Moral Relativism

Coincidentally, before I sat down to post part 3 of this drug series today, I saw Matt Lauer's interview with Floyd Landis. It was just painful to watch.

Lauer opened with his fastball, then repeatedly asked different variations of the same question: why should we believe you? Landis couldn't give a single straightforward answer and looked completely unconvincing. Heck, I felt myself squirming for Landis - I can't even imagine how defeated and ashamed he must feel. I actually felt bad for the guy.

On the other hand, maybe he's just getting the treatment he deserves.

I'm cutting the intro short, though - because this section is already over 1000 words long. I swear, sometimes I'm too analytical for my own good. Let's just move on to the next question...

Q: Would you ever use performance enhancing drugs?

A: This is the issue that prompts everyone to get on a pedestal and preach about the morality of athletics. Always play fair, don’t break the rules, don’t cheat, yada, yada, yada. But unless you’re Craig (an actual preacher), I’m not listening.

For obvious reasons, the most high-profile steroid stories revolve around each sport’s biggest stars. But for every superstar who may be juicing, there are thousands of younger (sadly, even down to high-schoolers), less talented athletes who confront the same question. Except in these cases, the outcomes of their decisions don’t simply pad the record books, but dramatically influence their livelihood in their chosen sport.

Imagine you’re a 29-year-old minor league baseball player making $25K per year and batting .240. You hit the weight room every day and train like a maniac, but your strength has seemingly plateaued.

You’ve played professional baseball for 10 years but never been called up to the majors. You don’t have any other significant career options that can support your wife and baby after you retire, because you’ve spent every waking minute working on your game. You know that if you don’t get called up before age 30, you probably never will be.

You also know teammates who started juicing and saw dramatic improvements in their performance. You realize that if you use the same types of low-potency steroids that many major leaguers use, you can maintain a higher intensity level in your training, and your strength will noticeably increase.

It doesn’t take much. A handful of those 350-ft fly outs would become 375-ft home runs. Send just one more ball per week into the bleachers, and your batting average could climb to .270. That would probably be enough for a call-up to the big team. And a salary increase to $300K. All with relatively low long-term health risk if done carefully.

Finally, you start seeing those aforementioned teammates - who may have less natural talent than you - getting called up to the majors. There is a trainer hanging around the locker room every day who has told you that he can easily hook you up - all you have to do is ask.

Are you telling me that you wouldn’t have that conversation with him some day? That you wouldn’t give steroids some serious consideration?

The closer you get to breaking through, the more tempting it is to bend the rules. If you’re a national-caliber 10K runner, a mere 45 seconds can determine the difference between missing the Olympic trials, and actually making the team.

Many sub-elite runners toil in obscurity and poverty for years, waiting for one breakthrough race on the national stage that will land them a shoe contract or an invitation to join a sponsored training group. Some runners get tantalizingly close: all it takes is a few seconds per mile over a 5K to make that kind of leap. But if it never comes, they have nothing to fall back on.

Now think of those elite athletes again. If you are a sprinter, what is the margin of victory in a major championship race? In many cases, it’s less than a tenth of a second.

If you could build your strength up enough to run one tenth of a second faster, that translates into significant tangible gain. You could win the 100m instead of finishing fourth. With prize money, sponsor bonuses, and appearance fees for future races, it’s literally a million-dollar decision.

But don’t worry, you won’t have to make your decision alone. Many young athletes are surrounded by like-minded individuals in similar circumstances. This circle of influence can be tremendously powerful, but not always in a beneficial manner.

This time, instead of a baseball player, think of yourself as a 23-year-old sprinter. You’ve never made the 100m finals of a major track meet. You’ve heard for years that the guys who are beating you (again, by a mere tenth of a second) are on the juice. Your longtime coach (who also happens to be your father figure since you never knew your own) has told you that your best chance of making a final is to level the playing field, to use the same weapons the faster runners are using. Otherwise, you’re constantly bringing a knife to a gun fight.

