Getting Faster in Five Steps

by   June 6, 2022 with No Comments

By David Freeze

Most of the runners I talk to that are seeking advice want to know one of two things. The first group wants to talk about getting on track and keeping the momentum going. The second group wants to find out how to get faster. During my most competitive years, that was my quest every day. And in a different way, it is still my quest. In those earlier years, I read everything I could and talked to faster and more experienced runners about what worked for them. After more than 40 years of running, here are my suggestions if getting faster is on your mind also.

  • First, to get faster, you have to run fast. Sounds like double speak to many, but by this I mean that your body has to come out of its comfort zone in a portion of training. Usually, the perfect place is to get on the track once a week with a series of intervals. One lap at a time is my favorite, a 400-meter sprint as fast as you can run. If you haven’t tried this before, warm up properly and  do about six of these sprints with a short rest period in between. Then in the weeks ahead, add more reps and shorten the rest period. Try two laps and even four at a time, pushing yourself at the fastest pace to complete the distance.
  • Use your arms. So many runners today are lazy with their arms. Arms are momentum when done right. Bend your elbows at 90 degrees and pump them forward, not sideways and hanging down. Many coaches will say things like, “Your running will go as your arms do!”
  • Warm up when you want to run fast, whether it be for the intervals described above or for a race. One client knocked a minute off his 5K time by just including a warm-up that brought some sweat before he went to the start line. Here is what worked best for me: A good warm-up doesn’t have to include a lot of slower running but is much better when it includes a series of sprints. My suggestion is to run steadily for 5 minutes, then mix in a series of 60- to 100-yard sprints. Really pushing the legs fast, but just for 3-4 brief periods with just a slow jog in between. Once completed, jog to the last bathroom break, make any needed clothing changes and hit the start line. The difference is with this pre-race warmup, you won’t be warming up in the first mile. You will be racing it!
  • Make sure you are hydrated, so much so that the last bathroom break is just before the start. If you are hydrated well enough that you your pee is clear, then your cardiovascular system and the rest of the muscles will be ready for peak performance. Plenty of athletes who were ready to do well lost the advantage by not being hydrated.
  • And finally, increase your mileage so that body is not always pushing the pace at its maximum distance. I am one of those old-school runners that believes in a long run at least once a week. Always be able to comfortably run several miles farther than the actual distance that you are racing. A good 5K effort is more likely when preceded by a long run at least double that distance a week before. For me, I always wanted to know in my head that I could run the distance. I always advise running the distance and just a little bit more even when properly preparing to race a half or full marathon. One of my best marathons came several weeks after a 32-mile run, my longest during my marathon racing years.

Friday night is one of the most popular races in Rowan County, the Main Street Challenge 5K in China Grove. The 5K starts at 9pm and is run entirely on Main Street. There is a Tot Trot and Fun Run just ahead of the big event. Look for more information on this and other events at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org

Planting Hope

by   June 4, 2022 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

            It has been a tough year for many home gardeners. We had some late frosts and cold spells. I was late getting started. When I had time, it was either too cold or raining. When the weather was good, I was busy with other things and couldn’t get to my garden.

            Over Memorial weekend I finally finished planting my garden. I put some things out at the beginning of May and they are up and growing. I saw my first tomato blossoms. I put in a number of seeds yesterday and now I am excited to see them come up.

            I am trying an experiment this year. I have four raised beds for my vegetables. I tilled two of them earlier. I never got around to tilling the others up. The leaves from last fall are still lying on top of the soil. I didn’t have time to till and I have heard people say it is better not to till the soil. For the remaining two beds, I just pushed the leaves back and planted. It felt wrong, but I had to get my garden planted. I will let you know how it turns out. 

            In one of those beds that I did till early I had hoped to plant my peas. I know peas like cooler weather. I never had the time to get them in. While I was working I was trying to decide if it would be worth it to plant the peas. I have the space and decided to plant them.

            As I planted those peas I thought about why we plant gardens. We plant them because we are hopeful for a good growing season and harvest. It’s hope that sends me out to the garden each day to see if those little seeds sprouted. I believe and am hopeful.

            I realize it takes more than hope to get a harvest. It takes watering, weeding, and keeping the pests out. We need to remember to add fertilizer and lime if we want the conditions to be right for a harvest. My mouth is watering just thinking about what will happen if everything works right.

            Hope is a powerful force. It drives me out there each year to try again. Some years are successful and I enjoy a bountiful harvest. Other years we get heavy rains and the potatoes drown. The rabbits, squirrels, and deer enjoy the harvest instead of me. But I will go out each spring because I hope that I will get to enjoy the harvest.

