June 7, 2007

Save Your Skin -- Go Nude

      You wouldn't think going nude would be good for your skin - and it's not. But as The Wall Street Journal pointed out in its Health Journal earlier this week, people who apply sunscreen while nude are more likely to prevent sunburn and longterm skin damage.

      That's because the sun's harmful UV rays penetrate clothing - even those expensive swimsuits marketed to parents for their children. If your unprotected skin would start to burn in five minutes in the sun, skin under a white T-shirt would start to burn after just 15 to 35 minutes in the sun. Darker T-shirts are better, but even they offer only limited SPF protection.

       Even if you never see sunburn on skin protected by clothing, your skin still is susceptible to longterm damage. So if you're going to be spending some serious time in the sun, apply that sunscreen all over while nude, just like the nudists do. (At least the health-conscious nudists.)

       The WSJ story was written by Tara Parker-Pope, who does a terrific job of covering health for the newspaper. I've kept her up to date on our show, as well as my Core Performance books with Mark Verstegen, but she's never responded. At least in her most recent story she quoted Susan Weinkle, an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at the University of South Florida. So at least Tara slowly is getting closer to us!

May 8, 2007

Kids and Drinking

      Since August, I've been teaching a religious education class to fourth graders at my church on Monday nights. Seven years ago, my wife and I taught a class of eighth graders and that probably caused us to postpone starting a family for a few years. Who says the Catholic Church doesn't encourge birth control?

      The fourth graders have been easier to handle, though occasionally they get a little rowdy. When this happens, I tend to depart from the class curriculum, which basically consists of being given a text book and told "go get 'em," and just talk about whatever.

      I usually have a teaching assistant, the mother of one of the students. She and her son were not there last night, but during my absence last week she assigned students what to bring for our yearend party next week. As I went around the room confirming everything, it seemed like there would be a disproportionate amount of soda next week.

      As a father of younger children, I'm always trying to get a handle on what I'll be facing in the coming years. So I'll sometimes conduct class surveys. I went around the room and asked what kids drank at home. It ranged from strictly water to "whatever I want." Several kids were limited to soda on weekends or to one can/glass a week. During the lenten season, when I asked the kids what they gave up, severa mentioned soda. Clearly this was a huge sacrifice for these 9 and 10 year olds.

      While this latest exercise was anything but a scientific study, I discovered that the better-behaved students, who tend to have perfect or near-perfect attendance, have the most restrictions on what they can drink at home. This is not surprising. Their parents probably place restrictio on TV, video games, and demand a base level of good behavior and academic achievement. One of the better students responded to my query by saying, "just water," as if there couldn't possibly be any other answer. Her dad thanks me after class each week for teaching.

       Perhaps because I grew up in a home where soda was rarely allowed, I found it startling how much soda most of these kids consume. Then again, given the way some of them bounce off the walls, it shouldn't be surprising. Maybe what a child drinks is no big deal. Then again, if parents don't place limits on something as simple as beverage consumption, you have to wonder what limits they place on anything.

May 7, 2007

Bad to the Bone

      All of my favorite people and things have been coming through the Tampa Bay area this year. Bob Seger, touring for the first time in 11 years, arrived in January. The ACC men's basketball tournament, the sports event I haven't covered that I most wanted to attend, tookplace here in March. Dale Murphy, my childhood baseball hero, was inducted into the Ted Williams Hitters Hall of Fame at Tropicana Field in St. Pete a week later.

      On Friday, George Thorogood headlined the Tampa Bay Blues Fest, which took place at Vinoy Park, along the water in St. Pete. Unlike Seger and Murphy, George makes it through Tampa Bay about once a year. Early in my career, I got to interview Thorogood for USA Today Baseball Weekly - he's a huge baseball fan - and got to meet him after a concert a few weeks later. He's a great guy and a terrific performer, though shorter than you'd think.

      I can't think of many singer/musicians that bring as much energy to their act as Thorogood. With his booming voice, constant hip gyrations and duck-walking, he's a sweaty mess by midway through the show. At 56, the guy still looks great. George sings a lot about drinking and hell-raising, but I'm guessing he leads a pretty healthy lifestyle, especially since he seems to constantly be in the midst of a grueling road schedule. The guy did play semi-pro baseball for a while, so he probably thinks like an athlete.

