Well this weekend will be a fun new adventure for me. I will be running the Pikes Peak Ascent on Saturday which is about 13.3miles and 7500ft of gain. This a major mountain race in the Colorado region and is what some dudes like this guy live for. My plan is to just go and have fun running it under 4:15 so that I have a Wave 1 qualifier for the next 3 years in case I decide to run this again. The reasoning behind my outlook of not really racing it hard is that I am stuck in Wave 2 behind about 1000 people due to the fact that I did not have a fast marathon or half marathon time in the last 3 years to put me in Wave 1 since I have only been running trails. I had to use a trail marathon as a qualifier and of course it was not fast enough for Wave 1, oh well. I think I am in 3:00-3:15 shape but I expect to run between 3:45-4:00 with all the passing I will have to do even when running at an easy pace.
Should be fun!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Weekend- Boulder Ironman 70.3
I was planning on doing the Audubon Duathlon this weekend but the wisdom of my wife convinced me that I need to ride farther than 12 miles in a single sitting before attempting this huge climbing bike ride. So on Sunday I rode my mountain bike all loaded up with gear from the house out to the Boulder Rez to watch my buddy Neal finish his first Half Ironman. While waiting for him to come off the bike I was able to get in a good 12 mile run around the Rez. This gave me a good 45 miles on the mountain bike and 12 miles of running, not a bad slow endurance training day.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Louis C.K. is one funny dude!
I came across this on Gary Robbis blog. It is funny as hell. Just make sure that you watch who is around when watching this, lots of f-bombs ect... If you are looking at this in Facebook you will have to go to the blog to see the video, well worth the effort. Have a great weekend!
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Rashad Evans
For those who don't know this (I think only my wife Ashley really knows) I am a huge fan of UFC and MMA fighting. I may never have the guts to give it a shot myself I do enjoy watching and cheering on these great athletes. Here are some videos of one of my favorite athletes Rashad Evans who is just a stud.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Salomon Team Hardrock Video
I know I have been real quite on here lately. Life has been getting in the way lately and I hope to make a better effort of updating this more often the rest of the year. Anyway I came across this today and had to share it. This is the #1 race on my life list of 100 milers. I have paced it twice and have seen 60 miles of the course. Maybe someday I will get picked in the lottery. Enjoy!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
18:42! Ouch!
That one really hurt! Last night I ran the first race in the Dash-n-Dine series that they hold out at the Boulder Rez after work on Tuesdays in the Spring. I think that the main purpose of this series is to get people qualified and ready for the Bolder Boulder.
Quick report:
Weather- perfect! It was cool and overcast
I did a 4.6 mile warmup jogging the course plus some extra around Coot Lake before the race. This is the first time that I have warmed up that much. I usually jog about a mile and just stretch. I felt loose and ready to race.
The actual race was all kind of a blur, it really hurt is about all I really remember. Especially that last 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile. The split times below are what I remember when looking down at my watch, I may be way off with them.
Mile 1: 5:52
Mile 2: 12:00 (6:08 mile pace)
Mile 3: 18:02 (6:02 mile pace)
Mile 0.1: 18:42 (6:40 mile pace) for a 5K PR for me!
As you can see I really died that last bit but I still finished 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. The results can be found by clicking here.
Hopefully next week I can bring that number down a few more seconds and not be as sore as I am today. I am not use to that much lactic acid being in my system. I am a long slow hilly running type of guy. But it sure was fun to battle it out at the front of the pack.
Quick report:
Weather- perfect! It was cool and overcast
I did a 4.6 mile warmup jogging the course plus some extra around Coot Lake before the race. This is the first time that I have warmed up that much. I usually jog about a mile and just stretch. I felt loose and ready to race.
The actual race was all kind of a blur, it really hurt is about all I really remember. Especially that last 1/2 to 3/4 of a mile. The split times below are what I remember when looking down at my watch, I may be way off with them.
Mile 1: 5:52
Mile 2: 12:00 (6:08 mile pace)
Mile 3: 18:02 (6:02 mile pace)
Mile 0.1: 18:42 (6:40 mile pace) for a 5K PR for me!
As you can see I really died that last bit but I still finished 5th overall and 3rd in my age group. The results can be found by clicking here.
Hopefully next week I can bring that number down a few more seconds and not be as sore as I am today. I am not use to that much lactic acid being in my system. I am a long slow hilly running type of guy. But it sure was fun to battle it out at the front of the pack.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
A QUICK GUIDE TO THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES
I just finished reading Paleo Diet for Athletes and really liked what it had to say. I am going to make an effort to keep Paleo in my mind when I look at food for now on. Here is a short version of the book. You can go straight to the website on TrainingPeaks by clicking on the name of this post. Enjoy.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A QUICK GUIDE TO
THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES
© 2005 Loren Cordain, PhD and Joe Friel, MS
The Paleo Diet for Athletes was released in October, 2005 from Rodale Press. Written by Loren Cordain, Ph.D., author of The Paleo Diet, and JoeFriel, M.S., author of numerous bestselling books on training for endurance athletes, the book applies the concept of eating as our
Stone Age ancestors ate to the extraordinary demands of training for serious endurance sports. Although it is now the 21 st century, athletes still have Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) bodies. There has been no significant change in the human genome in the past 10,000 years. Physiologically speaking, we are still Paleolithic athletes.
THE PALEO DIET
The basic premise of Dr. Cordain’s research on paleolithic nutrition is that certain foods are optimal for humans and others are nonoptimal. The optimal foods are those that we have been eating for most of our time on Earth—more than 4 million years. Only in the last 10,000 years, a mere blink of the eye relative to our species’ existence, have we been eating nonoptimal foods. Unfortunately, these foods
comprise the bulk of what western society eats today and include such foods as grains, dairy and legumes. Given that our bodies have not changed, we are simply not welladapted to these nonoptimal
foods and they moderate health and peak performance.
On the other hand, we have been eating optimal foods – vegetables, fruits, and lean
animal protein – for hundreds of thousands of years and we are fully adapted to
them. Science tells us that these foods also best meet our nutritional needs. Eat
these and you will thrive. Avoid or strictly limit them and your health and performance
will be compromised.
PALEO FOR ATHLETES
Serious athletes, however, when it comes to immediately before, during, and directly
after workouts, need to bend the rules of the Paleo Diet a bit since we're placing
demands on the body that were not normal for our Stone Age ancestors. Hour after
hour of sustained high energy output and the need for quick recovery are the serious
athlete’s unique demands. This requires some latitude to use nonoptimal
foods on a limited basis. The exceptions may best be described by explaining the athlete’s 5
stages of daily eating relative to exercise.
Stage I: Eating Before Exercise
In brief, we recommend that athletes eat low to moderate glycemic index
carbohydrates at least two hours prior to a hard or long workout or race. There may
also be some fat and protein in this meal. All foods should be low in fiber. Take in 200
to 300 calories for every hour remaining until exercise begins. If eating two hours
prior is not possible, then take in 200 or so calories 10 minutes before the workout or
race begins.
Stage II: Eating During Exercise
During long or hard workouts and races you will need to take in high glycemic index
carbohydrates mostly in the form of fluids. Sports drinks are fine for this. Find one
that you like the taste of and will drink willingly. Realize that events lasting less than
about an hour (including warmup) don’t require any carbohydrate. Water will suffice
for these. A starting point for deciding how much to take in is 200 to 400 calories per
hour modified according to body size, experience and the nature of the exercise
(longer events require more calories than short).
Stage III: Eating Immediately After
In the first 30 minutes postworkout (but only after long and/or highly intense
exercise) and postrace use a recovery drink that contains both carbohydrate and
protein in a 45:1 ratio. You can buy a commercial product such as Ultrafit
Recovery™ (www.ultrafit.com) for this. Or you can make your own by blending 16
ounces of fruit juice with a banana, 3 to 5 tablespoons of glucose (such as CarboPro)
depending on body size, about 3 tablespoons of protein powder, especially from
egg or whey sources and two pinches of salt. This 30minute window is critical for
recovery. It should be your highest priority after a hard workout or race.
Stage IV: Eating for Extended Recovery
For the next few hours (as long as the preceding challenging exercise lasted)
continue to focus your diet on carbohydrates, especially moderate to high glycemic
load carbohydrates along with protein at a 45:1 carbprotein ratio. Now is the time to
eat nonoptimal foods such as pasta, bread, bagels, rice, corn and other foods rich in
glucose as they contribute to the necessary carbohydrate recovery process. Perhaps
the perfect Stage IV foods are raisins, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams.
Stage V: Eating for LongTerm
Recovery For the remainder of your day, or until your next Stage I, return to eating a Paleo Diet
by focusing on optimal foods. For more information on the Paleo Diet go to
www.thepaleodiet.com or read The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
HOW MUCH PROTEIN, CARB AND FAT SHOULD I EAT?
The macronutrient requirement changes with the demands of the training season and
so should be periodized along with training. We recommend that athletes maintain a
rather consistent protein intake year round. As a percentage of total calories this will
typically be in the range of 20-25% for athletes. This is on the low end of what our
Stone Age ancestors ate due to the athlete’s increased intake of carbohydrate in
Stages I to IV which dilutes protein as a percentage of daily calories.