            Today is Memorial Day, a day that we remember all the men and women who went to fight and defend our nation and did not come home. One has to imagine that they gave their lives in hopes that their children and grandchildren could live in peace and harmony. They died as Americans defending our ideals and principles.

            Sometimes I wonder what is going on? One political party hates the other. How is that united? Families suffer from gun violence in our schools and communities. Where is the peace? There is social injustice in a land that was built on freedom and justice for all. We are divided over how to fight a virus that has claimed a million American lives. These and many other things divide us and keep us from what the people we honor on this day died to protect.

            But me, I like to find hope in the midst of the darkness. I think about neighbors reaching out to help one another in times of need. I think about all the people who rush to the aid of those who are suffering a tragedy, like a hurricane hitting our coast. I think about the many Americans who have gone to Ukraine to feed and clothe the refugees. I think about the many Americans who donate blood in times of tragedy. I think about the people who work with hospice to help in someone’s final days. I think about the police, firefighters, and EMS workers who come to help without asking or caring what you think or believe.

            I want to encourage you to look for the good in other people and to be a part of those who are planting hope. Love and hope have always defeated the darkness in this world. We need to focus on the good. For those of you who have lost family and friends while serving this great nation…I thank you and honor you. Let’s all work to change our corner of the world for the better. I believe that at our core we are a great nation filled with good people. God bless America, and fill us with faith, hope, and love.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

Culture Wars Abound

by   June 3, 2022 with No Comments

By Roger Barbee

The loud voices from every side that are involved in the oft referred to culture wars give me pause, and I remember the experience of my mother.

My mother was a divorced woman of six children in Kannapolis, North Carolina during the 1940’, 1950’s, and 1960’s. She hemmed washcloths in Cannon Plant #1 and attended a local Baptist church. It is that Baptist church during the 1950’s and its treatment of my mother that caused me to remember. While I was only a boy of only eight or so, I was old enough to hear adult talk and old enough to sense something was wrong.

A devout Christian, my mother took her six children to church twice each Sunday and every Wednesday night. She Believed and worked to make sure that her children Believed. The church we then attended accepted our presence in Sunday School and “preaching” and Training Union, and all else. However, my mother was told by church deacons that she would not be allowed to teach children Sunday School because she was a divorced woman. And, as one deacon strongly pointed out, the Bible taught against divorce, and it did not matter that my father was an abusive alcoholic who had deserted his wife and children. She was divorced, so no teaching children for her.

A few years after this ugliness, we moved to an in-town mill-hill house and began attending a Baptist church a few blocks from our new home. My mother confessed that she felt uncomfortable in a woman’s Sunday School class because she was the only divorced woman in the class, and she was often reminded of that either directly or indirectly. However, before long the church announced that an adult was needed to teach the children’s Sunday School and my mother stepped up.  Perhaps she was the only adult who volunteered to teach the class, but no matter, she began teaching the class and for the next fifty years she taught “her children” the Bible. When she retired from teaching the class, the church named the Children’s Sunday School wing in honor of her—the divorced woman who at one time was considered “unfit” to teach in her Baptist church.

All of this occurred over sixty years ago, and now, a divorced man, I have been a deacon and Sunday School teacher in a Baptist church. Some Baptist churches even have pastors who are divorced. There has been a cosmic shift and our culture survives. The issue of “divorcement” is not the only cultural change in these years, but it is the one I am most familiar with, and it demonstrates that things do change, and our culture can and does change as well. And we are no worse off for the cultural change.

For instance, many church attendees are quick to point out the sins of homosexuals. These church goers, while admitting “we are all sinners”, seem to condemn homosexuals because, as I am often told by church goers, “They continue their sinning life style.” Yet, the same church goers will admit  that every church is “Full of sinners”. But perhaps those sinners have a different favored sin than the homosexual– if one’s sexuality is a sin. In fact, I suggest we all have a favored sin, a breaking of a Commandment that we seem to gravitate to. Me? I’ve never met a woman that I have not liked, and I work at controlling that part of me, even at the advanced age of almost 75.  I once saw a church sign that read: “Don’t judge the other person because they sin differently than you do.” Amen to that.

What I find wrong in my mother’s ordeal with her first church and what she initially experienced at her second one is not what the Bible teaches, but how some deacons and church members interrupted its teachings. The Bible is a complex book that teaches simple truths such as “Love one another as I have loved you.”

All of this noise surrounding CRT, LGBT, BLM, and more will pass, but it will take its toll just as the “good deacons” did with my mother. But my mother knew that the battle was not about her, but one within each of the church leaders who were searching for an external enemy instead of looking inward, where the  greater threat stirred. Their names do not appear anywhere honoring their service to either chuch. But the divorced woman’s does.

