Month: March 2019

Here’s how to gently tell your friends that you’re good with ramen all week, thanks

Welcome to Tough Love. Every other week, we’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. Have a question of your own? Write to us at [email protected].

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Some friends and I have been planning a six-day float trip for a month from now. We’re breaking down menu planning so that two people are volunteering to cook a communal meal every night. The only problem is that I am a picky eater. I haven’t traveled with this group before, so I feel awkward about bringing it up. I really just don’t love big mushy stews and whatever else my hippie friends want to eat on the river. I know what I like, and I’m super willing to pay for and bring my own food every night, but I don’t want to kill the community vibe. How do I make this as non-awkward as possible and still eat the way I want to eat in front of my close-knit community of friends? Am I a huge jerk if I want to eat instant ramen every night while my friends make a festive mess? Maybe I could just bring cocktails?

The sooner you take yourself out of the communal food planning, the better. If someone’s taking the lead on most of the logistics, you could reach out to them privately to explain the situation—but everyone will know at some point, so you might as well bite the bullet and send a group email. It’s up to you to set the tone, so if you don’t make a huge deal out of the situation, your friends probably won’t either. Just say you’re a picky eater and excited about the trip, but with the exception of your communal dinner (which you should still contribute to—just make sure it’s something you like), you would prefer to manage your own meals. Then turn to the next item of planning. See? Not too hard. Once you’re on the trip, be responsible for your own trash and help with other communal tasks like filtering water and setting up camp.

You should expect some lighthearted teasing, but just laugh it off: “Hey, I like my ramen.” (If the teasing isn’t lighthearted, then you might want to find new friends.)

As for cocktails, that’s a great idea. Appoint yourself the camp mixologist and plan some tasty drinks to share with the gang. It’s hard to imagine a group of friends who would be sad about having awesome drinks every night (with mocktails also available, of course). Just don’t take it personally if someone only wants to drink Bud Light.

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I know this isn’t really my problem, but I’ve been feeling bothered by my partner’s eating habits. He eats a lot of snack food and premade meals. He’s very active and is working on getting a PhD in kinesiology, so he’s busy but has a flexible schedule that would allow him to cook during the day. Still, every time he goes to eat something, he grabs lazy stuff like frozen burritos or food from the grocery store hot bar. I put a lot of effort into the way I eat, and it bums me out to see that he doesn’t care about what he puts into his body. How can I encourage him to eat healthier?

Grad school is intense, and it’s likely that even if your partner wants to cook or plan meals, he’s at the limits of his energy. Having a flexible schedule doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has motivation to spare, and irregular hours make it harder, not easier, to build in daily routines. When it comes to ready-made foods, frozen burritos and hot-bar foods aren’t necessarily unhealthful, so I suspect your concern is less about nutrition than values.

You put a lot of effort into your meals, and it upsets you to see your partner treat meals as, well, effortless. Are you worried that if your partner can let regular meals slide, then someday you might too? If he can be active and healthy while eating so-called lazy foods, does it feel like all the effort you put into your own meals might be in vain? Do shared, careful meals represent family for you, and does it concern you that your partner might not share this value? If any of these ring true, it’s worth putting some thought into them and then having an honest conversation. The trick is to figure out what it is, exactly, that bothers you so you can come to the conversation by sharing your feelings and fears rather than attacking your partner’s habits.

If your main concern is truly nutrition, then the solution is simpler. Your partner is going through an intense academic program, and he’s reaching for easy, low-effort foods. With a little planning, you can help ensure that the lowest-effort foods in your house are also fresh and nutritious. Stock the fridge with fruits and veggies, and if you enjoy cooking, prepare extra meals that can be frozen in single servings and reheated in a few minutes. Why should you be the one to do the extra work? Because you’re the one who cares.

Celebrate ice climbing, snow monsters, and bluegrass at these stellar seasonal jubilees

Summer isn’t the only season with a jam-packed lineup of raucous festivals. This season’s best fiestas will see you watching films atop a ski resort, rocking out to electronic music at the foot of snow-capped peaks, and learning new skills like skate skiing or ice climbing. Plan your winter accordingly.

Snow Monster Festival

Zao, Japan

February 2–3, 2019

These monsters are actually naturally occurring mounds of snow whipped into beast-like shapes by the wind. The weekend-long, free-of-charge Snow Monster Festival at the Zao Onsen ski area sees them illuminated each night by brightly colored lights. Plus, there are fireworks, friendly mascots skiing down the mountain, and street vendors selling hot sake and ramen to keep you warm. Whiteroom Tours offers guided tours of Japan and the famed festival.

WinterWonderGrass

Stratton, Vermont

December 14–16, 2018

WinterWonderGrass brings big-name bluegrass bands to small mountain towns every winter. This year, it heads to Vermont’s Stratton Mountain Resort for the first time. You’ll rock out to headliners Railroad Earth, the Infamous Stringdusters, and Keller and the Keels inside heated tents while sampling local craft beer and food truck fare. There’s even a kid pavilion filled with hula hoops, music, and face painting. Can’t make it to the Green Mountain State? The event stops off in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, February 22 to 24, and Squaw Valley, California, March 29 to 31.

Hahnenkamm

Kitzbühel, Austria

January 21–27, 2019

Last year, 85,000 spectators showed up to watch the world’s best ski racers reach speeds of up to 85 miles per hour while bombing down more than 2,600 vertical feet in the Hahnenkamm, a legendary competition first held in 1931 that’s now one of the most challenging downhill races on the World Cup circuit. Many of those revelers also came for the street party that takes over the quaint Tyrolian village of Kitzbühel. The Streif and Ganslern runs are closed for the race, but you can ski everywhere else on the mountain.