On the other hand, periodization of diet produces significant and opposing swings in
the athlete’s fat and carbohydrate intake as the training seasons change. During the
base (general preparation) period the diet shifts toward an increased intake of fat
while carbohydrate intake decreases. At this time in the season when a purpose of
training is to promote the body’s use of fat for fuel, more healthy fat is consumed—in
the range of 30% of total calories—with carbohydrate intake at around 50%. During
the build and peak (specific preparation) periods the intensity of training increases
placing greater demands on the body for carbohydrate to fuel exercise. At this latter
time of the season Stages III and IV become increasingly critical to the athlete’s
recovery. Carbohydrate intake increases accordingly to around 60% of total calories
with fat intake dropping to around 20%.
During times of the year when training is greatly reduced (peaking/tapering and
transition periods) the athlete must limit caloric intake to prevent unwanted weight
gain.
WHY IS THE PALEO DIET BENEFICIAL?
Health and fitness are not synonymous. Unfortunately, many athletes are fit but
unhealthy. Frequent illness, injury and overtraining reduce performance potential.
The Paleo Diet for Athletes significantly improves health long term. Compared with
the commonly accepted athlete’s diet, the Paleo Diet:
● Increases intake of branched chain amino acids (BCAA). Benefits muscle
development and anabolic function. Also counteracts immunosuppression common
in endurance athletes following extensive exercise.
● Decreases omega-6: omega-3 ratio. Reduces tissue inflammations common to
athletes while promoting healing. This may include asthmatic conditions common in
athletes.
● Lowers body acidity. Reduces the catabolic effect of acidosis on bone and muscle
while stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This is increasingly important with
aging.
● Is high in trace nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are necessary for optimal health
and longterm recovery from exercise. The most nutrientdense foods are
vegetables and seafood. On average, vegetables have nearly twice the nutrient
density of grains.
EXCERPT FROM THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES
Training for endurance sports such as running, cycling, triathlon, rowing, swimming,
and crosscountry skiing places great demands on the body, and the athlete is in
some stage of recovery almost continuously during periods of heavy training. The
keys to optimum recovery are sleep and diet. Even though we recommend that
everyone eat a diet similar to what our Stone Age ancestors ate, we realize that
nutritional concessions must be made for the athlete who is training at a high volume
in the range of 10 to 35 or more hours per week of rigorous exercise. Rapid recovery
is the biggest issue facing such an athlete. While it’s not impossible to recover from
such training loads on a strict Paleo Diet, it is somewhat more difficult to recover
quickly. By modifying the diet before, during, and immediately following challenging
workouts, the Paleo Diet provides two benefits sought by all athletes: quick recovery
for the next workout, and superior health for the rest of your life.
For more information on The Paleo Diet for Athletes go to…
www.thepaleodiet.com
www.trainingbible.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A QUICK GUIDE TO
THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES
© 2005 Loren Cordain, PhD and Joe Friel, MS
The Paleo Diet for Athletes was released in October, 2005 from Rodale Press. Written by Loren Cordain, Ph.D., author of The Paleo Diet, and JoeFriel, M.S., author of numerous bestselling books on training for endurance athletes, the book applies the concept of eating as our
Stone Age ancestors ate to the extraordinary demands of training for serious endurance sports. Although it is now the 21 st century, athletes still have Old Stone Age (Paleolithic) bodies. There has been no significant change in the human genome in the past 10,000 years. Physiologically speaking, we are still Paleolithic athletes.
THE PALEO DIET
The basic premise of Dr. Cordain’s research on paleolithic nutrition is that certain foods are optimal for humans and others are nonoptimal. The optimal foods are those that we have been eating for most of our time on Earth—more than 4 million years. Only in the last 10,000 years, a mere blink of the eye relative to our species’ existence, have we been eating nonoptimal foods. Unfortunately, these foods
comprise the bulk of what western society eats today and include such foods as grains, dairy and legumes. Given that our bodies have not changed, we are simply not welladapted to these nonoptimal
foods and they moderate health and peak performance.
On the other hand, we have been eating optimal foods – vegetables, fruits, and lean
animal protein – for hundreds of thousands of years and we are fully adapted to
them. Science tells us that these foods also best meet our nutritional needs. Eat
these and you will thrive. Avoid or strictly limit them and your health and performance
will be compromised.
PALEO FOR ATHLETES
Serious athletes, however, when it comes to immediately before, during, and directly
after workouts, need to bend the rules of the Paleo Diet a bit since we're placing
demands on the body that were not normal for our Stone Age ancestors. Hour after
hour of sustained high energy output and the need for quick recovery are the serious
athlete’s unique demands. This requires some latitude to use nonoptimal
foods on a limited basis. The exceptions may best be described by explaining the athlete’s 5
stages of daily eating relative to exercise.
Stage I: Eating Before Exercise
In brief, we recommend that athletes eat low to moderate glycemic index
carbohydrates at least two hours prior to a hard or long workout or race. There may
also be some fat and protein in this meal. All foods should be low in fiber. Take in 200
to 300 calories for every hour remaining until exercise begins. If eating two hours
prior is not possible, then take in 200 or so calories 10 minutes before the workout or
race begins.
Stage II: Eating During Exercise
During long or hard workouts and races you will need to take in high glycemic index
carbohydrates mostly in the form of fluids. Sports drinks are fine for this. Find one
that you like the taste of and will drink willingly. Realize that events lasting less than
about an hour (including warmup) don’t require any carbohydrate. Water will suffice
for these. A starting point for deciding how much to take in is 200 to 400 calories per
hour modified according to body size, experience and the nature of the exercise
(longer events require more calories than short).
Stage III: Eating Immediately After
In the first 30 minutes postworkout (but only after long and/or highly intense
exercise) and postrace use a recovery drink that contains both carbohydrate and
protein in a 45:1 ratio. You can buy a commercial product such as Ultrafit
Recovery™ (www.ultrafit.com) for this. Or you can make your own by blending 16
ounces of fruit juice with a banana, 3 to 5 tablespoons of glucose (such as CarboPro)
depending on body size, about 3 tablespoons of protein powder, especially from
egg or whey sources and two pinches of salt. This 30minute window is critical for
recovery. It should be your highest priority after a hard workout or race.
Stage IV: Eating for Extended Recovery
For the next few hours (as long as the preceding challenging exercise lasted)
continue to focus your diet on carbohydrates, especially moderate to high glycemic
load carbohydrates along with protein at a 45:1 carbprotein ratio. Now is the time to
eat nonoptimal foods such as pasta, bread, bagels, rice, corn and other foods rich in
glucose as they contribute to the necessary carbohydrate recovery process. Perhaps
the perfect Stage IV foods are raisins, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams.
Stage V: Eating for LongTerm
Recovery For the remainder of your day, or until your next Stage I, return to eating a Paleo Diet
by focusing on optimal foods. For more information on the Paleo Diet go to
www.thepaleodiet.com or read The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D.
HOW MUCH PROTEIN, CARB AND FAT SHOULD I EAT?
The macronutrient requirement changes with the demands of the training season and
so should be periodized along with training. We recommend that athletes maintain a
rather consistent protein intake year round. As a percentage of total calories this will
typically be in the range of 20-25% for athletes. This is on the low end of what our
Stone Age ancestors ate due to the athlete’s increased intake of carbohydrate in
Stages I to IV which dilutes protein as a percentage of daily calories.
On the other hand, periodization of diet produces significant and opposing swings in
the athlete’s fat and carbohydrate intake as the training seasons change. During the
base (general preparation) period the diet shifts toward an increased intake of fat
while carbohydrate intake decreases. At this time in the season when a purpose of
training is to promote the body’s use of fat for fuel, more healthy fat is consumed—in
the range of 30% of total calories—with carbohydrate intake at around 50%. During
the build and peak (specific preparation) periods the intensity of training increases
placing greater demands on the body for carbohydrate to fuel exercise. At this latter
time of the season Stages III and IV become increasingly critical to the athlete’s
recovery. Carbohydrate intake increases accordingly to around 60% of total calories
with fat intake dropping to around 20%.
During times of the year when training is greatly reduced (peaking/tapering and
transition periods) the athlete must limit caloric intake to prevent unwanted weight
gain.
WHY IS THE PALEO DIET BENEFICIAL?
Health and fitness are not synonymous. Unfortunately, many athletes are fit but
unhealthy. Frequent illness, injury and overtraining reduce performance potential.
The Paleo Diet for Athletes significantly improves health long term. Compared with
the commonly accepted athlete’s diet, the Paleo Diet:
● Increases intake of branched chain amino acids (BCAA). Benefits muscle
development and anabolic function. Also counteracts immunosuppression common
in endurance athletes following extensive exercise.
● Decreases omega-6: omega-3 ratio. Reduces tissue inflammations common to
athletes while promoting healing. This may include asthmatic conditions common in
athletes.
● Lowers body acidity. Reduces the catabolic effect of acidosis on bone and muscle
while stimulating muscle protein synthesis. This is increasingly important with
aging.
● Is high in trace nutrients. Vitamins and minerals are necessary for optimal health
and longterm recovery from exercise. The most nutrientdense foods are
vegetables and seafood. On average, vegetables have nearly twice the nutrient
density of grains.
