Mexican and ran a couple of laps of the Imperial Guest House (Gosho) with her, generally easy but surging up the hills. An invigorating 12 km all up, though the warm conditions started taking their toll by the third lap.

This finally brings me to today and the title of this post. I've been reading up on all the Lydiard related theory posted by the enigmatic "Mystery Coach" (and commenters) on Mike's blog. As Ewen and others have noted, the methods of Bideau and Hadd, et al. all have a basis in Lydiard. Lydiard's prescriptions tend to be pace related determined from what he calls your "steady state" pace, the fastest pace you can run for 10 km or so every day and be recovered enough to run the next day without getting worn down. The most important word here is not "fastest" but "be recovered". Workouts are then based on a percentage of this pace, ranging from about 8% slower to the same pace.

Hadd, of course uses heart rate based prescriptions rather than pace-based. I have been basing my training on Hadd, but have been seduced by the incredible knowledge of Mystery Coach and really attracted to his ideas on the fiber recruitment model.

So to see just how the Hadd method compares with the classic Lydiard approach, I had a play around with some of Mystery Coach's numbers that he provides for developing a stamina build up. From an educated guess I assumed that my steady state pace is about 4:20/km, from which I calculated that the easier paced days that Mystery Coach prescribes for the early part of the program would have me running at about 4:40 pace. I thought that sounded interesting and based on recent experience was probably not too far off the mark for the Haddish lower aerobic heart rate runs.

So today when running around the Palace on an unseasonably cool day, I put this to the test. The first lap (5k) at 4:40 resulted in a HR considerably lower than the upper range of Hadd's lower aerobic, but that would not be unexpected even if I was following a heart rate guide for the run, since it does take a while for the system to get loaded up. It is the latter part of the run that the prescriptions really come into effect. And sure enough, during the second lap, although I did at times dip down into the 4:20s, the average pace was only a bit faster than 4:40 and the heart rate was right around the 139 to 143 area, exactly spot on for a lower aerobic run. You can see the data here. So this is good stuff. I feel that I much better understand the relation between these two fundamentally similar systems and feel the ability to mix and match somewhat without compromising the integrity of the program. In particular, I am pretty keen to adopt Mystery Coach's suggestion of running faster (100% of steady state) on Saturday (the day before a long run) to activate/fatigue the harder to get at muscle fibers and then bring them into use, i.e., condition them, during the next day's long run. Of course, all this depends on me staying injury free :-(

And if you have read this far, I'll reward you with a little anecdote from today's run, slightly grimace inducing though it is. On my first lap, I was running along concentrating on pace and heart rate and so on, and a nice fine drizzle had started. It was near the Otemachi stretch where the path is a little narrow and the paving is surfaced with that fine pebble-crete stuff. A guy and girl were jogging along side by side ahead of me and I started to pull out to go around them which would have blocked off the path, but I looked ahead to see a guy on a bicycle hurtling towards the gap I was about to close. I saw him in plenty of time to pull up and leave the gap open, but he, the poor bugger, saw my move and reflexively went for the anchors, unfortunately locking up the bike causing his front wheel to slide out from under him. Thereafter he involuntarily used his right knee and elbow as landing gear on the way to becoming fully sprawled over the pavement. He was still a good 10 m in front of us when he went down, indicating the prematurity of his actions, and also the speed he must have been going at. We scraped him and his bike up off the pavement. He was grimacing in pain but being very stoic. Luckily with the greasiness of the path he didn't lose any skin. He was a bike courier and was pretty good about the whole thing. I think he knew that whichever way you diced it, he'd screwed up: too fast for the conditions, notorious place for joggers at that time of day, misjudged and hit the anchors way too early...still, I couldn't help but feel bad for my part in it.

Getting back to normal

The back is still a bit stiff, but much better than it was. I went for a bout of cross-training last night. I spent 12 minutes on a stationary bike, then 5k on the treadmill (does that count as cross training?) and 1 k of freestyle. Plus I did a few strength exercises, but I need to approach those in a more structured way.

This morning the alarm woke me from a deep sleep and I fumbled my way out the door and ran a lower aerobic 15.5 km in 1:14:35, average pace of 4:48, average heart rate of 141. The humidity made this a tough little run. I only aimed for it to be lower aerobic, but despite the conversation over at Ewen's place, I did find that my heart rate crept up past the upper figure (143) for lower aerobic. I slowed as necessary to stop it going too far out of range, but still the average HR after 30 min is above what it should be, and the gradual heart rate drift can be seen in the pace vs heart rate of the splits.

I was still definitely a lot happier with it as a run than last Friday's, which although doesn't look too bad on paper, practically did my back in.

Germaine Greer on Aborigines

oldsprinter posted a link to a very good article by Germaine Greer on the aboriginal issue. At first it seemed like she was just going to rehash the same analysis that many other commentators have provided on why Howard's Crusade (as oldsprinter put it) is deeply flawed and cannot be interpreted as anything other than a deeply cynical political and ideologically driven exercise. But the article goes much further and draws heavily from her own experiences visiting aboriginal communities and friendships she has made within them. She provides some important insights and gets closer to the source of finding enduring practical solutions to the issue of improving the aboriginal condition than most other commentators.

