Work Hangover Wednesday: Careful, Don't Step In It!

It dumped rain today. We had hail, lightning, flooded streets, and of course, crazy people who don't know how to drive.

This rain thing is starting to get as bad as Arizona. It seems like Colorado people don't know how to drive in the rain, either.

Started out this morning, my first day "off", with a 2 hour staff meeting at work, at 7 am. It was not bad as far as staph meetings go. When I got out, it was not too bad as far as weather, there was a break in the rain, but I was too tired to get much done.

The yard is a mess. The grass is half dead, we're going to re-do the grass area of the yard next spring with raised beds for a garden, then re-plant grass where we want it. And there's a big pit out there where we hoped to plant a fruit tree but haven't gotten around to it yet, so Iris's snakes are now inhabiting it.

And dogshit. I was too out of it to remember to pick up dog poop today, maybe tomorrow, now that it's all soaked and soggy...ugh. Don't step in it...please, I keep reminding myself and the girls.

I did laundry and the dishes, and that was all my brain could handle. By 12:30 I ended up taking a nap and not running.

By the time I woke up from my nap it was looking like more rain, so I took Iris out for a quick 2 mile run, and by the end it was starting to sprinkle. We got home and soon after that, the lightning started, then a downpour, which turned to sleet and hail, and that lasted until it was time for my run with Shannon "Wheaties Boy" and we bagged it to reschedule for tomorrow.

And then Dennis and I went out for Mexican food and margaritas, what an alternative to a hard run! And of course, then it stopped raining.

So I have nothing to report as far as running goes. I will make up for it over the next few days, though. I will be putting in a few miles in. Somehow I cannot get ahead when it comes to getting my studying done, though. It's so hard to find time when my brain isn't foggy. Trying not to let it stress me out, but I am running out of time.

Two miles for the day, 2 miles for the week so far. And here it is, Wednesday. It's almost October! How did that happen? Is this what happens when you get old?

Equinox Half Marathon

This morning I woke up at 4:45 to get my act together and drive over to Poudre High School, where I caught the bus to the start of the inaugural Equinox Half Marathon down Poudre Canyon.

I texted Jen and we met up by the portapotties near the busses. She introduced me to several other runners, including Althea, that's Althea, Jen, and me from left to right in the picture. Jen and I shared the front seat behind the driver of the school bus, both of us trying not to have motion sickness on the way up the curves in the canyon.

When we got to Mishawaka, where the race started, we jumped off the bus into the porta-potty line, which was moving pretty quickly. Must have been a young crowd. Got that done. Then we ran into my friend Morgan and we went inside where it was warmer, inside the bar until it was time to drop off our bags and for me to warm up before the start.

It wasn't cold at 8 am when the race started, I brought layers and my sleeves but ended up not needing anything extra. I also had planned on carrying my pack with one water bottle in it, but decided against it, since there were 3 aid stations along the course, and it didn't seem like it would get very warm.

My plan for the run was two-fold: to use it as a tempo run, in which I was hoping to be able to average 8 minute miles, which would have had me finishing in 1:44-1:45. The other purpose was to give myself an idea of my current fitness level as a guideline for pacing myself in next month's 12 hour race in Oklahoma City.

I had no idea what would happen in 13 miles but I got up fairly close to the front, maybe 8 deep, and when the gun went off I went out at what felt like a relaxed pace, on a slight downhill grade that lasts a good portion of the race, with a few exceptions.

At the one mile mark I was at 7:23. That surprised me because 7:23 usually feels harder than that. It must have been the downhill. I backed off and made it to 2 miles in 15 flat. That felt a little easier, but I felt 7:30 average pace was still too ambitious for me at this point. I decided to walk through each water stop, that would make it feel like a training run and not a race. I didn't want to be totally spent after this run, and I know my fastest paced tempo run of 10 or 11 miles has been about 8:10 average pace recently.

As the run went on, I stayed consistent and comfortable, most of my mile splits falling into the 7:40 to 7:50 range. My slowest mile was 8:02, and nothing else was over 8 minutes. It never got warm enough to be uncomfortable, and the aid stations seemed to have plenty of drinks and volunteers and were well-placed. If it was a warmer day, another aid station would have been a good idea.