EXCERPT FROM THE PALEO DIET FOR ATHLETES
Training for endurance sports such as running, cycling, triathlon, rowing, swimming,
and crosscountry skiing places great demands on the body, and the athlete is in
some stage of recovery almost continuously during periods of heavy training. The
keys to optimum recovery are sleep and diet. Even though we recommend that
everyone eat a diet similar to what our Stone Age ancestors ate, we realize that
nutritional concessions must be made for the athlete who is training at a high volume
in the range of 10 to 35 or more hours per week of rigorous exercise. Rapid recovery
is the biggest issue facing such an athlete. While it’s not impossible to recover from
such training loads on a strict Paleo Diet, it is somewhat more difficult to recover
quickly. By modifying the diet before, during, and immediately following challenging
workouts, the Paleo Diet provides two benefits sought by all athletes: quick recovery
for the next workout, and superior health for the rest of your life.
For more information on The Paleo Diet for Athletes go to…
www.thepaleodiet.com
www.trainingbible.com
Monday, February 28, 2011
Paleo Fitness
This is an awesome read and kind of goes along with how I am trying to eat lately but failing at big time due to Girl Scout cookies. I copy and pasted the entire article here for my future reference but you can go to OutsideOnline.com article by clicking on the title of this post.
My wife as started getting into Crossfit and I have been reading articles about the Paleo diet and some about Crossfit here and there over the past month. She really enjoys it and gets me wondering how it would affect my ultra running and training for 100s. Would the benefit of spending the time doing Crossfit like workouts for example be greater than the benefit of using that time actually putting in more miles? I don't know.
Enjoy.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Workout that Time Forgot
Will caveman calisthenics be the next big thing for adventure athletes?
By Nick Heil
Erwan Le Corre seems to defy gravity—and not just because he's French.
I'm standing close by as the 39-year-old movement coach—shirtless, barefoot, and built like Mikhail Baryshnikov—hops up and grasps a wooden bar lashed eight feet off the ground between two stout maple trees. Le Corre dangles calmly from both arms for a moment before swinging one leg up to the side, hooking it over the beam, and—swoooop—crouching on top of it and looking down at us. The move is so swift and catlike that I'm not quite sure how he did it. A few minutes later, I attempt the same thing, legs scissoring awkwardly until my arms give out and I hit the dirt with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.
This is day one—hour one, in fact—of caveman camp: July's weeklong MovNat Reawakening Workshop, at Summersville Lake Retreat, an RV resort in West Virginia. MovNat, an abbreviation of "Move Naturally," is the outdoor fitness-and-conditioning business that Le Corre founded in 2008. Our camp—modern dome tents, a fire ring, and a kitchen area covered by a canopy—is set up in a grassy clearing a couple of miles from the lake. Gyms are out; wilderness is in. Instead of weights, we lift rocks, logs, and one another. Hand-to-hand combat is as much a part of the regimen as lying in the grass and watching billowy clouds blow by.
"MovNat is a comprehensive lifestyle," Le Corre tells us. "It's about diet and nutrition. It's about exposure to sunlight and nature. It's about getting rest. It's about feeding the mind with healthy insights and positive thoughts." Le Corre, who relocated to the United States full-time in 2009, founded MovNat on the premise that humans once dashed around untamed landscapes with power and grace, gathering berries, toppling mastodons, and so forth—and that proficiency at such things will help reconnect us to the world in which we evolved. Not only were we born to run, he says, but also to jump, climb trees, swim deep underwater, slog through swamps, stalk prey, and fight off attackers.
"We live like zoo animals!" he continues that morning, pronouncing it "ah-nee-mahls." It's an idea Le Corre borrowed from the British zoologist Desmond Morris, author of the 1967 classic The Naked Ape, and it's central to his worldview: that we are essentially wild creatures ill-suited to desk jobs and processed foods. "We have become divorced from nature, trapped in colorless boxes," Le Corre says. "We have lost our adaptability, and it's threatening our health and longevity."
Clearly, the approach holds some appeal: all five of Le Corre's $1,700 summer workshops have sold out. I'd worried slightly about the freak factor before arriving, anticipating a clan of wayward hippies and hairy Luddites. But the group is surprisingly normal—and cosmopolitan. Among others, there's a corporate-recruitment manager from Osaka, Japan; a musician and his wife from London; a journalist from Zürich, Switzerland; two brothers from northern New Jersey; a Web designer from Brooklyn; and a computer programmer from Tallahassee, Florida. Everyone looks reasonably fit and is either barefoot or, like myself, shod in Vibram FiveFingers, the simian-looking foot-gloves.
"When I saw his promotional video, The Workout the World Forgot, I thought, This makes sense," Richard Carlow, the manager from Japan, tells me when I ask what inspired him to make such a long trip. "I wanted to learn it from the Source."
The Source is being assisted by Vic Verdier, a 42-year-old former French commando who currently lives in Thailand, where he teaches Krav Maga, the official self-defense system of the Israeli Defense Forces, and other martial arts. The only other staff is Allie Brodeur, 22, an accomplished acro-yogi and poi spinner—and our camp cook.
They make a colorful trio, but it's Brodeur's cooking that's the focus of most of our first day's conversation. That's because we're all being put on a strict version of the paleo diet, as in "Paleolithic," a pointedly unhedonistic approach to nutrition modeled after the eating habits of our hunter-gatherer forebears. Meat, fruits, veggies, nuts, and certain oils are OK, but grains, dairy, salt, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol are all verboten. Starbucks, I'm reminded on the first morning in camp, didn't materialize until the Late Neolithic.
By the time I turn in that night, after more exercises and a dinner of gravyless pork ribs and boiled carrots, I'm drained and swan-diving into full detox: woozy, wobbly-kneed, and worried that it's going to be a very, very long week. I do, at least, find a queen-size air mattress and cotton sheets in my tent. "This isn't survival school," Le Corre reassures me. "We want you to be comfortable here." One great thing about hunter-gatherers, apparently, is how much they love Bed Bath & Beyond.
MOVNAT DRAWS FROM some familiar sources—CrossFit, low-carb diets, barefoot running, martial arts, mud wrestling, Quest for Fire, etc.—but Le Corre's program occupies a space all its own. If anything, MovNat falls within the concept of "evolutionary fitness," an increasingly popular trend embraced by a loosely organized but fast-growing global community of health enthusiasts, medical professionals, and athletes. The movement is often lumped under the "paleo" rubric, but it's more than just a prehistoric way to eat and exercise.
The most fervent paleos prefer raw meat (thankfully, our workshop meals were always cooked), eschew footwear, fast periodically, and entertain themselves by dissing vegetarians—especially vegans, who they believe are misguided about human nutrition. But most paleos are more moderate, embracing the 80/20 rule: don't despair over the occasional bagel or sundae, as long as you adhere to the diet roughly 80 percent of the time.
The basic tenets of the paleo diet have been kicked around for years, but its watershed moment came in 1985, when an anthropology professor at Emory University named S. Boyd Eaton published "Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications" in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggesting that the paleo diet could be a public-health panacea. While the paper made a sizable splash, it wasn't until Loren Cordain, a professor of exercise science at Colorado State University, came across the piece a couple of years later that the idea began to reach a larger audience. Cordain eventually became the reigning authority on paleo nutrition and, in 2001, published The Paleo Diet.
Interest in the paleo lifestyle sputtered along for a few years, with help from flag bearers like Ray Audette, the author of NeanderThin, and Frank Forencich, author of Exuberant Animal, as well as a few primal-exercise proselytizers, like Art De Vany, a buff eptuagenarian and former economics professor from Los Angeles whom many credit with launching the evolutionary-fitness idea and whose latest book, The New Evolution Diet, is due out this month. But toward the end of the aughts, something curious happened: Cordain's royalty checks began to fatten up, and The Paleo Diet crept into Amazon.com's top 100. Cordain attributes much of the book's sleeper success to Robb Wolf, a former champion power lifter and biochemist who apprenticed with him in 2006.
In the late nineties, Wolf had suffered a series of health problems, including ulcerative colitis, high blood pressure, and depression. "I was augering into the mountainside," Wolf told me. Two years later, ailments cured by the paleo diet, Wolf discovered CrossFit, the popular strength-and-conditioning system that combines weight lifting, sprinting, and gymnastics. Eventually, Wolf took the paleo message to the greater CrossFit community, speaking often at gyms and events. Word spread with viral intensity, and as CrossFit mushroomed—the brand grew from 13 affiliated gyms in 2005 to 2,200 by 2010—so, too, did paleo's popularity.
These days, low-carb, high-protein diets are embraced by everyone from professional athletes to suburban moms. While the paleo approach is considerably more holistic than, say, the now disparaged Atkins diet, not everyone is buying it. The influential nutritionist Marion Nestle, for example, has questioned the wisdom of completely eliminating grains and dairy from our table. "It's never a good idea to restrict food groups unless you have to," Nestle says. "These foods have been eaten by humans for a long time with much pleasure as well as nutritional value." Others, like Katharine Milton, a respected anthropologist at UC–Berkeley, argue that paleos' fundamental presumption—that we have been unable to adapt to relatively new types of foods since the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry—is flawed. Humans, Milton argues, have always, even in Paleolithic times, adjusted to their changing environment, nutritional and otherwise, quite well.
Despite the lack of consensus, by the time I get to caveman camp, premodern diets and exercise are a small but growing phenomenon. NFL veteran John Welbourn preaches the paleo diet to his former teammates on the New England Patriots. Endurance gurus like Joe Friel, who, along with Cordain, co-authored The Paleo Diet for Athletes, urge triathletes to try it. Similarly, books like Christopher McDougal's Born to Run, about Mexico's Tarahumara tribe, are inspiring people to run barefoot or nearly barefoot, helping jack sales of Vibram FiveFingers by a factor of five in just the past year. Countless Web sites, books, and blogs have sprung up too, along with a handful of local paleo clubs across the country whose members gather to do things like learn archery and make grass-fed-beef jerky.
