Mon 20 Mar 2006
Last week in jujitsu, the instructor said, “What’s that guy’s name who did the round table for those knights?”
“King Arthur?” one of the students ventured.
“No, the carpenter. What’s his name again? I think he was a knight, too.”
Nobody knew. I briefly thought of Jesus.
“Sir Cumference,” he said. (say it out loud)
***
While hanging out with friends watching the UCLA/Alabama game on Saturday nite, Vicky called me and invited me to join her in the Inaugural Half-Marathon to be hosted at Disneyland in September. I guess Disneyland’s going to close down the park and we’re actually going to run through Disneyland. HOW COOL IS THAT?! We’re just doing a half-marathon, so training up to 14 miles by September is totally do-able. Spots are filling up very quickly, so I told her to sign me up. $85, which is even more expensive than a full marathon in Los Angeles. But, it’s Disneyland, for gosh sakes! And it’s the FIRST run there, ever! I’ll be a part of Disney history! Maybe we can play in the park after we’re done running.
***
Speaking of the Los Angeles Marathon, which took place in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, apparently 2 runners died and one is in critical condition in the hospital. I don’t know anything about the one in the hospital, but the two deaths are both Los Angeles Police Department officers. Ack! One had a heart attack on mile 3 of the 26-mile run, and the other had a heart attack just 2 miles shy of finishing the run. It’s an unfortunate loss to the department and to law enforcement in general, but one of the first things that went thru my mind when I heard about this on the news was that I can just hear the Compton or Los Angeles criminals now: “Okay, so you take this gun and stand by the door and keep watch and I’ll give all the commands to empty the cash register. If you see LAPD, just holler and we’ll run.” “Where do we run to, man?” “It don’t matter, just keep running until the cop has a heart attack and dies. Shouldn’t take long.” And it certainly doesn’t help with the stereotype that cops are out of shape and subsist entirely on free donuts.
***
Later: I did some research on the 2006 Inaugural Disneyland Half-Marathon Weekend. Here’s what it says about the route:
The course for this fantastic event will take runners from Disney’s California Adventureâ„¢ park, celebrating California’s storied past and exciting future, to the Disneyland® park, to explore the fantastic “lands” of nostalgia, color and delight. Then it is on to the scenic streets of Anaheim, past Arrowhead Pond, along the Santa Ana Trail, around Angel Stadium, and finally back through Disney’s California Adventureâ„¢ park for an exciting finish of the Happiest Race on Earth!
Was it particularly hot yesterday? That’s sad that those guys just signed up for a race, and for that, they die. I wonder how old they were. I think we should all have mandatory stress tests, ekgs.. cat scans! Many people don’t even know their heart is damaged or that they even have heart disease until an unfortunate event. (even though some of us should have a clue by the lack of exercise, diet)
As far as the stereotype.. I’m sure there are many ‘fit’ patrolmen / officers.. it just seems that *most* of the ones I see ARE out of shape.. big bellies n stuff. They have certain requirements to get in to officer training right? Do they maintain this? (rules and regs that is)
i ran a little over a mile last night. i’m surprised that i live to tell about it.
It’d been rainy on and off all weekend (it’s pouring outside right now as I lay in my bed and play with my laptop), so it definitely wasn’t too hot yesterday. It is sad that these people passed like this, but how do we know that the running killed them, as opposed to, maybe the physical training actually helped them live an extra 10 years? Unless these people were seriously unhealthy and/or obese, heart conditions tend to be genetically predisposed. So the fact that these people were running marathons (which means that they very likely had trained for it, therefore they must’ve been exercise-conscious people and not obese/unhealthy) probably means that they’ve actually extended their lives. How do I say this better? If they weren’t doing the cardio they’d been doing, their hearts probably would’ve given out 10 years earlier because it was likely they were all predisposed to have heart issues.
You don’t always know whether a factor is good or bad. What may appear to have killed them may very well have, in actuality, given them the extra time to watch their kids graduate high school, meet their grandkids, create more memories with their families, earn that extra money to put their families in the nice home, take that extra vacation, etc.
Oh yeah. I’m not sure how other agencies work, but I know with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there’s a physical agility portion of the admissions process which an applicant needs to pass before being officially hired to be a Deputy Sheriff. But once they’re hired, there is no regular physical re-testing and no weight/body fat percentage requirement like they had for the entrance. The only thing they’re required to keep retesting and qualifying for is the shooting accuracy. Different specialized sectors, S.W.A.T. for example (it’s not called S.W.A.T. anymore but I can’t remember what they changed the acronym to), may have different physical requirements because that position is more physially demanding.
Wilco – You know you’re a closet athlete hiding behind the typewritten words of a fake lazy piggy.
