www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Exercise!

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado

According to the 2004 documentary, Super Size Me, 60% of Americans undertake no form of exercise... Of course, always use common sense before engaging in any activity or lifestyle change that can affect your health or medical condition - check with your doctor or health practitioner before relying on my (or anybody else's!) web page!

Me on top of Mount Morrison above Red Rocks Amphitheatre

1,000 Times up Mount Morrison!   In the top photo above, if you look carefully, you can just see the top of Mount Morrison (with its nearby broadcast antenna) towering over the people exercising.   Although I've been to Red Rocks many dozens of times (for concerts and bicycle rides) I had never done much exercising there. However, just above the Red Rocks Amphitheatre is 7,881 foot (2,402 metres) Mount Morrison. Starting from the southern trailhead, accessed via Highway 74, there's a total of about 2,000 feet (609 metres) of overall elevation gain each time the mountain is climbed.   On November 8th, 2021 I completed my one thousandth climb up Mount Morrison for a total of 2 million feet (609,600 metres) of elevation gain and 3,800 miles (6,115.5 kilometres) of distance! At the time I was just a few days away from my 66th birthday having used the mountain (but not Red Rocks) for my regular exercise routine. Since then I have continued to exercise on Mount Morrison and many other trails throughout the immediate area.

Click Here for a YouTube video of the Manitou Springs excercise incline...

John A. McDougall, M.D in his book, The McDougall Program Twelve Days to Dynamic Health, copyright 1990, had a lot to say about exercise:

The Addictive Effects of Exercise

"I hope that all of you are making exercise a part of your new approach to life. Even if you - like the Watermans [Sam and Sally Waterman are a northern California couple who adopted McDougall's program and whose progress was tracked throughout his book] - have never exercised much before, you'll soon find the balance of pleasure and pain starting to shift n the direction of pleasure. Of course, exercise is good for your stretching muscles and loosening joints, and if you choose the right exercise it can be entertaining too. But there's also a chemical reason for the pleasure it brings. Exercise causes your tissue cells to release endorphins, a natural narcotic related to morphine that is not only soothing but safe. The only thing it makes you addicted to is more exercise."
p. 157

What Form of Exercise Should You Do?

"You have probably heard that exercise can be classified as either aerobic or anaerobic. The distinction between the two is not a clear one. Aerobic activities are ones that require a great consumption of oxygen on the exerciser's part. Examples include walking, jogging, swimming, bicycling, dancing and rowing. Anaerobic exercise refers to exertions that do not require a large, continuing supply of newly breathed oxygen to perform. Examples are sprint running, weight lifting, and carrying heavy objects - most manual labor, in fact."

"There's some evidence to suggest that aerobic exercise is better for the heart and the circulatory system. Anaerobic exercise, on the other hand, builds muscle mass and power and that too has its advantages. Men and women who go in for exercise that increase strength, like body building, not only get a better-looking body from the work but get also a better functioning one."
p. 71

Click Here for a YouTube video Michael Sandler running long distance without shoes!

Click Here for a YouTube video of a group exercise session at Red Rocks Amphithetre, Colorado...

Click Here for a YouTube video of me jogging through the snow...

Running

Okay, let me express my bias about running - I've always loved it! For me, I think it started
in junior high when our coach gave us the option of either playing football, during the daily
sports period, or running the perimeter of the field for exercise. I, and one other guy (out of
a class of about 30 students) decided to develop our running endurance, much to the disappointment
of our coach. I've been jogging and running, ever since, and don't regret it! Plus, now that
I'm an elder I'm still regularly running (albeit not as fast as I used to!) but can't help notice
that there aren't too many my age playing football!

Silent Running
by Daniel Duane, Sierra, July/August 2011 p. 36 September 4, 2009

"'Natural Selection has designed us - from the structure of our brain cells to the structure of our big toe - for a career of seasonal journeys on foot,' wrote Bruce Chatwin, the great English travel writer. Not just walking either. Humans, it turns out, are among the animal kingdom's great natural endurance runners, evolution having left us so hairless and riddled with sweat glands that we shed heat remarkably quickly and constantly. We're also blessed with enormous Achilles tendons that act like springs; another tendon keeps our heads from bobbling as we run."

"How will I know if running is my exercise?"

"... Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility. It makes no sense in a world of spaceships and supercomputers to run vast distances on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense. The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of their being -- a call that asks who they are ..."

