Work Hangover Wednesday Part 2: Waking Up Hungry

Cool. Wet. Rain.

Finally, the sky is dumping something other than white stuff. After a 2 1/2 hour nap I woke up to the sound of drops on the roof. It's supposed to rain off and on for the next few days. I'm groggy. I don't feel quite human yet, maybe after a full night's sleep I will be recovered tomorrow, and I can get back to running and life.

I can't wait, I am soooo hungry to train and race. I'm missing running something awful, but as exhausted as I was, I didn't feel good enough this morning to force myself out the door. I have no evening run with Wheaties Boy tonight to get me moving, maybe we'll do a few miles tomorrow, or we'll resume next week.

The plan is to get about 20 miles in this week, and increase by about 20 miles a week until I'm back at 80 miles or so as my weekly base. By June training should be back in full swing. I'm not sore anymore going up and down the stairs today, but it took until tonight. Those 5Ks are brutal!

I'm looking for a marathon for the first weekend in June, there are several within driving distance: Casper, Wyoming, Steamboat, and it seems like there was something else I heard about. These marathons will be a good test of where my fitness is as I begin the 24 hour training again. I can compare to my 5Ks and estimate what is realistic to achieve in October. The best part will be getting back to the track and pounding out some good intervals. I love those summer mornings at the CSU track. Only a couple more weeks!

Work Hangover Wednesday: Target Practice

Note to readers: A short version of this blogpost appeared today on KevinMD.

What a week.

First of all, I was sore as hell after that 5k! That 24 hour run didn't give me anywhere near as much residual soreness as the race this past weekend did. My hamstrings, butt, and quads are all still screaming! This week I will do a few easy runs to get back into it, next week will be the first week I do anything resembling training.

And it's Nurses' Week.

Yes I know I've said a lot about nursing lately, and when I'm not training and racing, I have no running news. But I know there are a few readers out there who are all too eager to read what I'm going to say next, and a very small number are licking their chops and waiting for me, like predators.

Ask any nurse about Nurses' Week, and you'll more than likely get a snarky answer. Yes we like to be praised for the work we do, it doesn't happen very often, but when it does, it feels good. It makes up for a lot of the day-to-day garbage that we endure.

Yesterday I was touched, for example, by a patient who told me she was thinking about me when she heard about the bombings at the Boston Marathon, and wondered if I was there, and hoped I was okay. She remembered that I had a race coming up but she didn't know it was in Cleveland. She saw me yesterday when she came in for her appointment, and told me she was so happy and relieved to see that I was safe.

That is the kind of thing that nurses appreciate, it makes our day. It can make your whole career worthwhile. Why? Because it re-affirms the bond from human to human. It validates the connection between us and our patients, that we have so much in common, even when our lives and circumstances can be opposite extremes. Nursing is about being human.

Nurses and teachers are two historically female-dominated professions that are highly respected and desperately needed, but undercompensated and undervalued. This week also happens to be Teachers' Week, imagine that! Right before Mother's Day. Maybe the little trinkets and sweets designed to obesify already unhealthy nurses or teachers are intended to kill them off so they can bring in a whole new crop, as they'll be cheaper than the old experienced ones.

I'm an athlete, a writer, an artist, and a nurse. My whole identity is not wrapped up in nursing. It makes me take a broader view of the nursing profession, I can see it in a different light than someone who considers it "who" they are.

Don't get me wrong, I see nothing wrong with someone who considers their occupation to be their primary identity. I admire people who can focus on something like that when it's their passion. There are career nurses, and then there are people who are nurses, part of the time. But when you're there, you need to be there, 100 percent.

If nurses don't speak up about issues that might affect their patient care, then why be a nurse? Nurses are supposed to think critically about the things we are doing and how it affects the patient.

And historically, nurses also have this REALLY bad habit of not advocating for themselves and for each other, and for their working conditions, compensation, and expectations of them as human beings.

Why? When you talk to nurses everywhere, it seems that critical thinking is not allowed when it pertains to the nurse's workplace. You speak up, you become a target.

Before I further offend anyone who might be a little sensitive...let me assure you that it's this way nearly EVERYWHERE in the corporate world! That doesn't make it right, at all. Ever.