     (During my senior year of high school I attended a New Year's Eve party where the host played nothing but Thorogood's "Maverick" album the entire night. I just realized that Thorogood's birthday is Dec. 31, which means he turned 36 that night. I'm 37 now. Hmmm. Things that make you realize how quickly time passes.)

      Watching Thorogood on stage at Vinoy Park, I was struck by the contrast. A week earlier, where the predominately hard-drinking, chain-smoking crowd now was standing, there were 4,500 high-end racing bikes fenced in just hours before the start of the St. Anthony's Triathlon. Grass that had been trampled by 4,500 non-smokers now was being littered with cigarette butts. Not that I was one of those 4,500 athletes - hopefully next year - but I'm guessing I was one of the few people in attendance at both events.

April 24, 2007

On discipline...focus

    You'll see a large gap from my most recent blog, for which I am quite ashamed. I pledged at the beginning of the year to blog four times a week. Is once a month too much to ask?

     About two months ago, a lifelong streak of mine came to an end. I missed a deadline for the first time in my life. The circumstances - a book collaboration - are not important. And though they're not entirely my fault, I assume responsibility. Whether working alone or as part of a team, I've always gotten to the finish line on time. Cal Ripken has nothing on me. For as long as I can remember, I've never missed a deadline or asked for an extension for anything - not even for a college term paper - until March 2.

      Thankfully, our publisher is understanding and I'm excited about the final product and the impact it will have, not only on the fitness community but the rest of society. Still, it's amazing how missing one deadline throws your entire balance out of whack.

      Not only have I failed to blog, but I missed my goal of making my triathlon debut April 14 at the Escape from Ft. Desoto Triathlon in St. Petersburg, Fla. I had begun taking swimming lessons in January, but have not persevered. I'm in no condition from a swimming standpoint to tackle a triathlon, at least for now. Again, part of this could be attributed to spending more time than expected on a book and traveling more because of it, but that's a lame excuse.

     I've been trying to pinpoint the root cause and it hit me yesterday when I learned that the great, prolific writer David Halberstam died in an automobile accident in California. Halberstam didn't let anything come in the way of his writing. He risked his life daily to cover the Vietnam War, even dodging sniper fire to file his stories via Western Union. He won a Pulitzer Prize in his 20s, wrote two dozen award-winning books on politics, war, and sports, and continued to do tremendous work at the age of 73. He recently finished a book on the Korean War.

     I'm guessing David Halberstam didn't miss a deadline in his life. If he did, he didn't let it affect his work. He was prolific, disciplined and exceptional at what he did. Stephen King, a literary master of another genre, wrote in his autobiography "On Writing" that he writes a minimum of 2,000 words a day - 365 days of the year. When King was forced several years ago to stop for a few months after nearly being struck and nearly killed by a van while walking alongside a road in Maine, he worried that his skills would atrophy.

     Isn't that what drives most of us? Most endurance athletes reach a point where they do their workouts evey day - or at least every day they're scheduled to train - because they know missing even a single workout could cause a snowball effect of slacking off. It's like the alcoholic who knows a single drink will be his undoing.

    Nobody's perfect. Even Cal Ripken finally took a day off. But when life's streaks come to an end, for whatever reason, sometimes the greater challenge is just starting a new one.

February 13, 2007

Catchin' the Chill

   I took another step toward being a triathlete on Sunday by competing in the Chilly Willy Duathlon at Ft. DeSoto Park. Along with about 350 others, I ran a 5K, biked 10 miles, and ran another 5K.

    My time (1:24:40) wasn't all that impressive, and I finished a mere 15th in the always-competitive 35-to-39 year old age category. But I took solace in the fact that I completed an event that's about as strenuous as a sprint triathlon, perhaps more so since a .25 mile or .30 mile swim takes less time - at least in theory - than starting with a 5K run.

("Team Boston Bill" at The Chilly Willy Duathlon. From Left: Jessica Mundie, Pete Williams, Lisa Feldt, and Boston Bill Hansbury. Pete is the one not holding an age group award.)