AT CAMP, WE FALL INTO a familiar pattern: up by seven, hearty breakfast, some warm-up drills, a skill-building session on barefoot running or proper log-lifting technique, lunch, siesta (or "MovNap"), a combo circuit, a swim in the lake, meaty dinner, and a lecture on topics such as lipid metabolism or the value of vitamin D.
So far, considering there was no fitness test required, attrition has been pretty minimal. A few of us have missed meals because we weren't feeling well, though some have been hit worse than others. There's a strict no-snacking policy, and Dave Csonka, the computer programmer from Florida, who's a buff six-five, has been begging for bananas because his blood sugar keeps crashing. Worse, his arms are covered in poison ivy. On one of our daily 40-minute barefoot hikes to the lake, Oswald Fombrun, one of the brothers from New Jersey, gets nailed just beneath the eye as we dash past a hornet's nest hidden in some rocks. The hikes have been a favorite part of my day, in which I imagine myself a wily hunter tracking down lunch, until I get stung twice on the arm.
Most of our training takes place in a shady grove near camp, where Verdier and Le Corre have built a temporary outdoor gym, with timbers lashed at different heights between trees, a complement of rocks and logs, several four-by-four balance beams, and a couple of picnic benches for high jumps. Verdier mostly hovers quietly in the background, while Brodeur keeps the food processor and blender humming back at camp.
On occasion, Le Corre will interrupt what we're doing to demonstrate proper technique or impress us with feats of skill and strength. After a few of us fail to move a massive log, he comes over, levers the tree trunk (which must weigh more than 300 pounds) onto his shoulder, and carries it the 100 yards to camp, where he plunks it by the campfire, dusting the bark off his arm with a theatrical flourish.
Le Corre is tall and tawny—the kind of physique you might expect to find if you waxed the hair off a Neanderthal. Still, for all the hard-bodied exterior and motivational speeches, he's no drill sergeant. His coaching is seasoned with quasi-mystical declarations, like "Oxygen is an accident, breath is intentional," and tips, like how listening to more reggae encourages rhythm and flow. At one point, I find him standing in the grass, performing some sort of sun prayer, head bowed, one arm raised to the sky. "I was just having a moment of gratitude," he says. He owns an iPhone, drives a Land Rover, and, perhaps due to his Frenchness, is comfortable wearing tight black briefs at the lake.
By the third morning, I'm filthy and sunburned and have acquired hundreds of tiny cuts and scratches that sizzle in a glaze of sweat. Even so, my body has (mostly) adjusted to the diet, and I'm feeling surprisingly good as we squirm around on crackling brown grass under a blistering sun, practicing an evasive move that might help us escape an attacker. Le Corre barks that we have become domesticated, that our sterilized and hermetically sealed lives have left us intolerant of nature. "But you can train dirt!" he exclaims, making an oblique reference to the fact that being exposed to grit and germs helps bolster our immune systems.
Not only does exercising outdoors make us more resilient, says Le Corre; it's also a better conduit for fitness than the typical cardio penance or preacher curls popular at big-box gyms, where waist trimming and biceps bulking are the main motivators. MovNat advances a concept that certain athletics coaches have pushed since the seventies, one that treats the body as a tool for dynamic movement, not a topiary sculpture.
Later that afternoon, after practicing more barefoot running ("Fall forward, catch yourself on the front of your feet"), Le Corre adds a twist to our trip to the lake. Along the way, we have to stop and carry a partner on our backs. I team up with Christoph Zürcher, 44, the journalist from Switzerland, who's six-two and has about 20 pounds on me. We're sweaty and shirtless, and I awkwardly hop on his back while he hooks his arms under my legs and starts lumbering forward. "Uuuuugghhhhh," he groans. "How far are we supposed to go?"
"Switch!" Le Corre shouts after about five minutes, and I stagger down the trail, bent under my crushing Swiss payload. At last we scramble over large rocks and emerge at the lake.
"The more we move, the smarter we become," Le Corre says as we sprawl on the rocks after our swim. "We're less stressed when we see green, like leaves and grass." A motorboat whizzes by, towing a water-skier. "I love technology," he continues. "I love all the modern conveniences that we have now, but we have to ask: When do we use it, and at what cost?"
LE CORRE GREW UP RUNNING around the fields and forests on the outskirts of Paris. He dabbled with ball sports—soccer, tennis—but hated the rules and boundary lines. At 15, he moved on to karate, quickly surpassing older, more experienced opponents. But he also found karate's formal protocols and tense competitions too staid and confining.
Then, at age 18, he happened to watch a television show about a 45-year-old Parisian stuntman named Jean Haberey. At one point, Haberey jumped out of a helicopter into an iceberg-strewn ocean wearing only swim trunks. It was the most outrageous thing Le Corre had ever seen—and he wanted to do it, too. A year later, he tracked Haberey down, and for the next seven years he followed him and his other disciples around the French metropolis, playing high-risk games: a "fight club of natural movement," as Le Corre puts it.
"He was the first guy to take people up onto the roofs of Paris," Le Corre said. "He also took us down into the underground, always barefoot, with no gear at all, to train people how to move silently like cats through urban obstacles … especially at night, when everyone was asleep."
Once, Haberey and Le Corre held a sit-up competition while dangling by their legs from a bridge over an eight-lane superhighway. Another time, Le Corre climbed along the transom of a tower crane, legs dangling in the void nearly a hundred feet above the ground. "It was crazy," Le Corre recalls, "but you just felt so alive."
Haberey's urban antics helped kick off the parkour craze, but Le Corre, like most of his followers, eventually grew disillusioned. "I supported him for a while," Le Corre says, "but it turned into a cult of his personality. It became too dark and underground, all about helping him, not others."
For a few years, Le Corre delved into endurance sports, competing in Ironman-distance triathlons while supporting himself with odd jobs, including making soap and men's jewelry. But turning himself into a perpetual-motion machine wasn't his raison d'être, either. Finally, in 2004, he stumbled upon an online comment about Methode Naturelle, an obscure training manual published in 1912 by Georges Hébert, a French naval officer. The book featured black-and-white photos of robust young men in briefs performing all kinds of primal-movement exercises: jumping, running, swimming, climbing, etc.
"I was like What?! This is exactly what I was doing before, but this guy had given it a name," says Le Corre. "He had systematized it, and I thought, That's the way to go."
Hébert's motto was "Being strong to be useful," a concept largely inspired by the defining event of his life. On May 8, 1902, Hébert was stationed on the Sughet, a naval ship just offshore of Saint-Pierre, on the island of Martinique, during the infamous eruption of Mount Pelée. In minutes, the blast flash-fried most of the town's 30,000 citizens, searing them with pyroclastic ash before burying them in tsunamis of mud. Amid the carnage, Hébert and his shipmates were credited with saving some 700 lives, pulling from the sea scalded men, women, and children, some of whom had been blown hundreds of feet through the air by the blast.
Preparing your body and mind for real-world, life-or-death applications is at the root of MovNat. Our workshop activities (throw a rock, climb a tree) may seem random, but they're intended to cultivate what Le Corre refers to as "selective tension," a kinetic reaction in which muscles relax and contract in patterns that help you move efficiently, especially in unpredictable situations. To underscore their practical value, Le Corre would often cite imagined modern-day scenarios during our training. "What if you had to pull someone from a burning building?" he asks one morning. "Or a flood," Verdier adds. "Sometimes survival comes down to who can run up a flight of stairs and who can't."
One afternoon, Le Corre shows me a video on his laptop, basically the director's cut of The Workout the World Forgot. I recognize a few scenes: Le Corre scrambling through brambles and running on the beach in Corsica. But there's other, more dramatic stuff in this version. "I can't put this online for liability reasons," he says as he appears onscreen jumping, from boulder to boulder, across a raging, flood-swollen river.
In the next scene, as a large wave subsides, Le Corre leaps from a cliff into a frothing sea; it looks as if he's about to be pulverized into human bouillabaisse. As the next wave arrives, he angles his body and kicks—a subtle, fishy move that lines him up in front of an impossibly narrow opening in the rocks. The wave breaks, but Le Corre rides it like driftwood into the small alcove. He vanishes briefly as the chaotic surf washes over the shore. The water retreats, and there he is, crouched on the rocks, unscathed.
"I'm not trying to show off," he says, perhaps sensing my disbelief. "I'm just showing you what's possible."
TOWARD THE END OF the week, Verdier finally takes center stage. It's combat time. "The best option is always to get away," Verdier says. He speaks with a measured calm that reminds me of David Carradine in Kung Fu, a TV series I loved as a kid. "But if we have to fight, we should be ready to fight to the end." Street battles are "total chaos," he says. "You're flooded with adrenaline, and most fights don't last more than a minute."
Verdier passes out muay Thai strike pads, and we take turns punching the pad as hard and fast as we can. I team with Fred Fombrun, 26, one of the brothers from New Jersey. Both Fombruns are serious amateur boxers, and Fred's first punch is so powerful I stagger backwards and almost fall over. It takes all my energy to keep my feet during his flurry. My own assault is considerably less impressive; at one point, I notice Fred checking messages on his iPhone while I hammer away at the pad.