Powers-that-be worry because they can't control everything that is said, it's hard to avoid people saying things that don't match a carefully orchestrated and expensive PR agenda, so they get super-sensitive and defensive when people criticize them. When corporations are people, they get their feelings hurt. It doesn't matter if it's a small community or a big city, in the age of the "Internets", the truth gets out faster than a BP oil spill.

Back to nursing, nurses also have the reputation of eating their young. When you live in a pressure cooker, which might be a bad metaphor right now post-Boston, frustration comes out in the form of aggression. And that leads to illness.

So, in honor of Nurses' Week, I propose that nurses everywhere need to break out of the habit of being quiet and complaining amongst themselves, and feeling powerless to change things. It never accomplishes anything, like my friend Joanne said last weekend, the profession is still in the same cycle that it's always been stuck in. Things need to change and it's going to take a huge effort. If it's too hard to change from the inside, then perhaps it needs to be changed from the outside.

All of this goes way beyond healthcare, as I've said over and over again, it's a political and legislative issue, we've got this country set up in a way that hurts people. Nurses need to advocate for the public's well-being, too. I saw another person's opinion in the "soapbox" page of our local paper this morning, what he said was essentially the same thing I would say. People need to wake up and stop acting powerless, no one is going to make change happen except for us.

Until there's a national initiative to start giving out coupons during Nurses' Week for plastic surgery to have smiles permanently stuck on our faces, it's going to be hard to expect intelligent, hard-working, empathetic, caring human beings to be Stepford Wives.

Nurses are among the most stressed out workers out there. Masses of overworked, exhausted, unhealthy nurses are going to have to save themselves, or it will just go on like this forever. Why work a job that you can't stay in without being on antidepressants? Or a job where you find yourself gaining 10 or 20 pounds a year? A job that wears you out so much that you don't get any quality exercise on your work days, and you spend a day or two after your work week recovering before you have the energy to get out and do anything?

Unfortunately the state of things is that nursing is sick care, and while caring for the sick, nurses become sick themselves, because of the lack of support they receive for engaging in such demanding, needed work. Nurses are human, we work with human beings, and no bean counter or consulting firm anywhere can quantify the value of what we do. We need to find a new way of valuing nurses' work, it needs to be quantified differently, and not viewed as an expense, but an investment in our society.

There are those who think I should be a good meek little nurse and not give my opinion about these things. And I care passionately about this stuff or I wouldn't be saying it! If I get a target on my back because of it, just remember that violence is a resort of the weak.

So there. That's my Nurses' Week rant. The truth hurts. Work hangover or not, even in the rain, I'm going for a run.

Colorado Marathon 5K: Catching Up

I don't know what I would do without my friends. As one of them said this week, when you think about things alone, you get into this vortex, and you keep coming back to the same place. When you share your ideas and thoughts with others, you can find tangents to throw you out of the downward spiral.

I'm picky about my friends. I like intelligent, creative people. If there's no spark in there, when I look in someone's eyes and soul, I'm not going to pursue it.

When I take down time from running, I also use the time to catch up with a lot of people I haven't seen in a while. My running schedule can limit my ability to socialize, especially with my non-runner friends, simply because I don't have the energy to stay awake when most people do things, in the evenings or weekends. I'm either running or sleeping.

I didn't run a step for myself for two weeks, I did jog with the girls several times but never more than 2 miles at a time. I went for one bike ride. I decided earlier this week that I wanted to run in the Colorado 5K or 10K held with the marathon this weekend, so I went to the expo and signed up yesterday. My friend Connie, who wrecked on her bike last weekend, is home and recovering from her fractures and surgery.

Earlier this week, Dennis Vanderheiden, who runs Athletes in Tandem, and Connie's running partner Dan Berlin, who is blind, decided to push Connie in one of the strollers Dennis uses for challenged athletes. Connie has been Dan's guide many times in marathons and other races. They planned to run the 10K. I wasn't sure I could keep up with them, even pushing the stroller, and 10K was a bit longer than I wanted to push myself if I had to run hard, so I signed up for the 5K and waited around until they came through the finish line.