Ouray Ice Climbing Festival

Ouray, Colorado

January 24–27, 2019

Every January, the tiny town of Ouray, Colorado, welcomes the country’s largest ice climbing party to the Uncompahgre Gorge, where elite climbers battle it out and newbies check out clinics and gear expos. Spectators who aren’t interested in scaling frozen cliffs will find plenty to do as well, from demonstrations to beer tents to film premieres. It’s free to spectate and climb, or you can pay around $60 for an all-access pass to the clinics and nightly events.

Sundance Film Festival

Park City, Utah

January 24–February 3, 2019

Yes, the rich and famous descend on Park City once a year for the annual Sundance Film Festival. But very few of them actually ski, so the slopes at Park City Mountain Resort are usually empty. You can sign up to become a volunteer at the film festival, doing things like checking tickets or organizing shuttles in exchange for free entrance into select films. Or buy a pass or individual tickets to catch some of the 200 feature-length and short films premiering at the festival in between runs down the resort’s wide-open bowls.

Mardi Gras in the Mountains

Red River, New Mexico

February 28–March 5, 2019

If you want to celebrate Mardi Gras clicked into your skis, Red River is the spot. This northern New Mexico town throws down every year with a six-day celebration through Fat Tuesday, the final day of the Carnival season. Rid yourself of worries by lighting them afire during the Burning of the Wild Tchoupitoulas, join a crawfish boil, and toss beads in the parade—all after spending a day skiing 1,600-vertical-foot laps.

Festival Sayulita

Sayulita, Mexico

January 30–February 3, 2019

At this sixth-annual festival, held in the laid-back surf town of Sayulita, you’ll spend five days watching award-winning documentaries and short films in outdoor theaters set up on the beach. When you’re not watching movies, you can listen to live music around town, taste mezcal, or join festival group dinners—and, of course, there’s surfing and yoga aplenty. Plus, the event raises money for the town’s new community center.

Alpenglow Mountain Festival

Tahoe City, California

February 16–24, 2019

Alpenglow Sports, a beloved outdoor shop in Tahoe City, California, hosts the legendary Mountain Festival every winter. The nine-day, backcountry-focused event includes guided ski tours, skate-skiing clinics, snowshoe treks, avalanche safety courses, film screenings, and workshops on everything from tuning your skis to backcountry bartending to winter astronomy. Whether you’re brand new to the backcountry or a lifelong enthusiast, you’ll find something to do, even if it’s just the free morning yoga classes.

Chamonix Unlimited

Chamonix, France

April 2–7, 2019

Every winter, thousands of electronic music fans and a handful of hardy skiers descend on this six-day music festival hosted by French ski company Black Crows in the company’s hometown of Chamonix. This year’s headliners include artists like German DJ Stephan Bodzin, Swiss duo Adriatique, and Detroit techno legend Jeff Mills. Venues include the tram deck just below the peak of Aiguille du Midi and the Plan Joran gondola station.

Don’t set yourself up for failure

Sticking to a New Year’s resolution can feel like a losing battle. A 1988 study from the University of Pennsylvania that followed 200 people for two years reported that only 19 percent successfully maintained their resolution. Fifteen years later, the same researchers compared those who made resolutions with those who didn’t; of the 300 participants, those who set goals saw more positive changes overall throughout the year—even if they didn’t stick with their initial plan.

Kristin Keim, a certified sports psychologist, warns against putting too much pressure on yourself. “Language is powerful,” she says. “We believe that the new year is a new opportunity.” But that doesn’t mean you need to adopt a go-big-or-go-home attitude. Instead of setting massive goals, Keim recommends starting with small habitual changes that can lead to big results over time. Lori Nedescu, a registered dietitian and founder of the Cadence Kitchen, also points out that resolutions need to be action statements. “‘Be more mindful’ is a nice New Year’s resolution, but intentions so often don’t really mean anything. You have to have a plan,” she says.

You don’t need to chuck the whole resolution out the window—just rethink it. Here are five goals to leave behind in 2018, and advice on how to make positive, lasting changes in your diet and training in the new year.

Cut Out Sugar

Why it doesn’t work: Negative resolutions are tough to maintain, because restrictive behavior keeps whatever you’re missing out on at the forefront of your mind. “If you go cold turkey, you end up with cravings,” says Nedescu. “It’s not a sustainable, long-term approach for most people.” 

What to do instead: Keim suggests digging in to your motivations with a journal and some pointed questions. Why are you trying to cut back on sugar? What are the challenges? How will you cope with them? What can you do differently next week? “Educate yourself as to why you want to do something. If you don’t connect with that, you’re not going to be able to succeed,” she says. Then start with small, easy swaps, like opting for fruit instead of a nightly dessert or a seltzer instead of a cocktail. 

Lose Five Pounds (or Ten or Twenty)

Why it doesn’t work: Weight fluctuates with training, stress, and hormones, so weight loss (especially in the five-to-ten-pound range) is a fast-moving target. Plus, Nedescu points out that dropping a few pounds isn’t guaranteed to make you stronger, faster, or happier. But most importantly, this isn’t a game plan—just an end goal. “It’s not bad to have outcome goals—like losing a certain number of pounds—but we need to move our language to be more process oriented,” Keim says.

What to do instead: “I’ve had Olympians set resolutions like ‘Walk every day,’” Keim explains. “You can have this big resolution, but what are the steps to reach it?” Instead of shooting for an arbitrary number on the scale, resolve to take one hike a week, or swap your Friday-night pizza for a salad. Before you choose a magic number, consult a physician to find out what your optimal body composition might look like based on your lifestyle and your overall health. Instead of losing ten pounds, you might be better off aiming for a lower body-fat percentage or a reduction in waist size.