After fight class, we adjourn to camp, where Brodeur has lunch waiting. Spaghetti! Oh. No. It's zucchini, shredded to look like spaghetti: zughetti! Still, the veggies are dressed with raw campari tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, oregano, olive oil, and cracked black pepper—and it's delicious. I'm famished, and I gulp it down like a starved coyote, shamelessly licking the sauce from the bottom of my plate.
Despite my frequent anti-paleo cravings (the movie version of which I'm calling Quest for Fritos), I feel great. My skin feels thicker, my sunburn has faded into a honey-wheat sheen that it hasn't sported in years, and the soreness in my back and arms has dissipated completely. Only Dave Csonka, the big dude from Florida, seems to still be in decline. In addition to the poison ivy and low-blood-sugar spells, he's also tweaked his neck. "I'll be fine," he says, gamely playing along even though he has to rotate his whole torso to address us individually.
One question we all seem to be pondering is finally asked out loud by Fred Fombrun: "What exactly am I supposed to do when I get back home?" he says. "There aren't a lotta parks where I live in northern New Jersey."
Le Corre is working on an answer. In 2009, he met Robb Wolf, the influential CrossFit instructor and The Paleo Solution author, through a mutual friend. Inspired by Wolf's story and the viral success of CrossFit, Le Corre began hammering out a business plan modeled on it: he hopes to train and certify instructors, who will license the brand for their own gyms or create grown-up outdoor playgrounds like ours. Or both.
I could see the appeal as a general fitness program, especially because Le Corre believes that, if the regimen is intelligently designed, you have to do only a few circuits a week—no more dailies or oppressive dates with the treadmill. "A specialized athlete can improve their game, because training like this helps prevent injury and improve balance," he says. I figure it will also translate to the things I like to do, like skiing and cycling, because it's helping my body move the way it was designed to. Best of all, it's way more fun than doing intervals with a heart-rate monitor.
In the meantime, Le Corre is writing a book about MovNat. He also continues to crisscross the country, hosting one-day clinics, seminars, and other events. In October, he was a VIP guest at New York City's first annual barefoot run. A few weeks later, he and Wolf traveled to the Johnson Space Center's Wyle Laboratories to introduce and discuss the benefits of paleo diets and MovNat with NASA.
WORKING OUT On an empty belly, in a "fasted state," paleos argue, increases production of human growth hormone. So on the last morning, Le Corre has us begin our final, skill-culminating circuit sans breakfast. We begin by walking around the grassy hill near camp, twisting and bending, followed by body-weight squats. Then we drop down and prowl around the hill on all fours. "Scan the horizon," Le Corre instructs. "Stay low! You don't want to be seen. Remember: in nature we are ever mindful. Always alert."
He ratchets up the intensity with push-ups and wheelbarrows, a partner holding your feet, and then tells us to drop to the ground and roll down the hill, like logs. I'm so dizzy by the bottom, I can't stand up. Nearby, our other Dave, Dave Beretta, a young kid from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, is doubled over, dry-heaving.
Le Corre keeps throttling. We stagger into the wooded training zone for log lifts and stone carrying. Next, it's balance-beam walking and high jumps. Le Corre throws in some mind games, telling us we're doing an exercise on a ten count but stopping at eight and then counting backwards or repeating a number over and over: "Seven, seven, seven, seven …"
"Do we function in sets of ten in the wilderness?" he asks. "How do we know how long we will have to do something?"
After more than an hour grinding through the drills, we step up to the high bar that we attempted on the first day. I jump up, hook my leg, and … burst out laughing when I monkey myself on top of the bar. One by one, nearly everyone else, so embarrassingly defeated at the beginning of the week, pulls off the same feat. "See?" Le Corre says, a look of satisfaction on his face. "Progress."
I leave West Virginia inspired. Back home, I invent circuits in a neighborhood park—sprint barefoot across a field, jump over a bench, crawl on all fours down some stairs—even though I notice dog walkers and parents with small children altering course to avoid me. In the evenings, I cook my girlfriend dinners of grass-fed beef and roasted vegetables, with sliced watermelon for dessert. But it requires a level of dedication, planning, and self-control that I can't sustain, and soon I'm caught in the undertow of enchiladas and triple cappuccinos and driving a few blocks to the grocery store. My training fades to once a week, then once a month, and finally to watching 10,000 BC on Netflix.
I might have anticipated this while sitting at my gate in the Charleston airport, glumly half-watching a chattering news anchor talk about the Gulf oil spill while pudgy kids trundled by, clutching waffle cones the size of their heads. It dawned on me how each day boils down to a series of decisions centered on convenience and comfort. As I slumped in my chair, sipping water, our final morning in camp already felt distant and dim.
After the last day's circuit ended, we followed Le Corre down a game trail, deep into the woods. We weren't allowed to talk and had to move as quickly and quietly as possible. It started to rain, and soon we were not only sweaty but soaked and spackled with forest grit. At one point, Le Corre dropped down on all fours, and we did the same. Crawling down the trail, I crunched over some thorns but didn't feel a thing.
Eventually, we came to a small, fecund amphitheater, at the center of which was a dark bog, maybe 20 feet in diameter. The air was ripe with the smell of moss and ammonia, and the foliage flicked and glistened neon green. For the first time in 20 minutes, Le Corre finally spoke. Wearing only shorts and a dark-green bandanna, and streaked with mud as if someone had outlined his muscles with a black magic marker, he looked downright feral. "Adaptability is the holy grail of MovNat," he told us. "This is what we have done throughout human history. But we have lost touch with the world that created us."
With that, he charged across the swampy black hole, sinking instantly up to his waist but diving his arms and chest into the muck and thrashing his way to the other side in one sustained, growling effort.
The rest of us stood there dumbstruck, a couple of people shaking their heads while Le Corre beckoned from the other side. Finally, one by one, we splashed across to join him. And then, as if to underscore the fact that, yes, we had at last reawakened and it wasn't so bad, we slogged across the bog again—not once, but twice.
My wife as started getting into Crossfit and I have been reading articles about the Paleo diet and some about Crossfit here and there over the past month. She really enjoys it and gets me wondering how it would affect my ultra running and training for 100s. Would the benefit of spending the time doing Crossfit like workouts for example be greater than the benefit of using that time actually putting in more miles? I don't know.
Enjoy.
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The Workout that Time Forgot
Will caveman calisthenics be the next big thing for adventure athletes?
By Nick Heil
Erwan Le Corre seems to defy gravity—and not just because he's French.
I'm standing close by as the 39-year-old movement coach—shirtless, barefoot, and built like Mikhail Baryshnikov—hops up and grasps a wooden bar lashed eight feet off the ground between two stout maple trees. Le Corre dangles calmly from both arms for a moment before swinging one leg up to the side, hooking it over the beam, and—swoooop—crouching on top of it and looking down at us. The move is so swift and catlike that I'm not quite sure how he did it. A few minutes later, I attempt the same thing, legs scissoring awkwardly until my arms give out and I hit the dirt with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.
This is day one—hour one, in fact—of caveman camp: July's weeklong MovNat Reawakening Workshop, at Summersville Lake Retreat, an RV resort in West Virginia. MovNat, an abbreviation of "Move Naturally," is the outdoor fitness-and-conditioning business that Le Corre founded in 2008. Our camp—modern dome tents, a fire ring, and a kitchen area covered by a canopy—is set up in a grassy clearing a couple of miles from the lake. Gyms are out; wilderness is in. Instead of weights, we lift rocks, logs, and one another. Hand-to-hand combat is as much a part of the regimen as lying in the grass and watching billowy clouds blow by.
"MovNat is a comprehensive lifestyle," Le Corre tells us. "It's about diet and nutrition. It's about exposure to sunlight and nature. It's about getting rest. It's about feeding the mind with healthy insights and positive thoughts." Le Corre, who relocated to the United States full-time in 2009, founded MovNat on the premise that humans once dashed around untamed landscapes with power and grace, gathering berries, toppling mastodons, and so forth—and that proficiency at such things will help reconnect us to the world in which we evolved. Not only were we born to run, he says, but also to jump, climb trees, swim deep underwater, slog through swamps, stalk prey, and fight off attackers.
"We live like zoo animals!" he continues that morning, pronouncing it "ah-nee-mahls." It's an idea Le Corre borrowed from the British zoologist Desmond Morris, author of the 1967 classic The Naked Ape, and it's central to his worldview: that we are essentially wild creatures ill-suited to desk jobs and processed foods. "We have become divorced from nature, trapped in colorless boxes," Le Corre says. "We have lost our adaptability, and it's threatening our health and longevity."
Clearly, the approach holds some appeal: all five of Le Corre's $1,700 summer workshops have sold out. I'd worried slightly about the freak factor before arriving, anticipating a clan of wayward hippies and hairy Luddites. But the group is surprisingly normal—and cosmopolitan. Among others, there's a corporate-recruitment manager from Osaka, Japan; a musician and his wife from London; a journalist from Zürich, Switzerland; two brothers from northern New Jersey; a Web designer from Brooklyn; and a computer programmer from Tallahassee, Florida. Everyone looks reasonably fit and is either barefoot or, like myself, shod in Vibram FiveFingers, the simian-looking foot-gloves.
"When I saw his promotional video, The Workout the World Forgot, I thought, This makes sense," Richard Carlow, the manager from Japan, tells me when I ask what inspired him to make such a long trip. "I wanted to learn it from the Source."