As we approached the finish line in the last 2 miles I was able to pick up the pace and I felt strong, definitely still had something left in my legs. I crossed the finish line in 1:42:11 on my watch, and that is a 7:48 average pace per mile. Mission accomplished.

As far as 12 hour race strategy, I'll have to see what pace feels comfortable on my long run next weekend on the flats at altitude but I'm projecting that I'll need to plan a pace that's a good bit slower than my PR at 12 hours. I think I can get within 5 miles of it, though. I still have a few good weeks of training ahead, too.

For a first-time event this was incredibly smooth and well-organized. Lisa Sinclair is the race director, and a local runner, and she did a fantastic job putting it together and getting enough volunteers. I highly recommend this run. The course is overall downhill, with a few little rises and a few flat areas. I can't say whether it's a PR course because I'm almost a minute and a half per mile off my PR pace at this point in my life! But I know quite a few people who did PR today.

I didn't hang out much to socialize after the race, there was beer and food and an awards program but I have had enough of everything this week, all I wanted to do was go home, finish out my 20 miles for the day, and relax.

I went home and did another 7 miles and didn't feel bad at all, and here I am, contemplating a nap. I got 67 miles in this week, with plenty of quality miles, and two 20 mile days. Next week a long run is in order, but no racing. I see a couple more 5Ks on the horizon after that, though!

Breathe!

I woke up this morning and it was Saturday the 22nd, the day I've been waiting for, for two weeks. Not to mention that it is the first day of fall, officially. I wasn't quite sure I was going to wake up alive by today, the past two weeks have been so stressful. Finally, I have a break in my schedule, I have the whole weekend off from work, and time to take a deep breath and not rush off to anything for a whole day!

I am so thankful for today, I don't have to work, I don't have to run, I don't have to do anything except: study, work on my upcoming evaluation for work, pick up my race packet for tomorrow's Equinox Half Marathon, get ready for my butt crack wake up tomorrow to catch the bus up the canyon to the race start.

I haven't had time to get in touch with my doctor to get a lab order to get my thyroid checked, but I did jump start things by skipping a little of my thyroid medication this week, because my hands are shaking and I feel like I'm going to crawl out of my skin. Work was almost impossible for me to get through without being grumpy.

All the usual distractions, phones ringing, multiple people asking me questions at once, multitasking between 3 patients with all their pumps going off at the same time, trying to remember little details like calling the patient's family member 30 minutes before they're done...all of this stuff is normal but when you're hyperthyroid everything is exponentially escalated. It sounds like a chorus of frogs croaking and it won't go away! My head felt like it was going to explode.

So tomorrow is the test run, it's a test of my fitness to give me an idea of how I should pace myself at my upcoming 12 hour race in OKC.

This week I met with a runner and coach I've known for years, Kent Oglesby, and ran my training plans and goals by him. I wanted some input from someone who knows speed training. I've always coached myself, and will continue to do so, but when you work on things on your own for so long, it helps to bounce ideas off of someone who works with athletes all the time and has a vast amount of personal experience and knowledge about endurance training and racing.

I showed him how I set up my workouts and my training throughout the year, and asked questions about different elements of my training. He gave me some very useful suggestions for how to tweak a few of my workouts. Although he does not work with many ultrarunners and has not been an ultrarunner himself, it sounded like my approach is fairly similar to his when it comes to setting up training for long races.

I feel like I've been very much on the right track, haven't struggled with injuries, still find it possible to regain some speed, and perform fairly well on a minimum of training.

I've set some age 50 goals for myself and I'm now turning my focus to faster running. Not 5Ks or marathons, but I am looking to make a dent in my sluggishness that has resulted from several years of training for long races. I figure I still have some years to work on my speed and get my body to respond. I still have that 6 day race and more multiday runs in mind for the future, but I'm going to make the most of the resource I do have, which is, a fair amount of natural speed.