There was one passage though that I did find a little hard to reconcile with my own understanding of the history of early white settlement. She said:

The Aboriginal peoples reacted to contact in different ways. Some were used to foreigners visiting their land. Most assumed that the newcomers would adapt to their way of life, and offered to help them find food and show them how to survive by studying and venerating country. Even when diseases brought by the Europeans reduced thriving communities to a handful of traumatised survivors, there was no concerted attempt to drive the interlopers away. By the time the Aboriginal peoples realised that the newcomers had laid claim to the whole country and everything in it, it was too late.

To suggest that there was "no concerted attempt to drive the interlopers away" is a complete misreading of the real history. When aboriginal tribes understood the enormity and permanence of the white "invasion", they did resist. And they resisted stoutly. In NSW there was something of a guerrilla war that lasted fifty years or more after the first fleet (I guess these days it would be called an insurgency). But ultimately, guns, germs and sheer weight of numbers won out. Perhaps this is what she means by realizing too late. Still, it smacks a little too much of the noble savage rendering of history, and there are one or two other examples of that in the article. Which is not to diminish its overall thrust. It just brings to mind the reality of the sordid early history of white settlement. A legacy that I think hangs around our neck to this day.

I have been reading a book, actually two books in one volume, about the Northern Territory. They were written in the early 1960s. One is by Douglas Lockwood called Up the Track, and one by Bill Harney called To Ayers Rock and Beyond. Well worthwhile getting your hands on, especially the Bill Harney book as he recounts his time as the first ranger at Ayers Rock (as it was then known) after it was declared a national park in the late fifties. He shares a lot of what he learned from the aboriginal elders from the region during his time there.

But it is the Lockwood book that is germane to why I think Germaine glosses over the reality of the nature of the early contact. Lockwood recounts several incidents of history that are at once brutal and ugly and difficult for us descendants of those times to come to terms with. I will reproduce here an expurgated (for brevity) version of one passage. As the passage starts, Lockwood is being given a tour of an old telegraph repeater station in Barrow Creek by a chap called Tom. He goes on to describe an incident that occurred in 1874:

Perhaps it is not surprising...that the repeater stations in these remote spots, weeks and probably months from help, were built as fortresses with stone walls two feet thick and narrow loopholes commanding large fields of fire from within. The linesmen who had to go out on horseback to repair wires cut by the malicious natives generally travelled in pairs. Even so, there were those who failed to return.
...
Tom was saying something about the stone in the walls . . . but I had wandered off again to that hot as hell night in 1874 when the Kaiditj came down from their cubby-holes in the table-top mountains, their black bodies unseen in the dark, and crept to within a few feet of five men sitting on the front veranda of the station. The white men were unarmed and separated from the safety of their fortress. [Lockwood then introduces a couple of the men in the party, James Stapleton and John Franks.]
Suddenly, an incredible shower of spears fell among them, hurled by shadows now dimly seen but unmistakably heard as the quiet evening was pierced by their yells. The white men tried to regain the safety of their fortress through a gate leading to a courtyard at the rear. . . "Yes, that's it," Tom was saying. "They tried to come in through here . . ." but they were driven back by a second volley of spears from primitive tacticians who must have expected them to do just that.
John Franks was speared through the heart and died within a few minutes. At the gateway, Stapleton fell with no fewer than four spears in his body.
Finally the men were able to get through into the fortress. They armed themselves at once and poured a volley of shots through the loopholes ... and cleared the ground.
[section of waffle omitted]
The natives reappeared on the following day, but were fired on from five hundred yards and retired after leaving a dead man on one of the world's loneliest and least publicized battlefields. There was a grim sequel. A punitive expedition was soon organized and rode out to extract revenge. At least seventy aborigines, men, women and children, are known to have been shot. A near-by watercourse was named Skull Creek, for the obvious reason. And there is said to be a mountain named Blackfellows Bones, though I don't know it.
The graves of Stapleton and Franks are still there beside the road in Barrow Creek, a lonely monument to courageous pioneers who rode into unknown hostile country so that Australia might communicate with England.

From "Up the Track" by Douglas Lockwood, 1964 (1995 reprint by Seal Books)

There is a certain poignancy to that last phrase. Scenes like this were played out all over Australia from 1883 until as late as the 1920s. The aborigine has always just been "a problem" to be dealt with using the most expedient measures available and acceptable to the times. Ignore him, shoot him, civilize him, assimilate him, but don't try to understand him and meet him on his terms. He isn't really human enough to deserve it. It seems some things never change.

