TRIATHLETES ROCK, BABY!...

“You are old, Father William,” the young man said,

“And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head…

Do you think at your age, it is right?”

“In my youth,” Father William replied to his son,

I feared it might injure the brain;

But now that I’m perfectly sure I have none,

Why, I do it again and again!”

“You are old”, said the youth, “as I mentioned before,

And have grown most uncommonly fat;

“Yet you turned a back somersault in at the door…

Pray what is then reason for that?”

“In my youth,” said the sage, as he shook his gray locks,

“I kept all my limbs very supple

By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—

Allow me to sell you a couple?”

“You are old,” said the youth, “and your jaws are too weak,

For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak…

Pray, how did you manage to do it?”

“In my youth,” said his father, “I took to the law,

And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,

Has lasted the rest of my life.”

“You are old,” said the youth, “one would hardly suppose

That your eye was as steady as ever;

Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose…

What made you so awfully clever?”

“I have answered three questions, and that is enough,”

Said his father; “don’t give yourself airs!

Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?

Be off, or I’ll kick you downstairs!”

----------------------------------

Periodically, throughout my life, as the needlessly somber chaos we call daily life presses in a bit too acutely, I find myself returning to one of my favorite authors, Lewis Carroll, for a refreshing reminder that we human beings make entirely too much of this virtual fart in the Kozmik Storm called ‘human experience’. At such times, more often than not, there is invariably a perfectly sensible bit of delightful nonsense lurking in the pages of his works that instantly effects a comforting Zen-like flash of renewed clarity amidst all the crap and ordure of our little meaningless squabbles, conflicts, arguments, and irritations, with the efficient predictability of an atmospheric rocket at Max Q. Lewis Carroll has, therefore, functioned substantially as one of the major Zen Masters in my own life over the years and I find myself always swinging back to orbit his brilliantly humorous ironies like an eccentric earth satellite off apogee.

The above poem is a particular favorite, for it reaches out to touch us all (gently, but with the impact of a 2 kg sledgehammer), whether we realise it or not, for we are all inexorably aging with each sidereal swing. Because the rate of what I call ‘age acceleration’ is relatively constant, we are typically not aware of this irritatingly persistent and unstoppable phenomenon. In basic physics (remember that ‘useless” subject you hated so much, back in school?), one of the basics of physics doctrine is that once acceleration ceases and a steady state is reached, the forces of gravity are figuratively neutralized, relative to the linear vector you are headed on. In aerospace medicine (most commonly in ground school), this was practically demonstrated to our students in a device known as the ‘Barony Chair’, a simple chair mounted on a low-friction circular bearing, the purpose being to teach the important lesson that you can’t always trust your proprioceptic (more commonly known as ‘seat-of-the-pants”) sensory apparatus to keep you informed about what your aircraft is doing (the lesson being that, given the choice, ALWAYS trust your instruments and not your senses when lacking other important informational inputs for decision making in the cockpit).

In the Barony Chair, a student pilot is blindfolded and sits perfectly upright while he is gradually spun around in circles, faster and faster. Finally, the rate of spin stabilises (the acceleration having been deliberately stopped at a particular rate) and a steady rate of speed is maintained. To the blindfolded student, it feels as if he is no longer turning, since the motion-measuring cilia in the body’s vestibular apparatus are no longer registering an accelerative change.

To further demonstrate the practical effects of acceleration and inertia, the student is then asked to bend 90 degrees at the waist at this steady rate of horizontal spin and invariably registers considerable surprise to find that his brain suddenly feels as if it is trying to tear off his shoulders, due to the laws of mass, inertia, and motion that obtain.

So too are the effects of age, since one doesn’t feel aging perceptively on a discernible daily level. All too usually, one simply wakes up one morning, looks in the mirror and notes with appalling dismay that the 20s-something bloom of vigorous health one took for granted has suddenly and mysteriously been transmogrified into a vaguely less satisfactory state. More importantly, no matter how religiously you observe the Prime Edicts of good living, it’s going to happen to everyone, sooner or later.

