Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy, and your conclusions are highly questionable! You are a poor scientist, Dr. Venkman!
An open letter to Mr. Owl of “three licks to the center of a tootsie pop” fame: Your theories are the worst kind of popular tripe, your methods are sloppy,you’re your conclusions are highly questionable. You are a poor scientist, Mr. Owl. From putting your beak and tongue on the scale to reverse engineer your desired results (read: biting into the center of the pop), I cannot in good conscious support your supposed “research” into such an important question.
I can however offer as my bona fides for commitment to the scientific method my own empirical evidence on a different question: How many weeks of not running before an endurance runner losing the ability to run a marathon? The answer, based on my meticulous record keeping, is six weeks… and then even with two marathons and various shorter distances as part of a Dopey Challenge.
Cite my source, I hear you hoot from the digital backbenches of the WayBack Machine? Fine, Mr. Owl. I shall.
Exhibit A: a nasty sinus infection coupled with a sprained tibia contributed to a cut-down running schedule in the middle of December, albeit I did run the Holly Jolly Marathon on December 22nd.
Exhibit B: a resurgent infection or perhaps another bug picked up from the American populace (thanks a lot, RFK Jr, for making Americans unhealthy again and distrustful of expertise), coupled with continued tibia bone or muscle issues required further curtailment of running. I did however run the Dopey Challenge from January 8-11.
Exhibit C: Despite PT and attempts to run again, the pain grew too great and I cut running from my daily regimen on January 13th.
Exhibit D: I ran the Clearwater Marathon today.
The pain in my tibia hurt the same with the first step as it did with the tenth, hundredth, the ten thousandth and the fifteen thousandth. And then it kinda numbed to nothing… but exhaustion in the remaining 20,000 steps proved overwhelming. I wasn’t so much in pain as the body was unwilling or unable to endure the run. So I walked. A lot. Way more than I have done… way more than even at the WDW Marathon on January 11th… and that one had character photo ops. The closest this one has to that was the Hulk Hogan Trail sign:
The slowest marathon and the most out of shape I’ve been in 15, 20 years. Suck on that, Mr. Owl.
***
The truth hurts… more than even the tibia pain that my most recent 3-minute doctor consult has me getting an MRI to see if there is more going on. Of course to get an MRI takes apparently 2-3 weeks to schedule with my insurance and because labs around here are all understaffed or under construction. The joys of modern healthcare!
All this is to say that though I struggled in the first half with some pain in my leg (and again no more than just walking around the house… just at a for a time faster clip). The second half, when the pain seemed to die down, was mostly depressing for how slow and lumbering I had become. I don’t know this for a fact, but I wonder if Bob Dylan had written as a sketch for one of his big hits an alternate query: “How many weeks must a man not run, before he cannot run again?”
The answer my friends is six. Six weeks. And I have the data to back this up.