It was a cold morning and I warmed up a bit along the Poudre Trail after the buses dropped us off at the start. I did a few strides and felt awkward and clunky on my feet, but I didn't think I'd be running very fast. I just wanted to get out and move, run as hard as I could, with no goal, no expectations.

When the gun went off I was close to the front of the pack, and I only saw maybe 5 women ahead of me. In the entire race, only one guy passed me, no one else. I followed the nearest woman I could see for the first mile and scared myself when I looked at my watch at the one mile mark, it said 6:56. I didn't even think my legs could do that right now.

Of course my pace went downhill from there, progressively slower 7 minute plus miles to splits of 14:22 and 22:07 at the next two mile markers. But I was completely surprised when I could see the finish line and the clock was ticking 22 minutes and change, and I got in under 23 minutes. 22:51, my watch said. It was uncomfortable, but I wasn't dying...a pleasant surprise, I guess you could say. I won't start working on speed again for a few more weeks yet. Next week the plan is to get all of 20 easy miles in.


As it turned out I was 6th place overall woman, and 18th overall of everyone. There were a couple of women at the bottom of the 40-49 age group, like 40 and 42 or something. But I don't think there were more than one or two women under 20 minutes.

The race seemed well-organized, it was the first year under new management and I was impressed that they seemed to have put it together seamlessly. It's always been a good event, looks like it will continue like that.

I stood with Connie's husband Doug and her daughter Marissa waiting for the team of Dennis, Dan and Connie to come across the finish line.

Soon they did, and we stood around and talked a while, it was freezing and the sun wasn't warming us up very fast. I waited for my friend Joanne, who is a psychiatric nurse with the VA, to finish her half-marathon, and then we went for coffee along with her husband Hunter while I waited for Wheaties Boy, who was pacing the 3:15 pace group, to finish.

Joanne and Hunter are planning to crew for me at the race in Oklahoma City this fall. We talked a little bit about North Coast, and about Joanne's marathon plans, and of course the topic of nursing came up. Joanne has been a nurse for 35 years and she's seen the same cyclical changes and the same problems over and over, and things never change.

It's the theme that keeps repeating itself. This past week alone, I have spoken at length, literally for hours at a time, with four different nurse friends, and had shorter conversations with as many non-nurse friends, about nursing. It's disturbing as hell, yet somehow comforting to hear the things other people have experienced, not much different than my own, and it validates what I'm seeing, feeling, and experiencing. We're all fighting dinosaurs. And we all know what happened to dinosaurs.

What was said about the definition of insanity?

Soon it was close to the time I expected Wheaties Boy, so we went outside, and in a few minutes, I saw him flying in with the 3:15 marathon banner. As he approached the finish line chute, I yelled "GO WHEATIES BOY" and I could see him crack up.

After hanging out for a bit longer with Hunter and Joanne, and Wheaties Boy, I went home.

Refreshed. Caught up. Ready to push forward.

Heartbroken

Another tree, gone...

These late spring heavy snows have now killed two of our trees. Depressing.

Not sure what else to say.

Coming Up

It's May 1, and I'm really over it with the shoveling. We got something like 10 more inches of snow today. It sucks.

You know, this whole day really sucked. Ever have one of those days when you know you're just going through the motions and your heart is not in it, and then you realize just how much you are forcing yourself to endure?

Then I came home to find one of our trees in the backyard, the juniper, was uprooted by the heavy snow. I'm hoping we can save it once the snow melts, we'll need to figure out a way to stabilize it. Seeing the juniper lying down in the yard, buried in heavy snow, made me see myself and where I am.

I've been reading a lot of crap lately, mostly because I am procrastinating. Procrastinating taking some sort of step forward. Feeling like barfing up something from this hole in my gut, but there's nothing there, it's just dry heaves, empty. I feel sucked dry, with no hope of repletion.

I've been suppressing a rant.

So I get these newsletters in my e-mail every day that talk about medical news. And I read other people's blogs in medicine and get news about the pharmaceutical industry, and other things related to health care and reform thereof. And the shit continues to be cranked out. All the trouble in healthcare is the same trouble we have in every other sector of our world, which is, corporations have too damn much power and all the wealth is concentrated at the top, because politicans can be bought by wealthy interests. The "I've got mine, screw you" mentality.

