For the past month and a half I have had the immense privilege to be training with Tim VanOrden. And, I can tell you that I have gotten stronger and faster within that short amount of time. But, more importantly, I ran the smartest race I have ever run a few weeks ago at the Race-For-Research 5k in Springfield, Ma., due to his great coaching.
As some of you know, I have been running again since this past August, after not having run in twenty three years! At the beginning, my goal was to be competitive again in some local races, and to just stay fit. But, as I have gone on with this journey my goals have changed to: Let's see what's possible. Is Tim right? Will I gain an advantage by being a raw food vegan, and can I get back into the shape I was in when I was eighteen?
So far the answer is pointing to, yes. It's all possible! I still have a long way to go, but I have no doubt that I will get there.
At the Race-For-Research in Forest Park, on the 26Th of April, it was an unusually hot day. By 9:00 is was 80 degrees. That was a bit concerning, due to the fact that my training had not acclimated me to that kind of heat yet.
Running in this race to support our friend who is fighting a very aggressive rare form of cancer: Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma, was my wife Ginger, our friend Chrissie, Tim and me. My goal in this race was to set a much faster personal record for a 5k than I had run before. To help me do this, Tim (who had won a race the day before) graciously agreed to pace me during the race.
I have to tell you that I have never really run with a strategy before. Especially as an eighteen year old, it was: Gun goes off, run as fast as I can, for as long as I can. That's it. And, on this hot spring day, that would have been a very poor strategy. But, old strategies die hard.
The first mile was flat with a little downward slope, so we got into a comfortable cruise, nice and easy. At the first mile marker I was way behind four guys in their late teens and early twenties. The old strategy in my head wanted to kick in and go after them as hard as I could. But, Tim said, "Back off. There are hills coming. We'll catch them". I didn't believe him. I was even more doubtful when we hit the first hill, and he told me to back off some more. Now I'm convinced I'm toast. But, Tim said, "When we get over the hill, we'll really go."
And that's what we did. By the second mile mark we were gaining on the guys in front of us.
Then another hill. Once again, we slow down, taking small steps, conserving our energy.
Tim knows Forest Park well, as he has raced there many times before. So he knows there is one more hill three quarters of a mile before the finish line.
Just before that hill we pass one of the runners. Going up the hill there are two runners directly in front of us, and we're gaining on them fast! When we get to the top of the hill, it's a quarter mile flat race to the finish.
Now, we have the fresh legs, and we're kicking it into another gear. We blaze past two of the twenty year olds, almost at full sprint. There is only one more runner in front of us, and we're gaining on him. At this point he can hear us, and he knows he's in trouble, but he holds on and gets to the finish line just before we catch him. As soon as he crosses the line, he loses his breakfast. Ouch.
A great race! I got second over-all, and first place in my age group. Obviously, Tim could have won the race at any point, but was a good friend, and let me take second.
And the goal was accomplished, as I broke my best time by thirty seconds!

Since that race, my training has only gotten more intense. So we'll see what happens in the upcoming months.

