Chronic Cardio

Out of fear for death from heart problems, I started running which I had considered a boring (good for PT Usha and other girls) sport. It was going on well for a year when I managed running upto 25KM without any injuries. But then the running bug hit me hard and I wanted to improve my pace - trained for it, couldn't make it to a 10K because of a flu(exercise induced for sure) and then ran a half marathon that was half an hour faster than my previous timing at the same race. But ended up at the physio's table with a ITBS problem - my physio(who is a friend of mine) laughed at the problem when I described it to him that I cannot run more than 10KM. He suggested I run less than 10K, I laughed back telling him that he doesn't understand ! But in hindsight he was absolutely right - my legs(muscles around it) were not strong enough to run distances more than 10K.

After undergoing therapy for couple of months, I was back on the trail and slowly started hitting 10Ks regularly. Then I tried a 15K which brought back memories of old, so I slowed down a bit, but couldn't resist the longer ones. Despite some niggle at the ankle, I ran a 16K in a tough terrain around town. It turned out that it was an "Achilles"! Another month of physiotherapy and all looked well and the 10K race in town was round the corner. I wasn't planning to run, but then during the last week, I couldn't let it pass and did a spot registration and ran it which was followed with another flu(exercise induced for sure!). I got back again slowly building upto the comfortable 10Ks. I also added swimming as a cross training just to make sure that I don't die because of lack of cardio with all the problems that I was having with my puny legs(I thought I had strong ones being a football player). So the pains of hard running would be washed away next morning with a swim! Then I felt something funny at the sides of the heel while massaging the achilles. The achilles felt perfectly fine, but the problem seems to have moved further south on the heel. A quick search confirmed the symptoms to be that of "Plantar Fascitis" another chronic cardio problem. But I avoided my physio for fear of being laughed at (yet again), did some massages myself and just limited myself to 10Ks and took the bold decision of opting out the next half marathon where I would have wanted to take another half an hour out of my Personal Best(PB). It appears that there are two more problems that may be waiting in the wings for me - shin splints and runners knee.

It is not the running that gets you into this (though running involves a repetitive motion of some parts which is pretty unnatural) - it is the stupidity of the goal based running that doesn't consider one's capabilities. Usually you run a race on the date set by some race organizers, not on a date where you are ready to run the distance at your pace! And then you need to hit your timing goals as well! Considering the fact that I never run continuously, but do the run-walk, I shouldn't be in so much trouble. Though my goal was to enjoy the runs and to be fit, I stupidly deviated to increase my pace. The reality is that everyone is wired for some distance at some pace, more than that is fraught with all these injuries. There are lots of indicators - neck sprains, flu, ITBS, that told me that I was going above the thresholds, but I was married to my goal of improving my timings! BTW, any goal based activity in life is fraught with these risks.

And as you know, it is never one-sided, there are always both sides of the story. All my trousers are now low waist ones because the waist line has shrunk badly since I started running and my sparely used trousers that were bought 16+ years ago fit very well these days. And it looks like I will have to buy a new belt because this one(another 1o+ year old one). If I were able to sustain my running at higher mileages, I could have hit my 28" waistline in my 20's before I went to America. I also stopped going to the Cardiologist and doing the Executive Health Checkup every year - a spot check of cholesterol was good enough and even that got boring after very normal results every time. I am back eating all kinds of fish fried in coconut oil(BTW, that was a hoax about coconut - it is the king). But I wasn't saving any money though - it was going to the therapist and on new expensive shoes to fix my pronation on the legs !

All good things and bad things I attribute it to the chronic cardio that I have got into. At the moment I am trying to shift some balance into other things - though walking is pretty much useless for your heart except for some feel-good factor, I walk at every opportunity these days. Cycling aimlessly hasn't gone on well with me for some reason, tried a bit of commuting which was too short to be a workout. But swimming seems like an exciting sport - it is not the power, but the technique that comes first in this sport, and the variety of things to learn seems endless. But it is never going to be as simple as a run, you need the infrastructure and gadgets which I have close by. Another exciting one is Yoga - it has the variety for a beginner to an expert to keep them challenged. But if I don't run, I feel a pain in my heart, so I have got to check it out - run and see that the pain was just an imagined one. Hopefully, I will be able to break this habit sometime!

Kaizen Swimming with Easy Freestlye DVD by Terry Laughlin - Part 1

So I finally got back to the pool after a short break due to the rainy weather around here. Temperatures(20-23C in the mornings) are not that low to really keep away from the pool, but the swimming season in our apartment is May-June when the schools are closed and it is summer time here. Then everybody disappears till the next season. But I am trying to make it a year long season for me with Terry Laughlin's Easy Freestyle 21st Century Techniques for Beginners to Advanced Swimmers DVD. The pools(two 20m ones) are in great shape and I am the only one who uses it regularly.

