Arizona bound!

Sitting in the Memphis airport awaiting our flight to Houston and on to Phoenix/Tempe.  The training is done, just hoping it will be enough. I'm excited, nervous and humbled as I anticipate Sunday's Ironman event. My bike went on ahead last week and hoping I will find my steed in good shape and ready for the 112 mile mid portion of the race.

I have 17 hours to complete the event and hoping first to meet that deadline, but if possible under 14 hours. I will try to keep you posted. In the meantime, I want to thank my wife & son for joining me and for their encouragement along with so many other friends and family. It's my hope and prayer this process will be an encouragement to many others. Let's get off the sofa and move!

Morning boost from Starbucks at the airport

Big things a comin'

First an apology to those few silly enough to read my "musings"...& myself: sorry for the delay since my last post.  Life has been anything but boring over the past 9 months. I will try to update more completely over the next few weeks.

Today I'm sitting in the parking lot reflecting while my wife reads her Kindle, both of us awaiting the start of my son's next soccer game. Its fully fall in the south, mid 50's and overcast...an improvement from the wind and drizzle from the 6:15am departure from home and the first game this morning.  I'm not a huge fan of rain when I'm outside, but I love autumn with the leave changing & the snap in the air.

In one week, I'll turn 50. Half a century...that's hard to wrap my brain around!  I like so many before me feel like we've blinked and BOOM its here.  With the keys on my phone making it difficult to type I won't expound as much as I'm prone to do...and simply say I'm glad for every minute of my life both good and bad. I hope I squeeze every drop from the days I'm blessed to live and hopefully be a blessing to those around me in the process.

In one month, I'll attempt my first Ironman triathlon.  I'm excited and nervous at the same time.  My knees still give me some grief, but I've  been essentially injury free...another great blessing.  Several weeks ago I was able to participate in the Atomic Man half iron distance triathlon and had a blast there...more on that and some photos later.  Again, I hope and pray Ironman Arizona will be a successful journey for me and serve as an encouragement to others.

Well it's time for soccer...I'll check in later.

2012 reflections & what will we do with 2013?

Merry (belated) Christmas & Happy (belated) New Years to my family, friends & coworkers:

First, I would like to say how happy I am to be sending you this greeting, which means we survived the Mayan apocalypse on 12/21/12!...but from a purely non biased perspective I'm happy to say this month I've become a grandfather for the first time!  It certainly adds a new perspective on things.  A dear friend of mine asked me "do you know what grandchildren are?....they're a reward for not killing your children!"  With that said, my advice is "don't kill your children!"

It may seem odd to be sharing New Year's thoughts with you at the END of January, but I thought it would be appropriate to let the NEW part of New Year's wear off a little. (I can tell the new is wearing off when I see the parking lot at the gyms start to thin back out again)

New Year's day, I had the blessing of sitting down with my wife and four children to look back on 2012 (it's been a challenging year in our family) to see what we can learn from it.  Then we shared with each other our goals for 2013.  My daughter had the insight to say she'd like to have us all share what their favorite part of 2012 was and what we were looking forward to most in 2013...what a great idea.  If you haven't done the same yourself, give it a try.

As I reflect back on 2012 & look forward to the year ahead, there are several thoughts/quotes that mean a lot to me.  Hopefully you will find some or all of them useful (or entertaining) as well. 

1) The founder of Team Health (the Emergency medicine staffing company I've been blessed to work with since 2005) Dr. Lynn Massingale shared with me several years ago, "I've never had an original thought in my head, but I know good ideas & people when I see them."  I certainly have found this to be a great form of advice: Surround yourself with good ideas & good people. It will most likely bring the best out in you, especially when you consider the opposite.

2) I want to treat my body like I'll live forever and my soul like I'll die tonight.

3) New Year's resolutions.  It may sound like splitting hairs, but I prefer to set goals for myself, not make resolutions.  Over the past couple of years I've tried to sit down with my family so we can share our goals with each other.  This gives us a degree of accountability and a support system at the same time.  My desire is for us to have goals in the "4 foundations of daily life": family/relationships, spiritual, professional/financial and physical.  These goals need to be achieveable & measurable (example: "I want to run a 4 minute mile" unachieveable or "I want to run faster" unmeasureable).  I like to put them down in writing and look at them say 3-6 months later and see how I'm doing. If I need to reassess or readjust, that's ok.  But without goals or direction, you will fall prey to "if you shoot for nothing, you will hit it every time".