Heart Rate and Why Important

by   May 31, 2022 with No Comments

By David Freeze

People who exercise regularly eventually get around to paying attention to their resting heart rate. Some even use the resting heart rate as a measure of how intensely they should push themselves in the next workout.

With my recent blood infection, kidney stones and stents, I had plenty of reasons for my own resting heart rate to go haywire. Earlier in the year, I had an angiogram, a medical procedure that takes pictures of how your heart is working. But for the procedure to work, either naturally or by medication, the patient’s heart must beat at less than 55 beats per minute. Thankfully mine did, something around 52 which I was proud of.

In my most competitive years, from about age 35 to 45, I could usually keep it well under 50 and sometimes in the lower 40s. My heart and cardiovascular system were at their healthiest and strongest during that time.

What does your resting heart tell doctors and why should we pay attention? Usually at the first meeting of our beginning runners class, I ask the participants if they monitor their resting heart rate regularly. Almost none have and few remember the last time they checked. But exercise enthusiasts, on the other end of the spectrum, monitor theirs regularly. The heart is just like any other muscle, and it needs work. By getting exercise and challenging your heart, it gets stronger and gradually will take less beats to do the same work.

I tell those in the class who often struggle at first that their resting heart rate will gradually decrease as they get fitter on the way to doing a continuous 3.1 miles. The same goes for cycling, swimming and all cardiovascular sports. Even lifting weights or doing pushups will strengthen your heart when done correctly. My pushups done in the morning are harder on my heart for a short period of time than running is. Such is the basis for the popular high intensity workout programs like HIIT, short in duration but very intense in methods and practices. Sort of like the difference between running 100 yards as opposed to a distance race.

Why does the resting heart rate matter? An increase in resting rate has been linked to an increase in mortality from chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cancer. Resting heart rate can be used as a low-cost, noninvasive way to assess risk for cardiovascular disease and the effectiveness of interventions related to physical activity. Young or old, a stronger heart and cardiovascular system will usually be linked to all kinds of positive happenings that you hear me mention often.

Other factors are connected to individual assessment like stress, smoking, alcohol consumption and body mass index. When a person who doesn’t exercise has a low resting heart, possibly the reason is a term called bradycardia, linking dizziness and shortness of breath to the low pulse.

An elevated resting heart rate of 80 bpm or higher can be an indicator of increased cardiovascular risk. The risk is most pronounced when the resting heart rate goes above 90 bpm. Resting heart rate varies by sex. Women tend to have smaller hearts and lower blood volume and hemoglobin, which means the heart needs to beat more frequently to nourish the body’s tissues.

A person’s average resting heart rate also changes throughout the lifespan, being much faster in infants and slowing by adulthood. The average ranges also change slightly as we age.

Resting heart rate can also be affected by any medications taken. For example, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers can lower your resting heart rate below 60, while medications to treat asthma, depression, and attention deficit disorder might raise it. Be careful here!

I have always heard that the very best time to check your resting heart rate is just as you wake in the morning before getting out of bed. But any time you deem yourself completely relaxed will work. Use a good quality blood pressure meter that also records pulse rate for easy monitoring. And if you get an unusual reading, check again before any concern. I keep the batteries working in mine!

Saturday is the Bare Bones 5K at Knox Middle School benefitting Relay for Life. It is open to everyone of all abilities with more information at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org .

One of Us

by   May 30, 2022 with No Comments

By Lynna Clark

My husband’s mom is one of the sweetest, funniest, most determined people I have ever met. When her son & I married, she hugged me and called me her “other daughter,” stating matter of fact, that “daughter-in-law” was not a term that fit our relationship. How kind. And she has never treated me less than her very own daughter. Her hugs are like those of her son. She wraps me in her arms and locks down so tightly that I am left breathless; partly because I am overwhelmed with being loved so much, and partly because she is squeezing the life out of me. How rare are hugs like that?

We were in the family car between the funeral home and the cemetery on the way to bury her husband. As we drove by the Krispy Kreme, she noticed the “HOT NOW” light was on. She suggested to the driver that we lead the funeral procession through the drive through. There was no disrespect to her husband of over 50 years. He was certainly used to her off-beat humor. It was her way of making us feel better.

Did I mention that she is stubborn? That is actually an understatement. Because she is in her eighties, we worry that she will do something that will hurt herself, since she doesn’t know she is too old to climb in the attic or down into the creek. She has at least enough wisdom to ask someone to come “watch her” while she puts a ladder on the creek bank so she can climb back up after situating the rocks so that water won’t pool. One spring, her son asked her several times not to climb her rickety attic stairs to retrieve seasonal items. We noticed one day, that Easter had been taken up, and summer was upon us in the decorating sense. So he went over while she was gone and put screws into the attic door so that she could not get the steps down. On the string hanging from the door, he attached a note saying, “Pull all you want. They are not coming down. Call me if you need something.” He is a lot like his mom.

