5 questions: Ultra-runner Scott Jurek on training and diet

5 questions: Ultra-runner Scott Jurek on training and diet

Scott Jurek is a nice guy who exhibits none of the sanctimonious proselytizing that vegans sometimes do.

He's also a guy who gave up a fast-food burger diet and runs what many consider to be obscenely long distances. How long? In 2010, he ran an astounding 165.7 miles (more than six marathons) in 24 hours to set a new U.S. record. His long list of running accomplishments has led to much praise, including Ultrarunning magazine three times naming him ultra-runner of the year. He also found time to write the new book "Eat Run" with Steve Friedman (Houghton Mifflin).

How did you get into running, and do you feel like this is something you are genetically programmed to be good at?

I used to hate running and only did it to get in shape for cross-country ski season over the summer during my teen years. I don't think my genes were that special. When I was 20, a buddy of mine decided on a whim to enter a 50-mile race, and he won it, so the next year I decided to do it as well. I ran my first marathon [26.2 miles] … and finished in 2:54. What I think made it stick was the social aspect of it. My friend put a fun spin on it, and I've met a lot of great people because of running; there is a pack mentality to it.

Wait. You ran your first marathon in under three hours? And you say your genes aren't that special?

Well, I grew up in northern Minnesota, and during my childhood there was always lots of hard, physical work to do. Having a mother with MS meant we were always busy working, and if I was sitting down it was in a fishing boat or a deer blind. Maybe I had some good farm boy genes, b ut the beauty of ultra-running is that it is mainly a mental game. It's a pure guts type of event, and that's where I've been able to succeed. My best marathon time is 2:38, but I've beaten 2:15 marathoners in 100-mile races. Perhaps genes make a difference. I know I'm not made for shorter stuff. Also, I have scoliosis. I'm not this perfect specimen. I do get sick and run-down from time to time. I've learned to listen to my body.

What other type of training do you engage in to augment your running?

I do two to three days of strength training each week, both for the upper and lower body. I also do a lot of functional core strengthening. I think it's important to focus on the supportive muscular system for injury prevention. I also advocate some stretching, but don't think we need to be gymnasts. I'm a physiotherapist and know that lots of sitting leads to tightened hamstrings and hip flexors. I don't do any other aerobic exercise other than runnin g. I also do some yoga.

When and why did you become a vegan, and what effect did this have on your performance?

I became vegan in 1999, the same year I won the Western States 100-mile run, which I went on to win seven years in a row. (It's like the Boston Marathon of 100-mile races.) Going vegan was a really tough decision mentally. I came from a meat-and-potatoes background and made the transition to vegetarian at the age of 25 for a year and then fully vegan after that.

It wasn't a performance-motivated decision. It hit me when I began working in hospitals and learning about chronic disease and growing up with a mother with MS. I ate a lot of fast food in college, and the shift was one of those gradual things that was about health. It forced me to think carefully about what I was eating. I am sympathetic to ethical issues of eating meat, but don't think people should be demonized. I'm probably going to vegan hell for all the animals I kil led and ate in my youth.

With the traveling you do, is it hard to maintain your vegan diet?

It's not that bad. It's mostly about searching out ethnic foods, particularly when I'm in airports. You can still survive. In restaurants, a lot of times they have beans in the salad bar. Sometimes you have to look off the menu. It becomes a bit of a challenge, but usually Mexican and Asian are good choices. I've even eaten at a steak place in Texas before a race and able to get a good vegan meal there. Sometimes I travel with a protein powder or protein bars for those occasions that I can't find something.

You have to have an adequate protein intake, but it's really about caloric intake and getting enough variety. The amount of protein you need isn't as much as people think.

health@latimes.com

Try This! Yoga's crescent tones legs, builds balance

Try This! Yoga's crescent tones legs, builds balance

Yoga is a great way for athletes of any stripe to build lean muscle and improve their balance. No knowledge of Sanskrit is necessary.

Crescent reps, demonstrated by Tamal Dodge, co-founder of Santa Monica's Yoga Collective and the yogi behind Element's "Hatha Flow Yoga for Beginners" DVD, are a great way to tone the legs and get the body warmed up for other exercise.

What it does

The movement in this pose gets your heart rate up at the same time you're working your glutes and hamstrings. It also challenges the center of balance, which indirectly works the abdominal muscles.