Go Keto on January 1 

Why it doesn’t work: Highly specific diets require dramatic changes. “Taking on a huge diet will [often] require a massive grocery bill, a pantry revamp, and a lifestyle change,” says Nedescu. “Wanting to be a little leaner and cleaner is fine, but that blanket goal isn’t realistic.”

What to do instead: “Use a tracking tool like MyFitnessPal for a few days, see what your diet really looks like, and decide on smaller changes that you can make that will be easier to stick to,” Nedescu says. Instead of a huge overhaul, start eating more vegetables and cutting back on processed food. “Start with where you are, and make one small change,” she says. “That’s a more of long-term, lasting benefit.” 

Make January a Dry Month

Why it doesn’t work: Nothing is inherently wrong with a dry January, it’s just a hard act to follow. You’re setting a time limit instead of creating a long-term healthy habit, which means you’ll be in countdown mode through January and likely won’t make any lifestyle changes once February 1 rolls around. Short-term resolutions rarely have a long-term impact on your overall health, says Nedescu.  

What to do instead: Make changes that will have impacts beyond a 30-day period. Even if you do hop on the wagon in January, create a game plan for when you reintroduce alcohol into your diet. Track your weekly alcohol intake and adjust it accordingly—if you typically have five drinks a week, aim for three. You can also introduce tried-and-true strategies like offsetting each drink with a tall glass of water or skipping your second weeknight beer.  

Do a Dozen Things at Once

Why it doesn’t work: Setting new goals triggers the production of feel-good dopamine in the brain, Keim explains. It’s a nice bonus, but it can lead to resolution overload: this year you’ll podium at CrossFit, run a marathon, go vegan, and start composting. It’s fun to imagine coming out of 2019 stronger, faster, and better, but actually hitting those targets? Ain’t nobody got time for that. “You have one bad day and you say, ‘Screw this, I’ll go back to old habits,’” Keim says.

What to do instead: Start with one goal and remember that you can set new ones even when the New Year grows old. “I love people wanting to make change. Change is growth. Change is what gives life meaning and purpose. But I would encourage people to look beyond January 1,” says Keim. If you hit your goal early, choose a new one. If your first goal doesn’t go your way, recalibrate your resolution. “Look for when you’re in a slump during the year,” says Keim. “That’s when you can hit reset.”

For those of us chasing powder, here’s what the meteorologists say winter likely has in store

So…you’re planning a ski trip over the holidays. You’re probably curious about the snow outlook. Well, the good news is that after a parched summer and fall throughout much of the West, El Niño has brought fresh powder to a number of ski areas in the Rocky Mountains—and forecasts predict the precip will keep coming.

An El Niño occurs when sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator are warmer than normal for several consecutive months. (A La Niña is the opposite of an El Niño, occurring when these waters are cooler than normal for the same period of time. The standard temperature anomaly used to define an El Niño or La Niña is half a degree Celsius above or below normal, respectively.)

Over time, we’ve come to recognize these oceanic temperature anomalies as an important influence on global weather patterns; it’s hard to talk about a hurricane season or the potential for a snowy winter without discussing temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

The latest report, issued December 13, from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center showed a 90 percent chance of an El Niño forming in the Pacific this winter. Sea surface temperatures in the all-important eastern equator region of the Pacific have been above normal since July and the water has steadily gotten even warmer this fall. We could soon be in a full-fledged El Niño if these trends continue.

El Niño and La Niña can have a significant effect on weather patterns in certain parts of the world. These two phenomena are pretty cool examples of teleconnections—how different parts of the atmosphere can influence one another even if they’re separated by thousands of miles. It doesn’t seem like water temperatures fluctuating a degree or so either way could have that much of an effect on weather patterns. But just like we’re seeing with climate change, it doesn’t take much of a temperature difference over a long period of time to disrupt the atmosphere’s delicate balance.

It helps to understand how the jet stream forms in order to understand how El Niño affects winter in the U.S. The jet stream is a fast-flowing stream of air in the upper atmosphere that typically meanders around the cruising altitude of most aircraft. Almost all of our exciting weather in this country is caused by the orientation and speed of the winds in the jet stream—these dips and streaks in the upper-levels lead to rising and sinking air near the surface, which can create everything from intense storms to clear blue skies.  

The atmosphere is fluid, always churning and bubbling. Some of these disturbances are as small as a neighborhood—rising air forms a puffy cloud over your house—and some can turn into enormous storm systems that sprawl across the continent. We also have extremely large air circulations throughout the atmosphere known as “cells.” The cells are roughly oriented north-south and each take up about 30 degrees of latitude. In the northern hemisphere, the jet stream forms from the sinking air in these cells around 30°N and 60°N. The southern one is known as the subtropical jet stream, while the northern one is the polar jet stream.

Most of our weather systems in the U.S. are caused by the polar jet stream, or the one that lingers around southern Canada, occasionally dipping south of the border to create storms that sweep across the country. But El Niño can disrupt that. The warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures over the Pacific add extra heat to the atmosphere, helping to bend and twist that subtropical jet stream to cause unusually active winter weather across parts of the country.

The latest winter outlooks from the Climate Prediction Center line up pretty well with the graphics you’d see in the El Niño chapter of a meteorology textbook. The agency expects warmer-than-normal temperatures to persist across the West, as well as the classic uptick in precipitation across the southern half of the country. 

