Child of the Sixties

If you're looking for sex, drugs and rock n' roll, sorry to disappoint you!

I was born in 1964, the tail end of the baby boom generation. I'm the last of them, as we straggle off into the sunset of our golden years.

I'm really a child of the American pharmaceutical industry. I'm dependent on them, on four counts now. How does an otherwise healthy, fifty-something adult-lifelong runner end up on four different prescriptions before age 54? Mostly it's bad genes.

As a result of genes, I have defective organs, namely, thyroid, brain, and liver. Hashimoto's thyroiditis and other thyroid disorders run in my family. We all have wacked-out thyroids. So I take two meds daily for that.

Next is my brain. I have wacked-out neurotransmitters, serotonin and my serotonin receptors like each other too much. They are in love with each other and cling tightly to one another, it's very dysfunctional and they really need to get over themselves and get a life, at least give each other a break once in a while. In me, it causes depression. And probably, mild anxiety, which I never really thought I had, until I hit menopause. Those also run in my family, though people never talk about it.

Finally, and I hope this is the last one, but the night is young...and so am I, for a baby boomer...I have a defective liver. It makes cholesterol like rabbits make bunnies. That's in my family too. I've been able to manage my cholesterol in the past with diet, but it doesn't seem to work so well anymore. Recently I got my cholesterol checked again. I've always had very high HDL (aka "the good cholesterol"), this time it was 92. But I've never had high LDL (aka "the bad cholesterol") before, and while my total cholesterol has always run a bit high, the LDL wasn't an issue until now.

Besides genes, maybe it's menopause, diet, a 20 pound weight gain, relative inactivity compared to what I used to do, hormones, age, or who knows. Anyway, on my recent labs, my cholesterol took a giant leap into the high 200s along with my LDL being in the high 100s. Therefore, I chose to start taking a statin. Today.

That's for a couple of reasons- one is I have stopped avoiding wheat, just out of sheer hedonism, and that over the past year I've been pretty stressed out (it's the Trump effect). I've been indulging in far too many calories, both from things like bread and from alcohol. I really do blame it on the Trump effect, because I've gained about half of it over the past year. I just feel the need to calm my nerves in the evening with a couple of beers, or margaritas.

Many years ago I thought I was one of those tough people who didn't need antidepressants, could just tough it out myself, ya know. pull myself up by my bootstraps and snap out of it... well, it doesn't work that way for a lot of people. These drugs save my life. After several bouts of persistent depression starting in my late twenties that I got through on my own without drugs, finally I got wise in my late thirties and tried them. They truly are a miracle drug for those who need them. Made a world of difference. It's funny, even after the first time I tried them, I tried going without, and I managed to do without them for years, until I became a nurse. That changed everything.

Now I know better, and I still hear the old stigma come out of so many patients and clients mouths, and people in general. They think it's a weakness to depend on drugs to help with depression. And they won;'t go for therapy either, that's also a weakness. Well, not everyone's depression is the same. If you need it, you'll know it, because when you try it, you'll see the difference, sometimes in just a few days.

I had a lot of reservations about the statin, you hear things like liver damage, diabetes, muscle aches, and so on. I'm going to try it, and I'm on a tiny dose, but if I feel like I'm doing okay with it, and my lipids don't drop as expected, I will increase the dose. We're going to recheck in eight weeks. I don't need a stroke or MI. As an athlete, statins can cause muscle problems for some people who can't tolerate them- aches, tendon problems. I am on the lookout for that, but I know I need to do something at this point. If I can't tolerate the statin I'll try something else. But I hope I can.

I can remember when I was first diagnosed with thyroid disease and found out I would be taking a pill for the rest of my life- that was before the second thyroid medication got added- and I felt like somehow I;d failed as a healthy person because I was no longer able to say I don't take any drugs. The false pride of youth. Yes some people- rarely these days- do get through adulthood and into old age without taking ANY medications. That's wonderful and it's also very lucky from the standpoint of the gene pool. It doesn't mean you take perfect care of yourself, but then, there are people who take lots of pills and take immaculate care of themselves- and they just have bad genes.

Me, I have never been too extreme on either end. But this latest addition to my little collection has been a bit of a wake up call, I have definitely let everything slide over the past year, maybe even two or three when it comes to running. I do need to lose weight, I do need to run more, I do need to watch what I eat, I do need to drink less, and I do need to accept that I am not in my 20s or 30s with a resilient, high energy body and metabolism anymore.

However, I do still enjoy running, and I have the wisdom, hopefully, of having seen a brief glimpse of the other side, the less healthy side, the one that so many people live to an extreme degree- overweight, sedentary, self-neglectful...and I don't want to go there.

So, this morning, I looked at my growing pill pile- four pills now, one broken in half- (that's the levothyroxine broken in half once a week to reduce my dose slightly- so I don't go flying off hyperthyroid- been there, you wouldn't like me much)- and I decided I'm going back, the other way, to the healthier side. I will find ways to calm myself other than by cracking a beer or mixing a marg. I will pay attention while eating, so I don't eat too much. I will get my ass out the door and run more days than not. And I will keep boxing.