How to do it

Start in a standing forward bend, with your hands touching the mat in front of you (or as close to the floor as you can get). Step your right leg back 3½ to 4 feet so you're in a runner's lunge with your left knee bent and right leg extended on the ball of your right foot. (The taller you are, the wider your stance should be.) Slowly bring your hands to your sides, so your body forms a straight line from your right foot to your head. Inhale and raise your hands and your upper body until they form a straight line to the ceiling. Exhale and slowly lower the arms and upper body until you are back at your starting position. Once you're finished with 10 repetitions, step your right foot back in standin g forward bend and switch to the other side.

How much

Start with 10 repetitions on each leg. Work up to two sets of 10.

health@latimes.com

Green gyms focus on high-power workouts, low-power usage

Green gyms focus on high-power workouts, low-power usage

With the cycles, the flat-screen TVs and, of course, the air conditioning, most people who exercise at gyms are working out the electrical grid along with their muscles. But the members of AC4 Fitness in Goleta will be generating power and feeding it back to the grid every time they step on a treadmill or elliptical. When they need a drink, they'll have to bring their own refillable bottle and get water from a hydration station that provides free water filtered with reverse osmosis. And when they stash their belongings, they'll do so in lockers made from recycled plastic.

"If we're enabling people to be good stewards of their own bodies, it seems like the natural progression of that is to also be good stewards of the environment," said Tony Calhoun, 54, who opened AC4 Fitness in mid-June and plans to run it with as little paper, plastic and energy as possible.

AC4 Fitness is one of the more thorough examples of the so-cal led green gym, a trend that has been growing in recent years as more fitness centers embrace electricity-generating workout equipment and other strategies for reducing their environmental impact and improving their financial bottom lines. In the last year alone, several universities, including UC Irvine and Cal State Northridge, and private gyms such as the Greenasium in Encinitas, have installed workout equipment that generates, rather than saps, electricity. Chapman University in Orange plans to have equipment installed in August.

Byron Spratt, 34, was inspired to co-create the Greenasium after "years of going to a big gym and seeing the TVs and the AC blowing and the lights blaring in my eyes," he said of a situation he found especially troubling on days when the weather was nice and nobody seemed to be in the gym. "So much power was being used, we thought we'd be more responsible."

The Greenasium, which opened in August 2010, has floors covered with mats made from recycled tires. The dumbbells are previously used and refurbished. Sports drinks and energy bars are not offered for sale in an effort to reduce waste and plastic. If clients need water, of course they can have some. They'll just have to drink it from the club's reusable ceramic mugs or a bottle they've brought from home.

Still, "we realized we couldn't be 100% carbon-footprint-neutral in the workout studio," said Spratt, who tries to reach the gym's carbon balance with community servic e. Each month, Spratt and the rest of the Greenasium staff participate in beach cleanups with the nonprofit environmental group Surfrider Foundation. Every other month, they volunteer for a local e-waste recycler.

"Kinetic means if you take action, you can achieve anything," said John Scarangello, 47, owner of Kinetic Cycling in Brentwood. The popular Westside spinning club has been using five electricity-generating cycles since the club opened three years ago. Together, the bikes generate 600 watts of electricity per hour when in use. "We call it good energy," added Scarangello, who this summer will open a second workout space outfitted with silent Woodway Curve treadmills that are self-sustaining and use no electricity. The entire space will be lighted with energy-saving LEDs.

David Solomon, who is such a regular at Kinetic he is known as "the king," makes a practice of working out on the electricity-generating cycles.

"It's a great workout," said Solomon , a real estate investor who spins at Kinetic three days a week. "I like to think that in my small little world, I can make some little difference to the environment."

susan.carpenter@latimes.com

Gadget: SunMate UV index indicator

Gadget: SunMate UV index indicator

Ultraviolet, or UV, radiation. You can't see it coming. But you can keep a lookout for it, thanks to a nifty little gadget called the SunMate.

The sun's invisible ultraviolet rays are ultra-villainous â€" known cancer causers and wrinkle wreakers â€" and they're waiting to get you, year round, just about every time you step outside during daylight hours.

Enter the UV Index, a scale from 1 to 11+, that tells you the level of UV radiation at any given time, which, in turn, tells you how risky it is to be out in the sun.