Forecasters expect a weak El Niño if current trends hold up throughout the rest of the winter. A stronger El Niño has a better chance of affecting weather conditions in the U.S., but even a weak one can still lead to stormy, wet conditions. So what does that mean for your ski trip? When it comes to snow out West, El Niño really only tends to help if you’re in southern California, the desert Southwest, or the southern Rockies; expect those places to get near- or above-average snowfalls. El Niño patterns typically leave the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies warmer- and drier-than-normal—not completely without snow, but less than they’d expect during a normal year.

Whatever happens this winter won’t solely be the result of El Niño, but the weather pattern could certainly leave its mark on a number of states in the coming months. Areas in the Northwest won’t go completely snowless this year, while many areas in the south probably won’t have more snow than they’ll know what to do with. Seasonal snowfall totals depend on lots of factors. Think of El Niño as an added bonus.

In short: Go book a trip to the Rockies, then cross your fingers.  

Don’t compare yourself to others, and embrace the slog

I confess that I was caught off guard when I started reading The Happy Runner, a new book by SWAP Running coaches David and Megan Roche. Maybe it was the title, or the oversized “smiley face”on the cover—but I wasn’t expecting an opening sentence like, “Every runner has the same finish line: death.” And then, further down the page: “If you think deeply enough, running will constantly remind you of your own mortality… you realize you’re a sack of bones and gristle, stardust with delusions of grandeur.” I was feeling happier already. 

But The Happy Runner doesn’t set out to convince us that we need to be in a state of rapture every time we log a few miles. The way it’s discussed in the book, it’s probably more helpful to think of “happiness” along the lines of Aristotelian eudaimonia—which is frequently interpreted as living well, or flourishing. For Aristotle, living well was the ultimate end of human existence, as opposed to acquiring status or wealth. Similarly, a core tenet of The Happy Runner is that one shouldn’t be too hung up on running’s external rewards—be it an Olympic Trials Qualifier or a slimmer waistline. For the happy runner, running is always an end in itself.

Of course, that’s easy enough to say, but putting it into practice is another matter entirely. Distilled from the Roches’ book and their overall training philosophy, here are some insights for flourishing in your running life.

Know Your “Why” 

It’s tempting to view the moments of triumph as justification for the more unpleasant aspects being a runner. Finishing Western States might, for instance, feel like a vindication after months of getting up at 5 a.m. and numerous impromptu bouts of defecating in the woods. While it’s totally natural to savor the highs of the sport, one of the lessons from The Happy Runner is that one should also learn to embrace the shittiness, so to speak, without needing a big payoff moment.

“We found that it’s essential to have a ‘why’ that stands up to the worst times, and doesn’t just anticipate the good ones,” David says. “There’s no right answer, but it probably shouldn’t come from external validation.” 

Don’t Let Race Results Define Your Running

One could object to the previous point by noting that, for many runners, “anticipating the good times” is a huge motivator. What’s more, this sense of anticipation is itself often an essential part of what’s now fashionably referred to as “the process.” This speaks to a central conundrum in The Happy Runner, namely that it’s not always easy to parse the difference between internal and external validation. 

But when we spoke, the Roches made a helpful distinction between being motivated by a specific goal, and allowing that goal to dictate success or failure.

“We tell our athletes to dream so big that it horrifies them. But the results are just a means to structure the process,” David says. “And once you get there, you have the knowledge that it continues going. Your self-acceptance isn’t going to change based on what happens at a finish line. That’s all decided well before then.” 

Keep the Big Picture in Mind 

In case the opening sentence of their book didn’t provide enough of a hint, the Roches are big-picture people. Indeed, The Happy Runner doesn’t shy away from asserting that, on a macro level, one’s running life doesn’t carry too much weight. (One chapter begins: “No one gives a crap about your marathon PR.”) While some people might not find this too helpful when it comes to mustering the energy for an interval session, the idea is that taking a broader view of running can help preempt feelings of inadequacy. Furthermore, acknowledging our cosmic insignificance doesn’t mean we can’t be passionate about what we do. 

“When you step back and take the big view of everything, you realize that what you do doesn’t actually matter. Even the people who are winning races—we don’t remember who won some random race in 2015,” Megan says. “So, taking a step back and realizing you are always enough, is a really helpful place to start. But also understanding that it’s okay to care a lot, too, because that just means you’re passionate. So, it’s a delicate balance between understanding that things don’t matter and giving yourself the space to care about things deeply.” 

Beware the Comparison Game

It’s an undeniable fact of the running life: eventually, you will get older and you will get slower. And that’s the best-case scenario where your athletic career isn’t prematurely cut short by injury or–to stick with today’s theme—death. Especially when you’re at the top of your game, maintaining some perspective on the ephemeral nature of speed and fitness is a way to avoid plunging into despair when the invisible hand of senescence begins holding you back. 

The inevitability of decline is also why one shouldn’t peg one’s self worth as an athlete to how well one stacks up against others. Masters categories notwithstanding, the comparison game is a game you’re destined to lose. Or, rather, it’s game you can never win, since there will always be those who are better than you. Once again, it’s crucial to think about running in a way that isn’t self-defeating. 

As David puts it: “If you’re comparing yourself to Galen Rupp or Shalane Flanagan, you might not match up. Instead, you can reframe it by asking yourself whether you are doing all the things that constitute a running life. Not just succeeding, but also failing with grace. You are the one who gets to decide your own narrative and it’s nice if you can create a narrative that makes you feel better about yourself.” 

Mental Health: The Big Asterisk

The Happy Runner has a whole chapter dedicated to mental health. Since so much of the book is predicated on the idea that success in running is an attitude question, the authors felt it was necessary to acknowledge that for many of us—indeed, probably most of us—it’s never going to be a matter of simply flipping an internal switch. 

