Rock the Silver

Minimalist shoes for work and play

Who knew that "Born to Run" is a book as well as a song? I happen to love both. But today I am talking about the book by Christopher McDougall. However, if you need a classic Bruce Springsteen fix, go here.

The book is about the Tamahumara Indians, who run long distances barefoot without injury. Even if you don't believe in the concept of barefoot running, and there are plenty who don't, it's a grand adventure story about a foot race through the Copper Canyons of Mexico.

Some might call it pseudoscience, but the author discusses the running shoe industry and how all the cushioning, especially in the heels, has actually made us more prone to injury. The padded shoes encourage a heavy heel strike at impact. Barefoot running proponents say we should be trying for a mid-foot strike, which not only reduces injuries but also makes us faster.

The book helped spawn a barefoot running revolution, except that few actually run barefoot. Most people who want to try this out wear what are typically called minimalist shoes. One could argue all day about what makes a shoe minimalist. There are plenty to choose from! One data point is the drop, which is the difference in height between the heel and the ball of the foot. Some barefoot runners look for "zero drop."

Smitten after I read the book, I was eager to see if minimalist walking shoes could help fix my aching body parts. Sadly, I've written more than I care to about my knees and back, but here is the executive summary. You can browse through the rest of the Health, Fitness & Body Image category of the blog for more gory details.

Last year I was in physical therapy, and I asked the practioner about minimalist shoes. Granted, I'm only talking about walking not running. A young physical therapy student, he said, no, absolutely not, you need cushioning. I looked down at his feet, and he was sporting Vibrams, the funky standard of barefoot shoes. I said, well, you're wearing them!

He said, and I quote, "Well, let's put it this way. You have a few more miles on you."

I abandoned the idea of barefoot walking. Still wearing my heavily cushioned shoes, I went to a specialist in sports medicine, who figured out that my back was actually the primary source of my knee pain. I worked with him for several months and am now pretty much back to normal. Toward the end of my therapy, I said, you know, I will need new shoes pretty soon, what should I get?

He said since my knees were so sensitive I should introduce them very slowly but try a zero drop shoe. I told him the other guy said I was too old, had too many miles on me, and he said that was ridiculous. Note that anyone, regardless of injuries, should acclimate slowly to a minimalist shoe. Transitioning too quickly is a good way to find new muscles and possibly other injuries. He recommended Altra.

I bought a pair and began my transition, starting with 10 minutes. I did have some calf pain in the beginning, but that's gone. I now wear them for 1.5 hour walks and even wore them to walk 18 holes of golf because they are so darn comfortable. My knees and back are getting better and better. I do take shorter strides to facilitate the mid-foot strike, but I still move along at a pretty good clip.

Since I started with all the knee pain three years ago, I've steered clear of heels for work. I didn't really see much improvement in my pain, though, until I went to see this doctor. But now that I'm wearing the minimalist shoes for walking, I'm noticing how much I like a super flat shoe the rest of the time as well. I like the way the ball of my foot hugs the ground. Maybe I'm starting to feel that now because I've modified the way I walk. Whatever -- I feel great, and my knees are happy.

I still have some pretty shoes with heels in my closet, but I am not sure I will wear them again. This minimalist thing is working for me, and I don't want to go back to where I was on the pain scale after making so much progress. Now I want totally flat shoes for work, too. I feel lighter on my feet. Why even yesterday I was walking on the treadmill and suddenly had an urge to run! I ran one minute, walked one minute and then ran one more minute.

This is fun! Who knows where this might take me? I'm so glad I didn't listen to the guy who said I was too old for minimalist shoes. They might not be for everyone, and I encourage you to do your homework if this sounds like something you'd like to try. Here's a good starting point.

I know legs look great in heels, but swollen knees don't look good in braces and bandages.

Not quite a mountain goat

We spent a gorgeous weekend camping at Caprock Canyon State Park in Texas. We did an 8-10 mile hike down through the canyon and up near the top, and I am so excited to say that after all the troubles I had last year with my knees (which turned out to be my back). You can read the executive summary of my knee/back saga here.