I do have naturally fast leg turnover and it doesn't take too much for me to re-train my legs to go fast, I've been doing strides most of this year and I'm definitely moving along at a quicker cadence than I was last year. The 5Ks have helped too. Just reminding my legs that they can also run 7:30 miles instead of 10 minute miles has been a good addition to my training.

I suppose I am lucky in some ways, I do have that ability to run fast and I don't have to train awfully hard to perform well. I do well at moderate mileage, probably on the low side. I take a lot of rest.

It is always mind boggling to me when I hear these runners talking about how they train, with very little rest after long races and hitting it hard with high mileage and killer workouts, week after week, with almost no rest period. Even when I was in my 20s and 30s, I couldn't handle the high mileage.

I average about 40-50 miles a week year-round. That means I don't run that kind of mileage all year. I throw in some high mileage weeks when I'm getting preapred for a long event, but they are always followed by cutback weeks, and in my rest periods after races, my mileage can drop to zero for weeks. I might ride the bike some during that time, but not a lot.

Anything more than that for months on end, I get mentally burned out, first of all. And I get physically tired, my pace drops off, and I feel like a slug. And then I'm just plodding along, which as far as I'm concerned, unless you're training to run for days at a time, is pretty much a waste of effort. Might as well go for a recreational hike in the woods instead.

You might have longevity as a runner doing high mileage, but not longevity as a performing athlete. It all depends on your priorities. I would like to do all I can while I can, and later on, when my legs become less responsive and less capable of achieving lifetime PRs at shorter distances, then I have a whole world of multidays and longer distances to explore.

I don't race a lot either. You won't see me racing for performance more than a couple of times a year. I peak for specific races and everything else I run, even if it's an organized event, is for training. This year I have two goal races on my agenda, one was the Cornbelt 24 hour, and the other one is Across the Years 48 hour.

I can count 24 The Hard Way 12 hour as a race, too, because I am going to push myself hard just to see what I can do, but it really is just one of three key training runs for the 48 and I'm not going for a PR.

So tomorrow when I run this half marathon, which is downhill, on pavement, and should be ideal temperatures and weather, I am going to start off at my recent tempo run pace and try to pick it up just a hair and sustain it all the way to the end.

A good, hard, steady workout without hurting, so that afterwards I'm not completely spent. Hopefully I can run a decent pace which will be mentally rewarding going into my fall training, and will give me a dose of reality for preparing for my big race in the coming months, too.

I have a big blogpost building up in my head but I am still doing a little research and will be posting on that soon, once I get all my other stuff done. Enjoy your weekend, whatever you're doing.

"I Hate Tennis!"

So far, two days into my week, running has gone very well. After 10 plus miles yesterday with strides, I did my hard workout today and averaged 7:44 and 7:32 per mile pace during the 2 x 2 miles at a sustained, faster pace. I did a little over 20 miles today between my morning and evening runs and felt good on both.

Tonight I ran the Power Trail down to Harmony and back, and at the end of the Power Trail north of Harmony, it comes out onto the street at a little park with tennis courts at the west end. As I was running past the tennis courts, there were two boys, who looked to be about 14, inside the courts. One of them hit the ball really hard but wasn't too focused about where he was aiming, and as he smashed it into the fence, he yelled, in a raw, loud, dramatic tone, "I HATE TENNIS!"

It made me laugh so hard, and I said out loud, "So do I!". It reminded me of the days when I was that same age, having to take tennis lessons. I hated tennis. I always felt trapped inside a chain link fence, like I was in the zoo. So I got to relive some childhood traumas.

It all came back to me, what it was like as an adolescent, having a parent who is so out of touch with who their child is, that they would make them do things that they absolutely hated. Tennis was so confining, so limiting.

My mom thought tennis was the key to turning her recalcitrant, tomboyish, outdoor adventure-loving daughter who came home with scratches on her arms and legs from hiking through the woods, into a lady. I also think her motives had something to do with finding me a wealthy husband, thinking I might meet one through tennis.

"When are you going to be a lady?" was my mom's favorite expression.

"Never!" was my favorite reply.

I always felt like I was stuck in a cage. I used to stare out of the courts and focus on anything else, than the game of tennis. After years of tennis lessons, I still can't hit the ball or hold the racquet correctly.

