Running report

I had no enthusiasm for running this morning.

I promised myself that I only needed to cover the distance.

My first half-mile felt slow. The temperature was markedly cooler than any of the other days I ran.

I wasn't doing anything special. I was just running.

My time was within five seconds of the last time I ran. That is a variance of two-parts-in-a-thousand.

I find it a little bit freaky that my times are so repeatable. It doesn't FEEL like the runs are that similar. I start running. I slow down when I start feeling a bit of discomfort. I speed up when the discomfort fades away. Over and over and over again.

Step-counter

I carried the step-counter in my left, rear pants pocket. That gave me a very plausible 2060 steps per mile. My phone got demoted to the left sammich pocket on my cargo shorts.

Walk-about

I am thinking of going for a 13 mile (20km) walk this week, just to see if I still have it in me. 20km is a typical distance for a stage on the Camino de Santiago.

Wednesday is the first day that I have open. Cloudy weather with a high of 71 is predicted.  

My rehydration budget is 20 ounces every hour (or three miles or 5km) so I will need a bit more than three bottles. I can only fit two bottles of Gatorade in my fanny-pack, so I will be wearing a day-pack. Four bottles will give me an ample surplus. That and a few baggies of trail-mix and it should be a walk in the park.

Where does the education dollar go and Emergency Room visits

From the annual budgets of a local school district. The average over the last three budget years. Expressed on a per-pupil basis.

It is interesting that the cost of fringe benefits are about 70% of the cost of salaries.

Emergency Room visits

Source

The image shown above has a great deal of information in it. The headers are "Primary Reason" for going to the Emergency Room and they are numbered 1-through-16 which is their rank-order of in terms of frequency. The number in parenthesis in the headers is the "Coding number" and not the number of times it occurred.

The horizontal axis is broken into age groups and the squiggle-line is the percentage of ER visits with that primary cause that results in a hospital admission.

The text in the paper informs us that some admissions (especially for older patients) are because there is nobody at home who can care for them. Vertigo is a good example. They need somebody to help toilet them and if there is nobody there, then they get admitted. A higher percentage of seniors get admitted for vertigo than younger people not because it is more severe but because they are less likely to have support at home and because falling is a higher probability event and the consequences of falling is more severe.

In general, there is a bit of a knee in the curve at age 50 where the likelihood of being hospitalized from an ER visit ramps up more rapidly than between 1-and-50 years of age.

From anecdotal information, constipation is the "high runner" for abdominal pain (the most common "primary reason" given by patients). Women are between 1.5X and 4.0X more likely to suffer from constipation than men.

Studies with more than 10,000 subjects are highlighted. Source

 Controllable factors that contribute to constipation include

• Inadequate water intake
• Inadequate fiber
• Inadequate moving around
• Resisting the urge to defecate when our body tells us it is time 

It is easy to see that the corporate office work-model contributed to the gender disparity. The first study listed (1.82:1 disparity) was in the mid-1960s when fewer women were in the paid workforce and more of the jobs involved physical movement. Later studies, like the Harari, NHIS study (3.77:1 disparity) were conduced in the mid-1990s when more women were working office jobs and sat at computer monitors or answered phone-calls all day long. Many women strongly dislike using public restrooms.

Sidenote: I stumbled across several peer-reviewed papers about "gender equity in healthcare". The authors were criticizing Emergency Room personnel because they were much less likely to give women opioid's for abdominal pain then men. Clearly, these were Gender Study majors rather than Healthcare professionals. Morphine and other opioids are strongly counter-indicated for constipation because they reduce gut motility, i.e. they paralyze the gut.

Opioids should not be administered before a diagnosis has been done because it can make the underlying issue worse or make diagnosis more difficult. 

Applesauce

Yesterday was an "applesauce" day. Sixteen quarts were canned and now sitting on shelves in the pantry.

Running notes, VO2MAX and Portfolio approach to orchard planning

Running notes

3.2 miles. It was below 70F when I ran and I was less thermally-limited than on other days. My legs felt strong right from the beginning and my first, 1/2 mile split (typically my slowest) was 6:38.

I made two, short stops to rehydrate and breath. Less than sixty seconds each.

That is a solid 1:30 minute faster than my two previous runs of the same course, same protocol. I am not leaning hard into the discomfort zone. I am mostly trying to accumulate miles and get my body used to the idea of running. As John Blutarsky observed, Rome was not burned in a day.

One difference between this run and earlier runs is that I am taking a vacation from lifting until after the 5k and increased the frequency of running to every-other-day. 