I get up at 4:15 a.m. most weekdays to work out. I hate it, but it's worth it to stay in shape to see sights like this. We started off in the morning when it was cold, and I peeled the navy polarfleece layer about a third of the way through. Some of the trail was quite steep and rocky, but we took our time and played it safe. We didn't use to worry about falling, but now we do.

My husband and I have done rugged hiking like this in the past, and I always used to say I was like a mountain goat skillfully traversing the rough terrain. I'll just say this. My mountain goat days are over. My movements are stiff and careful, but I am moving, and that's good enough for me.

We came upon a young couple who did move like mountain goats, and they suggested we climb to a spot near the top, so we did to prove we still had it, and the view was spectacular. But the trail grew narrow and came quite close to the edge. I do not like edges! It wasn't marked well up there, and after awhile we turned around and returned the way we hiked in. We are perhaps less mobile but certainly smarter.

If you squint, you can see my little gray braids peeking out from my Tilley hat. One of the reasons I was looking forward to long hair is that I find long hair to be the best camping hair ever. You can wet it, braid it, clip it, put a hat on it -- whatever you want, and you never, ever wake up in the morning looking like Pee Wee Herman.

We were both whipped when we got back. We just hung out, read. Eventually took a shower, which felt amazing. I stretched for about 30 minutes, and I really think that saved me. Woke up with sore quads, but that's about it. Other than feeling relaxed and happy to be healthy and alive.

I used to take mobility for granted, but I never will again. Not to say that I won't lose it one day, but at least I'll have enjoyed every moment I had it.

Waking up to orange juice

When I was diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer in 1999, I made a conscious decision that I would not make my health all about what I could and couldn't eat. Some cancer survivors believe in eating a macrobiotic or other restrictive diet, but I have always maintained this strategy is really about the quest for control.

Controlling cancer with food? To me, that's like saying fairies dance on the lawn at night. It's possible, but we do seem to be unencumbered by evidence.

I made small changes in my diet I thought might enhance my overall health -- lots of water and no soda. Those were probably the big two, because I love to eat and wanted to live my life enjoying delicious food. Cheese is my downfall, but I don't eat fast food, and we only dine in restaurants occasionally.

Read this, and you will be inclined to think twice before ordering just any old thing. More than 3,000 calories in a simple pasta dish at the Cheesecake Factory. That's about the same amount of calories as a pound of butter! I cannot imagine what they did to fatten up this dish, but I can only assume other restaurants do the same thing.

So, OK, I want to be somewhat vigilant without getting crazy. Several months ago, I gave up orange juice, which I drank for years every morning. In fact, the only time I didn't drink it was during chemo, because it tasted awful. As soon as I was done with chemo, back to the OJ. I stopped when I mentioned my habit in a blog post, and a reader said, oh, you don't really want to drink orange juice.

You can Google how orange juice is made, or you can check out this article. Even the premium "not from concentrate" juice is not what you think. Yes, it is squeezed from oranges, but then all the oxygen and flavor is sucked out and replaced with tasty artificial flavorings made by perfume companies. Would it kill me to drink it? Of course not. I just thought, yuk, I don't need this.

But I do like something sweet and tart first thing in the morning, so I came up with a compromise that works for me. I juice six to eight lemons or limes with a chunk of fresh ginger root and then add simple syrup to sweeten. I freeze the juice in ice cube trays, which I put in a huge ziplock. In the morning, I pop out an ice cube, thaw it out in the microwave and add water. Delicious!

Today I am making my first batch of homemade yogurt. Wish me luck ...

Backwards and in Easy Spirits

No surprise, but I did not buy a multithousand dollar statement handbag as a gift to myself upon getting promoted. I bought this quite beautiful Harveys bag instead. All Harveys products are made in the USA out of seatbelts! I think it's very me, very much my personal style. It's a roomy satchel that's not too big and hangs nicely from my shoulder. Regularly priced $278, but it is on sale now at Zappos for $195. There's a smaller one, too. The quality is excellent, and I love the silver nickel hardware instead of gold. Cause we all know silver rocks.

Thank you for the kind words when I announced I had blogger's block. I typically reply to comments, but I have been so busy at work and sick on top of it and left the comments on idle. I'm proud to say it was my second full week on the job, and I was barely breathing, but I pulled it off anyway.

As Ann Richards said in her keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, "If you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."