You can keep tabs on the index level for your city or ZIP Code at http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html. You can also subscribe to daily forecasts by email (at https://enviroflash.epa.gov/uv/Subscriber.do?method=start) or download an app for your phone (at http://www.epa.gov/sunwise/uviresources.html).

Most convenient of all, perhaps, you can get a SunMate. "Pull it out and push a button," says Myron Mullins, chief executive of Purely Products, which makes the gizmo.

The UV scale on the SunMate is the same as the UV index, except compressed. (It ranges from 1 to 5.) Tests prove it's extremely accurate and consistent, Mullins says. "And it's very, very durable, impervious to rain, salt, sand or wind."

A SunMate can be yours for $9.99 at http://www.purelyproducts.com. "Our goal," Mullins says, "is to take very cool technology and make it affordable."

health@latimes.com

MOCA: Eli Broad discusses ousting of Paul Schimmel

MOCA: Eli Broad discusses ousting of Paul Schimmel

Inside the 12th floor conference room of his Broad Foundation in Westwood sat Eli Broad, the man the art world wanted to hear from after the forced resignation of Paul Schimmel, the longtime chief curator of L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art.

Broad, who helped found MOCA in 1979 and is now its biggest donor, didn't have an official vote in the museum board's decision to oust Schimmel â€" his status as a "life trustee" means he's not a voting member. But he was present for a portion of the June 25 meeting where MOCA's co-chairs, David Johnson and Maria Bell, negotiated an agreement calling for Schimmel to be paid his full salary for another year. (According to the most recent tax records, Schimmel was paid $235,000 in 2010.)

"It was no one event," Broad said of the board's action. "It was time for Paul and the museum to have a new beginning."

That new beginning is now firmly in the hands of Jeffrey Deitch, the New York art dealer brought in two years ago as MOCA's director.

Deitch's buzz-driven vision of how to run a museum collided with that of Schimmel, who was known for sweeping, meticulously researched and often expensive exhibitions that examined themes and movements in contemporary visual art. Those shows and Schimmel's acquisitions were vital to MOCA's standing as one of the world's most respected showcases for post-World War II art.

"They knew that Paul was from the old culture and was not getting along with the director," Broad said of the board's decision. "And although they had a lot of respect for his curatorial ability, they thought it was time to move on, especially some of the newer trustees."

Normally, museum directors hire and fire employees without board involvement or authorization. But, Broad said, "the leadership felt that getting Jeffrey Deitch involved would create a bad scene which wouldn't serve anybody.

"The bottom line is it was no surprise to Paul," Broad said. "He's a brilliant curator and he'll be an asset in whatever he chooses to do going forward."

How Deitch and MOCA fare going forward will depend not only on his signature presenting style, but on whether he has the fundraising clout to help pull MOCA out of the fiscal funk that has dogged it for more than 10 years.

Although the museum's attendance rose from 149,000 the year before Deitch arrived to 402,000 in 2011, its last successful fundraising campaign was in the mid-1990s, and from 2000 to 2008 it burned through most of the proceeds. In 2008, Broad stepped with $30 million to save the financially depleted museum from going under.

Even with Broad's help, MOCA is far from being out of the woods financially. The budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year that began this week is less than $15 million, according to a person knowledgeable about the museum's plans but not authorized to speak publicly, the lowest since the 1990s. MOCA last week laid off five employees besides Schimmel. According to the museum's most recent tax return, Deitch earned $648,281 in 2010.

In a departure from past practice, when MOCA would schedule shows before funding had been secured, it has adopted a policy of committing to exhibitions only after at least 80% of its projected budget has been lined up.

Deitch, who had no experience courting donors before taking over at MOCA, acknowledged in a public forum at an art fair last month that the difficulty of the task, a crucial and time-consuming one for museum directors, had come as "a rude awakening."

"People wouldn't take my phone calls because they figured, 'he's going to ask me for money,'" Deitch said, according to the online magazine Artnet. "People say it's more important to give to hospitals or needy children than the museum."

Now he'll need to overcome bitterness in local art circles over the perceived indignity of Schimmel's sudden exit.

