Work Hangover Wednesday: The Ripple Effect

I slept until 8:45 this morning after going to bed at 9 pm last night. I did wake up in the middle of the night though and was awake from 2 to 4 am.

I start a long stretch off now and I am ready to reclaim my life, everything is in disarray after the chaos of the past month. Our basement is a disaster, all that's missing is the yellow tape. It's drying out this week. Then we start the process of figuring out what to do next.

While I might need a few afternoon naps to recover this week, a friend of mine who is a nurse on a different unit that was understaffed worked a 16 hour shift his last of 3 days and he slept away the first two of his four days off. He's not getting compensated to recover.

This morning was a waste, I stared into space, did a few things around the house, but didn't even think about a workout. I'm hoping after a nap I might be able to fit a run in this evening.

Injury report

I guess it's fair to say, yes, I am injured. There, I said it. Do I feel better? No. Freakin hamstring. I can run, but I can't train. There's a big difference.

I am hoping to figure out where I am with this hamstring injury over the next few days and make a plan, I need to see if there is anything I can do for it that will allow me to get more improvement and do the training I want to do before October. The plan is to see if I can handle two 20 mile days this week and some shorter runs, and get some good rides on the bike.

Wheaties Boy crashed on his bike yesterday. He got banged up but nothing major. The bike took a worse hit than he did. The ground probably took an even worse hit than the bike. But he's tired, even though he doesn't think he is, and it's easy to be brain fogged for a day or so after a hard race like that triathlon, I think he needed to get more rest. When you're that fit, your body feels great even after a major effort, but there's more to recovery than just the body.

I don't know about him, but I know I am completely brain fogged the day after a long hard race. After a race it takes me a few days before I can even think clearly. You become more accident-prone because you don't have the mental sharpness that you usually have.

Stress report

All the stress at work and the distractions at home of cleaning up the basement, not being able to free my mind to focus on what I need to do to take care of myself, is part of the reason I'm injured. Work has been somewhat less stressful, we're starting to go back to our usual level of staffing but we're still running into glitches with the computers, and we have less support available now. It seems to be going pretty well, but there are many speed bumps.

Stress brings out the worst in people, every change seems to sweep a new wave of toxicity over us. It's amazing when people slowly reveal the inner core of their personalities. I always have to laugh when I hear patients refer to nurses as angels. Ha...if they only knew.

Sometimes if you pull a weed you think you're getting it out of the garden but it already went to seed and the seeds are sprouting other weeds. Little weeds grow up to be big weeds. It's a never ending cycle.

And on top of all of this our schedules are changing, which is not a bad thing, but getting a dozen people to change their daily pattern around is another source of tension and disruption to everyone's lives. There have been so many changes, I'll be glad when we get past all of this and things settle down again. Maybe by next year? I hope it won't take that long.

The Bright Side

I am just looking forward to going on vacation at the beach, a real vacation, no racing, no thinking, no stress. Just the sand, sun, and surf, and I'm planted on a towel in the center of it.

The good news is that I think I've finally come up with a fun Colorado mini-adventure run idea for my 50th birthday. No, not 50 WalMarts. It involves running 50 miles, and it also involves beer. And food, of course. I'm in the planning process. More to come...