“We felt the mental health chapter was really important because for a lot people they can’t even start to do things like making enthusiasm a habit, or practicing self-acceptance because their brain chemistry just doesn’t allow it,” Megan says. “There’s that giant asterisk next to everything we wrote.”

It’s an acknowledgement that’s consistent with the tone of the book, which benefits from never venturing into guru territory or turning a blind eye to another macro truth about running: this sport, it’s hard.

“We are all stumbling towards self-acceptance,” David says. “And it’s not always a neat narrative.”

A U.S. Army study aims to pin down the optimal staging protocol before high-altitude tests of endurance

You’ve got an awesome mountain adventure planned. Maybe it’s a trail race, or a backpacking trip, or a ski tour. There’s just one problem. If you knock off work on a Friday afternoon then fly directly to Denver or Calgary (or La Paz!) and head uphill, you’re going to run into trouble with altitude. The risks of altitude illness are well known, but even if you dodge that bullet there’s still the unavoidable fact that you’re going to be slower and weaker in the thin mountain air—and the effects will be worst shortly after you arrive, before you’ve had a chance to acclimatize.

The obvious solution is to spend weeks gradually adjusting to the altitude, as Everest climbers do with their prolonged two-steps-forward-one-step-back progression to greater and greater heights. When my wife and I went hiking in the Khumbu region of Nepal several years ago, we decided to skip the usual flight from Kathmandu to Lukla and instead took a bus partway then walked for four days to the start of our trek. That was partly because we had no money, and also because we wanted to be as conservative as possible about getting used to altitudes of up to 19,000 feet. But that strategy required another luxury that’s even scarcer these days: time.

One of the most pressing questions for people slotting mountain adventures into precious vacation is how much time they need to allot to acclimatization. Will arriving a day or two early make an appreciable difference to their performance and health? This is also, as it turns out, a crucial question for military personnel being deployed on mountain missions where they need to quite literally hit the ground running. Optimizing that calculation is the motivation for a new study from researchers led by Robert Kenefick at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, in Natick, Massachusetts, published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.

The question the new study asks is: if you’re headed to 14,000 feet (4,300 meters) and need to perform well right away, is it worth trying to get there (or partway there) two days early? Specifically, the researchers had 66 volunteers complete a series of tests, including a 5-mile time trial on a treadmill set at 3 percent grade, at the altitude research lab on the summit of Pikes Peak in Colorado. For the two days prior to the tests, the subjects were split into four groups who either camped in Pikes Peak National Forest at 8,200 feet, 9,800 feet, or 11,500 feet, or stayed at the research station at 14,000 feet. A previous study from the same group had found that spending six days at 7,200 feet did significantly improve performance after a rapid ascent to 14,000 feet, an approach known as staging. But who’s got six extra vacation days? The goal this time was to do it faster by going higher.

There was one other variable the researchers threw in. Exercising at altitude puts your oxygen-starved body in even greater stress, so adding some workouts during your acclimatization period might serve as an additional adaptive stimulus. For example, if you head from sea level to 7,200 feet, the oxygen saturation of your blood will drop from somewhere in the upper 90s to about 94 percent. That means only 94 percent of the hemoglobin in your arteries is carrying a full load of oxygen. If you then start exercising at a moderate intensity, that number will drop to 89 percent—the equivalent being at 9,800 feet instead of 7,200 feet for the duration of the exercise. So in each of the four groups, half of the subjects were assigned to spend three or four hours a day hiking during the two-day staging period, for an extra altitude boost.

The result of all these machinations? A big fat nothing. All eight of the subgroups produced essentially identical results in the final testing at 14,000 feet. Here’s what the oxygen saturation (% SpO2) data looked like, starting at sea level (SL), then at the beginning and end of the two-day staging period, and finally at the summit of Pikes Peak:

If you squint optimistically, you might imagine that there’s some evidence that the oxygen saturation levels were starting to creep up in the two highest groups after two days of staging, but there was no statistically significant difference. One notable gap in this study is that, for logistical reasons, they weren’t able to test the subjects at 14,000 feet with no acclimatization. Without this control condition, it’s theoretically possible that the two-day staging protocol was equally effective at all four altitudes, rather than being totally useless. But the smart money (and the researchers’ conclusions) is on for the latter option, unfortunately.

Trying to generalize from results like these is a bit fraught. We can say with reasonable confidence that if you’re planning to do a five-mile run at the summit of Pikes Peak, getting there or thereabouts two days early won’t help. But what if you want to run from the base of Pikes Peak to its summit? You’ll be starting at just 6,300 feet, so maybe that’s different. There are endless variables in terms of the exact elevation, duration, and nature of different challenges that make it hard to be definitive. But if we have to extract some general rules of thumb for mountain adventures from this body of research, I’d go with: getting there six days early helps; getting there two days early doesn’t; and, since we don’t yet know what happens between days two and six, you should err on the safe side and lobby for more vacation days.

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My new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, is now available. For more, join me on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for the Sweat Science email newsletter.

Plotting top-100 marathon times for the past decade shows that Eliud Kipchoge’s world record is a huge outlier. The question is why.

For better or worse, one of the biggest questions of 2018 for running fans is: was it Eliud, or was it the shoes? Eliud Kipchoge’s insane marathon world record of 2:01:39 at the Berlin Marathon in September made him the fastest man in history by over a minute. But he was wearing Nike’s controversial Vaporfly shoes, introduced last year, which feature a thick layer of foam and a curved carbon fiber plate that reportedly make runners four percent more efficient on average. So is Kipchoge really any faster than previous record holders?