The Source is being assisted by Vic Verdier, a 42-year-old former French commando who currently lives in Thailand, where he teaches Krav Maga, the official self-defense system of the Israeli Defense Forces, and other martial arts. The only other staff is Allie Brodeur, 22, an accomplished acro-yogi and poi spinner—and our camp cook.
They make a colorful trio, but it's Brodeur's cooking that's the focus of most of our first day's conversation. That's because we're all being put on a strict version of the paleo diet, as in "Paleolithic," a pointedly unhedonistic approach to nutrition modeled after the eating habits of our hunter-gatherer forebears. Meat, fruits, veggies, nuts, and certain oils are OK, but grains, dairy, salt, sugar, caffeine, and alcohol are all verboten. Starbucks, I'm reminded on the first morning in camp, didn't materialize until the Late Neolithic.
By the time I turn in that night, after more exercises and a dinner of gravyless pork ribs and boiled carrots, I'm drained and swan-diving into full detox: woozy, wobbly-kneed, and worried that it's going to be a very, very long week. I do, at least, find a queen-size air mattress and cotton sheets in my tent. "This isn't survival school," Le Corre reassures me. "We want you to be comfortable here." One great thing about hunter-gatherers, apparently, is how much they love Bed Bath & Beyond.
MOVNAT DRAWS FROM some familiar sources—CrossFit, low-carb diets, barefoot running, martial arts, mud wrestling, Quest for Fire, etc.—but Le Corre's program occupies a space all its own. If anything, MovNat falls within the concept of "evolutionary fitness," an increasingly popular trend embraced by a loosely organized but fast-growing global community of health enthusiasts, medical professionals, and athletes. The movement is often lumped under the "paleo" rubric, but it's more than just a prehistoric way to eat and exercise.
The most fervent paleos prefer raw meat (thankfully, our workshop meals were always cooked), eschew footwear, fast periodically, and entertain themselves by dissing vegetarians—especially vegans, who they believe are misguided about human nutrition. But most paleos are more moderate, embracing the 80/20 rule: don't despair over the occasional bagel or sundae, as long as you adhere to the diet roughly 80 percent of the time.
The basic tenets of the paleo diet have been kicked around for years, but its watershed moment came in 1985, when an anthropology professor at Emory University named S. Boyd Eaton published "Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications" in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggesting that the paleo diet could be a public-health panacea. While the paper made a sizable splash, it wasn't until Loren Cordain, a professor of exercise science at Colorado State University, came across the piece a couple of years later that the idea began to reach a larger audience. Cordain eventually became the reigning authority on paleo nutrition and, in 2001, published The Paleo Diet.
Interest in the paleo lifestyle sputtered along for a few years, with help from flag bearers like Ray Audette, the author of NeanderThin, and Frank Forencich, author of Exuberant Animal, as well as a few primal-exercise proselytizers, like Art De Vany, a buff eptuagenarian and former economics professor from Los Angeles whom many credit with launching the evolutionary-fitness idea and whose latest book, The New Evolution Diet, is due out this month. But toward the end of the aughts, something curious happened: Cordain's royalty checks began to fatten up, and The Paleo Diet crept into Amazon.com's top 100. Cordain attributes much of the book's sleeper success to Robb Wolf, a former champion power lifter and biochemist who apprenticed with him in 2006.
In the late nineties, Wolf had suffered a series of health problems, including ulcerative colitis, high blood pressure, and depression. "I was augering into the mountainside," Wolf told me. Two years later, ailments cured by the paleo diet, Wolf discovered CrossFit, the popular strength-and-conditioning system that combines weight lifting, sprinting, and gymnastics. Eventually, Wolf took the paleo message to the greater CrossFit community, speaking often at gyms and events. Word spread with viral intensity, and as CrossFit mushroomed—the brand grew from 13 affiliated gyms in 2005 to 2,200 by 2010—so, too, did paleo's popularity.
These days, low-carb, high-protein diets are embraced by everyone from professional athletes to suburban moms. While the paleo approach is considerably more holistic than, say, the now disparaged Atkins diet, not everyone is buying it. The influential nutritionist Marion Nestle, for example, has questioned the wisdom of completely eliminating grains and dairy from our table. "It's never a good idea to restrict food groups unless you have to," Nestle says. "These foods have been eaten by humans for a long time with much pleasure as well as nutritional value." Others, like Katharine Milton, a respected anthropologist at UC–Berkeley, argue that paleos' fundamental presumption—that we have been unable to adapt to relatively new types of foods since the advent of agriculture and animal husbandry—is flawed. Humans, Milton argues, have always, even in Paleolithic times, adjusted to their changing environment, nutritional and otherwise, quite well.
Despite the lack of consensus, by the time I get to caveman camp, premodern diets and exercise are a small but growing phenomenon. NFL veteran John Welbourn preaches the paleo diet to his former teammates on the New England Patriots. Endurance gurus like Joe Friel, who, along with Cordain, co-authored The Paleo Diet for Athletes, urge triathletes to try it. Similarly, books like Christopher McDougal's Born to Run, about Mexico's Tarahumara tribe, are inspiring people to run barefoot or nearly barefoot, helping jack sales of Vibram FiveFingers by a factor of five in just the past year. Countless Web sites, books, and blogs have sprung up too, along with a handful of local paleo clubs across the country whose members gather to do things like learn archery and make grass-fed-beef jerky.
AT CAMP, WE FALL INTO a familiar pattern: up by seven, hearty breakfast, some warm-up drills, a skill-building session on barefoot running or proper log-lifting technique, lunch, siesta (or "MovNap"), a combo circuit, a swim in the lake, meaty dinner, and a lecture on topics such as lipid metabolism or the value of vitamin D.
So far, considering there was no fitness test required, attrition has been pretty minimal. A few of us have missed meals because we weren't feeling well, though some have been hit worse than others. There's a strict no-snacking policy, and Dave Csonka, the computer programmer from Florida, who's a buff six-five, has been begging for bananas because his blood sugar keeps crashing. Worse, his arms are covered in poison ivy. On one of our daily 40-minute barefoot hikes to the lake, Oswald Fombrun, one of the brothers from New Jersey, gets nailed just beneath the eye as we dash past a hornet's nest hidden in some rocks. The hikes have been a favorite part of my day, in which I imagine myself a wily hunter tracking down lunch, until I get stung twice on the arm.
Most of our training takes place in a shady grove near camp, where Verdier and Le Corre have built a temporary outdoor gym, with timbers lashed at different heights between trees, a complement of rocks and logs, several four-by-four balance beams, and a couple of picnic benches for high jumps. Verdier mostly hovers quietly in the background, while Brodeur keeps the food processor and blender humming back at camp.
On occasion, Le Corre will interrupt what we're doing to demonstrate proper technique or impress us with feats of skill and strength. After a few of us fail to move a massive log, he comes over, levers the tree trunk (which must weigh more than 300 pounds) onto his shoulder, and carries it the 100 yards to camp, where he plunks it by the campfire, dusting the bark off his arm with a theatrical flourish.
Le Corre is tall and tawny—the kind of physique you might expect to find if you waxed the hair off a Neanderthal. Still, for all the hard-bodied exterior and motivational speeches, he's no drill sergeant. His coaching is seasoned with quasi-mystical declarations, like "Oxygen is an accident, breath is intentional," and tips, like how listening to more reggae encourages rhythm and flow. At one point, I find him standing in the grass, performing some sort of sun prayer, head bowed, one arm raised to the sky. "I was just having a moment of gratitude," he says. He owns an iPhone, drives a Land Rover, and, perhaps due to his Frenchness, is comfortable wearing tight black briefs at the lake.
By the third morning, I'm filthy and sunburned and have acquired hundreds of tiny cuts and scratches that sizzle in a glaze of sweat. Even so, my body has (mostly) adjusted to the diet, and I'm feeling surprisingly good as we squirm around on crackling brown grass under a blistering sun, practicing an evasive move that might help us escape an attacker. Le Corre barks that we have become domesticated, that our sterilized and hermetically sealed lives have left us intolerant of nature. "But you can train dirt!" he exclaims, making an oblique reference to the fact that being exposed to grit and germs helps bolster our immune systems.
Not only does exercising outdoors make us more resilient, says Le Corre; it's also a better conduit for fitness than the typical cardio penance or preacher curls popular at big-box gyms, where waist trimming and biceps bulking are the main motivators. MovNat advances a concept that certain athletics coaches have pushed since the seventies, one that treats the body as a tool for dynamic movement, not a topiary sculpture.
Later that afternoon, after practicing more barefoot running ("Fall forward, catch yourself on the front of your feet"), Le Corre adds a twist to our trip to the lake. Along the way, we have to stop and carry a partner on our backs. I team up with Christoph Zürcher, 44, the journalist from Switzerland, who's six-two and has about 20 pounds on me. We're sweaty and shirtless, and I awkwardly hop on his back while he hooks his arms under my legs and starts lumbering forward. "Uuuuugghhhhh," he groans. "How far are we supposed to go?"
"Switch!" Le Corre shouts after about five minutes, and I stagger down the trail, bent under my crushing Swiss payload. At last we scramble over large rocks and emerge at the lake.