But as I gazed at the pills in my hand, I was thankful- really thankful- that these drugs exist, because I probably wouldn't have made it to this point without them, and I have a chance to continue living a life I really do enjoy. Thanks, in part, to these drugs. And I'm also very thankful for the insurance I have to make them affordable and accessible to me. Everyone should have that opportunity when they need it. Gulp! Bottoms up*!

*Always drink plenty of water with your medication...

There Goes the Sun 12 Hour Fat Ass

The sun was already gone.

I participated in this third ever Fat Ass event at Lake Arbor in Arvada, a suburb of Denver, last Sunday. I'd been looking forward to it for months, it was the only thing that got me off my literally fat ass to do some long runs this summer. I did actually train for this, with three long runs (and just about nothing else) so my legs and feet wouldn't give up in protest.

Despite the past two iterations of this event being blessed with nice weather, this time it was a rainy weekend, and while Saturday seemed to be the worse day for rain, Sunday was a fairly steady light drizzle, in between periods of not raining briefly, followed by occasional harder rain.

My goal for this run was to get 50 miles in. My long runs had consisted of 4, 6, and 8 hour runs on Centennial Drive hills at Horsetooth, plenty of pavement and vertical. I didn't need the hills but they are always helpful. The course at Lake Arbor is a concrete path surrounding a lake, with a few gentle rises and descents that are hardly noticeable, 1.15 miles per loop according to the sign at the park, but some people said it was really 1.2 miles on their GPS. Who's counting?

I arrived early to find Sasquatch, aka Richard Cranium, aka Dale Perry, sitting there in his car in the dark. I walked over, he said he thought the start was at 6 am, but it was 7. We started to set up our stuff under the pavilion, to protect us from the rain, though at the time it wasn't raining. Soon Marissa DeMercurio showed up. Marissa and Pete, her husband, put this event on, it's a low-key, family event, my friend Connie also helps out, she is Marissa's mom.

I set up my table and all my stuff as well as I could, being out of practice from the ultra routine. I arranged the peeps along the entrance and exit to the pavilion. I got orange colored pumpkin peeps this time. Then I set up Dale's favorite item, the enema bag. I have always threatened to give ice water enemas in the running circles I frequent, to the obnoxious guys I suffer, as my alterego Nurse Ratched, or, Ratched, RN. I decorated it with a tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce that I called the lubricant suppository.

Where else but in ultras can you be this crude and disgusting anymore? Life is short, you gotta have fun, you gotta say FU sometimes. I refuse to grow up and be a lady, like I told my mom over 40 years ago. Eyes on the prize.

Vince Gerber showed up from Estes Park, and Matt Clark from Fort Collins too. We started at 7 am and the sprinklers turned on near the starting area, necessitating that we get wet even before it actually started raining. Vince also added some color to the Peep collection. He got the reputation for eating the butts off my Peeps at this event one year. I guess he felt guilty...

As the day wore on, I realized how out of shape I really am, my body is not at all used to being on its feet for this many hours. I also made the poor choice of wearing my most worn out pair of running shoes. I stuck to my plan which was to run half the time, powerwalking the other half. I got three hours of running in by the six hour mark, but after that I ran out of steam, both mentally and physically. I'd say it turned into the last 6 hours of light powerwalking. I turned my tunes on and settled into a brisk pace, but not my usual power blast.

It was fine. I was out there with the ducks, the geese, a few of my favorite people and some other runners who were there enjoying the rain. All was right. Plus, Marissa made awesome grilled cheese sandwiches and heated water for our warm drinks. I changed my clothes around halfway, it wasn't raining hard enough to soak through, but when the wind picked up it did get cold. People came by and visited, including Dan Yap from the Donut crew in Fort Collins, ran a few laps, ate from the crazy food feast Marissa arranged. I missed out on the donuts, but that was okay. I got the grilled cheese.

By late in the day it was just Dale, Vince, and me out on the course. The rain persisted. I thought I saw a vulture in one of the trees around the lake, but someone on Facebook corrected me and said it was a cormorant. I guess I was just wishing a vulture would scrape my carcass up off the pavement at the time. I was hurting, well before the end. By the end of twelve hours, Dale and I shared the last lap and half together. We were the only ones left on the course. Neither of us felt energetic enough to squeeze in an extra lap, which would have taken speed that I don't think either of us had at the moment. Dale ended up with over 40 miles, I ended up with 46. I didn't get my 50, but it was a chore dragging my 140 pounds of dead weight around that lake, and I earned every mile.

Marissa is threatening to hold this event again next year. Uh-oh. I'm in trouble. I better get cracking. I'll start training tomorrow. Even if it means I have to run.

I am going to have to figure out, between now and the end of the year, how to get my body prepared for a 24 hour event. I don't have any mileage goals, but I sure would like to remain upright and moving forward for the duration there, too. I have a lot of work to do.

As the poet Eminem once said, "Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity"

"Til the next post...