He tells you it’s safe. He tells you its effective. He explains that it's almost impossible to get caught. He tells you your teammates have done it. He tells you it’s the only way. And hey, if you just want to try it, he’s got some in his trunk right now.

I’ll ask again…can you honestly say you wouldn’t be tempted by this?

I’m absolutely certain that every single elite athlete faces this question at some point in their development. What I can’t imagine, though, is how I would respond if I were in that situation.

It’s easy to say, “These are the rules, don’t break them.” It’s much harder to consider all of the factors at play in making such a decision. As much as we like to believe in absolutes, all of us implement our own moral relativism in decisions about our careers and daily activities.

Are you reading this blog at work? Have you ever snuck out early or straggled in late so you could have a longer workout? Have you ever peed in a public area? Sure, these are trite examples, but the point is that nobody follows all the rules, and everybody creates an internal justification for those rules or laws they choose to violate.

For almost all of us, sports are merely a healthy outlet for our physical energy and competitive drive. Recreational athletes regard organized competitions as bastions of honesty and fair play. We wouldn’t think of cutting a corner in a road race, and we wouldn’t dream of contaminating our bodies in hopes of gaining an edge on our competitors.

But for a relative handful of athletes, the stakes are different. If we depended on our 5K time or our overall finishing place in order to support our families or to extend our careers for a couple more years, perhaps our moral compass would skew a few degrees off-center.

So OK, you have your principles. You don’t break the rules. Maybe you would be the one to draw a line in the sand and make the agonizing, career-limiting decision to say no to these ubiquitous temptations to cheat. And in the final analysis, maybe I would, too.

But the decision would be a lot harder than you think.

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Shades of Grey

First, the bad news: That whole breast business from the previous post wasn't really the main theme of this series - it was just an analogy to illustrate the point I was trying to make. But apparently the breast speculation was much more enticing than the discussion about doping, so I've made a mental note that the topic of celebrity breast augmentation could be further explored in this space at some point down the road. After all, this is a full service blog.

However, if you've come back today looking for more boob refernces, I'll save you some time and tell you there aren't any in this post. But I do mention Dutch hookers and shrunken testicles. Intrigued? Then read on to Part 2...

Q: Can’t we just ban all performance enhancing drugs?

A: This is the primary reason why I’ve never had strong feelings against the use of performance enhancing drugs: because it’s impossible to draw a consistent line between what substances should be legal and what shouldn’t be.

We have three major professional sports leagues in America (no, I don't count hockey anymore) along with the NCAA for collegiate athletics, and none of those four organizations have the same list of banned substances. If you're a 19-year-old playing single A baseball, you have a different list than a 19-year-old playing baseball for his college team.

If we're considering Olympic or international sports, who decides what is legal? The host country of the event? What if there is a track meet in Amsterdam – can athletes load up on ecstasy before the event and solicit a prostitute afterwards without any legal repercussions? (And in that case, what’s more dangerous to the athlete’s health – temporarily heightened sensation with sleep alteration, or an STD from the local brothel?)

For American sports, do we just ban drugs that are illegal? Then the government would have to keep up with rapidly changing, highly creative laboratories. That technology gap I mentioned yesterday would come into play again – except in this case, the guys with the slide rules and graph paper also have to deal with bureaucratic red tape and institutional inertia to implement any changes. The bad guys will always be light years ahead of the game. As soon as the Feds outlaw one group of drugs (like anabolic steroids), athletes can turn to something else that isn’t regulated (like HGH).

Plus, some of the most potent drugs are perfectly legal. For instance, EPO is a common blood-boosting medication provided to many cancer patients. Modafinil is the main ingredient in prescription anti-narcolepsy medication. And it’s certainly not against the law to own testosterone-boosting pills – in fact, there is a billion-dollar industry built around it, as testosterone is the primary ingredient in the rapidly developing field of “female vitality” (think Viagra for women) medications. Talk about enhancing performance.