And then I see snippets and links to things on Facebook. And I see what people post, divisive, politically charged, mean-spirited crap, because they are angry and frustrated with the way things are. They are afraid. It makes me wonder just how much the recent rash of violence we've seen is related to how upset, frustrated and powerless people feel.

So I want to talk about fear. People are afraid for their livelihoods. They are afraid because they want to keep a roof over their heads, food on the table, and live their borrowed, temporary, fake comfortable lifestyles full of gadgetry that they sell their souls to live. And they'll lie, stab someone else in the back, cheat, and steal to keep going, because they think they will be safe.

And so they put up with a lot of crap, that affects their health and well-being, sometimes staying for years in the same place because it's comfortable, but it's a false comfort because underneath they are afraid, very fearful every day that their paycheck and way of life will dry up suddenly. And they know it all depends on keeping a smile plastered on their faces, on being apologists for bad corporate behavior, acting like domestic violence victims who will come back no matter how many times they are beaten because they just don't get it, that they are enabling it themselves by their complicity.

But the way things are has us by the proverbial family jewels...and most people see their only hope of survival to be docility. It's not a good thing when you see multiple instances of people going berserk, and the copycats who follow, and you never know what it was that pushed them over the edge. There is way too much mental illness and not enough care for people who can't deal with the stresses life throws at them. It doesn't have to be this way. We have created this situation.

Over the years I have heard of so many people who got sick from their jobs, the stress, the inability to wake up in the morning and face another day of faking it, of making excuses for the sick and perverse way they enable the poor treatment of other people, of toeing the line and shutting up. And the behavior of corporations is dependent on fear, because those in the highest tiers are fearful of losing their control, so they rig the system to work in their favor, because they can. It makes people sick.

If you have the ability to see what's leading to a downward spiral, taking back control over your life and refusing to be sucked into the quicksand is what you have to do. You cannot force yourself to do things, you'll be bitter, angry, hateful, and sick. You'll be lucky if all you need are antidepressants.

I love the words to the song/poem "Coming Up" by Ani DiFranco. Reminds me of our politicians. Indulge in some wishful, idealistic thinking for a moment.

Congress, having formed its own set of rules for its members' behavior, works with their own code of unethics to guide them and obstruct any progress that might be in the interest of most citizens. They don't want to abide by the Affordable Care Act. That's for the little people. Whether they are on the side of attorneys or Big Pharma or insurance giants or big banks, they're all pitted against the common good and only acting in their own interest. As long as your ass is covered, it doesn't matter who's winning. What we need to do is remove them from office. Voting won't work. Hog-tie and carry them out if we have to. They are not serving us, they don't deserve be called our representatives. Send them back home where they can learn to work paycheck to paycheck like the rest of us.

The people are numb, anesthetized by their own gullibility for shiny flashing objects...necks flexed and mesmerized by their little mobile devices. When you spend most of your leisure time focused on a tiny little screen and fingertip-operated keyboard, and the remaining time focused on a bigger screen operated by a remote control device, there's not much brain space left for focusing outside, for thinking critically, or seeing a bigger picture.

Can't step outside yourself and your situation for a moment to ask yourself: Why? Why are we doing this? Why are things the way they are? Does it have to be this way? The thing is, we have short attention spans. No sooner is a thought thought, than it dissolves into the atmosphere. Can't hang onto it long enough to pursue it. It's true that we are powerless as individuals but wrenching ourselves from our butts and banding together with other people is what needs to happen.

It doesn't appear that anyone will be waking up from this societal coma anytime soon.

No, people want to find the next distraction, they're stupid enough to fall for fake "quizzes" as marketing devices for fake cures for middle age, or the latest snack food to support the obesification industry, or anything else of which irresponsible journalists enable the marketing: camel's milk, red bean Triscuits, snake oil, Androgel...

As long as they can still buy these things, they don't seem to care about changing anything.

You can't regulate stupidity. There's a whole industry built on it. It's called "America".

