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.