A Conversation

Here's a conversation I just had on facebook. I think it's amazing that, Lisa, a mom with no vegetarian back-ground, wants to support her 15 year old daughter to become a vegetarian. Incredible, right? Of course Lisa has questions, everything she has learned tells her that her daughter will not get enough protein or nutrients, but she is open-minded enough to want to support her daughter. I think she's a wonderful Mom!!
6:10pmLisa
michael, i have a question for you
6:10pmMichael
yeah?
6:11pmLisa
chelsea is 15 and wants to be a vegetarian
do you think she's too young
6:11pmMichael
fantastic!!
no of course not.
we are born vegetarians
6:12pmLisa
she showed me and victor a you tube on why to become a one...it was quite interesting
6:13pmMichael
I'll ask you a question: When you see a dead dear on the side of the road, do you think about getting out of the car to open it's belly with your mouth? Or, rather if you saw an apple truck, would you think about eating an apple?
6:16pmLisa
yea, i hear you....definitely the apple.
when she showed us the video, it was heartbreaking seeing the animals
6:17pmMichael
of course! We cook meat to make it palatable. If we didn't, we wouldn't eat it.
6:18pmLisa
I know, you make perfect sense. I just hope if Chelsea decides to do this she sticks with it...
6:22pmMichael
she'll need help from you, because she'll be pressured by everybody who thinks they know better. You'll have to help her by giving her a balanced diet. You can be a junk food vegetarian as much as you can be a junk food carnivore.
6:23pmLisa
she's behind me and said she might request you for a friend...i told her she could learn a lot from you...and of course i would
6:23pmMichael
i would be honored
6:24pmLisa
help her with anything she decided to do, that's what us moms do
6:24pmMichael
you're a great mom!
6:24pmLisa
i try
6:26pmMichael
I have started a meet up group for Raw Vegans. We're going to have our first get together on Mother's day. It would be great if you and our daughter came. Or the whole family for that matter.
6:27pmLisa
I can't on Mother's day, Victor is having a party at the Portuguese club and I'm staying home with Nicole...she's bed bound...but let us know the next time
6:29pmMichael
I will. If you would like, google Berkshires Raw Meet Up and join the group.
6:30pmLisa
ok thanks i will. but she wants to know what a raw vegan is.
6:31pmMichael
A raw vegan is a person who eats only uncooked vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.
6:32pmLisa
oh OK. ill let her know. thanks
6:34pmMichael
I know it sounds incredible, but I believe that's the way we're supposed to eat. I work 8-10 hours a day, then I train 1-3 hours after that every day, and I feel fantastic!
6:35pmLisa
wow...and you have great energy..
6:35pmMichael
exactly!!
6:36pmLisa
michael, it's always a pleasure talking to you, but i have to get going...thanks for the information..talk to you soon.
6:36pmMichael
talk to you soon... bye
6:36pmLisa
k.bye

Meet Up Group

Hey Everyone, Tim VanOrden my wife Ginger and I have formed a raw vegan meetup group for the Berkshires of Ma., southern Vermont, and Albany NY area. This is going to be a fun group. Sure we'll have pot-lucks, but we also plan to do other fun and exciting things, as well. I would love to meet as many raw vegan friends as I can, so if you're in the area be sure to drop by at one of our meetups.

Good Intentions

Well it happened again as it inevitably will from time to time. The question: "Raw vegan, huh? What do you eat? Grass?" Sometimes I play along, and say: "Yeah, I steal from bird feeders, or I graze on my front lawn." And, of course, this is not the persons fault who doesn't know how they would eat if everything didn't come cooked, wrapped, boxed and packaged, but rather it is the fault of the good-intentioned.
It seems as though the more social developers try to make our life "better", the more it gets screwed up. I'm thinking of Monsanto, bioengineering food to produce more food than we ever could organically. If we could control nature, we could feed millions of more people. Good intentions, right? Disastrous results. I'm thinking of fish farming. Same thing. I'm thinking about scientists torturing billions of non-human animals in experiments in a desire to cure diseases nobody needs to have been afflicted with if they ate properly in the first place. I'm thinking about the debate on universal health care. Great idea, right? To me, it sounds like health care cooked, wrapped, boxed and packaged. The idea seems to be, lets all pay billions of dollars into a pool, and the people who are healthy will pay for those who get sick. Nice idea, right? But, is this the dog trying to catch its tail. Government (our taxes) give subsidies to the factory farms like Monsanto and Archer-Daniels Midland etc.; companies that make people sick in the first place, then we pay the government health insurance money, which in turn pays the medical and pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, nobody is cured from anything. All of this is done with "good" intentions.
When people fool with Gods' natural laws bad things happen. I'll try to tell a story that I heard from Pragata a Qigong teacher.
God was walking the Earth a long time ago, and came upon a farmer surveying his farm. God said,"Behold your many blessings and wonderful bounty."
And the Farmer said, "God you sure know a lot about the Earth and all it's many creatures, but you don't know anything about farming."
And God said, "Why do you say this?"
The Farmer said, "Throughout the year it is a struggle. Sometimes it will not rain when I need rain, and my fields go dry. Sometimes all it does is rain, and my fields are flooded. Many of the insects you have created eat my stocks and leaves leaving my plants barren.
If you would give control of these forces to me, I will show you how to farm."
So, God agreed and gave the Farmer the ability to control the weather and the insects. And so it was, when the Farmer needed rain, it rained. When he needed sun, the sun shone brightly. And, not an insect ate from a single plant.
The Farmer was very pleased, as it looked to be his most bountiful harvest ever!
Then God appeared to the Farmer and said, "Bring me a shaft of wheat so I can see your handy work." So the Farmer bent down to pull a shaft of wheat, but the wheat disintegrated in his hand. He then raced to other plants on his farm, and sure enough, they crumpled in his hand.
The Farmer said, "I don't understand! everything was perfect. "
And God said, "You took away the struggle which contains the life force from your farm. Everything was perfect so the plants didn't need to be strong, so they withered and died in your hand.