In my case, it would be backwards and in Easy Spirits. Not as glam, but I had to make special accommodations for my lingering sports injury. The Easy Spirits look like flight attendant shoes. I like them, but I hope to be back in sassier shoes soon. And that leads me to my get off the stage comments, which will feature an update on my bad knees.

Here is the executive summary. I used to be a competitive racewalker. In May 2010 I went to a racewalking clinic and hurt my knees badly. Ongoing pain and swelling has dramatically curtailed my exercise, even my ability to move around or sleep without pain. Months of physical therapy helped some, but nothing made it go away completely. Even the physical therapist gave up -- he said I needed to adjust my expectations.

Two MRIs show my knees are 100 percent normal -- not even any signs of arthritis. Yay! The doctor finally said the only thing left to do is an exploratory arthroscopy. I was within a week of having the surgery, when I was talking to a young woman at work who played Lacrosse in college and has had multiple surgeries on her knees and still has problems. She said you don't want to get them cut on unless you've exhausted all your other options.

I went to a sports injury rehab clinic, and the first thing he said is that pain lies. It's not usually where you think it is, and it usually starts at the top and moves down. He said the biggest problem I had was my back, which was referring pain to my knees. My back never hurt! He gave me back stretches, and 60 percent of my pain was gone in two days. The knee pain didn't completely go away, and he is using a variety of sports rehab techniques such as ART to break up the scar tissue in my knees and dry needling to loosen up the muscle knots in my quads.

I'm the best I've been since I first hurt them and am exercising 30 minutes a day with no pain. Slowly building up to more but not doing anything dumb. I hate to play the gender-age card, but some of the so-called professionals I consulted with wrote me off because I'm a middle-aged woman, and hey, isn't knee pain normal for you gals? I kept telling them it was an injury not a gradual decline, but they couldn't accept me as an athlete. Just a gray-haired lady with bum knees.

My point today is about listening to your body and never giving up. That saved me with cancer, and it looks like it's going to return me to a more active life without knee pain and without surgery.

Reality knocking

We have a small pool at home with a current generator so I can swim in place, but alas, the outdoor swimming season has come to an end. Last year I quit swimming during the cooler months, but since I have persistent knee problems, this year I didn't want to give up one of the few things I can do that doesn't hurt. The local YMCA has a beautiful pool, so I joined last weekend.

I bought a pretty purple bag to arrive in style:

Of course, I would need a combination lock for the lockers:

Even swimming requires extra support for my knees, so I brought along my compression do-dads:

I locked up my stuff, slipped on the compression do-dads and walked out to the pool area. You can imagine that I looked fab. There's a shower right by the pool for rinsing off, and as I was getting my hair all soaked down, a woman walked over to compliment me on my knee gear. Where did I get it? What's my problem? Next thing I know, she's talking bone-on-bone pain and her next doctor's appointment.

To my surprise, I felt very comfortable. Athletes with battle scars, still fighting it out with whatever they have left. These are my people now. No more jockier-than-thou for me. Could I be ready for Aqua Zumba? A cap with flowers?

Swam laps for 45 minutes. It was great to stretch out across the pool after swimming in place all season. I used to swim at a nearly identical facility years and years ago, and I had this sense of being transported back in time. I was 30 again, and even though I have no desire to turn back the clock in real life, in the surrealistic blueness of the pool, it made for a fantastic swim.

I tried to get out of the pool at the deep end with a little hop up onto the ledge as I used to, but the wrist I broke in March wouldn't support me, so I went under the ropes to the next lane and used the ladder. A small concession ... just reality knocking. I made my way to the locker room and went to unlock the combination, but there was a tiny problem. Can you guess what it might be?

My glasses were inside the locker, and I could not read the numbers on the lock! I squinted, got closer, backed off and waited for someone else to come and help me. No one showed. Finally I started spinning the dials with wild abandon. Then I settled down and was able to make out the general shape of some numbers. A lot of trial and error, but eventually I landed on the right combination.

When reality knocks, it knocks loud. My husband found the story hilarious, but he has bionic eyes thanks to cataract surgery. He said I needed a large-print lock, and for some reason that gave him the giggles. I'm thinking of a hard plastic case for my glasses that I leave at the end of the lane where the real swimmers put their pull buoys and paddles and other workout gear.

