Pre-Race Inspection: Buffalo TSA

Iris presides over the Delano Park packing pile, we're back to that old routine again.

Monday was brutally cold and windy with horizontal snow, and I wimped out of my run. I know that's really pathetic but I just didn't feel like dealing with it.

Instead I spent the day indoors, doing most of my packing for the trip. I wish I could bypass the security lines at the airport, I've already been pre-inspected by the bomb and drug sniffing dogs.


Today I needed to take care of business and get a workout in. I needed to go to the track to shake out my legs and move them fast again. I also had an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, and I needed to have my labs drawn. I've been hanging onto these lab orders since mid-January.

The thing that's kept me from doing it is the need to fast for the lipid panel for at least 12 hours prior to the draw. I have a really hard time doing that, it seems like I either have to go to work, or I have a workout planned, and fasting doesn't work with either of those scenarios. Plus I often forget about it. I don't have to fast for any of the other labs. Really, the only thing that will be affected by not fasting is triglycerides.

Plus I know it's silly but I hate having blood taken out of me. It's only 3 tubes, or about 12 ml, but I need every red blood cell going into a race. How stingy of me.

This morning it was COLD! Fourteen degrees when I arrived at the track to do my workout. That's not ideal for doing fast repeats, but I can't wait for it to warm up, or I'll be waiting until June!

I got a good warmup in and did some 200 meter repeats in 44 seconds each, consistently, with 200 meter jog recovery between each. I didn't want to make myself tired, I wanted my legs to feel refreshed. With the extreme cold, I also didn't want to strain anything with a race coming up. I decided I would do between 8 and 12 and settled on 10 repeats.

When I finished my workout, it was 24 degrees. Nice view of Long's Peak behind the track.



After the dentist, I took Iris and Isabelle out running and finished up with almost 14 miles for the day. Tomorrow I'll do 10 or 11 and then I'll be traveling on Thursday and Friday, so probably won't do much running. Race day is Saturday, my last race as a 48 year-old. I'm the old lady of my age group.

There is something different about the light, the sun is higher in the sky, when it shines, even when it's cold outside, I can smell spring. The dirt warms up and you can smell it, and the birds are singing in the mornings. We change the clocks on Sunday!

The weather looks okay for the race, it's been cool and rainy there, but we might have a break. There are about 70 runners in the 12 hour event and 24 women. Should be a competitive race, I love that. I can't wait.

I love 12 hours, 50 miles, 100 Km. Those are my favorite short ultra distances. Run all day, sleep in a bed at night. Perfect!

Trained, tapered, packed. Ready.

Only more one thing to do, and this is the toughest of all: pass the Buffalo TSA inspection before I can go out my front door.

VERY EXCITED

I am VERY EXCITED to announce that I will be a member of Pearl Izumi's Team PI in 2013, as a promotional athlete. It's a regional team, more details later...but just thought I'd say it for now, because I am VERY EXCITED!

This weekend at work was good. We were busy but we had enough staff to make things run smoothly, and we celebrated my birthday along with my co-worker's birthday, hers was last week and mine is next week. We both like whipped cream, so we had chocolate cake with whipped cream on Saturday and chocolate ice cream with whipped cream on Sunday (plus I had a brownie under mine so it was a brownie sundae) and we got a good sugar buzz both days.

Now I have to get ready and packing for flying out to Nashville, driving to Denver at the butt crack of 3:30 am, on Thursday. My flight leaves before it even gets light. That means I have to get up at a really ugly time on Thursday. But I'll be racing on Central time anyway, and the race starts at 6 am, and that's 5 am our time, so might as well get used to it. I can take a nap when I get into Nashville.

I am looking forward to whatever adventure this coming weekend brings. I've never been to Nashville, the state of Tennessee, or Alabama. Two new states for me. I hope I can understand the southerners, for one thing, being a Yankee. And I'll be looking for something to eat other than fried catfish and barbecue before the race. Afterwards I don't care.

The weather has been kind of cold, wet and icky, so I don't expect to run into any Gators from Decatur. I hope I don't run into too many critters in the hotel room, though. But if I do, you can rest assured that you'll hear all about it on this blog.