I am proud to say that to this day, the only game of tennis I know how to play with any skill at all is Fart Tennis.

My mom tried too hard. It backfired...

Brilliant, Einstein!

I'm almost to work hangover day, but not yet. I can breathe for about 34 hours between my Monday and Wednesday shifts. Why did I do this to myself? The aspen colors are peaking! What has happened to my brain?

I lucked out today, didn't have to go in until 5 pm and just worked until we closed for the evening. I was home by 9:00. Awesome! That helped a lot, and I was able to take an hour nap this afternoon.

I have a full plate on the running schedule this week. I'm not going for mega miles, probably will end up somewhere around 65, but I do have a couple of faster sessions planned along with running the Equinox Half Marathon at a good tempo run pace. It's downhill, so that should take a few seconds per mile off the pace and make it a little easier.

Tomorrow is normally tempo day but I will be doing a couple of sustained hard 20 minute runs in with my morning miles. And then speedwork on Thursday, likely 800s. Not too many, though. I want to get a couple of 20 mile days in this week and that, combined with everything else, should make it a good quality training week.

I've continued on the up and down emotions the past few days. All day Saturday at work I was holding it together on the outside but all I wanted to do was cry. I continued that on Sunday, and it was a little harder to hold back the tears but I still managed to keep it together while the patients were around. Back in the nurses station I had a few moments of wiping away tears.

I had a really difficult patient over the weekend, and one of the hardest things to deal with are people with dementia and/or brain metastases from cancer. I'm not sure what was wrong with this one patient because there was no mention of brain mets in his scan or history but the type of cancer he has is likely to go to the brain and his behavior was so inappropriate.

I had to endure two days of him, the first day when I did his chemo for 7 hours, and the second day even though I wasn't taking care of him, he was being verbally abusive and upsetting other patients, and it was horrible.

Sometimes I wonder why we are putting people through the treatments we do. We are so focused on trying to cure things or control things, when sometimes it's just torture for the patient.

I see so few patients who, faced with terminal disease, make the choice to not go through the rigors of treatment, and they sometimes have a better quality of life and live longer because they aren't purging their bodies with chemicals and radiation and being sick from that the last few months of their lives.

But I don't have any tears now. Don't know where they went. I have been so totally unfocused and unpredictable with my emotions. The hot flashes are not helping.

All I want to do is go look at the changing aspen leaves somewhere. I know they are peaking now and won't last long. I should have known better than to overbook myself this week. I always try to get up to the cabin or go somewhere up high to see the colors the third week in September. That was so dumb to miss out on that!

I suppose I could blow off all my runs and studying to go up and see the leaves but right now I feel so crunched for time and so stressed out with deadlines that I think it would be more stressful. So I'll stick to the plan and wait for the cottonwood, maple, and other trees to change here in another week or two.

Not the same as aspen, but I did this to myself. Now I pay for it. Dumb. Really, really dumb.

Suspect The Evil Thyroid...

I think it's thyroid...

It took a comment from Kathleen at Happy Trails, fellow blogger and thyroid adventurer, to make me realize that my recent lunacy might be somehow connected to my thyroid and not necessarily lack of estrogen.

I started thinking about it, and I've been having trouble sleeping, I've been hot, my face is breaking out, my menstrual cycle is completely messed up, and I've been emotionally labile for about the past month. And this week, the additional workload and worrying about things has piled on the stress, and under normal circumstances this is not extreme stress.

I think I need to re-adjust the thyroid med dosage, what I suspect is that over the past few months it's caught up to me, taking my full dose of levothyroxine daily. When I intentionally went hypo before Badwater last year, I was skipping a full dose every other week. For the past 9 months I've been taking it daily without skipping doses. I suspect that I need to skip half a dose once or twice a month and that would probably be a good place for me. But first I'll get tested to make sure I'm on the right track.

I never would have believed that such a small adjustment in medication would make a difference, but it was clear after my labs last year that was exactly what was going on. And my endocrinologist in Arizona warmed me long ago that the closer I get to menopause, the harder it would be to regulate my thyroid meds. So far everything that doctor ever told me has turned out to be right on.