February 8, 2007

Cigarettes a Campaign Issue?

    If you've ever worked with or around smokers, you've no doubt questioned their work ethic. In this age of smoke-free workplaces, smokers are forced to go outside. They essentially take six to 12 15-minute breaks a day, depending on the extent of their nicotine addiction.

    When I worked at USA Today as a full-time sportswriter, our offices were on the 21st floor. Smokers had to take the elevator to the mall level of the building, and then walk another 100 yards or so out the door. If you factor in the time spent smoking, "travel time," and the transition time back into work-mode, each break probably cost the company a half hour of productivity.

     I once had an editor get on my case after I returned from my desk following a 90-minute workout. (I was training for a marathon at the time. Thankfully, then-Gannett chairman John Curley was a huge fitness guy who had a fabulous employee gym installed in the basement of the building.) Forget the fact that I brought my lunch from home, ate at my desk, and essentially used my lunch hour, plus a few extra minutes, to work out. Even without that, I still was spending far less time away from my desk than the 2-3 hour equivalent that smokers took to feed their addictions.

     Actually, there were very few sportswriters at USA Today who smoked; the smokers tended to be editor and management types. As a sportswriter, you're at a serious disadvantage if you're a smoker. A lot of times the job involves standing around in locker rooms waiting for interviews. If you have to go out for a smoke, you might miss an opportunity. Besides, when your job involves tight deadlines and smoke-free workplaces, there's no time for smoking.

     Which brings us back to Obama. A president's schedule is organized by the minute. There's little room for flexibility, though as President Clinton showed us, there's always time for a little extracurricular activity. Still, do we want a leader whose judgment and performance is impacted by whether or not he's had a nicotine fix?

     Say what you want about President Bush, the guy is a workout freak. And say what you want about Sen. Hillary Clinton, but she did have smoking banned from the White House as First Lady. (Must have had something to do with that cigar episode...)

     Some have noted that Obama looks youthful and fit. He characterizes himself as a light smoker. But if you look at his face - and these days, it's hard to miss - he has all the telltale signs of a long-time heavy smoker. His face is stretched tight at the mouth and eyes, but fleshy and jowly around the cheeks. He has the skinny, slight build not of a man who exercises regularly but of someone whose metabolism is jacked up on nicotine. Like many smokers, he looks older than his age (45).

     Perhaps not surprisingly, few presidents have been cigarette smokers. Richard Nixon enjoyed an occasional cigar and, of course, Bill Clinton had an affinity for stogies, whether smoked or not. Ronald Reagan quit smoking before entering politics, and Gerald Ford was a pipe smoker. Though Republicans are viewed as lackeys for the tobacco industry, Democratic presidents have been more frequent tobacco consumers. FDR wielded his cigarette holder like a fashion accessory. LBJ, a cigarette smoker with the jowly face of one, suffered a heart attack in his late 40s and died relatively young (64). And now Obama, a Democratic frontrunner, is a smoker.

     Let's hope Obama quits smoking, if only because he's now viewed as a role model by many. If we have a smoker in the Oval Office, that won't exactly send the message that health and fitness is valued in this country. Do we want a president who is incapable of running 2 miles? Even Clinton, in his fattest days, could do that. Besides, do we want the president reeking of cigarettes when he's meeting other heads of state? (Hmm, Obama's initials are B.O...)

    Obama reportedly is using Nicorette gum to break the habit. That's a good start, but anyone who has been down that road will tell you the gum can be just as addictive as cigarettes....or power. Let's see if Obama can obtain one without the other.

January 29, 2007

Reason No. 721,345 to Stop Smoking

     Just when you thought somebody couldn't come up with a more frivolous lawsuit, along comes Claudette Siar.

      According to Saturday's St. Petersburg Times, Siar was enjoying her wedding reception on April 19, 2003 at the Columbia Restaurant at the St. Petersburg Pier. It's a wonderful restauant in a spectacular waterfront setting.

     Everything was going spledidly until Siar, now 50, needed to go out for a smoke. And as we all know, nothing says "classy" more than the sight of a bride lighting up a Marlboro Red.