So legality can’t be our litmus test. Do we ban drugs that are harmful? That becomes a personal liberty issue, just like alcohol prohibition in the early 1900s. If someone wants to destroy his kidneys, shrivel his nuts, lose his hair, and have a back full of acne while experiencing constant rage and paranoia, that’s his Constitutional right (if not exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind). Major league baseball didn’t care that Mickey Mantle drank himself to an untimely death, and effectively looked the other way during the cocaine epidemic in that was rampant in the sport in the late 1980s.

Besides, it’s possible for any high school kid to walk into his neighborhood GNC store or surf the Internet and stock up on hundreds of products that are just as harmful as steroids over the long term. Think about Mark McGwire and androstenedione – Big Mac is pretty much considered a villain now, but that particular product was available over-the-counter at the time he used it. The farthest he had to travel for his juice was the local shopping center. If these drugs are so hazardous, how come they are easier for a teenager to buy than a pack of cigarettes or some sleazy skin magazine? Should players be punished for using a supplement they bought at the mall?

Finally, who determines what drugs are performance enhancing? Andro has since been put on the banned list – but what about creatine? Or Sudafed? Or the painkillers that many runners pop like candy? (Remember the commercial where a woman made it to the finish line of a 5K only because of all the Alleve she took? She even handed them out to other runners during the race. Could they make a similar commercial like that today with a bunch of women injecting testosterone into each other's backsides? I promise not to skip through that one on my TiVo.) How about caffeine pills or antacid tablets? All of those products provide a clear performance benefit, but are harmful if taken in high doses over a long period of time. How many of you ultra runners out there would like to have your Tylenol, NoDoz or Tums prohibited during your next 100-miler?

I once ran the Boston Marathon while suffering from a hellacious bout of the flu. If it wasn’t for the megadoses of Sudafed and Advil I took before and during the race, there’s no way I would have finished (or even started, for that matter). If the USOC had taken a urine sample afterwards, I would have failed, because most cold medications are on the banned substance list. While I obviously wasn’t trying to win the race, I definitely benefited from the performance enhancing properties of those meds. (Um...nobody from the BAA reads this, right? Because there’s no way I’m giving my medal back.)

To further complicate things, why are we merely focused on things that go into our bodies? What about all of the equipment changes that have revolutionized nearly every sport? Is it safe - for the server or the recipient - to swing a racket that sends a tennis ball 130 mph? If you are a blood doper riding a bike that is capable of going downhill at 80mph, are you more likely to suffer from kidney failure, or a career-ending spinal injury in a crash?

How about oxygen-deprivation tents that can boost someone’s red blood cell count over a period of months, just as effectively as blood doping? Why is doping wrong but living in a $30,000 high-elevation tent acceptable? At that point, we’re merely splitting hairs based on the method of blood cell production.

The point I’m making (over and over) is that banning various substances is a very slippery slope, without much consistency or logic driving it. You can’t simply have a blanket zero-tolerance policy. Even assuming - which we can’t - that these drugs could consistently be detected, there will never be agreement on where to draw the line.

As for this post, I’m drawing the line here. To be continued next time.

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Suspicious Mind

Imagine me sitting here wearing suspenders and giant eyeglasses, speaking in a raspy voice – I’m in Larry King mode.

Me: Thousand Oaks, hello. What’s your question?

Thousand Oaks: I was wondering what your take is on the whole drug situation in sports.

Me: Oy vey. Pull up a chair.

I’ve been terribly reluctant to tackle the whole drug issue, for a few reasons:

1. It’s simply exhausting in scope. Asking someone to address the drug issue is like asking Anderson Cooper “So how are things in the South since Hurricane Katrina?” It’s just an enormous story that constantly evolves from one week to the next, with countless angles and thousands more stories than can ever be told.