4) The Bible describes 3 men in the New Testament that I need in my life to keep me balanced.  (If you aren't familiar with these men, that's ok, but I would encourage you to read about them...like us they were far from perfect, but God used them in mighty ways): A Paul, a Barnabus, and a Timothy.  My "Paul" is someone more mature and wiser than myself who can share with me their successes and failures in a way to guide me in my own life.  My "Barnabus" is someone at essentially the same place in life as myself who can relate to my situation and encourage me as I do the same for them.  My "Timothy" is someone that I can be a Paul to; sharing my successes and failures to guide them along & invest in their growth/development.

5) The longer I live, the more I've been guilty of looking back and saying this has been a "good" or "bad" year, when in fact the "bad year" may have been full of many good things.  I have tried more of late to look at life as "seasons" with some being full of difficult winter storms and others peaceful springtimes.  Every season has it's purpose and they come without my control, so I will try to make the best of each one I live through good or bad, easy or hard, happy or sad. 

6) I want to get in better shape whenever possible, but there are 5 exercises I want to avoid: Jumping to conclusions, Flying off the handle, Carrying things too far, Dodging my responsibilities, and Pushing my luck.

I'm sure you may have more and better ideas/thoughts than these.  I'd love to hear them, so feel free to share.  In the meantime, good success as you move through the beginning of 2013!

The bee's knees....and why mine hurt...IT band friction syndrome

How many of you suffer from joint aches and pains?  Specifically knee pain?  More specifically lateral (outer part) knee pain?

As I plummet headlong towards the half century mark in my life, I look at aches and pains somewhat differently.  Most notably of late has been knee pain as noted in my last post.  For the past several years, my right knee develops a "tightness" after heavy exercise which usually eases up over the following days of recovery.  This past year I began to experience a new and more specific sharp/stabbing pain on the outer portion of my left knee that came to it's full glory while in the middle of my first marathon in December.  After discussing this with my friends in the medical/orthopedic world and online research, all signs were pointing to IT (iliotibial) band friction syndrome.  Being a family medicine/ER physician (which means a bad patient) and not sure where I wanted to go for orthopedic evaluation, I set myself up for xrays and MRIs of both knees ($5,000 for both before insurance....ouch!  Man that could go towards a REALLY nice tri bike!)  I shown below a 2 view xray of one knee (including my own goofy reflection) and one slice of the MRI through the knee.

The REALLY exciting thing about both of these studies is both were essentially normal except for evidence on both knees of IT band syndrome.  No bony, cartilage or ligament/tendon destruction!  The only thing I can think of better would be no knee pain.  I have done a fair amount of research on treatment and prevention of IT band (friction) syndrome that affects so many endurance athletes.  I will update with you as I work through these, but the one key piece of information I would like to share for now is this:

***The majority of IT band syndrome treatment and prevention information seems to be fixed on STRETCHING the IT band...which is important.  But as one writer put, much of the IT band is like leather and will not stretch that much.  Thus, STRENGTHENING the IT band PROPERLY seems to be of even greater importance.***

I have read more lately from and about a young triathlete/coach Ben Greenfield who is among a growing number of athletes and coaches ascribing to higher intensity and shorter duration training methods for endurance sports/competition such as Ironman triathlon. HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) is rapidly growing in popularity and in my opinion is a sound approach to general fitness.  More on this later with another post.  In my review of Ben's blogs/posts/products, I ran across his discussion of similar knee problems he had in the past.  This lead him to research and ultimately package the "best" (in his opinion) methods for treating IT band syndrome AND preventing knee injuries in his product Bulletproof Your Knee.   I have purchased Bulletproof Your Knee  which is a series of 13 modules/videos outlining exercises/treatment/prevention.  As I review this and put it to use, I will give feedback. 

In the meantime, train hard and live well!

To follow:  2012 reflections & what will we do with 2013?

                 HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)