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In This Issue:
Look Who Won
Our Newest World Champion is …
Keeping Up With Helen
Need Motivation?
Until Next Time – Ponder this
Look Who Won
Dear Friend/Subscriber:
Tamara Savage’s transformation from unfit to fit (including losing 100 pounds and then running a 100-mile race across the desert in Arizona) was so inspirational that we devoted all of last month’s issue to her story. Who knew that she had an even more inspiring story up her sleeve or should we say in her running shoes? Believe me, you won’t want to miss a word of Tamara’s latest adventure – so keep reading.
But first, I want to announce the winner of our American Idol of Fitness and Transformation Contest. Although it was slightly skewed in Tamara’s favor (since last month’s issue was all about her), we still had votes for other contenders. In the end, Tamara Savage was the clear winner. The following 8 (participated and had their names drawn) won an E-book entitled, “Big Fat Lies.” They are: Deb Clem, Susan Duval, Denver Fox, Scott Hults, Mary Kettering, Patricia Rawling, Jane Byng, and Carl Kristenson.
Enjoy!
The Best Is Yet To Come –
Ed
Our Newest World Champion Is …
Our newest World Champion is Scott “Old Navy” Hults. You may
remember that when Scott turned 50 he found that he had some of the
symptoms of diabetes. Since his father and grandfather had died from
the complications of diabetes, this was a wake-up call for him to
start watching his diet and working out regularly. He did such a
good job of taking care of himself that one day his wife suggested
that he looked so fit that he “should compete” in bodybuilding.
That was at age 61. Now it is a couple of years and many trophies
later. Here are his latest (and I might add, amazing) results:
Competing at the 2006 FAME WNSO (World Natural Sports Organization)
World Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships, in June, he placed
FOURTH in the Advanced Open (all ages) Men’s Lightweight (150
pound) class (last year he placed seventh). In the Men’s Master
60+ class he came in FIRST – making him the FAME WNSO WORLD
CHAMPION! Congratulations, Scott. To See for yourself and learn more
visit: www.BodyBuildingSenior.com
Keeping Up With Helen (or the circuitous route to the ole’
rocking chair)
The last weekend of April, Helen Klein hosted and ran in the
Cosumnes River College 24-Hour endurance run. According to her good
friend, Jane Byng, Helen decided that she would ONLY run 50 miles
because she was very tired from all the things that go into putting
on a 24-hour race and she wanted to be at her best for the Fargo
Marathon coming up May 20. True to her word, she put in her 50 and
saved some for the upcoming marathon. On the 20th she ran the Fargo
marathon in 5 hours 13 minutes despite the fact that the wind was
gusting and blowing her “all over the course.” The wind can do
that to 109-pound runners. Helen left over a hundred much younger
runners in her wake. Congratulations, Helen, on a couple of
awe-inspiring runs!
Need Motivation?
The following is an E-mail Tamara Savage sent to a friend. She was
nice enough to send me a copy and give me permission to print it as
she wrote it. WARNING! You might want to keep a box of Kleenex
nearby.
I had no idea that the Pig [Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon – run
May 7, 2006] would end up being my most memorable marathon, even
more so than MY first marathon. The course was beautiful and the day
perfect for a marathon (it was overcast until after the race with
temperatures between 43 and 49).
What made it so memorable was the person I ended up pacing. In March
we found out that one of our regular runners (who’d only been
running with us a few months) had breast cancer. She’d been
training for the Pig as her first marathon so she told the doctors
to do the double mastectomy as soon as possible because she still
wanted to do the marathon. She had her surgery on March 21st and
started running 10 days later. It turned out to be late stage III
cancer, so it’s going to be an uphill battle for her. Four weeks
ago she had a port put in her upper arm (she couldn’t have it in
the usual place because she is so bony in the chest area) and
promised the doctor she wouldn’t run for two weeks. After the two
weeks she started running again … up to six miles. On April 20th
she had her first chemo session … and decided she was going to run
the half marathon. Last week she E-mailed me and asked if she could
run with me. I had only really run with her long (10 miles) once
(when she had first started back to running). After that, she was
way too fast for me. I told her I’d pace her if she were willing
to do a slow marathon … like a 5 or 5 ½ -hour marathon (or more
if needed). Her longest run had been 20 miles and that was six weeks
ago. We ran 8 miles on Thursday to see how she’d do with
distances. It went well and she seemed remarkably strong. I know we
should have been tapering [reducing weekly mileage right before a
race so as to have fresh legs,…], but I needed to try to get a
clue [as to] what I thought might work for her over 26.2 miles.