2. Far better writers have written much more eloquently about this issue in magazines and Internet columns. Believe me - there are a lot of sportswriters I admire, and nearly every one of them has analyzed the drug issue from one aspect or another. In other words, if you want to read drug stories, you can probably find 10,000 good ones from Google in about 0.034 seconds.

3. On many levels, I don’t know how I feel about using performance enhancing drugs. It’s fashionable to take a moral stand against them, but the boundaries can become very blurred. I think equally good arguments can be made either way.

Honestly, I planned on staying out of the whole mess. But then Floyd Landis happened. And Justin Gatlin happened. And it just felt like a good time to say something.

So I started typing. And typing. Before I looked up, I had 1500 words down. And I was just getting rolling.

Now instead of one post, this is going to be a series – maybe three, maybe five, who knows. (I reserve the right to interrupt the series if any Beyonce-related musings spring to mind. You know how this blog works.) There’s no way I’ll cover every facet of the issue here, but hopefully I’ll put some observations on the table and highlight a point you hadn’t considered before.

Here’s the format I’ll use: Each post will start with a common question, after which I’ll discuss why the answers aren’t as obvious as you’d think. If you want to post follow-up questions here, feel free to do so – that could easily lead to another post.

Enough preamble. Like the Black-Eyed Peas say, Leeeeeet’s get it started!

Q: How many top athletes use drugs?

A: There’s no way of knowing. My runner friends and I often speculate about which athletes are “using” in the same manner that college guys muse about which actresses have fake breasts. For every case that is overwhelmingly certain (like Barry Bonds or Pamela Anderson), there are scores of people who appear enhanced but may just be naturally gifted (Lance Armstrong, Lindsay Lohan, Deena Kastor, Tyra Banks, Bernard Lagat, Courtney Cox…I could go on and on. In fact, this could be a whole separate post, comparing famous athletes to famous breasts. I’m filing that thought away for later.)

Unfortunately, there will NEVER be any way of knowing for sure which athletes are using drugs. If you think Hollywood plastic surgeons are secretive, try uncovering information on a BALCO-type lab (there are probably hundreds out there) without any tips to help you.

Rigorous testing doesn’t clarify the matter. Sure, Marion Jones can say she’s never tested positive, but anyone with basic laboratory knowledge understands what a low threshold that is. For every drug that can be specifically tested, there are probably ten other drugs that can mask the presence of that first drug. The technology gap is enormous – the testers are like a handful of guys with slide rules and graph paper trying to keep pace with Microsoft and Intel.

So clean test results are pretty much useless. On the other hand, what else can an athlete do besides take test after test after test and pass them all? In Every Second Counts, Lance Armstrong describes in painstaking detail how the testers knock on his door at all hours of the day and night, any day of the year. He’s the most frequently drug-tested athlete ever, and he’s never tested positive. Why shouldn’t we believe him?

The main reason guys like Landis and Gatlin get caught is because they or their “handlers” do something foolish, like getting greedy or forgetting to cover their tracks. It doesn’t mean they are they only guys out there using – it just means they were the only ones who screwed up enough to get caught.

Let me put it this way: among high-profile professional athletes, there is nobody – NOBODY – whose name I would be surprised to hear as a drug user. Especially with runners. Any sprinter or distance runner at the world-class level could be Demi Moore (fake, but impressive) or Teri Hatcher (real, and spectacular). Cyclists and triathletes are fair game, too. To think otherwise is simply ignorant.

It’s just part of the landscape of sports now: if you are the best at something, or if you do something unexpected, you automatically come under suspicion.

And we’ll leave it at that for today. Look for Part 2 tomorrow.

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My Josie

“Yeah my girlfriend…
she’s so smart and independent, I don’t think she needs me –
quite half as much as I know I need her-
I wonder why there’s not another guy that she prefers-
And when I feel like giving up like my world is falling down…-
I see her pretty face, and it takes me away to a better place and –
I know that everything, know that everything, know that everything, everything’s gonna be fine.”
Blink-182, “Josie”

One of the most frequent questions I’m asked in comments or e-mails is whether my wife reads this blog.