     Since Florida thankfully prohibits smoking inside of restaurants, Siar was forced outside. As she stumped out her cigarette, with a cloud of nicotine and toxins absorbing into her white satin, an errant football smashed into her jaw. If you picture that episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Marcia caught one in the nose, you get the idea.

      Apparently two boys, about 12 years old, were tossing a football. They, along with the mother of one of them, took off and have never been found. It's a good thing for them, too, since the Times notes that the wedding party consisted "mostly of attorneys like (groom) David Siar and insurance adjusters."

     David Siar helped his wife back to the restaurant where she "downed two Grand Marnier liqueurs to soothe the pain in her jaw."

     Now, nearly four years later, the happy couple is suing Urban Retail Properties, which leases the Pier on behalf of the city of St. Petersburgh, for failing to "keep the public observation deck safe." The suit is seeking $15,000 or more in damages.

      Cladette Siar never went to the hospital. Instead, according to the Times, she proceeded on her honeymoon to Biloxi, Miss., (really, you couldn't make this stuff up) because "it was her husband's first wedding and she could see how crushed he was that it was ruined."

Siar, a "self-published romance novelist," told the Times, "there was no way that kind of thing should have been going on up there. It was a dangerous environment they put me in."

      This, of course, coming from a smoker who was only in the path of a football because she had to feed her nicotine addiction. Yep, let's blame the city. Blame the kids. And let's find the one who tossed the ball. There are some important people who want to talk to him, starting with a football team across the bay that could use aquarterback capable of hitting a target.

January 16, 2007

Springing Ahead Early

      After 15 months on the air, we're moving forward an hour, to the 5 to 6 p.m. Friday timeslot. This is the timeslot we wanted when the

show debuted in October of 2005. It wasn't available then and even though it's been available for some time, we're creatures of habit and didn't feel compelled to move until the station owners asked us several weeks ago to make room for a different show.

         We had a blast on Friday afternoon at the St. Pete Beach Classic Health & Fitness Expo, broadcasting live from the Tradewinds Sandpiper Resort. The weather, as has been the case all winter long, has been phenomenal and several thousand people showed up for the 5K/10K on Saturday.

      The Health & Fitness expo felt like an official Fitness Buff event on Friday as we were able to welcome fellow exhibitors Erin DeMarines of 3Bar and Bill Hansbury of Boston Bill Sunglasses to the program.

     After writing about hearing loss last week, I went to my second Bob Seger concert in eight days, this time at the Times Forum in Tampa. I didn't wear earplugs and this time paid the price, with ringing in my ears for almost 48 hours. I had no ringing in my ears - even moments after leaving the building - following the show in Orlando. Are certain buildings just better for concerts? I thought that was just an old wives tale.

January 9, 2007

Old Time Rock and....Fitness?

     I saw the best concert of my life last Saturday -- Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band in Orlando.

     Seger is my all-time favorite act, and it helped that through some Ticketmaster quirk, I landed seats in the 10th row of the former "O-rena" just four days before the show. Seger and his band, who haven't toured in 11 years, seemed thrilled to be back on stage.

     If you've read reports of Bob's health in recent years, you can imagine why he's just happy to be on stage again. Bob hasn't exactly been the poster child for fitness. As far as I know, he's still a heavy smoker. During his semi-retirement of the last decade, he supposedly tipped the scales at 300-plus.

      The 61-year-old Seger looked far from svelte on stage, but I'm guessing he's down to the 230-240 range. I imagine he's still smoking, which makes him no different than most rockers. I'll never understand how cigarettes seem to be practically performance-enhancing when it comes to rock artists. Just about everyone smokes. At some level, I'm guessing, it enhances singing voices - much like it does for people who do voiceover work - but you'd think it would cause some long-term damage to your pipes.

      The rest of Seger's regular bandmates, all of whom must be in their late 50s or early 60s, looked phenomenal. It could be that they're fitness nuts. It could be, like many musicians, they looked older in their 30s and 40s than most people. It could be that they've sweated off the pounds on this tour - or got in shape before hitting the road.

