A.M. Did not sleep well because my skin was itching. It does not like the sun. It actually has been itching for a while. But I was able to stay in bed. This time I woke up at 5:10 and did not feel like I'd be able to fall asleep soon enough to get anything out of it, so I decided to just get up.
Started with Jeff, James, and Benjamin on a bike. At 2 miles hid Benjamin's bike in the bushes and he ran with us. We ended up running 2 fastest continuous miles for the day with him - 14:21 with the splits of 7:18 and 7:03. Matt joined us shortly after Benjamin started running and ran to the end of his run. Benjamin got back on his bike and we took him and James home, so that was 6 miles. Then I wanted to measure Jeff tugging power against mine. So we got out the harness and tried running in opposite directions. Jeff was a clear winner in the running motion - I was steadily moving backwards. Then we tried facing each other and play a tug-of-war with no arms, squatting down and pushing the harness with our backs. In that motion Jeff was a little bit stronger, but not as much as in the running motion. Then we went for another 6 miles, and Benjamin wanted to ride along with us, so we took him as well. We were discussing the results of the test. They were rather interesting. We measured my leg extension to be better than Jeff's in the absolute value earlier (although it was a little bit worse relative to body weight). Yet in the running motion Jeff was clearly stronger, not just in proportion to his body weight, but in the absolute power of the pull. To add to this, in 2003 I increased my hamstring curl max by 50%, and the leg extension by 10%, yet the increase in individual muscle group strengths did not make any difference in an all out 100 sprint. So this led to the contemplation of the need to be able to use the muscles together, that there might be some kind of limit not related to individual muscle strength that you could hit when you have to use several muscle groups. We started talking about the kangaroo, how its preferred way of motion is hopping, and began to wonder exactly how inefficient humans are at moving this way. So we did a kangaroo hop for 100 meters. The results were interesting. Jeff was a much better kangaroo. He hopped it in 33 seconds, while it took me 49! However, my HR got up to 140, which (over 49 seconds) suggests I was probably putting in an equivalent of maybe 5:30 running effort. We did not have an HRM on Jeff, but subjectively he said he really felt the pain of the effort. Our next experiment was the bound - cover 100 meters in the least number of steps. Jeff bounded 100 meters in 46 steps and it took him 20 seconds. I took fewer steps (44), but it took me 21.5 seconds. We did one more experiment - 100 m sprint on one leg. Jeff did it in 25 seconds, I did it in 28. This gave us some food for thought. One legged hop was consistent with our all out sprint difference. The bound results were consistent with what we've seen in the past, although we still do not understand why I can bound further than Jeff while he outdoes me by quite a bit in every other strength measurement prorated for body weight that we have tried so far. Perhaps the leg length? But at the same time, I've performed on par in the past with people my height in a bound that would outsprint me by quite a margin (24.5 200 for the peer group vs 27.5 for me). And I am not that much taller than Jeff anyway (5'8 vs 5'10). So we still have this bound mystery to solve. The difference between the kangaroo and the one legged jump was interesting. Both of us were faster on one leg than on two. Probably because the other leg was making a good contribution with a swing, which was more than what it could have contributed in the power when forced to be on the ground at the same time. One question that remains unanswered is why I did such a bad kangaroo job. One thing I can try is see if I can improve it with training, and when improved if it will have an effect on the all out speed. Then we ran into a lady on the trail that was doing 8x800 with 1 minute rest at about 3:05-3:15 range. Her names was Cherri Erickson. So we paced her over a few of those. She has 3 children, used to run for BYU, and graduated in 1994. P.M. 1.05 with Julia in 10:23, 2.1 with Jenny in 18:45, another mile with no running kids. Pushed Jacob and Joseph the entire time. Five Fingers - 880.20 miles.
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