Easy easy

The back is sorta kinda improving each day. After the easy 10k yesterday morning I went for a pretty serious bit of massage last night at a clinic (K's in Ebisu) that treats some very good athletes, including Mara Yamauchi, who came second in the Sapporo half marathon behind Mizuki Noguchi on the weekend (and ahead of 6th placed Catherine Ndereba). I digress. The masseur also deigned that I was in need of getting a few needles jabbed in me, so I came to have my first encounter with acupuncture. It wasn't bad, but I cannot proclaim it to be a miracle cure either. Not for whatever I've got, anyway. I was in great fear of the massage, not for any pain I might feel, though there was some of that, but for the fact that I might find myself thinking that this is something I need a lot more of. I had good reason to hold that fear. Damn it was good. But at $50 a pop, I just can't do it very often. I dunno, maybe I should aim to go once a month or something. Do a night a month at a host club in Kabukicho to raise the readies.

Tonight, track night, I skipped track and had a good run in Yoyogi Park with Colin. One hour and fifteen minutes of nice easy/steady pace in pretty high humidity and a few squalls. Under the circumstances I think it is a good outcome. And rest assured, the back is getting plenty of stretching.

Caught short

I have often wondered if my continual niggles in the left leg have any structural or gait basis, but never got around to doing anything about it.

With the fact that I am going for a sports massage tonight in mind, I did something simple this morning that I have meant to do for ages, check whether my legs are the same length. After the shower, clad only in my best pair of Bonds briefs (an image I could have spared you all, but ha!), I sat with my butt against the wall, legs stretched out straight, and got my wife to come and give the old pegs the once over.

"Your left leg is about a centimeter shorter than your right leg," she immediately blurted out with a kind of sadistic smirk. Sure enough, I could even see it myself. My left ankle bone touched against my right leg quite conspicuously above the right ankle bone. Damn! Fourty-four years it has taken for me to notice this.

Now the million dollar question is whether this is a) the cause, b) a result of, or c) not even related to my back and other left side problems. And finally, what kind of practitioner do you see about getting a definitive analysis and remedial measures? I have heard that short-legged bastards can get a heel lift shoe insert. I wonder if one centimeter is enough to justify such an intervention?

A tentative come back

Thanks for the assorted "Get well soon" comments.

I took Saturday and Sunday off running. It was hard to swallow given that I was on track for such a good week, but there wasn't much option. I got onto the Ibuprofen and generally just took it easy.

By yesterday morning it was feeling somewhat improved, but far from 100%. SO I decided to use the ticket to a sports club I have and went for a swim before work. That was fin and I did 2 km in 40 minutes. By theend of the day the back was feeling heaps better and the little hip injury thing had pretty much faded into the background. Great stuff that Ibuprofen.

So I braved a run this morning. I ended up having a reasonably crappy sleep and the back was a little tender when I woke up. This time I decided to a) not force the pace, and b) Just aim for 50 minutes. So in the end it was a very easy 10k in just over 50 minutes at an average heart rate of 126. I felt only mild discomfort and never that I was making things any worse. So if I can continue to nurse it back to health this week while keeping up a few runs like this, I shouldn't go too far backwards.

Hobbling & humbling

My lower back has flared up. I worked at home on Tuesday and I think the chair I used is the main culprit. It was a bit stiff on Wednesday, but didn't really hinder my running. Yesterday it was somewhat worse, and due to the discomfort combined with a deadline at work, I didn't run.

So I woke up this morning, got moving and knew immediately it still wasn't the best, but I have run through lower back pain before so thought I'd give it a try. Ended up being a pretty difficult run. Quite painful and slow for the first 4 km or so. Then I stretched my legs and back when I hit Komazawa Park, and it improved a little. I finally got my pace better than 5:00/km, but not much. Still felt like I was hobbling. I did a couple of laps only and then after a toilet break headed home. When I was fully warmed up I was moving OK, but it was a bit of an effort. My heart rate was higher than it should have been for the pace. By the time I finished, my right hip was hurting, probably because of an altered gait. I should have known better. Here's the breakdown.

From a training perspective it wasn't complete write off, but I hope I have not set myself back further by pushing through. I have a tendency to do that, especially when, as now, I am trying to lift the workload. Let's see what tomorrow brings.

A good compromise

Last night it was Wednesday night at the track, i.e., VO2max intervals of some sort. When in aerobic training in the past I have skipped these and gone into Yoyogi Park and tootled around at below LT pace. Got an email from Gareth in the afternoon asking what my plans were for the evening and I said I wasn't sure. Track is more fun and interesting, but I have started aerobic base building so want to avoid running above lactate accumulation pace.

After a 5 km warmup in the park we headed to the track (at which point the drizzly rain decided to get a bit more serious). With none of the regular leaders in attendance, Gareth took over the podium and stop watch and announced we would do 5 x 1200 on a 7-minute cycle. I decided to run them at a lower intensity than I would if it was a full-on interval session, thus they became what McMillan calls cruise intervals (4:26 to 4:32/1200 for me).

Rather than think about pace too much I just said I'd try to not let my heart rate get much above 160. As it turned out, that gave me a set of times just a bit on the slow side of McMillan's suggested range. They were pretty comfortable to run and I was even talking a little bit during a couple of them. So I did one more for good luck. Final result: 4:40, 4:38, 4:33, 4:31, 4:34, 4:31. Full log entry here.