Some thoughts on VO2MAX

VO2MAX is a measure of how much oxygen your body can absorb and convert to energy. It is expressed on a per-kg basis so it washes out differences in body-weight.

Picture a runner who weighs 200 pounds and is carrying 60 pounds of body-fat. Now, picture that same runner, exact same lung capacity, heart capacity, same muscles all with the same absorb and use the same amount of oxygen...but only carrying 30 pounds of fat. He now weighs 170 pounds. The gross amount of oxygen the runner can process did not change but the LOAD that the runner must move over the ground diminished. 

The upper number in the fraction did not change but the bottom number did. That runner's VO2MAX changed. His VO2MAX increased by about 18%.

Conventional thinking is that for distance runners, speed scales with VO2MAX and inversely with time.

So...if 200 pound me can run a 5k in 40 minutes, a 170 pound me should be able to run it in 34 minutes.

But wait, there's more...

Let's consider the biological factors that limit VO2MAX.

• Lung volume capacity
• Heart efficiency
• Mitochondria activity
• Lung perfusion capacity 

Lung volume

Less belly fat, especially internal belly fat, means your diaphragm can drop lower into your abdomen and you now have the ability to inhale a larger volume of air (21% oxygen) with each breath. 

Heart efficiency

Regular exercise, over time, has the potential to increase the strength of the heart muscle and the volume of blood your heart can move with each contraction. This comes with about a half-dozen qualifying statements. If you have heart disease, then your exercise program needs medical supervision.

A stronger, more efficient heart means more blood is available to transfer CO2 to the lungs and can absorb more O2.

Mitochondria activity

Mitochondria are structures within your cells, including your muscle cells, that convert sugar and oxygen into ATP, the actual chemical that makes the protein fibers in your muscles contract. 

My understanding is that intense exercise incentivizes the cells' eliminating old, broken mitochondria and replacing them with younger mitochondria that function at a higher level. Intense exercise might also increase the number of active mitochondria within your muscle cells.

Lung perfusion

Everything else is great news. Lung perfusion, as a stand-alone metric, isn't. Age, ozone, smoke, reactive air pollution all damage lung cells and reduce their ability to pass CO2 out and O2 into the blood stream. Exercise has a minimal effect on that loss of porosity. 

Your net ability to absorb O2 can be enhanced by exercise as described above, but it cannot (fully) rejuvenate damaged lung tissue. 

Planning an orchard, a portfolio approach

If you have been following my blog, you know that I am hip-deep in planning orchards right now.

One strategy that I lean on is to spread out the harvest seasons.

Labor is always at a premium on a homestead or dacha. Spreading out the harvest season levels the work-load and minimizes the impact of an unexpected hiccup in labor availability. It also minimizes the need to process the crop since you have smaller amounts showing up at shorter intervals.

Cherry ripening sequence. The vertical line on the left is July 1. Graphic from Grandpa's Orchard

To make this concrete, suppose you are looking at cherry variety to plant in your homestead orchard and you only have room for two varieties. You thoroughly investigate the plusses and minuses of the different varieties and you determine that you want WhiteGold sweet cherries because birds are less likely to bother them than most other sweet cherries and you want Jubileum tart (pie) cherries because they have extremely high amounts of anti-inflammatory compounds and make outstanding pies.

One reason you might want to rethink that combination is because their harvest seasons almost completely overlap.

Suppose you reconsider your priorities and decide that the anti-inflammatory properties of the tart cherry are more important to you than the bird resistance. You tell yourself, "I will have to put nets over the sour cherry anyway, it isn't that much of a big deal to put it over the sweet cherry, too. In that case, maybe Jubileum and Lapins is a more serviceable combination.

On the other hand, maybe you tasted WhiteGold and its inclusion is not negotiable for you. In that case, perhaps Mesabi or Bali/Evans will better meet your needs for a tart/pie cherry. 

A pretty good video

10 useful skills to have when the supply-chain craps-out 

According to the narrator, most of the skills that will keep you alive are not the dramatic ones that they make movies about. They are boring and pedestrian.

Random stuff

Quicksilver attended the year's first play-date about 8 days ago. Yesterday she had a runny nose, a cough but no fever. She took a three hour nap and would have slept longer if her mother hadn't shown up.

I am firmly convinced that one of the reasons that senior citizens were monkey-hammered by Covid-19 is because most of us avoid contact with snot-nosed kids. We allow our subscription to the-virus-of-the-month club to lapse and our portfolio of antibody production tools becomes obsolete.