The query typically isn’t asked in the context of “Wow, you’re a talented writer - she should be proud to have you around.” Rather, it always seems to have an unstated implication like “Dude - you have some strange issues. You could get into big trouble if she knew the things you write about.”

You know, like the way I’m enthralled by Beyonce videos, or how I’ve said training for a triathlon is very much like having an affair, or why I feel compelled to stay up past midnight watching seven recorded hours of the National Spelling Bee. Things like that.

The answer is yes, she’s very aware of everything that goes on here. Truthfully, there’s no way on Earth I could do something like this without her knowing about it. She’s wicked smart. And I’m not good at being sneaky. So there’s not very much that gets past her.

Thankfully, she’s about the most understanding and supportive person I’ve ever known. She always goes along for the ride, even when she sees me travel down one crazy path or another.

I figure it must be something like watching your kids play on the high bars at the playground: you realize you can’t keep them away, and you know there’s a decent chance that things could turn out badly. So you just stay close by and provide help if they ask for it, and figure if they fall and hurt themselves at least you’ll be there to help pick them up and comfort them afterwards.

She had every right to ask for a refund after we got married, because in many ways – athletic and otherwise - I barely resemble the guy who stood at the altar with her. When I trained for my first marathon in college, it was basically a lark. She had no indication that for the next dozen years she’d have to put up with me traveling to several marathons a year, running up and down the sides of faraway mountains, or waking up in the dark every weekend to train for ultras.

Yet that’s the course we’ve charted: me coming up with some wild idea, her keeping me grounded and realistic. It’s very much a give-and-take thing, except, um…well, I’m usually the one doing most of the taking. But I absolutely need her to keep me under control – because if she gave me enough rope to do all the things I imagine, there’s no question I would end up hanging myself. And then you wouldn’t have this blog to read.

Which brings us back to the question at hand. This girl has known me for about 15 years now, and like I said, very little escapes her. So do you think there’s any way she didn’t already know that I was a brooding, obsessive/compulsive, idiosyncratically scatterbrained idiot before I launched this blog? Me neither. But she puts up with me anyway, which seems increasingly amazing as the years roll by.

They say that behind every good man, there is a woman. Sure, that’s true - but any woman can support a good man. It’s the woman who supports a bizarrely flawed man who really deserves special recognition.

I think about that every year at the end of July, as we celebrate our anniversary. I consider myself very lucky. And I know that everything’s gonna be fine.

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Family Milestones - Part 1

The end of July is a big deal for our family. Today I’m writing about reason #1, and the next post will be reason #2.


On Saturday morning, I was awake long before dawn to put in a couple of hours on my bike. There would be no talking myself out of this particular workout, and this is why:


It’s my son’s eighth birthday cake, made by my wife. It goes with the shark theme for the pool party we had at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

I’ve written before about my wife’s skills when it comes to making cakes. This shark was no exception – it was crazy delicious. Here’s how attached I become to these cakes: every time we have a birthday party, I find some way to oversee the slicing of the pieces to all of the kids, to make sure they are small enough that we have lots of leftovers afterwards. (By the way, I graduated from college more than ten years ago.)

Since there’s no turning down these culinary delights, I always make sure to get in a good workout on the morning of a birthday party. The cake seems to taste even better if I feel like I’ve earned those extra calories.

Luckily, my wife usually makes enough to spare, because we also have a cool family tradition of having birthday cake for breakfast on the morning after parties. (When it comes to cool family traditions, we have some pretty great ones.)

So I had my share of shark cake at the birthday party. And believe me, it was certainly worth riding 30 miles in the dark.

***

Actually, my son’s real birthday was last week. It led to the following conversation one night before he went to bed:

Me: Hey…do you know what you’ll be tomorrow?

Him: I’ll be eight.