Exercise Studies Find Good News For The Knees
by Allison Aubrey - All Things Considered, NPR
September 4, 2009

"Common perception has it that exercise can be hard on the joints. But several recent studies suggest that moderately intense, weight-bearing exercises - including long-distance running - do not increase the risk of arthritis. "Physician Harvey Simon, 67, has been running for over three decades. Back in college, they called him 'Gazelle,' despite his somewhat ungainly stride: "'I'm reasonably lean, but I'm uncoordinated and clumsy. My running stride is something awful to look at,' he says, laughing. 'But I haven't missed a day of running since Oct. 30, 1978.' "No Worse For The Wear "After clocking a little over 100,000 miles over the years, Simon says his knees and hips are no worse for the wear. "I may be lucky, I may be genetically gifted in that way, but my joints are fine," he says. "The questions remain: Is Harvey Simon an anomaly? Isn't all that pounding bound to do some damage?

"Every time a runner strikes the ground he or she applies 8 times their body weight to the joints, says Simon. If you take a 150-pound person, each stride will impose a load of about 1,200 pounds to the body.

"'That goes from the foot to the knee to the hip and spine, etc,' says Simon. And that's a lot of weight. 'Over the course of a mile - that's tons and tons of impact,' he says. 'So it's understandable that people suspect that may be harmful to joints.'

"But the most recent studies are showing that for many people, running isn't harmful. In an analysis for Harvard Men's Health Watch, in one long-term study of about 1200 residents of the town of Framingham, Mass., researchers looked for a correlation between arthritis and exercise:

"'People who were physically active were no more likely to develop symptoms of arthritis or x-ray evidence of arthritis than people who were sedentary,' says Simon.

"Exercise For Healthy Joints

"And then there's a study from Stanford University that tracked a group of long-distance runners for 20 years. Researchers compared their health to others of similar age who did much less exercise. They expected to find a lot of problems with the runners' knees, but it turns out they had healthier joints at the end of the study, says Dr. Eliza Chakravarty, a professor of rheumatology at the Stanford School of Medicine.

"'It does sort of negate the idea that running is universally bad on the knees,' says Chakravarty.

"There are, however, some clear risk factors for osteoarthritis related to physical activity, says Steven Blair, an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina.

"'The primary predictor of joint injury is a previous injury,' he says. 'You may have damaged something as a kid that then causes you trouble later on.'

"Studies show that if you suffer an injury in a shoulder or knee you're 2 to 5 times more likely to develop arthritis in that joint.

"Other risk factors include weight, age, or alignment problems. For example, if one leg is shorter than the other this can put unusual stress on the joints.

"There are all sorts of individual exceptions, says Blair, and it's important for everyone to be careful and not over-do it.

"But increasingly, he says, the studies are reminding us that the joints were made for moving."

Shoes

Okay, I'm not a shoe salesman and I don't normally endorse many products. But, I had an interesting experience with these Vasque trail shoes that I thought I might share; Because of a good online deal I bought a number of these particular Vasque shoes as they were very similar to a pair I bought at a brick-and-mortar store a few years earlier - that initial pair having fitted me well in addition to lasting a reasonable amount of time. Anyway, the first pair of Vasques, not shown here, lasted me about 80 roundtrips up Mt. Morrison near my house west of Denver - not a great distance but still pretty good considering the difficult terrain. Mt. Morrison, itself, isn't a pristine hike because it's so close to town (you can hear motorcycles and the adjacent highway noise almost constantly up the entire mountain), but it's a pretty good exercise workout since there's about 2,000 feet (609 metres) of elevation gain for a round-trip distance of about 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometres). So, I get some pretty good exercise thanks to a steep grade and difficult terrain. In fact the terrain is even more difficult than can be imagined because there's so much loose and sharp rock most of the way - playing havoc with ankles, leg muscles, and the soles of my trail shoes.

My first pair of Vasque trail shoes lasted about 80 trips up and down Morrison for a total distance of over 300 miles (482 kilometres). The second pair, shown in this picture, were of almost identical construction and color as the first yet lasted me 136 trips up and down the same trail! And, at the time of this photo (on the 2nd day of January, 2011), the second pair still had another half dozen trips left in them but were worn so smooth I thought it better to wait until the snow was gone before using them again... That second pair, in effect, were good for about 516 miles (830 kilometres), or about 70% more distance for identical materials and construction over the exact same terrain! I have no idea how there could be such a difference in the same manufacture of a shoe but hope somebody might write with some insight! Both the first and second pair, of course, were glued back together at times (if you look carefully you can see a glimmer of the glue I applied seeping out of the cracks on the sole the old pair in the photo) until the soles actually tore or ripped off - making one leg shorter than the other and requiring the disposal of a very slippery pair of trail shoes!

All of these shoes were used equally over different seasons with the winter probably being the "softest" test since the snow protects them from the sharp rock, etc. In fact, the third set of Vasques, shown in this photo, had their inaugural run in the snow on that second day in January. Later in the year, if I'm still exercising on Morrison, I'll report back on how well pair # 3 held up - time will tell!

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