Viruses are like music. The coat of different strains of virus are all composed of the same musical notes but they are arranged in different patterns. New virus evolve with modest rearrangements of the coating; the part of the virus that is exposed to our bloodstream/immune system. If your body has been exposed to the new virus's most recent ancestors then your immune system will recognize most of the patterns and start churning out antibodies which will be successful in slowing down the new challenge.

My mental image is that of three defenders getting a piece of Billy Sims (a runner) and slowing him down enough so that the rest of the team can show up and help tackle him.

Wood-splitter

I bought a used wood-splitter yesterday.

The seller's father recently died and he had inherited his father's larger, newer wood-splitter. He didn't need two of them.

He started it up and split a gnarly piece of Black Locust log I brought for demonstration purposes. 

He sold it for a fair price. Fair for him. Fair for me. If taken care of, the unit still had 2/3 of its life ahead of it. It could last much longer if I (or whoever I bequeath it to upon my death) has access to a replacement motor.

He wanted 2/3 the price of new. Knowing that it would not wear out within my life-time, it presented no less value to me than a new one would.

It is now parked in the barn at the Upper/Hill Orchard site. 

Step counters

I have been wearing it more days than not. I am skeptical about its accuracy. I haven't done a test, but I think it logs steps when I am driving somewhere in the truck. It sees acceleration and the truck has a bumpy ride.

I didn't do much yesterday. I drove an hour, total, in the truck to pick up the wood-splitter. I walked 40 minutes with Mrs ERJ. I pushed a lawn mower for 20 minutes and the step counter credited me with 14k steps.

I will have to test the "truck hypothesis" one of these days. That is, write down the number of steps when I get into the truck and then after the drive to the Orchards.

Michigan is all centerfire for firearm deer-season

Michigan historically was divided into three zones. The most southern zone was "shotgun only" for deer season. Then exceptions were added. Black-powder and certain types of handguns were allowed.

Michigan was the last state in the nation to allow elevated deer blinds for firearm deer season.

Shotgun technology evolved. Rifled barrels, sabot ammo, "Rifle" platforms with stiff stocks and good triggers were chambered in shotgun cartridges.

Michigan then allowed certain rifle cartridges in the southern zone. They had to be within a certain size...not too long and not too short. They had to be more than 0.354" in diameter. They had to have straight walls. Those constraints limited the amount of smokeless powder they held and limited their power.

While all of this was happening, fewer young people became hunters. The average age is now about 64 years of age for deer hunters. The deer kept multiplying and now infectious diseases are an emerging concern.

2026 marks the first year that hunters in southern Michigan can use virtually any rifle cartridge to hunt deer.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.... I am sure this topic will be revisited on this blog.

Random meme

The meme may have mutated in the time between when I stole it from Midwest Chick and when I posted it here. IDK.

I watch the WOKE movement do exactly what the commentor suggests. They keep changing the location of the "Most Oppressed" sign. 

Friday grab-bag

It is rumored, at least among some groups, that young members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints can be identified by their luminous complexion.

The rumor (supposedly) got started when a group of young people were watching a game show (Jeopardy?) on television and one of the group blurted out "She is a Saint!" about one of the contestants. When asked how she knew, she claimed that the contestant had "The LDS glow".

It turned out that the impulsive TV watcher was correct. Then it became a game for the group, "Find the Saints".

If the missionaries who stopped their Toyota to talk with me are good examples, I can affirm that at least some LDS members do, indeed, have luminous skin.

Clean living, simple diets, exercise in the great outdoors: It is amazing what that can do for a person.

More backstory

During our conversation, the driver claimed to have mistaken me for somebody else who runs on the back-roads of Eaton County. I suppose it that was possible. Perhaps she saw my lumpy gait and assumed I was pulling up lame and needed help.

Most missionaries are not going to be in their late 60s, so this friend of hers who exercises is obviously not one of them.

I guess fat, old, shaggy guys all look the same to young people.

Side story

The passenger revealed that there were not a lot of single, young, local LDS men asking the young, women missionaries out to ice cream socials. Alas, MGTOW is seeping into every crevice of society.

I tried to cheer her up. I told her that "when she was ready" she would get lots of attention, that it would be like a light-switch flipping. In retrospect, I wish I had told her that she needs to get clear on "her mission" in life and dump the parts that dilute that mission. Once she had that squared away, she would be transmitting down a single channel and the-right-kind-of-guys will be pulled in like moths to a candle. 

