57’32″…

fit data to your model [bobologie]

A few weeks ago, I contacted my general (and sport) practitioner for a mild issue with hurting toes, as they were indeed hurting and not only during or after my daily runs (!). Since the beginning of lockdown. I thought he would tell me to contact him later and stop running in the meanwhile but instead he told me to come to his office and after a rather cursory glance at said toes started discussing on a rare occurrence of COVID-19 induced frostbite-like toes. He then ordered a blood test which I took the next morn. Right after my (legit and solitary) one hour run. The results of the test were within the “normal” boundaries, except for the D-dimer test which was above the limit and is usually intended for detecting deep venous thrombosis. (As reported on Wikipedia, “a four-fold increase in the D-Dimer protein is a strong indicator of mortality in those suffering from COVID-19.”) This caused my physician to react quickly by prescribing me a cocktail of anticoagulants, corticosteroids and antibiotics. And another test four days later, incl. one for COVID-19. While anticoagulants made sense wrt to the coagulation issues, the corticosteroids were a surprise as they had been earlier pointed out as a potential aggravating cause for younger patients. Including by the French Ministry of Health. I thus asked my daughter for advice, as she had been triaging potential COVID-19 patients in the emergency room for the past month and she was strongly negative about the treatment, both because of the corticosteroids and of the antibiotics. Treatment that was apparently advocated by my practitioner on his own. I thus waited for the second round of blood tests, which returned a lower D-Dimer level and a negative signal for COVID-19. (In the meanwhile, I had spotted a BMJ paper on the possible impact of extended running on the D-Dimer levels and hence waited till the mid-afternoon to take the test!) While this ended up as a non-story, only made more exciting by the lack of competitive events during the lockdown!, I find it interesting that my doctor, who was most reasonably worried about the rising number of COVID-19 among his patients, leaned towards a viral conclusion with little data, as my month-old return to intensive (daily) running was a more likely explanation for sore toes…

don’t run with 21run [for locals only]

This (whining) post is of little interest to anyone but French runners: last week I ordered a new pair of running shoes as mine had suffered too many kilometres to keep going and came upon a sale offer on 21run.fr that suited my needs. Checking similar offers on other running sites made this sale the best choice and hence I ordered the shoes. As is often the case with running shoes, the size varies with the brand and the pair of Asics I received was too small. Nothing unusual with that, but I then found out that the company is actually located in Germany, despite the website being integrally in French, plus advertising in the Paris métro, which again is not an issue per se, except that it charges returns outside Germany. Meaning that I ended up paying 17% of the overall price just to return shoes that were not my size.

Why Runners Get Slower With Age

“The differences were striking. With each passing decade, the runners’ stride length and preferred speed dropped by about 20 percent.”

This morning at breakfast I read this New York Times article on the impact of age on running abilities. The perfect article to get me in the right post-birthday mood! The results of a physiological study reported in this article are not crystal-clear, but they primarily show that “older runners used their ankle muscles less but not other muscles more.”  A point on which I have no opinion, although I think I now run more from the front of my feet than I used to run, if the imposition on my running shoes is informative: the sole under the big toe is the first part to wear out! Then, at lunch, I went to train with my friends of the Insee Paris Club on 1km splits, with a good soul playing the pacemaker on the last lap. And helping me to achieve an average 3:31 average I was not expecting! Too bad I only have one serious training left before the traditional Argentan half-marathon, early October…