     Whatever the case, I hope Seger continues to drop the pounds, along with the cigarettes, if he hasn't already. After all, rockers are now performing well into their 60s. I don't want his Saturday show in Tampa to be the last time I see him on tour.      

January 5, 2007

Obesity Epidemic Villain of the Day: Jim Skinner

       You might think these are tough times for McDonald's. Between the media focusing on the obesity epidemic and the company receiving negative publicity from movies like "Super Size Me" and books like "Fast Food Nation," McDonald's has been painted as Public Enemy No.1 in the obesity epidemic.

       Yet over the last two years, the company's stock has climbed about 45 percent. The uptick coincided with Jim Skinner taking over as CEO. In today's Wall Street Journal, Skinner talks about the strategy he implemented two years ago for turning McDonald's around. It included improving customer service, offering tastier food, and better marketing.

       The plan did not include anything about making McDonald's food healthier and in a Q&A with The WSJ, Skinner says any perceived health dangers associated with his food are overblown. He sounds much like the tobacco experts who refuse, at least publicly, to acknowledge the medically-proven link between their products and lung cancer.

      I love The WSJ, but lately it's done too many of these puff Q&A pieces that allow CEOs to put ridiculous spins on things. Instead of challenging the CEOs on their comments, the reporters just proceed to the next questions. Here's a sample of Skinner's preposterous comments.

WSJ: You've made it a priority to put a big emphasis on helath and nutrition both in the menu and in the marketing. (Editor's note: Says who?) Is that message compatable with burgers and french fries and milk shakes?

Skinner: What I put an emphasis on is what we call balanced, active lifesytles. When you look at the kinds of choices we've provided, we've done more work here than probably any other restaurant company in trying to be part of the solution....We are not prescribing what people should eat...We have to provide choices so that you say, "I can go there because there's a choice that makes me feel good."

WSJ: Why has it been so difficult for you to take trans fats out of food when other companies have done it?

Skinner: We don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction...And I think, to our benefit, we didn't pull the trigger on something that wasn't going to give us the best opportunity to give our customers the best-tasting french fry as well as the benefits of a reduced-trans-fat oil.

     Here's the thing about McDonald's, though. If the public really wanted healthier food, the Golden Arches would be forced to provide it. In reality, most people want to eat this garbage, which is why McDonald's serves 50 million customers a day, up 4 million from 3 1/2

years ago, according to The WSJ.

     The 62-year-old Skinner tells The WSJ he eats McDonald's food every day, preferring a Quarter Pounder without cheese. He obviously isn't heeding the warnings of "Super Size Me," in which producer Morgan Spurlock nearly killed himself by eating nothing but McDonald's food for a month. Nor is Skinner concerned about the recent history of burger executives.

     Skinner's predecessor, Charlie Bell, died of colon cancer in 2005 at the age of 45. Bell worked for McDonald's since the age of 15 and ate their regularly. Bell's predecessor, CEO Jim Cantalupo, another longtime employee, died of a sudden heart attack in 2004 at the age of 60 while attending a McDonald's convention in Orlando. Two former CEOs of Wendy's, Jim Near and Gordon Teter, died in their fifties of sudden heart attacks. Near, who had worked at Wendy's for two decades, died in 1996 at age 58. Teter was 56 when he passed in 1999. And Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, whose mentor was KFC's Harland Sanders, died of liver cancer in 2002. Thomas was 69.

      Not exactly a rollcall of longevity. Yet, I suspect none of the burger czars saw any correlation between the products they sold and health problems.

January 4, 2007

In Shape? Watch out for Mood Changes.

      By not working out between Christmas and New Year's, I was destined to be in a foul mood, at least according to a recent study.

      People who exercise regularly start feeling depressed and fatigued after just one week of forced inactivity, according to the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

      A team of researchers looked at 40 men and women who exercised at least three times weekly for at least 30 minutes. Half were instructed to stop working out for two weeks, while the other half continued with their regular routine.

     At the end of one week, the people who stopped exercising reported more fatigure and other somatic symptoms than those who had kept working out. At the second week, the non-exercisers reported more mental symptoms as well. (Good thing I didn't extend this to two weeks.)