ERJ Diet Program (10 pound weight loss guaranteed)

 The package comes with a complementary, weighed, sleep-shirt.

Running notes

Running notes:

3.2 miles in 42 minutes.

I was on the second-to-last stretch when an SUV that was traveling in the opposite direction that I was running slowed down and stopped. The window opened. There were two wholesome, modestly clad, young women in the SUV. They were wearing name tags.

I paused my stop-watch. 

I asked "Are you with the Latter Day Saints?"

"Yes we are" the driver replied.

"You've heard of us?" the passenger exclaimed, surprised. 

We chatted for more than ten minutes. They are a credit to their church. 

I changed the oil in the truck today

That was a work-ticket that kept sinking to the bottom of the stack for a week.

Inspection

The inspector for the construction work is scheduled to show up some time today.

We will see if it happens. I am holding off on the major repair to the landscaping until after that happens.

Quicksilver is growing by leaps and bounds

There were some new three year-olds at play-date today. They are tiny!

QS was that small and timid not that long ago.

Catbirds and small fruits

I was in the bathroom and looking out the window when I saw one of the grape vines shaking. Having nothing better to do, I watched until I could see what was doing it.

It was the catbird that had been nesting by the raspberries beneath the persimmon tree.

Suddenly, it clicked in my head. SHE was why the grapes and raspberries and even many of the mulberries were disappearing as soon as they started to show color. 

Mushrooms

Southern Belle gifted us with a big box of mushrooms. I don't know how they fell into her hands, but they were commercially grown mushrooms.

So, part of my day was spent sauteing them in butter and putting them into small, snap-top plastic containers for freezing.

I will be making applesauce in the near future. 

Conformity

Sigma personalities

The "Sigma" personality is the honey-badger personality. "He doesn't care". 

Seth Capehart is a doctor who practices Emergency Medicine in Sarasota, Florida. He also has a Youtube channel.

Sarasota is an attractive community for retirees. Given his location and his profession, he gets to interact with more people who are over the age of 100 than most of us.

He said they all have one thing in common.

"They dance every chance they get." *

Beyond the physical benefits of dancing, Capehart points to one of the underlying enablers: They are immune to the opinions of the wallflowers. They do what they want to do, what they feel is "right".

The wallflowers do a lot of "crab-bucketing" and try to drag down the outliers. They actively discourage people with curious minds from exploring new information and new skills. They mock and ridicule people who work-out. 

The wallflowers are frightened by Sigmas and call strong-minded people "lone-wolves". They are outraged by the dissonance that Sigmas create in their conformity-based world.

One of the divides between women and men is that most women have a greater need for belonging and conformity than men do. It is a generality and there are exceptions. The discussion of whether it is due to socializing (nurture) or biological (nature) is beyond the scope of this essay.

The oppressive hand of conformity clamps down in about 7th grade. At one time, it loosened during the early 20s when kids left their parental homes and experimented with a vast diversity of sub-cultures like The Society for Creative Anachronisms. A few fell into cults but that seemed to be a small price to pay to let the majority of kids flower into full adulthood.

For our purposes I will define a cult as a rigid system of beliefs where the dogma is absolute and questions are not tolerated. The control structure is authoritarian and top-down. People outside of the cult are less than human.

Unfortunately, the college experience metastasized into a cult. Divergence is not tolerated. A very large number of kids are exiting college owing a metric shit-ton of money and with petrified brains.

One of the cult's articles of faith is that "feelings" are a superior form of "thinking", that is, "Emotions" are a truer and more pure than logic.

If that is so, then from a purely economic standpoint it would be far cheaper to put three-year-olds into corporate and government positions than to spend another half-million dollars** and 20 years teaching them how to throw peer-reviewed tantrums. Even the STEM fields (Sub-stack, Twitter, Ello, Meta) are not immune.

ERJ to start marketing a diet program

Guaranteed to produce a 10 pound weight loss in the first week. Much cheaper than GLP drugs. Deals with healthcare insurance companies are pending.

Sign up now and get a discount and the tee-shirt.

 

---Image of tee-shirt not postin

*Mrs ERJ was delighted to learn that dancing is mandatory. She likes to dance. I do not. We met dancing. I figured dances were a target-rich-environment.

**In Michigan, we now spend an average of $17k per year, per student between K and Grade 12. That is $221k for 13 years. Then add another +$200k for the 4-year college experience + graduate degree and and you are well over a half million per moron.