I ran the stringray shuffle 3k this morning with cheri. It was sponsored by a local running shoe store called the Running Zone. I’m pretty happy with it, it let me get it in my head that I can run the distance without stopping. I was going at a slower pace than I do when running here, but I wanted to finish without stopping so I was taking it easy. Here are my stats:
MALE AGE GROUP: 40 - 44
Place O'All No. Name Age City St Time Pace
29 568 520 Mike Ward 43 Melbourne FL 22:26.2 12:03
Me and Cheri rounding the curve to the finish line (note the concerned looks on the ambulance attendants):
Peter, on his hyperlipid blog, has a great post graphing all cause mortality vs % of calories from fat:
Cholesterol presentation: Between countries
He shows the graph that Keys used in his arguments against fat with the cherry picked countries and then cherry picks his own set of countries to show the opposite. He also shows a graph of all the countries and it’s just a big cloud.
Keys was so sure of his position that he basically took the data that contradicted his hypothesis and manipulated it to support it instead of accepting that he was wrong.
Wow. I knew I was in trouble when my calves hurt yesterday after running. The day after the day after is always the worse and today is really bad. I look like an 80 year old man hobbling around. I was planning on running again on Tuesday but I don’t know if my legs will have healed enough by then. I think I was leaving my weight too much on my toes and not shifting to the back of the foot enough. It could be that my legs are so out of shape. I should have a better idea about it after my second run.
Tonight we are doing biceps and chest so I will try to stretch my calves out a little bit when I bend over to pick up weights. May have to delay running again until Wednesday or Thursday.
Got off my butt and did my first run in several years today. I used a heart rate monitor and ran (HA!) until my heart rate got above 180 then walked until it dropped to below 130 and then ran again. I made it two miles taking about 30mins to do it with four periods of running. The last run period was very sloppy, I had a lot of trouble keeping my forefoot running going, I kept wanting to take a larger step which made me land on my heels. Not fun in the Nike frees, which I guess, is why I am using them.
I am skipping the leg workout today, Karen is doing the leg routine now. May try some squats tomorrow some time if I don’t end up working in the yard too long. Probably won’t try running again until Wednesday.
We did triceps and back yesterday so now the back of my arms are sore as well as my biceps. A little in my back, but not too bad. I couldn’t do as many pull-ups as I wanted since my biceps were so sore from Tuesday. I held off running because we are doing legs Thursday and I figure I will be sore enough from that without adding in some running soreness. Hopefully I will be able to manage something this weekend.
Cherie wants to do a 5k towards the end of March. (I think, not real sure of the date, got this second hand through Karen) Not sure if I work up to 5k by then, certainly not at my current rate. :/
We did the first workout of the series Sunday and I am sore today even though I was working out with lighter weights than I should have been. I think the Imuran makes Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness worse for me. My joints were bothering me all day Sunday so I couldn’t workout as hard as I wanted to.
It’s supposed to be a nice day today so I will try to get some running in tonight. Monday is always hard though, I just don’t seem to have much get up and go on Mondays. Tuesday will be the next workout in the series.
I managed to remember to bring my toaster oven in to work today, so I have a chuck steak and will probably drive the rest of the crue crazy around 1 or 2 this afternoon when I am hungry for lunch.
Well, the best laid plans and all. Monday night was raining and Tuesday wasn’t a verty good day, I was tired all day and came home beat. Now the weatherman is saying that it’s getting into the 20’s tonight so I am pretty sure that there will be no running tonight.
Karen and I ordered some workout videos from Cathe and you need to detirmine your one rep maximum for the various excersizes in order to know how much weight to use so I may work on that tongiht. I did my 1RM for curls and according to the calculator, it’s 35lbs. What a wuss I’ve become since the major workout prior to the wedding.
At my lowest weight, before the prednisone and the honeymoon, I was 155. Since that time I have climbed up to 170. I’ve been doing my pushups and pullups somewhat haphazardly and recently got challanged to start running again. So. Tonight after work I will strap on the pulse meter thingy and get to it. To get back into things I’ll run my pulse up to max and then walk until it setttles down again. Cycle through that a few times and see how it goes.
I also plan to work on my fore-foot landing technique. The last time I tried that, I ended up running on my tip-toes and getting really sore calves. Since then I’ve read over more on the technique and will work on landing on my toes but pushing off with my heels.
Another number you will see is the Number Needed to Treat (NNT). This is the number of people that need to be treated with the drug under study in order to prevent one bad outcome. It is the inverse of the Absolute Risk Reduction. If the ARR is 1%, then the NNT is 100. That means that out of 100 people taking the drug, one of them will see a benefit. The other 99 will suffer the side effects (if any) for nothing.
Business Week did an article on statins that talks about the NNT for statin therapy. For people without heart disease but who have risk factors such as high blood pressure, the NNT to prevent one heart attack or stroke is 70-250 over 5 years. That’s a lot of people that think they are doing something to prevent a heart attack by taking the statin that are going to be really pissed when the chest pains hit.
When study results for a new (or old) drug are summerized, they can be shown several different ways.
- Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR), the difference between the event rate in the intervention group and the control group.
- Relative Risk Reduction (RRR), the AAR divided by the event rate in the control group.
Consider a trail for a new drug to treat heart attacks. 2000 people at high risk for a heart attack are tracked over a period of 10 years. They are split into two groups, one group gets the new drug (treatment group) and the other group doesn’t (the control group). After 10 years, 900 of the control group die due to a heart attack compared with 600 of the treatment group. The Relative Risk Reduction for the new drug is (90% – 60%) / 90% or 33%.
The Absolute Risk Reduction is just the difference in the two rates, 90% – 60% or 30%. Both of these numbers are about the same. Things change when we start talking about a low risk group.
Lets consider this same drug tested against a group of low risk individuals in the same manner. 2000 low risk patients are split into two groups and tracked over 10 years. At the end of the trial, 30 of the control group have died due to a heart attack or 3% and 20 of the treatment group or 2%. The Relative Risk Reduction is (3% – 2%) / 3% or 33%. Taking the new drug over 10 years will reduce your chance of a heart attack by 33%! Seems like a damn good idea.
The Absolute Risk Reduction is the difference between the two groups, or 1%. The new drug will save 1% over 10 years of low risk individuals. Not really worth it, especially if there are side effects.
Relative Risk Reduction does not take into account the initial baseline risk of the outcome event making a trivial improvement in mortality risk seem significant.
Interestingly enough, all of the studies I have seen summarized so far for cholesterol lowering drugs are only reporting relative risk reduction. More on this later.