I will have those toys one day, too. As is my style, I will get better at this and swim like I mean it. But for now what I really need are my glasses so I can go home when I'm done.

Does this make my butt look big?

I've been watching the Olympics. Well, that's not quite true. I've been watching beach volleyball and Kerri Walsh's ass. Mesmerized by her tush. Is it OK to say that out loud? Although I've grown accustomed to my curves, there's something about a lean little butt I've always envied.

When I was a young woman, the worst thing someone could say about your body was that you had a big ass. I was a skinny adolescent, but that ended rather abruptly in high school, when I grew wide and meaty hips in a single summer. I was devastated. Even my mother seemed disappointed, as though somehow she thought I would be spared. She had her own demons.

We’d be at the grocery store. She’d see a woman with ample hips and pull me aside.

“Is my butt that big?”

And the thing is, she did not have unusually large hips. My mother was a classic apple, who mostly carried extra weight in her mid-section. I take after my dad’s side of the family. The cancerous pears. Most of my height is in my torso, and I carry excess weight in my hips and thighs.

So, my mom, who didn’t even have a big butt spent her adulthood worrying about it anyway. I can only assume I learned anxiety by example. The first thing I’d ask when I tried on a new outfit or before going out was, well, you know ...

“Does this make my butt look big?”

As I’ve mentioned before, I gained a good deal of weight as a young woman. I lost the weight in my early 20s. I was married and living in Germany, and I sent my mother a picture of my svelte self. She was impressed. Other mothers might leave it at that, but Lillian had to take it another step. She asked me what size panties I wore. I said size 7. She was like, no way, surely I was smaller than that.

I ended up putting on a pair of panties and asked my husband to take a Polaroid of me from behind. I mailed it to her and wrote, “My size 7 butt.” We laughed about that for years. When she died, I went home and was flipping through some family photo albums, and there it was! I was going to take it out when my sister wasn’t looking, but it made me laugh, so I left it there for future generations.

It’s hard to remember when I stopped worrying about whether my butt was big or small or something in between. I just stopped worrying. Part of it is the culture. In high school, my girlfriends and I all wanted to be skinny. Having a tiny ass was somehow a mark of superiority. Power over ourselves, or power over the other girls? The culture changed, I don’t know, 10 or 15 years ago? Butts became fashionable. Geez, they even do butt implants now. That’s one of those things that if someone told you 30 years ago it would happen, you would say that person was smoking crack -- if we had known crack existed.

Thank you, younger generation, for giving us back our butts. It is such a pleasure to just put on clothes that fit and live life without all that unnecessary angst. Big, small, whatever -- it's just who we are. No self-loathing allowed. I still admire the beauty of an athletic body such as Kerri Walsh’s, but maybe I just like checking out chicks.

By the way, did you see the abs on those runners?

Note:

This post originally included a photo to illustrate, but I've since deleted it. You will see reference to the photo in the comments, if you should get so far.

Cycling just got interesting

Today I rode my bicycle for 15 miles in the Tour de Cure fundraiser for diabetes. The ride was at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, and we got to do a lap around the track. That was fun.

I was not among the elite pack riding 30 and 60 miles, but I felt proud that I could do a mean 15, what with all my ailments. It's not a race, it's not a race, it's not a race, but it was snarkily delicious to leave some youngsters in the dust and not finish dead last. I completed the ride in 90 minutes -- a 10-miles-per hour pace won't set any records, but I was pleased.

Although this is as far as I've ever ridden, I had done several 10-mile training rides, so I knew I would be OK. I saw a lot of dead soldiers on the side of the road. I'm wondering if they thought, ah, 15, that's a piece of cake and then found out the hard way it wasn't. I felt great, and now I'm eager to work up to longer distances.

This was also my first group cycling event, and I liked it! The vibe was nice -- a huge range of ages and body sizes and everyone just out to have a good time. Baby boomers were definitely well-represented, and why not? Cycling might be the ultimate pro-aging sport. Easier on your body for sure.

It could be a money pit, though. Sure, there were plenty of people modeling your basic t-shirt or bike jersey and shorts, but many cyclists have some serious style. The freak flag was flying! I loved the eclectic mix of rebels and free spirits and Lance Armstrong wannabes. I'm kind of a loner -- not the serial killer kind -- but not as social as I could be, and this looked like a group of people I'd like to hang with.