Keeping Me On My Toes

I went for a bike ride with Connie, one of my coworkers, on Monday, down to Boyd Lake and into Loveland and back. It was a warm morning, the day ended up being hot, in the 80s by afternoon. First thing in the morning I took Iris for a walk and found myself running, but it was already really warm and she couldn't go very far. Looks like I'll have to start taking the girls before the sun comes up. The sprinkler stops won't be as frequent given our watering restrictions. I might have to hose the girls down before we leave the house.

I wonder if not getting as many miles as my body was capable of in the race has made me less tired. It's hard to tell because sometimes you think you feel good soon after a race and then you can overdo it, and set yourself back. I've learned to be on the conservative side of this. Three weeks minimum. If I'm crawling out of my skin, that's okay. Speaking of rest, and patience, the universe sometimes delivers these messages in cruel ways.

I was supposed to get together this week with another Connie, my friend from the running club, to have coffee and just catch up. She's been recovering from knee surgery and hasn't really gotten back to running. I thought I'd hear from her during the day on Sunday and never did. Then Monday morning I was on Facebook and saw a message from her daughter, saying Connie had been in a bike accident and had surgery Sunday night for a hip fracture and other injuries.

Fortunately her daughter was able to get to the hospital and let them know before the surgery that Connie is an athlete, which changed the way the surgery was done, and was there to advocate for her afterwards, reminding the nurses and other staff that her mom is not an old lady, that she should be treated as the younger, stronger, healthier person she is compared to other people her age.

I got in touch with her daughter Monday morning and later in the day went over to the hospital to see her. Connie's husband was there, he'd been out of town when the accident happened, but flew back early in the morning. Connie was groggy from the pain medications and finally they had her pain under control so she was able to sleep. She is stable and recovering, but she's at the beginning of a long road. She wasn't hit by a car, she actually tipped over on her bike while trying to get a water bottle out of the cage, and fell hard on the asphalt.

These things can happen at any time, to any of us. It's important to remember every day that we are so lucky to have our health and fitness and be able to do the things we do, because it's not guaranteed. I'm so glad Connie wasn't hurt worse, I'm thankful for helmets, and that her injuries were things that can be fixed and rehabbed, so she will be able to resume doing the things she loves.

The other lesson that comes out of this is rest. She is going to have to take a long rest, she'll be working hard with physical therapy and getting her strength back, but it's going to have to be in moderation so she heals properly. It will take a lot of patience and mental discipline, which is hard for some runners to do. Disciplining yourself to hold back at times, and knowing when it's okay to work harder, is an art in itself.

It's a reminder that after a hard racing season, or any time when your body is telling you, "Enough!" to listen to the clues it gives you. Sometimes it's tempting to go do those extra miles or extra cross-training, but it takes self-discipline to know that at the most it won't make any difference, and might actually do more harm than good.


When I arrived home yesterday afternoon from visiting Connie, there was a package on my doorstep from Pearl Izumi. The M3s. They are road training shoes, with midfoot stability. My wide foot on the left always gives me problems, there are few shoes with toe boxes wide enough or without material that doesn't hit me in a way that compresses my surgically altered foot. They feel good, very comfortable and well-cushioned.



The weather is about to turn back toward winter, in time for May 1st. That should be expected by now. Eighty-three degrees yesterday, snow tonight. I can see green leaves on the lilac bushes out my window. Last year at this time they were already past full bloom and fading. The leaves have not popped out on the cottonwood trees, but they will any day.

Doing What's Right for You in the Rest Cycle

I'm making gradual progress toward recovery. I was super sore after North Coast, but in my upper body, not my legs. I'm guessing it was from fighting the wind. My shoulders, neck, and low back were sore. At some point in the race Andy Lovy told me I was leaning forward too much. I tried to pay attention but then in a video I saw of myself at a point late in the race, I was leaning forward, my butt sticking out too far. My butt and hips were sore, more on the left side than the right.

Now everything is slowly working itself out, I spent some time soaking in the hot tub Wednesday and yesterday, and stretched while I was in there. I've walked the girls each day, but nothing else. Today the weather looks more promising and I plan to get out on the bike, at least for an easy spin. I work the entire weekend so that will keep me out of trouble. Next week I'll get on the bike more than my feet.

