Oxygen debt

Leonard Cercone was old school. Win all your intervals, go all-out on every down, beat the other guy, even if he's your best friend. Especially if he's your best friend. Leonard Cercone was the track coach at Wylie E. Groves High School, also assistant football coach and world history teacher, in that order.

I went out for track my sophomore year, and after failing miserably in the hurdles, I tried the quarter mile because Coach had been a quarter-miler and his default setting was to run the quarter. But I didn't have the speed, so I tried the half mile. I passed people on the second lap, and Coach Cercone said, "Dunc, you're a half miler because you get stronger as you go along."

I remembered that phrase, stronger as you go along. It would help me in a lot of things that didn't come easily. I wasn't much of a half miler either, at least not on a team like ours that was loaded with talent, not to mention that I had no idea what training was all about. So I ended up a high jumper my senior year and did alright once I switched to the Fosbury flop.

Yet I still didn't know what a workout was, and it was years later, after high jumping was all over and I needed something else to do, that the concept of aerobic conditioning entered my world. Like many aspects of physical nature, it is a harsh and beautiful thing. You can strengthen your existing muscle fibers by overloading them with progressively increasing resistance. You can cause your heart and lungs to get stronger by demanding that they do more than they are prepared to do. Push the instrument and the instrument responds.

The opposite is also the case. If you decrease the resistance, muscle fibers get weaker, and if you stop using them, they atrophy. Go a week or two without asking the cardiovascular system to rise to the occasion, and the system loses the capacity to do it. Like trying to run a marathon when you've trained for 10K, at some point there's an oxygen debt, and it ain't gonna happen. If there's insufficient oxygen delivered, there's no ATP and no go.

Back in March when the weather got nice, I was riding the old Schvinn and feeling pretty confident about putting some miles on it. In my endorphin-fueled excitement, I actually thought I could bike three times a week, with one long ride on the weekend, and keep increasing the distance week by week. If I add just half an hour a week to my long ride, I'll be up to a hundred miles by summer.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Not that I seriously believed I would do that. I just saw that it was possible and briefly entertained the notion that, in the abstract, it could be done. So what happened? It rained. It got cool and windy. It wasn't 65 degrees and clear every day during April. It rained again. Note the whiny tone. I thought about riding, but I had other things to do.

Consequently, when perfect weather returned the second week of May, I saddled up old Schvinn and moseyed on up the trail, and guess what. No gas in the tank, no wind in the sails, no ATP in the muscles to climb the long, gradual, half-assed central Ohio hill on County Line Road. Use it or lose it, and in a couple of weeks I lost it.

The first day was bad, and the second day was horrible. Where I come from - and Coach Cercone would certainly endorse this - being fit has moral weight. If you let the body go all slack, this demonstrates your failure as a person and reveals an undeniable character flaw. He would give you that glare.

The third day was better, much better, as if my sins had been redeemed and I was a good person again. The fourth day I was unstoppable. Cars ate my dust, and I climbed hills in high gear. Westerville to the Park of Roses? No problemo! Legs, heart, and lungs hitting on all cylinders. Mind and body humming on all chakras. Oxygen delivered on demand, and the endorphin bar is open.

Let's see how long this lasts.