As a t.v. commercial once put it: "It's not nice to fool with Mother Nature". They were selling margarine, which was later found to make people sicker than butter.

Me Man Very Smart

I'm dealing with my first runner's injury: tendinitis in my ankle. Consequently, I have had to take three days off from running. I had planned to run a 5k race this coming weekend, and have already payed for it, so I am hopeful that I'll be good enough to go.
I am icing, and believe it or not,even stretching to help the ankle. I read that this particular injury needs proper rest or it can become a chronic problem. So, in my warped world, three days is proper rest. We'll see.

I wanted to write about a story in the news I read the other day. It was about a caged monkey in a zoo that stored up rocks in the morning to throw at people later in the day. Now the geniuses in the science & news world were amazed that this monkey was able to plan his rock throwing idea ahead of time.
Hundreds of thousands of years living with monkeys on this planet, and they think that's a discovery? Boy, you know we are out of touch with nature and our natural world when this is news.
My basset hound knows when I leave for work in the morning so he can get on the couch. And, he knows what time my wife wakes up so he can jump off. A miracle!!!
Of course, they never asked: "What could be upsetting this monkey?"
I don't know, maybe he doesn't want to live the rest of his life caged and exploited!!!
Maybe this little playground they built for him doesn't come remotely close to the life he should be living. Maybe after throwing his feces at passersby for a long time, he finally thought, "I'm going to throw something heavier at these meatballs, they don't seem to get it!"
They've probably already honored his ingenuity by dissecting his brain.
Lord help us.

I want to apologize for how boring my blog looks. My 11 year old daughter was making fun it the other day. I know it's not the most beautiful, but the truth is, I don't really know how to make it much better. She offered to help, but I'm afraid with her help, I'll have pictures of horses and penguins all over the place.
I was thinking the other day, actually most days, of how blessed I am. And, one of the ways I am truly blessed is being a part of the vegan raw community. Nothing in my life besides my family has brought me so much joy. And, although I don't personally know many of you out there, I feel a great connection to all of you. I also believe, most raw vegans are incredibly compassionate, spiritual people, filled with loving kindness.
I just wanted to say, thank you, for all the nutrition information, the inspiring stories, the great recipes, your love for the environment, and your love for all humanity and the non-human animals in the world. You are all beautiful people.
And, if my blog is about us, then it must be beautiful too.
Sort of.

Winter Training

Hi, a brief check in just to say how things are going this winter, training wise. I have been engaged in a training program for a half marathon in April.
I have never run a race longer than a 10K, so I'm a bit intimidated. And, I have never done the mileage in training that I am doing right now to get in shape for such a race. In fact, yesterday I ran 14 miles. And, I did that on a tread mill! I must be insane!! Plus, I haven't run 14 miles since 1985!
In fact, almost all of my training has been on the tread mill this winter. As much as it sucks not to be outside, I have gained a lot by working out this way: 1) I have never been good at keeping a steady pace, which this training has taught me to do. 2) It keeps me honest. When you set a goal, you set the speed, and you do the run. 3) Negative splits and tempo work are easy to orchestrate on a tread mill.
On the other hand, this winter's training hasn't been all that easy. Last week, I felt a little burnt out, and didn't come close to the training I wanted to do, but this week I feel pretty good; and so I'm off to a good start.
I still weigh more than I should at 157, but I'm optimistic that I can get down to where I need to be.
A couple of weeks ago, I got down to 153, and thought I was on my way to 150, but alas, the mind and it's insecurities took over and I went back to 157.
I am going to try to incorporate more yoga in the up-coming months. I used to go to yoga class every day, but it has been difficult work-wise to find the time with the training. Still, I think it would benefit me tremendously emotionally and spiritually to find my practice again.
I think it would be amazing to incorporate the raw vegan diet, yoga, and race training all together. The thought of it gives me chills.
Thanks to you who care enough to read this, and many blessings.