My recovery plan includes at least 3 weeks of primarily NOT running. I'm looking at the Houska Houska 5K as my first "race" of the summer season, and breaking in my Pearl Izumi M3s. I never took any quality recovery time last fall after Oklahoma and I was feeling it by this spring. It's always worked well for me to take a break about every six months and do no running for a week or so before I slowly get back to it. Usually I take a whole month to avoid "training", which means I'll go for runs but nothing long or hard, just easy jogging. I'll ride the bike and sometimes rack up the miles there, but no intensity.

Some people like to get right back into running after they race their last race of the season, but I've always felt it's important to get completely rested, both mind and body. Taking the focus off of the grind of the daily workout is as important as giving your muscles and soft tissue a rest. I can find myself getting mentally burned out toward the end of training, and the rest period helps this. I can tell I'm in a good place mentally, because I already can't wait to get started again.

I'd love to run out the door and go over to the track to hammer out some miles or 400s as soon as the soreness goes away, but that will have to wait until June. The break will build up a hunger to work hard when the time comes. Letting go of the fear of losing fitness is an important lesson that runners need to learn. If you lose anything at all, which is doubtful, it will be quickly made up in the first few weeks of training again, and your body will respond better as a result of the rest cycle.

That's what works for me. Everyone finds what works for them, but I think there are a lot of people who push themselves too hard for too long and then get stale and have mediocre results. That's what I was experiencing myself this spring, but my goal has been to build up strength for later in the year. When I keep myself focused on the long term plan, what happens in the short term is all about strength, mental focus, learning, and experience. It requires patience and believing in one's training.

Last night I went over to Runners' Roost and Scott Jurek was there making an appearance because he was in town to speak on a vegan panel at CSU. He went for a short run with the Wednesday night running group and then signed copies of his book before he left. I took a lot of pictures on other people's cameras of them with Scott. I spoke with Scott's wife, Jenny, about races, while people were lined up getting his autograph. Scott seemed like a very personable guy, even though I didn't actually talk to him, there were too many people lined up waiting.

There was a good turnout and I wish there was that big of a turnout for the Wednesday night runs all the time. I haven't attended many myself, half the time I work Wednesdays and then many of the other Wednesdays I was running my tempo runs. I couldn't help taking the above picture of that t-shirt. I love it.

I saw Cat last night, she was lamenting the fact that all the trails are still full of snow. We were trying to figure out how long it might take for it to melt. It's supposed to be in the 70s this weekend, we'll have plenty of mud to dry up first. Judging from the dog poop in our backyard that was in the snow, the trails aren't dry yet. The poop is still too soft to pick up. The true test: When the dog poop gets solid enough to pick up without falling apart, the trails will be dry enough to run on. Or something to that effect...

Spring seems to be back. We still have a pile of snow in the front yard over the flower garden. All of the flowers that came up before the blizzard are trashed, but the wildflowers will probably do great in a few weeks. I saw in the paper that the snowstorm helped our snow pack so much that the city is considering partially lifting water restrictions. I think that's pretty dumb, City of Fort Collins, considering that we are still in a major drought. As soon as they lift the restrictions, we won't get any more rain and we'll dry up like last year. We should have been on watering restrictions for years.

The other night I officially signed up for 24 The Hard Way in October. I am totally psyched for that race. Plus I know a lot of people who will be there, it will be fun, intense, and there will be tons of competitive support among the runners.

I also started looking at tuneup races in August and September. I think I found one, the Badgerland Striders in Wisconsin have a 12 hour event at the end of Auugust, on Labor Day weekend. I looked at the map and costs, it looks like it would be a fairly reasonable trip to fly to Milwaukee or Chicago. I have to work Labor Day, so it will have to be a quick trip.

It's time for me to get off my ass and start moving this morning, I'm getting the Buffalo staredown. It's sunny and almost 50 degrees, and purple flowers are popping out in the wildflower garden. I'll need to find my sunglasses, in case I look down at my white legs. Happy running, walking, hot tubbing, or whatever you're doing to get off your own ass this weekend!