       Researchers found that the people who were the most fit - as measured by their V02 max, which represents the body's ability to use oxygen efficiently - showed the greatest loss in fitness. And those who experienced the greatest drop in fitness showed the sharpest drop in mood.

      If you exercise regularly, you know this to be true. When you miss workouts, you become tired, irritable, and edgy. I took a class in college called "Mental Health Adjustment," which though it sounded like a "gut" class actually taught some useful information. The thrust of the class was that a lot of mental health issues could be treated, if not prevented, by exercising three times a week for 30 minutes at a pop.

     So keep working out. Your mental health depends on it.

January 3, 2007

Can You Hear Me Now?

    One area of health and fitness that gets far too little attention, especially now in the iPod era, is hearing.

     If you grew up in the 1970s and '80s, you spent a lot of time with your ears affixed to a Sony Walkman, the clunky predecessor to the iPod. And no matter what era you call your own, you no doubt have spent time at rock concerts and behind the wheel of motorcycles, lawnmowers, and other hearing-damaging devices.

     If you think you've lost some of you're hearing, you're probably right. According to Stefan Heller, an expert on hearing at the Stanford University School of Medicine, we have 15,000 tiny cells in our ears that aren't capable of regenerating themselves.

      Dr. Heller, interviewed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, notes that "after a high-impact noise, sometimes (the cells) choose to die. It's called 'apoptosis,' and it's a self-defense mechanism to protect the body from things that go wrong."

      Dr. Heller notes that some people can crank their iPods to the limit and kill none of these cells, but others will suffer significant damage.

      Want to test your hearing? Go to mosquitoringtones.com, where there's a high-frequency ring tone that kids use on their cell phones in school because adults can't hear it.

      I couldn't hear it, which was disappointing but not surprising. I spent far too much time as a child behind lawnmowers, at rock concerts, and with the music cranked loud. These days, I wear earplugs at concerts and while cutting the grass, but I fear the damage has been done.

      It seems like we should pay more attention to this issue. So often I come across older people, especially men, who are physically fit and mentally sharp, but their hearing loss has hampered their quality of life.

      That's why I'll continue to wear earplugs, even when I see my beloved Bob Seger on tour in Florida this month. I can blame Bob for some of my hearing loss, having cranked the likes of "Hollywood Nights," "Feel Like a Number," and "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" back in high school when I was driving a 1977 Pontiac LeMans station wagon with an 8-track tape deck. (Easy now, the car was nearly 10 years old at the time!)

      This is Seger's first tour since 1996. From what I hear (pun intended), the playlist includes the song "Still the Same."

      I wish that could be said of my hearing.

January 2, 2007

Crowds in the Spinning Room

    There were fewer bikes available this morning for our 6 o'clock Tuesday spinning classes. The New Year's Resolution crowd has arrived and I imagine seats will be at a premium on Thursday, which is typically a busier day.

     I applaud anyone who makes a New Year's commitment. The first step is taking action and getting up for a 6 a.m. spinning class isn't easy. But I imagine that within a month we'll lose most of the newcomers and be back to our core constituency.

     The problem with New Year's resolutions is that people look at them as add-ons to their existing lifestyle. Inevitably, life intervenes, and they go back to normal. The only way to make a New Year's resolution permanent is to build your lifestyle around fitness. When you do that, everything else will fit in.

      I was reminded of this over the holidays, which we spent with my wife's in-laws in Annapolis, Md. I did absolutely nothing from a workout standpoint from Dec. 23 through New Year's Day, the longest stretch I've gone without a workout in years. Not only that, I ate nothing but garbage. My mother-in-law loves to bake and I scarfed down a steady diet of pizza, chocolate, cookies, cake - two family birthdays in this period only added to the insanity - and other baked goods. It got so bad that during a daytrip to Charlottesville, Va. - nice new hoops arena, U.Va. - I almost followed my buddy into McDonald's for breakfast.

     I stopped short of that, though I consumed my first Diet Cokes in years. No, I didn't fall off the bandwagon from my "Biblical Beverage Plan" of drinking just water and wine. It's just that between not working out, eating crap, and the stresses of the holiday season, I experienced my first attacks of heartburn in years. And the way I dealt with heartburn back then was with soda.