There’s no simple answer to this question. But one way to think about it is to ask what the broader trends are in marathon running. Are times getting faster overall? Even if only a fraction of elite marathoners—say a quarter of them—are wearing new supershoes, then those runners will leapfrog past non-Nike runners and push them further down the rankings. That should produce a ripple effect that makes the 10th or 50th or 100th fastest marathoner of the year faster than in previous years, regardless of what shoe he or she is wearing.

So, with that in mind, I’ve plotted the top 100 marathon times for men and women each year for the past ten years, drawing on data from the IAAF and including only the fastest time for each runner. Bear in mind that 2018 isn’t over yet, so it’s still theoretically possible that a few new performances might squeeze into the top 100 (the data is as of Dec. 10).

Here’s the men’s data:

And here’s the women’s data:

Does the appearance of the first Vaporfly prototypes in early 2016, or their general release in July 2017, bend the curve? Admittedly, these plots are basically glorified Rorschach tests: you (and I) can see whatever you want in them. But there are a few things worth noting.

Looking at the broad patterns (as opposed to the big jumps in the top few individuals), there’s no doubt that 2018 is faster than 2017, which in turn was faster than 2016. But the improvements aren’t noticeably bigger than the fluctuations in annual performance in previous years.

In fact, the most obvious feature that’s present in both men’s and women’s data is a steady improvement leading up to a peak year in 2012, followed by a few years of declining performances. Then things start getting better again sometime between 2014 and 2016 (depending on where you look), leading up to the current streak of improvement. What happened in 2012? I’m not sure. I asked a few running-expert friends, and they couldn’t reach any consensus. It’s true that 2012 was an Olympic year, which generally brings out the best in people. But the same bump doesn’t show up in 2016. My leading theory, I’m very sorry to say, is that 2012 was when the first doping positives under the IAAF’s new biological passport began showing up. Perhaps that led to a subsequent chill in performances—at least temporarily.

Is the general improvement in performance in 2018 enough to raise a red flag? For comparison’s sake, I’ve plotted similar top-100 data for a swimming event (I picked the men’s 100 freestyle). Swimming’s results were famously skewed by the introduction of ultra-fast textile suits like Speedo’s LZR in early 2008; those suits were banned from 2010 onward. Here’s what that data looks like, drawing from the FINA’s official rankings:

The thing I should highlight is that I’m not confident in the completeness of the rankings from the earliest years. FINA’s website showcases rankings from 2008 onward, but the earlier data is available in archived form. So some of the apparent improvement between 2005 and 2008, particularly outside the very top performances, may simply be a result of more complete data. That said, the LZR swimsuit didn’t emerge out of nowhere: there was steady improvement in swimsuit technology leading up to the big dip in 2008 and 2009.

What’s unambiguous is that the introduction of new swimsuit rules in 2010 led to a slowdown across the board. At the time, many commentators (including me) wrote about the prospect of swim records that would never be broken, thanks to the distorting effects of the now-banned suits. Curiously, that’s not what happened. Overall top-100 performances are faster now than they were in 2009. Of the 20 official men’s world records, eight have been set since 2010; 16 of the 20 women’s records are post-2010. There are many possible explanations, like faster turns and hyper-optimized swimming pools. Regulating swimsuits didn’t stop the tech-aided march of swimming progress; nor did it destroy the sport.

There are some key differences between swimming and running, most notably in the greater role of drag underwater, and the consequent importance of subtle changes in technique. Swimming’s records have always fallen more frequently than running’s records. But there’s one point that stands out to me in the graph of swim rankings. In 2008 and 2009, everyone seemed to get faster. The top swimmers were no further ahead of their competitors than they were before or after.

In contrast, take another look at where Kipchoge’s new world record sits in the marathon graph. He’s way out of sight relative to his competitors. Lots of top runners are wearing the Vaporfly. In 2017, these runners took 19 of 36 podium spots at the six World Marathon Majors. But none of them are anywhere near Kipchoge. So it can’t all be the shoe.

The marathon, of course, is uniquely challenging. Kipchoge’s record run was his fifth official marathon in the Vaporfly, but the first when fitness, course, and weather conditions combined to give him the opportunity to shatter the record. Maybe there are other runners who will follow Kipchoge into 2:01 or at least 2:02 territory when the stars line up for them, and in doing so demonstrate that his run in Berlin wasn’t as special as it appeared. After all, by the end of 2016, prior to the Vaporfly’s release, 31 men had run 2:04:59 or better. If the Vaporfly really alters performance by several percent, we should see someone threaten Kipchoge’s record soon.

The tough question is whether we can afford to wait. If, in five years, a half-dozen men all wearing the Vaporfly have run 2:01, we’ll have our answer. But by then it may be too late to convince authorities to regulate shoe technology—if it’s not already.

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My new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, is now available. For more, join me on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for the Sweat Science email newsletter.

Why give stuff when you can give a travel experience instead?

We’ve spent the past year compiling the best trips, outfitters, lodges, and destinations across the globe. Now, as the year comes to an end, we decided to take a look back at some of our favorite spots that we discovered in 2018. The best part? It’s easy to give these trips as gifts this holiday season. So if you have someone on your list who already has everything, here’s how to give them an experience they won’t soon forget.

Getaway

Various Locations Across the United States

Back in July, we called Getaway one of the dreamiest cabins of the year. The locations of these tiny (under 200 square feet), smartly designed bungalows are kept secret until after you’ve booked to create a sense of surprise and impromptu adventure. Now you can find these perfect weekend escapes outside Boston, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. Each is stocked with firewood, board games, and basic food supplies. You can gift a Getaway starting at $50.