"The more we move, the smarter we become," Le Corre says as we sprawl on the rocks after our swim. "We're less stressed when we see green, like leaves and grass." A motorboat whizzes by, towing a water-skier. "I love technology," he continues. "I love all the modern conveniences that we have now, but we have to ask: When do we use it, and at what cost?"
LE CORRE GREW UP RUNNING around the fields and forests on the outskirts of Paris. He dabbled with ball sports—soccer, tennis—but hated the rules and boundary lines. At 15, he moved on to karate, quickly surpassing older, more experienced opponents. But he also found karate's formal protocols and tense competitions too staid and confining.
Then, at age 18, he happened to watch a television show about a 45-year-old Parisian stuntman named Jean Haberey. At one point, Haberey jumped out of a helicopter into an iceberg-strewn ocean wearing only swim trunks. It was the most outrageous thing Le Corre had ever seen—and he wanted to do it, too. A year later, he tracked Haberey down, and for the next seven years he followed him and his other disciples around the French metropolis, playing high-risk games: a "fight club of natural movement," as Le Corre puts it.
"He was the first guy to take people up onto the roofs of Paris," Le Corre said. "He also took us down into the underground, always barefoot, with no gear at all, to train people how to move silently like cats through urban obstacles … especially at night, when everyone was asleep."
Once, Haberey and Le Corre held a sit-up competition while dangling by their legs from a bridge over an eight-lane superhighway. Another time, Le Corre climbed along the transom of a tower crane, legs dangling in the void nearly a hundred feet above the ground. "It was crazy," Le Corre recalls, "but you just felt so alive."
Haberey's urban antics helped kick off the parkour craze, but Le Corre, like most of his followers, eventually grew disillusioned. "I supported him for a while," Le Corre says, "but it turned into a cult of his personality. It became too dark and underground, all about helping him, not others."
For a few years, Le Corre delved into endurance sports, competing in Ironman-distance triathlons while supporting himself with odd jobs, including making soap and men's jewelry. But turning himself into a perpetual-motion machine wasn't his raison d'être, either. Finally, in 2004, he stumbled upon an online comment about Methode Naturelle, an obscure training manual published in 1912 by Georges Hébert, a French naval officer. The book featured black-and-white photos of robust young men in briefs performing all kinds of primal-movement exercises: jumping, running, swimming, climbing, etc.
"I was like What?! This is exactly what I was doing before, but this guy had given it a name," says Le Corre. "He had systematized it, and I thought, That's the way to go."
Hébert's motto was "Being strong to be useful," a concept largely inspired by the defining event of his life. On May 8, 1902, Hébert was stationed on the Sughet, a naval ship just offshore of Saint-Pierre, on the island of Martinique, during the infamous eruption of Mount Pelée. In minutes, the blast flash-fried most of the town's 30,000 citizens, searing them with pyroclastic ash before burying them in tsunamis of mud. Amid the carnage, Hébert and his shipmates were credited with saving some 700 lives, pulling from the sea scalded men, women, and children, some of whom had been blown hundreds of feet through the air by the blast.
Preparing your body and mind for real-world, life-or-death applications is at the root of MovNat. Our workshop activities (throw a rock, climb a tree) may seem random, but they're intended to cultivate what Le Corre refers to as "selective tension," a kinetic reaction in which muscles relax and contract in patterns that help you move efficiently, especially in unpredictable situations. To underscore their practical value, Le Corre would often cite imagined modern-day scenarios during our training. "What if you had to pull someone from a burning building?" he asks one morning. "Or a flood," Verdier adds. "Sometimes survival comes down to who can run up a flight of stairs and who can't."
One afternoon, Le Corre shows me a video on his laptop, basically the director's cut of The Workout the World Forgot. I recognize a few scenes: Le Corre scrambling through brambles and running on the beach in Corsica. But there's other, more dramatic stuff in this version. "I can't put this online for liability reasons," he says as he appears onscreen jumping, from boulder to boulder, across a raging, flood-swollen river.
In the next scene, as a large wave subsides, Le Corre leaps from a cliff into a frothing sea; it looks as if he's about to be pulverized into human bouillabaisse. As the next wave arrives, he angles his body and kicks—a subtle, fishy move that lines him up in front of an impossibly narrow opening in the rocks. The wave breaks, but Le Corre rides it like driftwood into the small alcove. He vanishes briefly as the chaotic surf washes over the shore. The water retreats, and there he is, crouched on the rocks, unscathed.
"I'm not trying to show off," he says, perhaps sensing my disbelief. "I'm just showing you what's possible."
TOWARD THE END OF the week, Verdier finally takes center stage. It's combat time. "The best option is always to get away," Verdier says. He speaks with a measured calm that reminds me of David Carradine in Kung Fu, a TV series I loved as a kid. "But if we have to fight, we should be ready to fight to the end." Street battles are "total chaos," he says. "You're flooded with adrenaline, and most fights don't last more than a minute."
Verdier passes out muay Thai strike pads, and we take turns punching the pad as hard and fast as we can. I team with Fred Fombrun, 26, one of the brothers from New Jersey. Both Fombruns are serious amateur boxers, and Fred's first punch is so powerful I stagger backwards and almost fall over. It takes all my energy to keep my feet during his flurry. My own assault is considerably less impressive; at one point, I notice Fred checking messages on his iPhone while I hammer away at the pad.
After fight class, we adjourn to camp, where Brodeur has lunch waiting. Spaghetti! Oh. No. It's zucchini, shredded to look like spaghetti: zughetti! Still, the veggies are dressed with raw campari tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, oregano, olive oil, and cracked black pepper—and it's delicious. I'm famished, and I gulp it down like a starved coyote, shamelessly licking the sauce from the bottom of my plate.
Despite my frequent anti-paleo cravings (the movie version of which I'm calling Quest for Fritos), I feel great. My skin feels thicker, my sunburn has faded into a honey-wheat sheen that it hasn't sported in years, and the soreness in my back and arms has dissipated completely. Only Dave Csonka, the big dude from Florida, seems to still be in decline. In addition to the poison ivy and low-blood-sugar spells, he's also tweaked his neck. "I'll be fine," he says, gamely playing along even though he has to rotate his whole torso to address us individually.
One question we all seem to be pondering is finally asked out loud by Fred Fombrun: "What exactly am I supposed to do when I get back home?" he says. "There aren't a lotta parks where I live in northern New Jersey."
Le Corre is working on an answer. In 2009, he met Robb Wolf, the influential CrossFit instructor and The Paleo Solution author, through a mutual friend. Inspired by Wolf's story and the viral success of CrossFit, Le Corre began hammering out a business plan modeled on it: he hopes to train and certify instructors, who will license the brand for their own gyms or create grown-up outdoor playgrounds like ours. Or both.
I could see the appeal as a general fitness program, especially because Le Corre believes that, if the regimen is intelligently designed, you have to do only a few circuits a week—no more dailies or oppressive dates with the treadmill. "A specialized athlete can improve their game, because training like this helps prevent injury and improve balance," he says. I figure it will also translate to the things I like to do, like skiing and cycling, because it's helping my body move the way it was designed to. Best of all, it's way more fun than doing intervals with a heart-rate monitor.
In the meantime, Le Corre is writing a book about MovNat. He also continues to crisscross the country, hosting one-day clinics, seminars, and other events. In October, he was a VIP guest at New York City's first annual barefoot run. A few weeks later, he and Wolf traveled to the Johnson Space Center's Wyle Laboratories to introduce and discuss the benefits of paleo diets and MovNat with NASA.
WORKING OUT On an empty belly, in a "fasted state," paleos argue, increases production of human growth hormone. So on the last morning, Le Corre has us begin our final, skill-culminating circuit sans breakfast. We begin by walking around the grassy hill near camp, twisting and bending, followed by body-weight squats. Then we drop down and prowl around the hill on all fours. "Scan the horizon," Le Corre instructs. "Stay low! You don't want to be seen. Remember: in nature we are ever mindful. Always alert."
He ratchets up the intensity with push-ups and wheelbarrows, a partner holding your feet, and then tells us to drop to the ground and roll down the hill, like logs. I'm so dizzy by the bottom, I can't stand up. Nearby, our other Dave, Dave Beretta, a young kid from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, is doubled over, dry-heaving.
Le Corre keeps throttling. We stagger into the wooded training zone for log lifts and stone carrying. Next, it's balance-beam walking and high jumps. Le Corre throws in some mind games, telling us we're doing an exercise on a ten count but stopping at eight and then counting backwards or repeating a number over and over: "Seven, seven, seven, seven …"
"Do we function in sets of ten in the wilderness?" he asks. "How do we know how long we will have to do something?"
After more than an hour grinding through the drills, we step up to the high bar that we attempted on the first day. I jump up, hook my leg, and … burst out laughing when I monkey myself on top of the bar. One by one, nearly everyone else, so embarrassingly defeated at the beginning of the week, pulls off the same feat. "See?" Le Corre says, a look of satisfaction on his face. "Progress."
I leave West Virginia inspired. Back home, I invent circuits in a neighborhood park—sprint barefoot across a field, jump over a bench, crawl on all fours down some stairs—even though I notice dog walkers and parents with small children altering course to avoid me. In the evenings, I cook my girlfriend dinners of grass-fed beef and roasted vegetables, with sliced watermelon for dessert. But it requires a level of dedication, planning, and self-control that I can't sustain, and soon I'm caught in the undertow of enchiladas and triple cappuccinos and driving a few blocks to the grocery store. My training fades to once a week, then once a month, and finally to watching 10,000 BC on Netflix.