So yesterday at the Pig, I paced her (Shelia) and my friend Aimee to
a 2:26 at the half (doing 4 and 1s) [4 minutes running alternated
with 1-minute walk breaks] and everything seemed to be going fine.
Then at 15 miles, Shelia started slowing down on the hills. I’d
just told Aimee that I needed to slow it down (and Aimee needed to
go kick *ss for the last 11 miles … she finished with a negative
split [where the second half of a race is run faster than the first
half – something to strive for in running long distance] at 4:48)
when Shelia staggered off to the side of the road. She was having a
lot of trouble breathing, was crying, and looked at me and said,
“But I HAVE to finish this race, I HAVE to.” I really thought
the best action would be to call for an ambulance (I had my cell
phone with me), but the determination in her eyes just touched my
heart. After doing the 100 miles when I shouldn’t have been able
to … with the help of two very fine pacers … I knew it was time
for me to try to return the favor.
We started walking and I was trying to figure out why she was
struggling so MUCH to even breathe. I thought she might be having an
acute case of asthma (at which point I would have called the
ambulance because I wasn’t carrying my inhaler). When I
asked her if this had ever happened to her before, she told me
“yes” that this had happened when she awoke from the double
mastectomy. She couldn’t breathe and demanded they take the
tight dressing off that was binding her chest and get her out of
bed. When they did that, she was able to breathe again.
I still don’t know for sure, but it sounded like (and I told her)
a panic attack brought on because her breathing was so constricted
that she started to panic. I think the same thing happened at
mile 15 because she was working too hard, breathing too hard, and
got in the same trouble as after the surgery. Plus, for the
race, she was wearing some pretty heavy binding to protect her chest
from the jostling. She tended to round her shoulders forward
to ease the binding’s tightness, which restricted her breathing
even more. So, for the next 10 miles, we did very slow 1 and
1s…13 minutes per mile. If I let her go even a little bit
faster she started having breathing problems again, about two DOZEN
times in all. I spent all that time just talking to her about
anything, while at the same time reminding her to focus on her
breathing and asking her to slow the pace. My goal was to run
as slow as we were walking. The run served two things:
1) it gave the walking and running muscle groups a rest so we had a
chance of finishing; and, 2) it gave Shelia the ability to say we
ran the last 11 miles doing 1 and 1s. We didn’t walk it.
In the last mile, Shelia was overcome when she knew she would
finish… and the sobbing set off big time breathing problems.
I made her walk for 3 minutes and told her to get her act together
because I was NOT going to take her over the finish line with her
breathing like that. Our friends (we had about 20 running
friends there) were all waiting for us and I’d called them to let
them know we were coming in. I told Shelia they could kick my
*ss if they ever knew I let her run when her breathing sounded like
that!
We ended up running in (at a pretty good pace) for the last 0.2
mile. We crossed the line at 5:26 looking strong.
Everyone was crying because they were so happy for Shelia.
It’s the day after now and I’m sitting here crying as I’m
typing this. I still have no idea if I did the right thing by
helping her to finish. It may stress her body so badly that it
will make her next chemo (this week) even harder. All I know
is that she badly needed to be able to achieve her goal of being a
marathoner. If things go well, this could be the first of
many. But, if things go badly, it might have been the only
chance she had to be a marathoner. For that reason, I aided
and abetted. Often during the last tough miles, I told her
“Today your body has to do what you want it to do…focus on your
breathing…today is the first day of the rest of your life…focus
on your breathing…slow it down…no matter what curves life may
throw you in the future…YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A MARATHONER.”
Tamara
Until Next Time, Ponder This: Tamara has shown us, in her
story of helping Shelia achieve her dream of being a marathoner,
that in helping another we receive a great gift ourselves. Whom can
you uplift and how?
Ed Mayhew’s Fitter After 50 Newsletter
Reclaiming the Energy, Vitality & Stamina of Youth
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