Loge Camps

Pacific Northwest, Colorado

Named one of our best trips in 2018, Loge (pronounced “lodge”) is more than just a hotel for outdoorsy types. Launched in 2017, this hospitality startup offers revamped motel rooms, hostel-style bunks, and campsites in surf, ski, and cycling meccas. Current locations include Bend, Oregon, and Leavenworth, Westport, and Snoqualmie Pass, Washington. Starting in 2019, Loge adds locations at Mount Shasta and Big Bear, California, as well as Breckenridge and Estes Park, Colorado. While you’re there, you can demo high performance outdoor gear, listen to live music, sip beer in the café, and mingle with like-minded travelers. Use the offer code GiftOutside15 by July 1, 2019, for 15 percent off.

Amigo Motor Lodge

Salida, Colorado

Less than three hours from Denver, this off-the-radar adventure town on the shores of the Arkansas River—which we named a brilliant spot for fall foliage in October—has world-class kayaking, a rowdy summertime whitewater festival, mountain biking along the Continental Divide, and uncrowded skiing at Monarch Mountain. Plus, it has the Amigo Motor Lodge, a supremely cool hotel with tons of tips for making the most out of your stay. And, yes, it offers gift cards.

Surfhouse

Encinitas, California

We named this hip, eight-room hotel on Highway 101 near the beach in Encinitas a perfect California road-trip destination. Rooms come with beach cruisers, access to an outdoor shower, and special rates at a local co-working space. Its sister company, Surfhouse Adventures, offers surf lessons for all abilities, guided outings to some of the best local breaks, yoga classes on the beach, and even photography of your surf sessions. It doesn’t offer gift cards, but buy an Airbnb gift card and the surfer (or aspiring one) on your holiday list can use that to book a room.

The Outbound Pursuit Series

North Carolina, Utah, California

We love the Outbound Pursuit Series because they’re basically grown up sleepaway camps. Guided mountain biking, paddleboarding, trail running, yoga sessions, and photography workshops are taught by some of the top experts in those fields. The series travels to Snowbasin, Utah, next June; Bear Valley, California, in August; and a new location in Green River Preserve, North Carolina, in September. To make a gift of it, book tickets for the location of your choosing in someone else’s name.

Main and Mountain

Ludlow, Vermont

Main and Mountain, a new bar and motel in Ludlow, Vermont, got the nod from us back in August for its invisible service—you check yourself into your room with a personalized access code sent straight to your inbox. Even if you don’t stay the night, you’ll want to order a cocktail at the bar after a day of skiing nearby Okemo Mountain Resort. Treat your friends and family in New England to a gift card, which can be used for lodging and at the bar.

Teton Backcountry Rentals

Jackson, Wyoming

If you’re heading to Grand Teton or Yellowstone National Park or skiing Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, chances are you will need to rent some gear. Teton Backcountry Rentals loans out essentials like avalanche safety gear, camping equipment, and four-wheel-drive trucks equipped with fully outfitted camper shells or rooftop tents. The shop also rents pack rafts and offers guided trips down the Snake and Hoback rivers, which is one of our favorite guided packrafting trips of the year. Contact TBR directly to arrange for a gift certificate.

Maine Huts and Trails

Carrabassett Valley, Maine

There’s a reason we think these four deluxe solar- and hydropowered lodges are some of the country’s best huts for mountain bikers: They can be linked up for a European-style traverse where home-cooked meals await when you walk through the door. Or post up in one of your choosing, and ride or hike 80 miles of singletrack in summer or cross-country ski or showshoe some 50 miles of groomed trails in winter. You can buy gift certificates in any value you choose.

From flash airline sales to public transportation, a boutique travel agent shares her tips for cost-effective travel

There’s no getting around it: Traveling abroad is expensive. Long flights, hotel rooms, and eating out add up quickly, and it’s incredibly easy to blow your budget. But there are ways to mitigate some unavoidable expenses.

This summer, my wife and I spent two weeks in Belgium and the Netherlands. We saved up a long time but still had a fairly limited budget to work with, so we had to get creative in planning. For us, that meant hiring a travel agent. The words “travel agent” and “budget” may not seem like they go hand in hand, but the money we saved by getting help from a professional who knows the ins and outs of the business—like the best time to book flights to get a good fare and how to score deals on lodging—saved us a ton of money in the end. Plus, if something goes awry, you’re not on your own.

The key is finding someone who understands your needs. We used Passiflora Travel, a small travel consulting firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, owned by Sullivan Peraino. Her knowledge of our destinations and tips on where to spend and where to save were priceless. Here’s her advice on how not to break the bank.

Don’t Pay for Too Many Things in Advance

Doing so can actually cost you more money. “Unless you’re traveling in the peak season and have no flexibility in your schedule, wait until you arrive in country,” Peraino says. “Paying online with a credit card for things like boat trips to the trailhead or gear for glacier trekking in Patagonia will always entail extra fees and leaves you no room to bargain. Plus, if you book on the ground, you’ll be able to pay with local currency.”

Cash Is King

Speaking of paying with cash, it’s always best to bring U.S. dollars and exchange it for local currency as soon as possible. Peraino says making purchases with a credit card will likely entail foreign transaction fees and puts you at the mercy of the day’s official exchange rate.

Book Lodging Directly

You’ll often be able to negotiate a better rate by getting in touch with the lodge or hotel owner or manager directly by phone or email rather than by booking online, Peraino says. This is especially true if you’re traveling during the off-season.