The drills in the DVD has changed a lot from Terry's original Total Immersion book, but the philosophy hasn't changed much. The book really helped me understand the basics and made me a TI and Terry fan. So I didn't have to think too much about buying the DVD. And the first day of using these latest techniques is always a challenging one because how you feel on the first day would really make or break your progress. So as usual I spent good amount of time watching the DVD at home(this is really a challenge with a toddler at home) and observing the nuances.

The first lesson is about "Cooperating with Gravity" which gives you techniques to float on water with the least amount of effort. The key takeaway for me was just relax and let the buyoancy do the rest for you. Though the drills are not so unfamiliar except for the last couple are brand new and a bit challenging.

The first thing I noticed was I was getting tensed up at many parts of the body - shoulder and knee specifically. So the first drill, "Superman Glide", was just to relax in water as much as possible. I went up and down the pool with one drill and gradually moved to the more interesting and challenging ones. The basic idea of the drills is to imprint the right techniques by repeatedly doing it. I have to iron out a few rough edges on the last couple of drills, especially the last one where you need to turn your body to breath.

It was unreasonable to expect any immediate impact to my swimming on day one. So I was a bit surprised when I could do a 20m lap of freestyle easily without much struggle breathing bilaterally on every third stroke. Considering the fact that I was swimming after more than couple of months made it even more miraculous. So I did couple more laps and it seemed getting better and better and the last lap was so easy that I didn't realize that I reached the other end breathing bilaterally on every 3rd stroke ! I had never done that before! The only thing I was consciously doing was to relax and not letting the body go tight anywhere. I had to pinch myself to be sure that it wasn't a dream(I was having many after watching the DVDs). It may be a bit too early to declare victory, but having known Terry's philosophy of swimming and teaching, I want to think it to be the "Easy Freestyle" at work!

Organic Terrace Garden Roundup

It's been over 7 months since our outsourced terrace garden came into existence. Though the produce is no where near what we need, there is constant flow of produce from the garden. As you may know this is based on the concept of a square foot garden where each vegetable has exactly 1 square foot to grow - pretty much cramped I would say. This is the typical urban philosophy where you cramp up stuff which is not so natural as you can imagine. The natural fallout is that those who can grab land from the neighbor's by their muscle outgrow the others and produce pretty well. But there are some plants that doesn't need too much space - for example, ladies finger and most of the leafy ones. But in general, I think it is more or less like mechanized animal farming, not so natural at all.

We have had one bumper crop of tomatoes which we had to distribute to neighbors to finish the stock, but all of those plants died at the same time which resulted in no produce for a long time. But when we had a lot of tomatoes, it was also very cheap in the market as well. So it may be same breeze that got us a lot of tomatoes like the farmers. Ladies finger was always producing, but not in abundance though. Brinjal was not something we wanted, but it appears to be producing copiously. It is enough and more for us and the monkeys. We have two varieties of beans, one of the meter beans produced good amount of beans, but the normal beans which is supposed to be an easy plant, didn't thrive very well. A ridge gourd plan thrived very well going all across the trellis, but no produce at all. Most of the leafy veggies do very well as well. We had one good crop of beet root, but nothing after that.

We have had our share of bugs, birds and monkey trouble - this is indeed very natural ! They are out looking for food, they don't real

ly care whether it is your organic terrace garden or not. And the basic tenet of Organic thinking is that don't fight it, get used to it. They do spray organic pesticides, but that is again fighting the symptom. The idea of an organic garden should be

to create an ecosystem that will provide for everyone - but this is again not a practical thing in an urban guerrilla garden. We are in fact trying to grow some flowers and herbs that are supposed to create this balance or take the hit instead of the vegetables, not sure if that is working well, but it gives a good variety to the garden. And monkeys need special treatment - it appears they don't like the smell of dry fish, so we put some around the vegetable garden, but still they come in and pluck the veggies. But the lesson here is - don't fight the pests, get used to it.

Also the idea of outsourcing itself is not a good one for an organic garden where you are supposed to toil it out and get up close and watch it grow, watch it being eaten by bugs and birds, watch it produce, take care of it completely. This is more or less like a young mother leaving her new born baby in the crèche or a babysitter. In fact it is even worse because you are not even involved in the seeding process itself. So we are planning to drop the idea of outsourcing once the current contract expires. Like any outsourcing effort, you tend to blame it on the vendor who we pay for the service. But it did give us some good ideas and we now have a one-point source to get the supplies for the garden. But overall the experience has been pretty good - lots of learning about plants and the interplay of bees and bugs etc.