Me: I can’t believe it.

Him: Me neither. But I’ll still be the same.

Me: But what about me? I have to learn all kinds of new things. I’ve never had an eight-year-old before. I don’t know anything about eight-year-olds.

Him: You don’t?

Me: Not really. I don’t know as much as you think sometimes.

Him: It’s OK. You’ll be fine.

Me: I know. We both will.


What I didn’t tell him was, I was only half-kidding. I feel like I don’t have a clue about this parenting thing sometimes. It’s like an ultramarathon where each mile poses its own unique challenges, with equally memorable high points and low points along the way. You don’t know exactly what the next ones will bring – you just know that somehow you’re going to keep moving through them.

The birthday parties are like aid stations where you take stock of how far you’ve come, get some encouragement from others who are there to assist you along the way, and shove down as many calories as your system can tolerate. Then you head off down the trail of the upcoming year.

Only in this case, each kid is a one-shot deal. You can’t do the race a second time. If you’re smart, you’ll remember to enjoy the journey, because once you are through it, there is no going back.

So bring on milestone #8, and let’s keep on rolling. I have a feeling it will be a blast.

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Infomercial Madness

Many of you know that my friend Mike and I write a twice-monthly column about running in the Monterey Herald. For the first several months of this blog, I made a habit of linking to those newspaper articles that I kept on my original R&R website.

I haven’t done that for a while now, for two primary reasons:

1) A lot of the ideas for the newspaper column originate on this blog, so if you were to read both articles, you’d notice an awful lot of redundancy. Over time, this blog has become the on-deck circle where articles warm up before stepping up to the Herald’s home plate. (That may be an inaccurate analogy – because I have no idea how many people actually read the Herald stuff. For all I know, there may be just as many who read this blog.)

2) I’ve been extraordinarily slow in getting articles posted to the original R&R site recently. For some reason I make this step way more complicated than it should be, and consequently it’s very easy for me to fall behind.

However, from time to time we’ll come up with something for the paper that hasn’t already been test driven on this blog. That was the case last week. Mike had been recuperating from an injury and started to keep track of all the outlandish infomercials he saw for various fitness products. We took that premise and had some fun with it.

***

The Running Life 7/20/06 : “Infomercial Fitness”


From time to time, both of us have battled recurring injuries. The standard advice injured runners always hear is to take some rest.

Unfortunately, we both happen to be terribly impatient. We get antsy when we can’t go running. So during our “rest” periods, we look to other forms of exercise to stay in shape until we can hit the roads again.

Fortunately we have television access for our indoor cross-training. Whenever we’re pedaling away at a stationary bike or tugging on a rowing machine, we channel surf through the countless infomercials promising a fast lane to fitness. (Unless of course we come across a Girls Gone Wild video, in which case we immediately stop surfing – but not pedaling.)

We’re amazed at how much we didn’t know about fitness before we started watching early morning television. Sure, running is the easiest and fastest way to get in shape, but apparently it isn’t the sexiest.

Now we have some better alternatives. Here then is our money-back guaranteed recommendation for anyone looking to achieve peak physical fitness:

You have a DVD player, right? Buy several DVD’s that you can alternate from day to day in the comfort and privacy of your own home. Monday can be Yoga Booty Ballet, hosted by fitness superstars Teigh and Gillian. Hollywood celebrities use it to flex, firm, and burn. This workout seems primarily aimed at women, but men would certainly enjoy watching Teigh and Gillian work their booties. Like we said, you’re in the privacy of home.

On Tuesday try Chalene’s Turbo Jam Workout. You can lose 10 pounds and 10 inches in 10 days while learning calorie-busting kickboxing and dance moves. And Chalene’s not bad to look at, either.

Wednesday would be the classic, the pioneer: John Basedow’s Fitness Made Simple. John cares about you. Just do John’s workouts and follow John’s nutrition recommendations, and any man will undoubtedly end up looking like John. Single women will land themselves a man that looks like John, so everybody wins.