     Sure enough, the Diet Coke cleared everything up. But the episode reminded me of the importance of maintaining a healthy environment. If I stock my home, car, and backpack with healthy foods, I'll eat healthy foods. But if you put a plate of chocolate chip cookies in front of me, I'll eat every last crumb. There was nothing but temptation in my in-laws' house, and I paid the price. Sure, I could have gone outside for a run, but I've gotten spoiled by our warmer Florida temperatures.

      If nothing else, I suppose a mental health break from working out and eating right is okay. But when you've grown accustomed to putting nothing but high-test fuel in your body, it's amazing how it reacts to the bad stuff.

January 1, 2007

Don't Retire Yet, Brett

     It's time for Brett Favre's annual quandry of whether or not to retire. The Green Bay Packers season ended over the weekend and it looks, at least for the moment, as if the decorated quarterback will call it quits.

  I hope he re-thinks his decision. I have no attachment to the Packers but always have identified with Favre, if only because he and I were born within a three-day period in October of 1969. With the exception of some hard partying in college and in our early 20s, that's probably all we have in common, and I like to think I look a little better at age 37 than Brett does at this point.

    Then again, I haven't been sacked hundreds of times by angry NFL defensive linemen, survived a near-fatal car crash, or overcome anaddiction to painkillers.

    You know you're getting older when pro athletes younger than you are retiring. Tiki Barber is five and a half years younger than me and will be leaving the NFL for television in a few weeks. Herman Moore, a college classmate of mine at the University of Virginia, is two weeks younger than me and has been retired for four years.

     That's why I'm rooting for Favre to keep playing. As long as he remains in the NFL, I won't feel so old

December 13, 2006

Endurance is Out!

     The best part about writing a book is getting to hold that first copy in your hands. I've been fortunate to experience this feeling seven times, most recently this morning, and it never gets old. Core Performance Endurance, the third book I've written with Mark Verstegen, is hot off the presses and I dare say this is the best book we've written.

      Perhaps I should clarify that; after all, picking a favorite book is like picking a favorite child. Our first book, Core Performance, revolutionized the way people train. Our second book, Core Performance Essentials, has the broadest appeal and is the workout I've spent the most time with over the last year. But Core Performance Endurance is the book for runners, cyclists, swimmers, and triathletes - a group I'm trying to be more a part of in 2007. There are so few quality books out there for this crowd, which is why I'm so excited about this book.

     I haven't blogged in 11 days in part because I've been out in Phoenix not only working with Mark on our fourth book - Core Performance Golf, due out in January of 2008 - but also undergoing some tests with Mark's coaches and physical therapists. When you can have elite-level people working on you, well, you've got to jump at the opportunity. I'll write more about that shortly.

     I can't recommend our new book, Core Performance Endurance, enough. Mark was kind enough to let us include a plug for The Fitness Buff Show. It's on page 219 and you can see it HERE as well.

December 2, 2006

One Step Closer to Triathlon...

    I finished the Safety Harbor Duathlon today with a time of 1:05:17. Having never run a multi-sport event, I have nothing to compare it to, though I feel pretty good about the time. I finished sixth in the always-competitive 35-to-39 category, just 35 seconds out of third place and one second (ugh) behind the fifth-place finisher.

    Getting off the bike after an 11-mile ride and trying to run a modest 1-mile third leg was a lot tougher than I expected. Endurance-wise, I felt pretty good, but my legs felt like they each weighed 100 pounds. Triathletes tell me you get over this feeling after the first mile or so, but I was thankful the third leg ended at this point.

     A year ago, I watched this race as a spectator, and felt like a slug since the Philippe Park race site is within walking distance of my home. I'm glad I'm acting more as a participant than a spectator in the "game of life" these days, though I know I have my work cut out to compete in the Escape from Ft. Desoto triathlon on April 14.

     The Safety Harbor Duathlon is not an easy race to put on, what with a tight course in the middle of Pinellas County. Kudos to race director Suzanne Henslee and her army of volunteers. If you see "Zanna" around this week, be sure to give her a pat on the back.