Congenital heart disease and other predisposed heart conditions are certainly a factor, however, since heart disease is the # 1 killer of all men and women, we’re all predisposed. In many cases it’s the lifestyle. There are certain things you cannot control as far as risk factors go, (sex, race, age, family hx) but there are many other things you can control. Since Coronary artery disease seems to be way up there as the leading contributor to heart attacks, cutting the risk factors would greatly increase the odds of a heart attack. (smoking, cholesterol, exercise, hypertension, stress mgt. diet..) So with heart disease (and many don’t even know they have it) so prevalent, I would assume we all have some predisposed factors. Here’s the thing though, (and this is kind of like all the respiratory therapists at work smoke) you can be ‘active’ and exercise, but you eat fatty foods, allow stress to dictate your life.. smoke occasionally.. but then to ‘make up for it’ you hit the gym 5 x a week. Our bodies are different, so that might work for some people while smoking alone, for other people is what has caused their particular heart condition, regardless of how much they worked out. In the perfect world, we would all avoid the risks completely and live healthy lives just to get run over by a bus. Information is the first step, and with heart disease being the #1 killer, we should all be so freightened into avoiding these risk factors thus decreasing our chances.
Then there is the college or high school athlete, a picture of health, has a heart attack on the ballfield or court. Which screams congenital there. In adulthood, there are symptoms.. some minute, but we tend to ignore them (more specifically men).. indicating a problem. You know your body, you know when even the smallest thing is out of whack, we need to pay better attention.
Now with that, I’m not saying that these gentleman ignored risk factors.. . until an autopsy you really don’t know what caused it.. but it should be enough to scare some people into saying… alright, I’m getting checked out.. or I’m going to eat better.
One thing I find particularly interesting is that in some countries where heart disease was NOT the leading killer, they ate healthier, their routines appeared less stressful, exercised more.. then over the years an increased number of fast food restaurants opened up, exercise decreased.. stress increased.. heart disease sky rocketed.
I’m going to go light a candle and feng shui my house…. just writing this stressed me out!
I meant greatly DECREASE the odds of a heart attack… as far as recognizing risk factors.. mybad
I love how my blog is sometimes very public service announcement oriented. Thanks, nurse and research-sharing readers!
Heart disease is sort of our country’s “success story” in that the sheer number of deaths/afflictions from this has dropped dramatically once the factors that contribute to heart disease were discovered and disseminated. That means a lot of these factors (and deaths!) are preventable, and it’s not too late for anyone reading this blog cuz you’re obviously all still around to read this.
I keep reading things that make me grateful I don’t eat fast food (anymore) or take in food chemicals like soda, or unnecessarily take a bunch of drugs (legal AND illegal; I have to be crawling on the floor foaming at the mouth about to pass out from pain to take an aspirin, but that ensures it’d work well), or eat too richly very often. And of course, the exercise.
Stress is a whole different issue. I have a hard time battling non-physical or emotional demons.
don’t run. eat donuts. watch tv.
this has been a service of the public health is for people who don’t like to eat donuts and watch buffy reruns service.
I like Buffy.
[…] I’m actually kind of excited for lunch today. Earlier this week, my gym trainee for the first time got on the treadmill. She can’t run distance yet, but her goal is to get into good enough cardiovascular shape where she can do 3 miles w/o stopping. When I first started training with her, she was too loose and heavy to run on the treadmill at all. But on Tuesday(?), after a minute-long brisk walk, she started with a 30-second jog, then brought it back down to a brisk walk, and then 45 seconds, then walk, and so on with me monitoring her heartrate and recovery time until she got up to a 2 min 15 sec jog in her final increment. We were on the treadmill for a total of 30 mins (I did a 3-mile run next to her while monitoring her and yelling encouragement and instruction) and her total distance was just over 2 miles. I’m so proud of her, and she was surprised at herself. I was actually surprised at myself, too, since I hadn’t run in probably over a month. I suppose I can’t keep procastinating on the training forever. There IS that expensive half-marathon in September I’m committed to. […]
[…] Yesterday I was engaged in a long conversation with an old friend (who JUST emailed me right now, how weird!) on the drive home from work, and the conversation continued as I plopped sideways onto my chenille La-Z-Boy recliner, which ended all hopes of making it to jujitsu last nite for me. I decided to at least go for a run and try to prepare somewhat for the Disneyland half-marathon coming up in a couple of months, and I changed into my running clothes. Before I even got off the phone with the first friend, Dwaine called me. Turned out he had a hard month at work and was looking for a drinking buddy. So off came the workout clothes, on came the casual going-out clothes, Dwaine stopped by to pick me up in his new ‘68 restored Camaro, and we were off. […]