At least I have a cool bike. It practically rides itself. Still, I felt woefully outclassed in the fashion and gear department and can't wait to throw money at the problem. I saw a woman about my age wearing an adorable cycling dress and thought, how cute is that? She had little braids poking out of her glitzy helmet, and I got excited thinking about how snappy I would look with gray pigtails against a canvas of purple titanium.

Oh, and my sunglasses suck.

The difference between naughty and knotty

An old man at physical therapy checked me out. It says something when the achy breaky boys in physical therapy are the ones who check you out, but these are my people now, so I’ll take it. I mentioned the incident to my husband, Dale, just to remind him what a catch I am.

I said you know, my longer gray hair, shorter bangs and thicker glasses -- they are not the universal turn-off I imagined. Guys check me out, I explained, trying to make it sound like it’s not safe for me to leave the house. Dale said I have that naughty librarian look.

The what?

The naughty librarian. He saw it on television, and he kind of chuckled and maybe even winked when he said it, like he was proud to be on the cutting-edge of geezer slang.

The problem is, I am more of a knotty librarian. I know this because I just graduated from physical therapy. This was all about my knees, which I hurt participating in a sports clinic two years ago. The PT said my knees were fine. My problem was tight quadriceps, pathetic abs, weak hip flexors and thick knots in the tendons of my legs. Somehow all that just made it seem like my knees hurt.

He said the acute injury started the pain ball rolling, but by my own account, there was a pre-existing pattern of abuse. Then I kept re-injuring them, and that caused all these other problems, some of which are unlikely to go away completely.

Therapy was a lot of exercises to stretch and strengthen the core. He also used cross-friction massage and heated ultrasound to break up the knots in my tendons. I always felt better after the treatment, but as soon as I’d walk or cycle or anything, the pain returned, although not as bad as when I first started therapy. But it never went away completely.

The PT explained. Apparently, I am not young anymore. I realize how dumb this sounds, but I thought I would go to physical therapy, do the hard work, the pain would go away and I could go back to doing all the things I did before. Except all the things I did before are what contributed to this problem! The bottom line is that I have to change.

What’s the quote? People don’t hate change, they just hate being changed?

The PT tells me I can walk, I can ride my bike, I can swim and I can play golf. I just can’t do them all on the same day or even back-to-back. Ideally, I should exercise every other day to give my body time to recover. Walking and cycling count as leg days -- can’t do legs two days in a row. Swimming is “nearly neutral.” As long as I can swim without pain, I can swim all I want. I should probably ride in a cart when I play golf. Me and the Flomax guys.

He also put me on a maintenance plan for stretching and strengthening the core. The exercises take about 30 minutes, and it’s just as important as cardio. News flash! Cardio is not king when you’re over 50 and the body doesn’t party like it’s 1999.

I’ve stuck to the plan for about a week now, and guess what? My knees feel pretty darned good. I am liking this plan. OK, so I have new physical limits, but I can still do a lot if I do it in a smarter way, and I suspect this is what many of us baby boomers are going to face as we age. I'm done fighting it -- now I just want to deal with it.

Knotty is bad, but naughty might be pretty good. I'll give up the punishing exercise, but I maintain that some things are worth hanging onto. The librarian gig sounds rather promising, don’t you think?

The great weight debate

Ex-smokers are known to be especially intolerant of people who still smoke, and it would seem that someone who was once obese might develop a similar intolerance for those who are overweight. After all, if you can lose the weight, so can they.

As a formerly chunky person who lost 55 pounds more than 30 years ago, that intolerant someone might be me. But I am changing.

I like to think I understand things, but in actuality I spend much of my time driving around the planet punch-drunk and ignorant trying to figure out how I made it this far on a half-empty tank. If I didn’t like being fat, and you didn’t like being fat, it was an easy run for my money to assume nobody liked being fat. This is why I’m bad at math.