In my case, having been early-on tuned in to an acute awareness of the importance of good health (i.e. good nutrition, physical and mental exercise, and abstinence from unhealthy habits such as smoking and/or substance abuse) by my medical work, I saw this pending crisis well in advance and built upon my high school swim team interests (I swam Breast, Butterfly, and Individual Medley…although I was regrettably a lousy Butterflier, due to a semi-gracelessness that typically became apparent when I used the dolphin kick) and aquatics activities (I went through the National Aquatics School program, was a Red Cross WSI, swimming and small watercraft instructor, and worked as an aquatics counselor at summer camp) to branch out into sports that have sustained m y health over the past decades. As an adolescent disciple of the Canadian 5BX program and a big fan of Dr. Ken Cooper (the early guru of aerobic medicine), I quickly embraced bicycling, running, and other forms of cardiovascular and cardiopulmonary exercise (these being principally mountaineering, climbing, and ski-touring, since the effects of altitude experienced on mountain summits dovetailed beautifully with my early interest in the medical physiology of altitude) as important parts of my daily routine.

With pre-existing strong philosophical affinities for brilliant radical economists such as E.F. Schumacher and Ivan Illich, the many benefits of bicycling (philosophical as well as physical) were a natural for me to enthusiastically adopt. Further, being conveniently located near Lake Merritt’s 3.5 mile perimeter running course (in Oakland, CA, while working at nearly Highland General Hospital), a daily run at noon was perfect exercise and convenient as well. Serious weight work (for muscle toning effects, not necessarily for bulking up) came a bit later, but I quickly found it wasn’t as easy for me to end up like some bloated muscle beach freak, since apparently I was genetically programmed to remain lean and wiry. It took me a while to understand that I simply would not gain an Auh-nuld Schwartenheiser physique, no matter how hard I trained, so I finally accepted this fact and settled for muscle toning, rather than the muscle mass augmentation (and this was LONG before steroid abuse even became known as a hazardous and risky short-cut to abnormal muscular development).

It wasn’t until I spent a considerable number of years in the Middle East that I finally put it all together and combined swimming, bicycling, and running to get into triathlons. In Saudi Arabia I was fortunate enough to hook up with an inspirational (and incredibly sensual) South African (of Boer ancestry) nurse who ran 60 mile marathons back home (Durban to JoBerg), and I also worked for a cardiologist who spent a major part of his off-time working out (he had begun this activity back in Vietnam, as a way to increase his self-defense potential against VC assaults in Saigon bars on R&R). The nurse I ran with also helped me get into half-marathon shape, which was taking things to a new and fulfilling level for me. Before I left Saudi permanently, I was doing a daily 10 mile bicycle sprint, a 4 mile training maintenance run, and a mile swim every day (before and after work); on Sundays (Saturday is the Islamic day of special religious worship) I ran an 11 mile course out in the desert—sometimes with the Riyadh Third Herd Hashers. The occasional triathlon ended up being sandwiched in between the other events.

Granted, I was a terrible triathlete, not being in the same category of super-achievement as the big names in international competitions, but for me the important thing wasn’t as much winning as it was achieving a steady state of rock-solid physical and cardiopulmonary fitness, a conviction prompted by my understanding of the importance of basic cardiopulmonary (aerobic) fitness in ordinary daily life. Besides, I had seen FAR too many cases of terminal COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) in my clinical career, and helped open up (or replace) up far too many coronary occlusions (cardiac bypass surgery--‘CABBAGE’, as we used to quaintly refer to it as—for CABGS, Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery) to ever want to end up on the patients’ unhappy side of a gurney rail.

In the Middle East (Southwest Asia, as the military persist in designating that geographic region) of the 80s and early 90s, you had to be a bit more imaginative in creating a meaningful and fulfilling personal life for yourself, so in addition to the occasional embassy soirées in Riyadh, USMTM beer bashes, and defense contractor compound parties, these activities helped me keep both a sound body and a sane outlook despite the worst effects of the frustratingly constipated mind-set that is Wahabbist Suuni Islam.

