September 27th, 2010
One Year Off The Ganga
It’s today! Despite a few generous invitations over the past year, I’ve held firm to my resolve of no more pot smoking. I’m happy with my decision to quit, though it didn’t produce the outcome I desired at all (quieter breathing during races and improved running). In fact, it messed with my heart rate for about 6 months.
What I gained from quitting was some renewed motivation on the work front and the end of guilt for having a habit. Both results are satisfying, though it’s amusing how small the payoff actually ended up being. Oh well, it’s good to be untethered.
Status Update
Yesterday capped a sweet running week of 49 no-pressure miles with one day off due to a sore throat/snotty cold. The cherry on the sundae was an overnight visit from one of my 3:20 thread pals, Ultra running queen Amy and her cool cage-fighter hubby, Bryan. We had a blast filling our guts, jabbering away and enjoying a lovely 10-miler on Sunday morning.
This week’ll be more easy running with maybe something faster near the end of the week just to keep steady. I don’t feel a big hurry to push ahead but I don’t want to lose what I have, whatever that may be (talk about your giant question mark).
I got my appointments for the medical tests: breathing thing is on Oct. 4th and stress test Oct. 28th, so it’s part of the background for now. I’m not thinking about it, I just want to enjoy the coming Fall temps while letting my body steer the pace.
My Complicated Head
The day after those race photos and the video came out, I had some really dark thoughts along the lines of “What am I doing this for?” You know, you spend serious time and thought working on your body to get it as racing-able as possible, solid months working on form and posture to make yourself more efficient and then it all goes to shit when you see yourself folded over at the waist looking like something from Night Of The Living Dead.
And while you know it isn’t warranted, you can’t help but feel a sense of revulsion, particularly when it’s not the first time. I see that video (btw, $70 for a Half and all they can afford to photograph is the finish line? RNR are assholes) and I can’t help but think it’s something I did wrong, like pacing so far outside of my fitness level like a naive beginner. That’s the suck. The self-blaming. It never really leaves, even though I’m going for tests and stuff, I’ll always have that shadow in my mind that it was something I chose to do incorrectly. You’ve no idea how much I hate that.
But that’s when I feel like dwelling on it, which I don’t. Right now, my thoughts are focused on continuing what I’ve started. That this can’t interfere with the concentration I’ve done on my body, form and fitness, that I am simply moving forward from where I was on Saturday, Sept. 18th when I was confident, hopeful and pleased with what I had achieved so far. Because that’s the fun!
And honestly, every day that I’ve been out on the road this week, it’s as if nothing bad happened. I start running and I’m right back in the beautiful place again, the one where I know what I’m doing and have utter control of each step. Where I feel graceful and pretty. That’s the me I know.
New Headband Styles!
An armload of new headband goodies for you gals.
1. Brown Happy Flowers
2. Psycho Lady Red and Psycho Lady Black
3. Japanese Gold (gorgeous fabric, looks like hand-painted gold on black)
4. Warm Paisley Delight
5. Red Polka-Dots (so you can compete with that Minnie Mouse guy) and Black Polka-Dots
6. Sequins! In turquoise, pink or silvery-white hologram
Check out the New Stuff page to see ‘em in all available widths.
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my head is complicated too. but know that you’re awesome. seriously
sounds like you had a good week of running though! an easygoing week will pick you back up and it also sounds like you had a great time with your friends! i’ve found that there is nothing better than hanging out with friends.
Gol-LY. Reading a bit about your strange/frustrating experiences, and having lived through a few similar ones of my own, my only real conclusion is that bodies are weird and more complicated than we can fathom. They bloat up, slim down, speed up, slow down, have good days, bad days… all sometimes with very little apparent reason. I’m sure you share my wish of being able to somehow “get behind the scenes” and KNOW wtf is going on to cause these frustrating aberrations.
My own athletic performance is such a foggy mystery to me sometimes — I had this period of crummy, awful workouts in college and then I’d bomb our time trials with these lightheaded/migrainy/sugar low experiences. Then I had my vitamin D tested and it was ‘perilously low’ so they put me on a prescription. Magically as my D levels came up, I started performing back at my usual caliber. I hated this knowledge that one little vitamin deficiency could throw my body off to such a degree. There’s just so much going on with hormones, ion channels, nutrients, allergies, blah blah blah… bodies are basically packages of craziness.
Okay, I’m getting rambly rambly for no reason, sorry. Glad you are booting the self-blame out the door and getting back into your happy zone with running. That’s what it’s all about anyway.
Hey Flo. I was kind of out ‘communicado’ for a week, playing around abroad. No phone, PC only very sparingly. I did read about your race and what happened. Very sorry about that! I do understand the ‘thoughts’ you are having and the ‘complicated head’. Understand that very well. You said you’re getting a stress ECHO? What is that? I am asking since I did have an ECHO earlier this year after some ‘issues’ of my own. The Echo was done lying down. It records what the valves are up to, records the sounds (SCARY!!! LOL). Or do you mean a stress EKG? Just curious. I am glad you are getting all this checked out. I know you have convinced yourself already that it will be inconclusive since deep down inside you stil think it’s something you simply didn’t do right. My cardiologist did a lot of tests on me. They were all ‘negative’. The symptons I had were real, not imagined. However, the tests did give me peace of mind. Just some thoughts…
Well pooh! It would seem that such virtue would bring better reward. Oh well, Happy Anniversary.
I had a similar thought when looking at the video. It seem that no matter how much posture adjustment and gait doctoring we do, we backslide when the chips are down. I suppose it takes years to make these changes permanent, and we have to be careful to prevent old habits creeping back when we get tired. Not much can be done when we’re semi-conscious, of course.
Martina, it’s a combination test divided into 3 parts: resting echo study, stress test and a repeat echo when the heart is beating fast.
Jim, I wouldn’t say the video shows me “backsliding” into my old ways, it’s in another category completely. I had physically checked out at about .3mi prior to that so what you see is me just trying not to fall over.
Catheen, ramble away, it was a good one! I have another friend who discovered he was Vitamin D deficient this year. Amazing how much havoc it can cause.
Karyn, hey to another complicated head. :-)
The first sentence cracked me up…I know last year for the half they had pictures at other areas like at the 10k mark and stuff but maybe under the new management I guess they went a little cheapo and all they would give is 10 finish line shots which unfortunately sucked in your case
I’m glad you’re out enjoying “the road” as if nothing happened. I’m sort of hoping nothing shows up with the tests besides exercise-induced asthma. It does seem odd that you haven’t experienced anything like that in training, but you might be one of these athletes that can push themselves over the edge at the end of races. I was reading the story about Shalane Flanagan in Running Times — the bit where she collapsed in sight of the finish at two cross country races was reminiscent of your problem. Anyway, enjoy the cooler weather — perfect for running!