It has occurred to me that maybe it’s not so much about liking or disliking our weight but loving who we are at any precise moment and realizing that we have beauty and worth, regardless of our size or shape. I mean, I knew that intellectually, but emotionally I’ve always thrown my lawn dart at thin. While being on the slender side was and still is my personal bullseye, it was also a standard I set for others. Like I get to be the judge. With a little willpower, this could be you.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with judgment and profoundly annoyed with the beauty and fashion industry, which has pulled an Al Haig and declared itself in charge:

• 10 Things You Should Never Wear
• Clothes That Make You Look Fat and Old
• Hair Mistakes You Must Avoid

Last week I saw a “beauty and aging” feature in an online magazine, and I struck out twice in Hair Mistakes for 100. My bangs are too short for my age, and I have long gray hair. Oops, I forgot to conform.

The pressure to look like everyone else is intense. And it’s such a losing game, because just open your eyes! Considering that we are one species, variations of the human body are nothing less than astounding. It’s a circus out there. A crazy, wonderful circus.

One of the turning points for me was observing a woman at work who is so utterly petite, you can’t imagine that she has normal-sized heart and lungs. I think, what she eats can’t be all that different than what everybody else eats, but it’s like we’re not even cast from the same mold. She was just born that way.

We don’t typically afford the same courtesy to people we define as overweight. We assume something is wrong with them. Unhealthy. They must eat all the time. Enormous quantities. We don’t assume they are born that way.

I’m a strong believer in free will, but it just has to be that some of this stuff is hard-wired. Maybe my unique biological structure made it possible for me to drop the pounds. It doesn’t make me stronger or better. It’s just who I am.

And maybe someone else’s DNA keeps them at a different weight -- small, big or something in between. Or maybe somebody is larger and sure, they want to be smaller but not that bad. Or not right now. They have other things to worry about. They are searching for their own brand of beauty, and they’re searching for self-acceptance -- not the perfect diet.

Plenty will argue that being overweight is unhealthy -- I’ve believed this myself. And I’ve used and defended the description, “Fat and unhealthy.” But I no longer believe the categories are that clean. There are unhealthy fat people, just as there are unhealthy thin people.

The way we look, whatever it is, whether we choose it or not -- it's simply who we are, and it ought to be just fine. I certainly don't want to wake up every day and think, "This isn't good enough." How exhausting. Better to work at tuning out the noise and judgment, assume we are smart, beautiful, healthy and cool and go from there.

Postponing medical tests

Whatever medical tests you're supposed to get that you've been putting off until after the zombies come ... please just go get this taken care of now. Now, I said. You'll be happy you did.

My oncologist cut me off a couple of years ago. I've outlived his usefulness, I guess. The only thing I really need at this point is an annual blood test called a CA-125. The onc said my family practice guy could do that, and if something came back hinky, he could take it from there.

I am not a doctor, but I play one on the internet, so I explained the deal about lab tests to him. I said my family practice dude uses a different lab, and I will get a slightly different result. The onc said that's true, you'll just have a new baseline. I said that will freak me out. He said it's not a problem. I said that will freak me out. He said just do it, so I didn't. Fuck him.

So, uh, two years go by or is it three? I haven't had a CA-125, and it's really the principal tool for detecting a recurrence of ovarian cancer. Well, that and symptoms. I had no real symptoms to speak of, but ovarian cancer is a sneaky bastard. The simplist things like being a bit, well, farty, can be a symptom.

What can I say, it was a farty party this spring. I now think it was the glucosamine I was taking for my knee issues and possibly the cucumber in my juicer drinks. It's not easy being me. I knew it was time for me to bite the bullet and get the blood test. I almost went back to the onc and begged just so he would send it to the same lab, but I told myself to man up and do this thing.

I went last week and told the family practice dude what was up. I said, look, my lucky number has been six for years now. I know it could go up a little with the new lab. Anything more than a few points of deviation will freak me out. If it comes back abbie normal, I don't want some stranger nurse calling me on the phone and cheerfully announcing that my new lucky number is 3,465.

The doc said, "I will call you if something is hinky."

The nurse called. She called the house first, and my husband freaked out. It was almost like, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" He was scared for me. He called me on my cell, then she called me on my cell and said everything was normal. I said what's normal? She said 10. Ten is normal. Ten is good.

I called my husband back. I said hey, guess what? I get to live another year!

He said don't screw around with this anymore, OK?