This morning I'm off to work, twelve hour shifts today and tomorrow, followed by an 8 hour evening shift on Monday. I should be sufficiently fried by Sunday night to get some sleep. If I can't sleep after that, I'm sure it's my thyroid. Yesterday I took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon and then only slept 5 hours last night. I woke up at 3:41 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Always fun before two twelve-plus hour back-to-back shifts.

So Monday I will get an order to get my thyroid labs drawn and figure out how to get myself back to a happy place. Instead of being the Random Thyroid-Impaired Bitch.

The world will be safer as a result.

The Crunch: RPB Goes Berserk

Crunch time. Silly me, trying to make some money I signed up for two extra shifts at work next week in addition to this week's extra shift plus it being my work weekend. So now I will be working until the cows come home, it feels like that every day lately.

And of course we are busy busy busy and I was hoping I might get called off of an extra shift. Well that isn't going to happen. All hell broke loose soon after I was committed to the extra shifts. A new and urgent project at work, meetings to resume work on another project after being adjourned for the summer, and multiple things happening all at once, and somebody needing to take a leave of absence the next 2 weeks.

Yesterday was a 10 hour chemo plus an extra patient afterwards. And an extra chemo pump to hook up. A 10 hour chemo feels something like the feeling after a 50 mile run that didn't go so well, one that you were really thankful just to finish. Under most circumstances, it's easier to run 50 miles than it is to work a 12 hour shift, or even 10 hours. By the end of the night my brain felt ready to explode.

Even worse is that a good friend of mine was hit by a car while riding his bike in town last weekend, fractured 6 ribs, and is in unbearable pain. He lives out of town and a bunch of us are taking turns checking on him and bringing him things he needs, but I am really concerned about his safety, living alone up there. He's had a run of bad luck lately, and it's been a rough time for him.

I drove up this morning to see what I could do for him and he's barely able to do the basic things he needs to do, safely. I sort of wish he had been admitted to the hospital to get him through the first, most painful days. Right now I'm afraid for him developing pneumonia since he's hurting so much and on so much pain medication, and unable to keep using his incentive spirometer enough to get much benefit from it. But I'm equally afraid of him hurting himself at home since he's so out of it.

Fortunately there is a group of us watching out for him, who have worked with him in the past or are his coworkers now, and we're sort of tag teaming to keep our eyes on him. But this sort of thing scares me. You can go from being independent and healthy one minute, to something awful hapening that turns your world upside down. And this is the 4th bad thing that has happened to him this year, three of which have been really bad.

I'm trying not to get too stressed out with all this going on. I'm not putting in many miles this week and I will try not to fly off the handle like I did this afternoon at the woman who was placing handbill ads on doorknobs in the neighborhood. I went slightly berserk. The Random Perimenopausal Bitch (RPB) is alive and well.

We have a no soliciting sign on the door but she came up anyway to place the door hanger on there, the dogs went nuts and scared her, and I came downstairs to see what was happening and for some reason I freaked out at her. I opened the door and followed her down the driveway, waving the handbill at her.

I started yelling, "Does this sign mean anything to you?" Don't you understand that NO SOLICITING means none of this crap?" I handed it back to her. She said she didn't have time to read the door, the dogs scared her so much.

"Well, good. Next time read the damn door before you hang your trash here."

I felt absolutely enraged and almost like I wanted to physically attack her. It was like something came over me and I went rabid. Scared myself, too. I suddenly morphed into a raging maniac.

Is this what happens during menopause? Because I can't think of anything else that would explain totally losing it over a silly thing like that. Am I that stressed out?

And did I mention, last night the temperature actually fell below 50 degrees for the first time all season? Maybe since last April. Not sure, but it's damn cold and I love it. I wonder how much of that has to do with hot flashing all the time.

So now I have fifty gazillion things I need to get done in the next two weeks which leaves me very little time to do the things I wanted to concentrate on: namely, running and studying. If I can just make it to October without hurting anyone, I'll be in good shape.

Just don't hang anything on my front door.