A further (and unanticipated) benefit of being in top shape was, I found, substantial enhancement of sex, since there’s nothing like the formidably enhanced lower pelvic muscle tone of a well conditioned woman to enhance bedroom gymnastics by an order of magnitude! Yow, mama! A quality not often referenced or explored in most bodies of conventional literature, likely due to constraints of modesty and discretion (fortunately, both low on my list of attributes), triathlete level sex can often be mind-blowing in its pleasure power and orgasmic impact. Since the chief erotic mechanics of the sex act depend largely on stamina, endurance, movement, and pressure gradient (damn!…that sounds almost clinical, doesn’t it?) for their PQ factors (‘pleasure quotient), sex between individuals who have achieved triathlete level fitness is probably well beyond the ability of any non-athletically inclined individual to imagine. Long story short, it was even better than it had been with a former girlfriend, back in Berkeley, who had spent a life studying dance (i.e. ballet). Erg! Yowp! Gaak!

While in China, after leaving the Kingdom permanently, I was thankfully able to stay in shape with long runs through the beautiful (if often smog-filled) rural areas near Taipei, but only after I came back to the USA in the mid-to-late 90s did I manage to get back into a few local triathlon contests again. Regrettably, for reasons that I don’t understand, a mysterious problem with lower extremity muscle cramping that had been vaguely discernible in high school now became a major problem, eventually ruling out any regular aquatic sport. Since swimming is an important ‘leg’ of the triathlon, that ended my activity in this area permanently, much to my everlasting regret.

Today, I have to be content with bicycling (commuting to the office 5 days a week), running (a 2 mile course at noon around the State Capitol), muscle toning (using a home ‘Ow-Flex’ machine), and sporadic weekend events involving kayaking, mountain summiting (in season), and in winter, ski-touring and informal mushing (with the dogs).

It’s enough to keep me in shape, but I can still feel the deadly effects of the aging process that will not be denied, gradually encroaching as the years go by. Little aches here, a few small pains there. Allergies and sinus problems likely due to living and bicycling in a heavily polluted urban area, etc. One thing that particularly rankles me is the fact that whole cohorts of environmental do-gooders (such as the American Lung Association, at al) are constantly encouraging people to get on bicycles to help alleviate dependency upon automobile transport, with its noxious car exhaust problems; the plain and simple fact they choose to overlook, however, is that when your aerobic exercise level goes up proportionate to the intensity of your aerobic activity, your minute volume (amount of air breathed per unit of time) rises dramatically. This means that active exercisers in such smoggy areas as this are breathing substantially greater amounts of extremely bad air than individuals who are indolent, tending to be low physical activity level recidivists. Over a period of time, this respiratory ‘Catch-22’ can have significant adverse health effects—especially now that recent studies have finally demonstrated conclusively and undeniably to all the heads-in-sand nay-sayers that ultra-micro particulate soot debris (sub-micron size) from diesel exhausts can be entrained into the coronary arteries from the lung’s alveolar capillaries (thus contributing substantially to the development of possible coronary occlusions not cause-related to specific and/or pre-existing genetic risk factors) through ordinary respiratory function. Scary for die-hard exercisers, eh? I think so.

At any rate, being a person who has been varying focused on medical physiology for most of his life, and despite the fact that any pretense at my being a triathlete (and there never was much, anyway) is now at an end, I still have a particular affinity for the wonderful air of our planet that, along with water, is the enabling sustenance behind all earthly biological life. I love breathing it (when it’s clear and pure, as one finds it on a high mountain summit), flying through it (as a dedicated back-seater in whatever is going up at the moment), watching it (such as when sea birds use thermal gradients and coastal ground effects to soar into the sky like small biologically powered gliders), and writing about it (QED the above).

I HATE it when yahoo dimbulbs (author’s note: a “yahoo” by accepted definition is a brain-cell deficit, awareness-challenged individual of low proximal perceptivity and virtually non-existent situational awareness; this term was in common circulation LONG before the internet entity YAHOO came along and co-opted the name….the term ‘dimbulb’ is sufficiently self-explanatory) persist in filling it full of unhealthy pollution (whether from excessive bovine methane production on mega-farms or through rampant emissions abuse by vehicular transportation) in selfishly myopic questing after obscenely large corporate profits.

But that's life among our species, isn't it? As one ecobiologist recently put it: "Human beings claim they love nature, but evidence suggests they don't respect it!" Too true. Too true!