Use Public Transportation

Public transit just about everywhere else in the world puts the United States to shame, and it can offer more benefits than just being cheaper than expensive in-country flights. Buses in Chile and Argentina, for example, usually include free movies, regular meals, and hot tea and coffee. “Book a sleeper seat, or salon cama, for a fully reclining chair and relax,” Peraino says. Not only will this save money, but you also won’t be at the mercy of the regional airlines, which are known to cancel flights and go on strike with remarkable regularity.”

Be Flexible

This is easier said than done, but padding a few extra days into your itinerary can save you money. “This flexibility allows you to change your plans on the fly. Say you meet another group of hikers on the street, and they’re headed out one day later than you. If you can push your schedule back a day, you could share the shuttle costs with them,” Peraino says.

Watch for Flash Sales

It’s never too early to start scouting airline websites for flash sales. “LAN Airlines, the main carrier for South America, will often have 24-hour sales where you can fly to Patagonia for half the normal price,” Peraino says. “Icelandair is renowned for offering sale fares to Reykjavik for less than $300. Similarly, expedition cruise companies that sail to Antarctica will try to fill their remaining berths by offering mind-blowing buy one, get one free promotions for trips leaving within a few days or weeks.”

Be Diligent

It pays to do your research and look at all your options, even for expenses that seem obvious. For example, while grabbing a Eurorail Pass may seem like a no-brainer for a trip across the pond, after a ticket-to-ticket comparison, Peraino found that buying individual tickets for each leg of your journey is often cheaper. Sometimes it’s even more economical to rent a car. “If you’re headed to Western Europe, rentals often cost just $200 a week, and you’ll have the ability to explore the remote mountain roads and coastal hideaways between the big cities.”

Look into Opening a New Credit Card

A lot of cards, like Capitol One’s Venture Rewards Card, offer an incentive of 50,000-plus airline miles just for signing up. That’s a free plane ticket, depending on your destination.

What you eat changes how you feel. These foods are the best for your brain

Active people tend to overthink what food is doing for their body—Is keto good for endurance? What’s the perfect post-training macro spread? Butter or no butter in my coffee?—but underthink what it’s doing for their mind. Yet you’ve probably noticed that what you eat impacts what’s going on upstairs. We’ve all devoured a cheat meal and afterward felt off, not just physically but also mentally and emotionally. And new research suggests that the connection between diet and mental well-being is a little more nuanced than scientists once thought.

Earlier studies suggest what you might expect: eating junk isn’t great for your brain. People who consume plenty of fruit, vegetables, and fish seem to be less at risk of depression compared to those who favor fatty meats, processed carbs, and sweets. But emerging research shows that even among healthy diets, some might be better for mental health than others. In a recent review published in Molecular Psychology, researchers analyzed 41 studies that sought to quantify the impact of various diets on clinical depression. The analysis accounted for a variety of eating plans including the Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, and the Healthy Eating Index.

The winner? The Mediterranean diet, which according to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition features abundant fruits and vegetables, olive oil, dairy products like yogurt and cheese, cereals, beans, fish and poultry, and moderate amounts of red meat and wine. (Sometimes it seems to be the best diet for just about everything: it may help you live longer, and it recently won the top spot in an exhaustive, expert-led analysis of 40 diets based on metrics like being heart-healthy, plant heavy, and easy to adhere to.)

Drew Ramsey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and the author of Eat Complete, says the Mediterranean diet may have a positive effect on mental health because it helps fight inflammation. “Molecules that are responsible for inflammation influence things like your mood and energy levels,” says Ramsey. “For example, inflammation gets in the way of the brain’s self-repair process. Many antidepressant medications are also powerful anti-inflammatories that spur brain growth.” The diet may also improve your gut microbiome, which research suggests influences depression.

But don’t purge your refrigerator or medicine cabinet quite yet. Observational nutrition studies, where researchers ask participants to recall their eating patterns, can be unreliable, says Trevor Kashey, an Ohio-based registered dietitian. “People lie, don’t know how to track their intake, and have terrible memories,” he says. 

More importantly, every diet in the study showed some positive impact on depression. “When we begin to dissect which particular healthy diet is optimal, it misses the point,” says Ramsey. “The big take home for individuals and for our mental health care systems is that food matters.” The study itself concludes that “adhering to a healthy diet, in particular a traditional Mediterranean diet, or avoiding a pro-inflammatory diet appears to confer some protection against depression.”

To that end, Ramsey recently conducted a separate study that looked at which foods are highest in the 12 nutrients associated with preventing or relieving depression. Low levels of folate and B12, for example, are associated with depression, and the symptoms are often relieved by taking in more of those vitamins. The full list of foods with purported mental-health benefits is expansive, but vegetables, organ meats (like liver), fruits, and seafood took the top four categories.

No single food has magical powers, however. “We want to shift [the conversation away] from singular foods and diets and into talking about food categories,” says Ramsey. His study, for example, found that spinach, Swiss chard, kale, and lettuce contain the highest antidepressant nutrients per serving, but that it didn’t really matter which leafy green you ate—what matters is that leafy greens are a regular part of your food intake. 

“As a clinical psychiatrist, it’s intriguing to think about food interventions and how they could shift an entire organism,” says Ramsey. “What happens if I get someone using food for a more diverse microbiome, lower overall inflammation, and more connection to a sense of self-care? Those are all great things for someone struggling with mental and brain health.”

These findings could have a big impact. Worldwide, 4 percent of men and 7 percent of women suffer from depression, and the disorder can affect all facets of life, including productivity and athletic performance. Nutrition is just one piece of the mental-health puzzle, but it has researchers excited. “I really am a big fan of responsibly using medications and effective talk therapy to treat depression,” says Ramsey. “But [focusing on] diet allows us to empower patients to think about their mental health as tied to nutrition.”