I might have anticipated this while sitting at my gate in the Charleston airport, glumly half-watching a chattering news anchor talk about the Gulf oil spill while pudgy kids trundled by, clutching waffle cones the size of their heads. It dawned on me how each day boils down to a series of decisions centered on convenience and comfort. As I slumped in my chair, sipping water, our final morning in camp already felt distant and dim.
After the last day's circuit ended, we followed Le Corre down a game trail, deep into the woods. We weren't allowed to talk and had to move as quickly and quietly as possible. It started to rain, and soon we were not only sweaty but soaked and spackled with forest grit. At one point, Le Corre dropped down on all fours, and we did the same. Crawling down the trail, I crunched over some thorns but didn't feel a thing.
Eventually, we came to a small, fecund amphitheater, at the center of which was a dark bog, maybe 20 feet in diameter. The air was ripe with the smell of moss and ammonia, and the foliage flicked and glistened neon green. For the first time in 20 minutes, Le Corre finally spoke. Wearing only shorts and a dark-green bandanna, and streaked with mud as if someone had outlined his muscles with a black magic marker, he looked downright feral. "Adaptability is the holy grail of MovNat," he told us. "This is what we have done throughout human history. But we have lost touch with the world that created us."
With that, he charged across the swampy black hole, sinking instantly up to his waist but diving his arms and chest into the muck and thrashing his way to the other side in one sustained, growling effort.
The rest of us stood there dumbstruck, a couple of people shaking their heads while Le Corre beckoned from the other side. Finally, one by one, we splashed across to join him. And then, as if to underscore the fact that, yes, we had at last reawakened and it wasn't so bad, we slogged across the bog again—not once, but twice.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
One man to run two marathons per day for eleven months
Came across this story and had to share it, 13,000 miles in 11 months. Impressive!!!
PS- If you are viewing this in Facebook or Google Reader, ect you will have to come over to the blog to see the video as a FYI. I just noticed it does not show up in Google Reader.
PS- If you are viewing this in Facebook or Google Reader, ect you will have to come over to the blog to see the video as a FYI. I just noticed it does not show up in Google Reader.
Monday, February 7, 2011
No Hardrock in 2011 for Shad
I was not lucky enough to have my name drawn this past weekend for the Hardrock 100. I was really hoping that I would get lucky. Now it is time to either come up with a plan B or not run a 100 this year which I am also considering.
Here are some Plan Bs that I am mauling over:
1. Grand Mesa 100 7/22
2. Leadville 100 8/20
3. Grand Teton 100 9/3
4. Swan Crest 100 -July last year. Don't know if they are having it or not.
5. The Bear 100 9/23
6. Pony Express 100 10/21
Any others out there that I might be missing? I really don't want to drive more than 8-10 hours from Denver/Boulder area which is why you will not see anything in California on the list.
I am also toying with the idea of just doing a bunch of 50 milers and shorter races. It might just be nice to not have to worry about all the training and planning that goes into a 100 miler. I don't know, it is something my wife Ashley and I will hopefully figure out over the next few weeks.
I am also looking at doing a non-race 100 and have a few ideas that I am talking over with some buddies. Not quite ready to share those thoughts out in internet world yet.
Shad
Here are some Plan Bs that I am mauling over:
1. Grand Mesa 100 7/22
2. Leadville 100 8/20
3. Grand Teton 100 9/3
4. Swan Crest 100 -July last year. Don't know if they are having it or not.
5. The Bear 100 9/23
6. Pony Express 100 10/21
Any others out there that I might be missing? I really don't want to drive more than 8-10 hours from Denver/Boulder area which is why you will not see anything in California on the list.
I am also toying with the idea of just doing a bunch of 50 milers and shorter races. It might just be nice to not have to worry about all the training and planning that goes into a 100 miler. I don't know, it is something my wife Ashley and I will hopefully figure out over the next few weeks.
I am also looking at doing a non-race 100 and have a few ideas that I am talking over with some buddies. Not quite ready to share those thoughts out in internet world yet.
Shad
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Top 4 ultra runners in the Boulder area
Last week at the BTR (Boulder Trail Runners) talk they had the top 4 ultra runners in the US. I was not able to go but did find this blog giving us the low down on the talk.
You can find it by clicking below.
http://www.activeataltitude.com/blog/?p=121
And of course the video!!!!
Enjoy!!!
You can find it by clicking below.
http://www.activeataltitude.com/blog/?p=121
And of course the video!!!!
Boulder Trail Runners - Q&A with Scott Jurek, Anton Krupicka, Dave Mackey and Geoff Roes from Alpine Works on Vimeo.
Enjoy!!!
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Grandma Headley
Before 2011 had a chance to turn over the calendar I lost my second grandparent of 2010 the morning of Dec 31st. She was a very young 91. I have copied her obituary on my blog for my future view. You can see it here. I has been a tough year in 2010, here is to moving forward into 2011 with hope and love.
Peace,
Shad
CORRECTIONVILLE, Iowa -- Besse M. Headley, 91, of Correctionville, formerly of Sidney and Arnold, Neb., passed away Friday, Dec. 31, 2010, at Correctionville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Visitation will be 5 to 7:30 p.m. today, with a prayer service at 7:30 p.m., at Grace United Methodist Church in Correctionville. The Nicklas D Jensen Funeral Home of Correctionville is in charge of the arrangements.
Besse was born to sandhill homesteader and rancher, Charles M. and O'Dilla (Fry) Fisher, on June 28, 1919, in Arnold, Neb. She graduated from Arnold High School with the class of 1937. After graduation, she entered normal training, but went to work as Arnold's citywide switchboard operator.
On April 13, 1943, she became a war bride, marrying Donzel "Jack" Headley in Washington D.C. After World War II, the couple purchased Central Grocery in Arnold. In 1952, they moved the business across the street, purchasing the Jack and Jill. In the 1950s, they started the Swirley Top, bringing soft serve ice cream to Arnold. In 1962, Jack and Besse moved to Sidney, Neb., buying the Jack and Jill Store which they successfully operated until they retired until 1984. Jack passed away in 1994. Besse moved to Correctionville in 2002.
Besse was a longtime volunteer at the Sidney and Correctionville nursing homes. She was affectionately known by the residents as the "juice lady" and the "popcorn lady." She was a member of Eastern Star for nearly 70 years. Besse loved to travel, knit, fish and eat ice cream. Most of all she was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
She is survived by four children and their spouses, Joe Headley of Lodgepole, Neb., Charles (Jan) and Lisa Headley of Omaha, Tanja and Don Shever of Correctionville, and Jim Headley of Gering, Neb.; 10 grandchildren, Barbara "Buffy" and Dean Soucie, Joe and Kari Headley, Aree Ann Headley, Chuck and Theresa Headley, Marisa Headley, Kate Headley, Emma Headley, Shad and Ashley Mika, Jeni and Chris Schmidt, and Alex Haeberle; and 12 great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her husband; her parents; brother, Charles and wife, Lou Fisher; and two stillborn children, Mark and Mary.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to the American Diabetes Association; the Alzheimer's Foundation, or the Correctionville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Peace,
Shad
CORRECTIONVILLE, Iowa -- Besse M. Headley, 91, of Correctionville, formerly of Sidney and Arnold, Neb., passed away Friday, Dec. 31, 2010, at Correctionville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
Visitation will be 5 to 7:30 p.m. today, with a prayer service at 7:30 p.m., at Grace United Methodist Church in Correctionville. The Nicklas D Jensen Funeral Home of Correctionville is in charge of the arrangements.
Besse was born to sandhill homesteader and rancher, Charles M. and O'Dilla (Fry) Fisher, on June 28, 1919, in Arnold, Neb. She graduated from Arnold High School with the class of 1937. After graduation, she entered normal training, but went to work as Arnold's citywide switchboard operator.
On April 13, 1943, she became a war bride, marrying Donzel "Jack" Headley in Washington D.C. After World War II, the couple purchased Central Grocery in Arnold. In 1952, they moved the business across the street, purchasing the Jack and Jill. In the 1950s, they started the Swirley Top, bringing soft serve ice cream to Arnold. In 1962, Jack and Besse moved to Sidney, Neb., buying the Jack and Jill Store which they successfully operated until they retired until 1984. Jack passed away in 1994. Besse moved to Correctionville in 2002.
Besse was a longtime volunteer at the Sidney and Correctionville nursing homes. She was affectionately known by the residents as the "juice lady" and the "popcorn lady." She was a member of Eastern Star for nearly 70 years. Besse loved to travel, knit, fish and eat ice cream. Most of all she was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.
She is survived by four children and their spouses, Joe Headley of Lodgepole, Neb., Charles (Jan) and Lisa Headley of Omaha, Tanja and Don Shever of Correctionville, and Jim Headley of Gering, Neb.; 10 grandchildren, Barbara "Buffy" and Dean Soucie, Joe and Kari Headley, Aree Ann Headley, Chuck and Theresa Headley, Marisa Headley, Kate Headley, Emma Headley, Shad and Ashley Mika, Jeni and Chris Schmidt, and Alex Haeberle; and 12 great-grandchildren.
She was preceded in death by her husband; her parents; brother, Charles and wife, Lou Fisher; and two stillborn children, Mark and Mary.
In lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to the American Diabetes Association; the Alzheimer's Foundation, or the Correctionville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.
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