She told us one day, that her favorite word in life is steadfast. She says in that word is expressed all she strives to be. And yes she is, steadfast. Throughout her life of 86 years so far, she has always been faithful, steady, strong, loving, but unwavering on the things that matter. And funny trumps stubborn any day! She goes to a contemporary church on Saturday night. If the band is especially good, they get the OK sign with a little wink that says, “Well done!” Then on Sunday mornings, she attends her traditional church and enjoys their fine choir. She loves both. I respect so much that she is wise enough to understand that we are not in competition. And she never lets age, or the opinions of others hold her back!

You may feel that because of your age, you do not have anything to give. YES YOU DO! YOU MATTER TO THE BODY OF CHRIST! Put your unique background, experience, and expertise to work for Him! And again, someone really needs to hear your story!

Lord, help us look at people like You do, each one having great worth, no matter their stage in life. Help us, no matter our age, health, or background, to realize that You have a job for us to do. Strengthen us to be steadfast, and to faithfully carry out our part in Your great plan!

More: Psalm 92:14; Job 42:12; Isaiah 46:4; Jeremiah 29:11

1 Corinthians 15:58 KJV- “Be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

PS: Our beloved Nina remained steadfast until she walked right into the arms of her Savior. Though she is no longer my neighbor, I will always think of her as one of my favorite people. She taught me so much about life and love. I miss her every day.

Stepping Back to my Past

by   May 28, 2022 with No Comments

By Doug Creamer

            I recently received an email from a colleague at East Davidson High School. My colleague informed me that one of my former students had won a scholarship, and had mentioned me as a role model in his life during the interview process for the scholarship. My colleague wondered if I would like to come back to East and present the scholarship to him. How could I turn down that opportunity?

            East Davidson has their awards day in the gym on what is typically the hottest day of the year. I attended 18 of those events, and began to wonder if sitting in that hot gym was actually what I wanted to do. Thankfully, God had mercy on everyone and delivered a cooler day.

            After I arrived and checked in, I started to bump into old friends and colleagues. It was so wonderful to see people who I had worked alongside, and to have a few minutes to catch up. We talked about how things had changed since I retired. Some of my colleagues talked about how COVID had affected them, their families, and how they taught through it. They were all glad that things were settling down some and they were getting back to what we all remember as routines.

            I had the opportunity to personally thank a few people who served as references for my current job. I deeply appreciate their help and have great respect for the role they played in my life. I count it an honor and privilege to be considered their colleague and friend.

            When I walked into the gym to find my seat a former student waved me over to sit with him. David was also a DECA member who did very well at both the district and State DECA competitions. He graduated and is now attending N.C. State. It was wonderful to talk with him and to hear about his hopes and dreams…another Golden Eagle who is soaring.

            As David and I talked, we realized that we were both there to honor the same student. I taught Matthew when he was a freshman. He was in my Principles of Business class. His grades were outstanding, just like I heard from other teachers about his character. He always worked hard in my classroom and was a very respectful young man. Matthew stayed in contact with me after I retired because he has a dream to publish a book.

            After the ceremony I got the opportunity to talk with him. He has his college and career plans firmly in place. We shared about our lives since I retired. He is still the same respectful young man I knew when I taught him. By the time you read this in the paper, He will be another Golden Eagle soaring from the nest at East Davidson.

            Several colleagues asked if I missed East Davidson. I miss seeing my colleagues and teaching students like Matthew and David, but that chapter of my life has come to a close. I am thankful for the experiences, opportunities, and the memories that will never fade. Now I find myself on a new adventure, a new chapter that I am thoroughly enjoying.

            I think it is important for us to look back at our past. We have learned so much in our spiritual journey, and we need to remind ourselves of our victories. God wants us to have a strong faith, so He will allow us to face challenges. Our job is to remember how God helped us in the past and know and trust that He will help us through our current trials.

            It is also good to reflect back on our prayers and see the many ways and times that God has answered our prayers. Our prayers change situations and circumstances. Why? Because we have a God who delights to answer our prayers. Battles are won in prayer through persistence and perseverance. It is good to review our victories and refresh our faith in troubled times.

            I want to encourage you to look back on your life and look for the many times and ways God has come through for you in critical moments. Looking back, we can often see God’s hand guiding us through the difficult times. He is always with us. He promises never to leave or forsake us. He is always making good plans for our future. God wants us to have a good trip through life, but He knows that there will be some bumps along the way. Looking back we can see His faithfulness and that will help us trust Him as we move forward into our future.

Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com

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