On Thursday do the Inside and Out 6 Week Body Makeover with Michael Thurmond. You can sleep in a little, too, because you’ll only need 18 minutes for the body sculpting routine. You’ll be able to eat more, exercise less, and get fit - guaranteed. Michael is a master body sculptor who has transformed the bodies of countless celebrities.

Then again, you can work out with real celebrities on the remaining three days of the week.

Supermodel Elle McPherson and less-than-super actor Patrick Duffy are spokespeople for Supreme Pilates. Note that it is “supreme,” meaning it must be way better than that plain old Winsor Pilates crap that Daisy Fuentes sells. But don’t play favorites – give each of them one day of the week. Besides, how exciting would it be to have both Elle and Daisy in your living room? It’s the kind of thing guys dream about.

Don’t think that Sunday is a rest day, because we’ve reserved that day for our favorite workout, Billy Blanks’ Tae Bo Boot Camp. You’ll transform your body and mind, and blast into shape in just 7 days. Have you seen Billy? Would you argue with him? Us either.

So you’ve got your indoor workouts covered. What if you want some fresh air? In that case, we recommend that you park the cars outside and start filling your garage with exercise equipment. No, it’s not “really” outside, but this way you’re protected from the harsh wind and rain. And sunlight.

Sure, it can be quite expensive, but if you are serious about total fitness, you absolutely need this equipment. Start with the Bowflex Extreme, for as little as $20/month. You’ll still be paying for it six years from now, but by then you’ll have the body you always wanted. You’re worth it!

If that’s not your style, how about the Total Gym? In just 6 to 8 minutes a day, you can look like Chuck Norris or Christie Brinkley. All this time, did you think Christie was just naturally beautiful? If it weren’t for the Total Gym, she’d be just as frumpy as the rest of us.

Leave room in the garage for abdominal machines. Those old fashioned sit-ups and crunches are for chumps. Work your abs into a frenzy with the Ab-doer, Ab-blaster, Ab-Lounger, RED (Rotational Exercise Device), or (our favorite) the Torso Tiger. Or if eight minutes per day is too much commitment, just buy the Slendertone Flex Ab-Belt, which you simply wear and go about your daily routine, with no exercise needed.

Got all that? Your exercise regimen is now complete. Oh, wait - there’s one more thing. Read the fine print on all of these revolutionary programs:

Results may vary. Advertised results not typical. You may be less successful. And of course, best results are achieved by using this product along with a consistent program of sensible diet and traditional exercise.

You know, traditional exercise…like running.

Come to think of it, being injured sucks. We’d much rather save our money, and just get back out on the trails and roads.

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Vacation Report, Part 2: Big Trees

OK, one more post about last week’s vacation, then it’s back to business as usual. But just to clarify one point that apparently stood out from the last post – yes, I really did TiVo the World Series of Darts when I was gone, and I really did watch it when I came back. The unintentional comedy of that show is simply off the charts. I’m also following VH1’s World Series of Pop Culture, and with the World Series of Poker currently underway, I’m at risk of developing a World Series of Bedsores on my backside from spending so much time on the couch.

Anyway, back to the running. The second location I ran in was Calaveras Big Trees State Park, at the relatively low altitude of 5000’.

The sequoias here are the largest living things ever created upon the Earth. The park today stands as a monument to the majesty of nature, and the wonder of these breathtaking trees. Unfortunately, it also bears witness to the colossal damage that humans inflicted upon the trees before they became protected by early conservationists such as John Muir and Robert Johnson in the late 1800s. So running through the main grove elicits some conflicting feelings, as I’ll describe later.

From where we were staying, it was less than a half-mile to a fire road that provides a side entrance to the park. The fire road stretches for another mile into the heart of Big Trees Park, before connecting with a single track that stretches between the two primary sequoia groves.