Schimmel, 57, did not return calls, and Deitch, 59, declined to comment for this article, other than releasing a prepared statement: "I want to express my admiration for Paul and his great contributions to the art community. I am happy to participate in an interview about my plans for the museum in more detail at a later date."

When Deitch took over at MOCA in June 2010, after closing his Deitch Projects galleries in New York, acclaimed Los Angeles artist Paul McCarthy and others thought that sparks between the new director and Schimmel might kindle a stronger MOCA.

"Both have done really great shows, both have a super awareness of the art world. I thought a dialogue between the two of them could make it into a really interesting place," said McCarthy.

The hoped-for fruitful creative tension never developed.

Scott Peterson appeal says verdict tainted by publicity, bias

Scott Peterson appeal says verdict tainted by publicity, bias

Convicted murderer Scott Peterson told the California Supreme Court that his guilty verdict and death sentence should be overturned because his trial was tainted by massive publicity, a biased jury pool and shaky evidence.

In his appeal, Peterson said he was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn son "absent evidence of how, where or when the murder occurred."

"At the very least, a verdict under such circumstances raises a legitimate question as to how a jury could arrive at such a result," Peterson's lawyers wrote in the 423-page brief. They said the answer was overwhelming pretrial publicity and widespread public belief in Peterson's guilt, fueled in part by inaccurate reports from police who assumed form the start that Peterson had killed his missing wife.

The lawyers noted that nearly half the prospective jurors said in pretrial questioning that they believed Peterson killed Laci, and a huge billboard outside the courthouse asked people to call in and vote on whether Peterson was "man or monster."

The appeal reminded the court that "a mob" of more than 1,000 people waited outside the San Mateo County courthouse for the verdict and wildly cheered the departing jurors after they found Peterson guilty but before they had deliberated on whether he should be condemned to die.

Laci Peterson disappeared on Christmas Eve 2002. Her husband told police that he had gone fishing in San Francisco Bay off the Berkeley marina and returned to find their Modesto home empty. Intensive searches failed to find a trace of the missing woman until her unborn son, Conner, washed up on a beach near Berkeley a year later, near a torso that was identified as Laci's.

Peterson's lawyers complained that an expert witness who testified about the movement of bodies in water admitted he was not schooled in the subject. They also questioned "highly prejudicial dog scent evidence" from a dog with a record of being wrong 66% of the time.

Lawyers for the former Modesto fertilizer salesman also faulted the trial judge for excluding a video that the defense said showed Peterson's fishing boat would have capsized if he had used it to dump his wife's body, weighted down with anchors, into the bay.

"The evidence the state claimed conclusively established Scott's guilt was simply unreliable and should never have been admitted in this capital trial," Cliff Gardner, Peterson's chief appellate lawyer, argued.

Peterson's appeal is not likely to be decided soon. More briefs will be filed, and the court could spend a year or more studying the written arguments before scheduling a hearing. Peterson is also entitled to file a second legal challenge based on evidence that was not presented at trial and may appeal his case in federal court if he loses in the state court.

Senate passes high-speed rail funding, which now goes to governor

Senate passes high-speed rail funding, which now goes to governor

The state Senate voted to fund California's ambitious high-speed rail project on Friday, handing a major victory to Gov. Jerry Brown and the Obama administration.

The $8-billion legislation will fund the project's first stretch, covering 130 miles from Madera to Bakersfield.

The project had become increasingly controversial as Democratic senators from around San Francisco and Los Angeles asked why construction was was set to start with a 130-mile stretch in the Central Valley.

"The ridership is not in the Central Valley," said Sen. Leland Yee (D- San Francisco), speaking Thursday night. "The ridership is along the 101 corridor," referring to the U.S. highway stretching from the Bay Area to Los Angeles.

The funding bill included $5.9 billion in state bond money and federal funds for the rail network. There was also about $2 billion for local and other related transportation projects, such as electrification of Cal Train tracks in the Bay Area and improvement of Los Angeles County's Metrolink system.

After the Assembly approved funding on Thursday, the pressure was on Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) to round up support in his chamber.

"Our predecessors faced this same challenge before building California's freeway networks and the Bay Area's bridges," he said in a statement before the vote. "Today, we have an historic opportunity to follow in their footsteps and do the same."

Brown and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were also leaning on senators to vote for the funding.

The bill now goes to the governor.