Swimming Effectively - learning from the book/DVD

As things stand, I can swim 20 meters(I was under the impression it was a 25m pool till recently) freestyle with a bit of effort and 60m backstroke effortlessly. I have been at work trying to improve my freestyle this season and it sure has improved - I am reaching the other end with less panic and I can breath bilaterally(though not so smooth) and I think I am reaching there faster with less strokes as well(haven't measured this because there are other urgent things to take care now). The biggest bottleneck has been breathing - while I could hang on for more time with breathing on my stronger side every other stroke that was screwing up the form badly forcing me to stroke more.

So I went to work to improve the breathing bit first - till I started doing an exhalation drill I found at Swimsmooth.com, the progress was indeed slow. You also need to be relaxed in the water, but unless you are breathing out smoothly, you can't relax well. So this was a good workout that focused on the problem specifically. At the same time I was doing the Total Immersion catchup drills breathing on alternate sides and started introducing into my swimming. The breath on the right side is still not very smooth, which needs some work definitely. But overall good progress since the last couple of months.

So I decided to invest in a DVD, Terry Laughlin, who to me is the master teacher, which I hope can take me to the next step. I was also considering joining Nisha Millet's advanced swimming class. But that would mean a bit of commute and I am not too sure of Nisha's swimming philosophy except that she was one of the best swimmers India has ever produced. At the moment, I am brainwashed by Terry Laughlin and his Total Immersion techniques. It is not blind faith though - I learned backstroke from the Total Immersion book without anyone's help. So there is no question about whether it will work or not. I hope a video will show me more finer points than a book.

So here I go - the next target is to get to 40meter freestyle effortlessly using the DVD as a self help and let me see how it goes!

Tender Coconut Water

One of the hangovers from a year living in the US was the habit of drinking cola especially in situations where you weren't sure of the water quality. While tender coconut is available in most of the places in Karnataka, it was no match for the one's we are used to in coconut country - Kerala. Typically they are no fresh because they are not sourced locally. There was also this propaganda of coconut is not good for one's health, which is an absolute nonsense as I figured out later. So it was usually avoided unless the aerated stuff was not available and it turns out that the colas are available in remote corners of the country as well. And in a coconut country, tender coconuts are considered to be of less value than the real coconut which finds its use everywhere.

But the Cola problems in India forced me to think a bit about the use of aerated drinks, one was the blatant sucking of underground water by Coca-Cola at Plachimada, another was the claim of pesticides in the aerated drinks. But the enlightening article about this controversy was a column in Swaminomics, Milk is more Dangerous than Cola, where Swaminathan Ankleshwara Iyer questioned the legitimacy of even drinking milk which was another animal's milk specifically produced for its offspring. Though the argument was that milk would be equally or more contaminated than the colas, my takeaway was that both drinking Cola and Milk was very unnatural when we have really good alternatives. I have since then quit drinking milk and Cola.

Since then I have been drinking tender coconut water and an occasional sugar cane juice outside of home and lemon juice with honey at home. The #1 drink remains tender coconut, which is packaged very well and no processing happens before you get to drink it - very natural indeed. There is also no need to store it in any special way, it stays fresh for at least a week or more. While the fresh ones have some fizz, the taste doesn't really change with the natural packaging. It is indeed expensive than the cola, but the availability in Bangalore is as good or better. These are specialized corner shops on the street manned by people with special expertise in opening the tender coconut. Though they offer plastic straws for you to drink, I don't use the straws to make it a clean drink.

We have couple of shops nearby to pick up the tender coconuts, one of them is run by someone who goes around and gets fresh ones from the trees around and he knows his job pretty well and very passionate about his job as well. He can tell you which one's have more water or better taste by a tap on the coconut. You could easily be fooled if you just go with external appearance. The husk can hide the real size of the shell. If he is not around(when he is sick or he doesn't get the produce), I usually have couple of tender coconuts a day. Otherwise I go the other shop, which sources its produce from outside town and their expertise about the produce is limited.

Another cheaper option is sugar cane juice(they say milk). It is just 6-7 INR on street side shops and 10-12INR in regular shops where they have to pay rent for the shop. I was skeptical of the hygiene of the shops because it need some processing before you can drink it. But tried couple of times and found that they do keep everything clean and hygieneic as well. But unlike tender coconut water, you can't drink too much of this because of the high sugar content. The neighborhood juice shops are also a pretty good alternative for the Bangaloreans, but we don't have any descent ones around except for the musambi juice shops on the street. I would rather eat the fruits as it is than sucking its juice which needs additional processing and creates more waste.

While Americans may not have other natural alternatives and Colas may have become part of their lifestyle, I believe there are many natural alternatives in the Indian scenario and tender coconut remains #1 choice at least in south India. You can easily wean away from the synthetic aerated drinks and bottled juices. I used to drink Gatorade as a sport drink for my runs, but I have since completely shifted to plain water and tender coconut which is by itself a great sport drink. I stock up several of them for a run to keep myself hydrated before and after the runs.