I took one branch of the trail for about one and a half miles to the North Grove, which is the main visitor destination of the park. But in the dawn of early morning, I was the only person there. Everything around me was silent, except for the whistle of a light breeze in the high treetops.


It’s impossible to portray with words exactly how imposing the giant sequoias are. The dimensions they reach are simply mind-boggling: many of them grow over 300 feet tall, and stretch more than 30 feet across their diameter. Many of them still have a 16’ diameter as high as 50 feet above the base of the tree. They would be roughly the same height and weight as an ocean freighter standing on its nose. One signpost on the trail points out a fallen branch lying in the brush – the branch alone is as big as the trunk of a full-grown oak tree.

Even pictures don’t do nearly enough justice to the enormous stature of these trees. Unfortunately, the most telling examples come from human misconduct through the years. Some of the destruction was rooted in good intentions, while other damage was merely negligent.

The centerpiece of the North Grove is known simply as the Big Stump. It is the remains of the first giant sequoia to be discovered in this forest. A bear hunter named Augustus Dowd encountered the tree while tracking a grizzly bear in 1852, and word soon spread about the grove of “monster trees” high in the Sierras. Although Dowd argued for preservation of the tree, less than one year later it was felled by speculators.


Perhaps the best depiction of the size of this tree was what happened after its demise. At various times over the years since 1853, the stump was used as a dance floor, and a bowling alley and bar were built on top of the fallen trunk. Today - 170 years too late - the stump and trunk are left to rest in peace.

Many people have seen pictures of cars passing through a carved out tree. In the 1880s, the Wawona Tree Tunnel was carved from a tree in Yosemite National Park. Shortly thereafter, the caretakers of Big Trees Park created a similar tree to attract attention (and tourist interest) further north to this area.


This tree was selected because it already had a huge fire scar at its base, and the tunnel was cut through it. And while it’s very cool to run through the middle of a tree, the publicity stunt came at a steep price: the tree can no longer support growth in its upper half, and the hollowing leaves it especially vulnerable to fire.

The most graphic illustration of negligent destruction to a tree lies further up the trail, at a sequoia known as the Mother of the Forest. In 1854, speculators stripped the bark off the trunk, and reassembled the bark at various conventions and fairs in the eastern United States to demonstrate the size of the fabled giants to skeptics.


Unable to transport nutrients and without its natural defenses, the tree deteriorated for many years, and fell victim to fire in 1908. Today a blackened remnant is all that remains from the once majestic tree – and if you look closely, you can still see the horizontal scars from the chainsaws that were used to remove the bark.

Knowing the stories of these trees adds a somber component to running in this particular forest, but it’s not an overwhelming sensation. Despite the visible reminders of human foolishness, hundreds more sequoias remain on over 6000 acres of park land. Instead of sadness, as I made my way around the tourist trail and back home on the single track, my mood was one of humility, respect, and joy.

Humility, in that there is no way to set foot in this place without feeling extremely small. In addition to their sheer size, most of these trees will live to be 3000 years old. They were here long before humans laid eyes on them, and they’ll remain for centuries after we’re gone. That fallen trunk from the Big Stump will lie in place for another 1000 years before it decomposes back into the soil. Considering these timelines, a human life span is a relative blink of an eye, and the 90 minutes I spent running here seems infinitesimal.

Respect, because despite the travesties that some of these trees have suffered, they clearly are in the hands of loving caretakers today – and it’s not just the employees of the park. Almost every runner and hiker, every camper and every family who sets foot here comes away with a sense of reverence for these majestic creations. The trees are forever protected as much as our laws will allow, ensuring that the sequoias will continue to inspire and amaze many future generations.

Joy, for in one morning, I was able to do one of the activities I love amidst one of the most beautiful backdrops imaginable. During those 90 minutes, I had this park and these trees all to myself - there was nowhere else I wanted to be, and nothing else I wanted to be doing. I can’t think of a much better way to spend an early morning.

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