I'm feeling exhausted right now, after my work weekend, but will be posting more as the week unfolds. WOO-HOO! VERY EXCITED!

photo credit: Kathy Vest

March: In Like A...Crab

March, already?

You wouldn't think it was March when I went to the track this morning, temperatures in the 30s and hurdles frozen in snow on the outer edge. Outdoor track season is about to begin, and the steeplechase pit could be a skating rink.

I'm still bundled up in two or three layers for my track workout. Spring along the Front Range of Colorado is always windy. The wind was coming from the south this morning, making my final 100 meters on each lap an extra effort. That's a good thing, but each time I crossed the finish line, I felt like I was dying.


I got a strong workout in this morning. I mixed it up for interest, and since my race is a week away, I wanted a full workout. I did a 1600, then 3 x 800m, then 4 x 400m. It was strong and consistent, not fast, but fast enough that I got some benefit from it.


Crazy clockwise running lady showed up but she was well-behaved, she stuck to lane 2 for running against traffic while I was using lane 1. She weaved into lane 1 a lot, but not so far that we risked colliding this time. She needs to drink less vodka before she runs, or something...

This week I've limited myself to 10 miles a day on the days I'm not working. I work all weekend, so this is it for my week. A big 40 miles. I don't feel rested yet, but I do feel restless. Ten miles is not enough and I want to go out for more. I'm guessing that is a good thing.

I read an article this morning about two new medications that are in the process of FDA approval. Guess what they treat? Menopause.

Great. Just what we need, is for menopause to be a diagnosis. For all the bitching I do about menopausal weirdness that has taken over my body and mind, I also feel like we need to be less reliant on drugs.

The two drugs mentioned are Gabapentin and an SSRI similar to Paxil. Gabapentin is not new, it's just never been approved for menopause. It's been used for neuropathic pain and seizures. It reduces vasomotor symptoms (hot flashes) and paroxetine mesylate works as an antidepressant to reduce anxiety, mood swings, and other types of emotional dysfunction. Both drugs have plenty of potential side effects.

Menopause is a natural state, not a disease. Because our lives are set up the way they are, having to stick to schedules, work commitments, time crunches, and stress make these changes in our bodies problematic. The things menopause does to us conflict with our self-imposed lifestyle. Waking up several times throughout the night because you're burning up and pouring sweat does not mix well with a rigid work schedule, especially when you need to be on top of things mentally for a full 12 to 13 hours.

What we really need everyone to do is slow down. We've brought all this on ourselves. We've allowed our lives to be shaped by the demands of working and living based on a crazy way of existing. We are slaves to the economy we've helped create, and the government we've enabled to work against the people's best interest.

I've been extremely stressed out lately because of things changing at work. It's happening at a time when I'm having to deal with my own body going through changes. The two things combined have led to my feelings of anxiety and insanity. I've been questioning whether I want to stay in nursing and put up with it.

Treating nurses poorly is cyclical. From the time I started nursing school until now, in the space of just 8 years, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other. First they couldn't do enough to attract nurses, now they can't cut our hours and benefits fast enough. A company that merges with another and rushes through the entire process creates havoc for the employees who are being dragged through it. We suffer and pay a steep price in our work and personal lives as a result, while the highest-ups reap the benefits.

I like what I do for my job, but the way we are being forced to work with fewer nurses to care for higher risk patients, it's a problem. It's not safe for patients, and it's not healthy for nurses, either. I don't know what else I would do, and I'm almost 50. I don't know what else I'd WANT to do.

I woke up in the middle of the night last night, and realized that a lot of these things I've been worried about, I can let go of them. I don't have to worry about them. I've been crabby and I'm hoping that by the end of this month, I can drop the claws and grow something softer and fuzzier.

I'm giving up crabby for Lent.

Yes, I'm Tapering

And I'm losing my mind. The taper worms have infested my brain!

It's Monday, a new week of training and I did go out on this sunny, slushy day and put in 10 easy miles. My legs felt tired. I don't know why they feel so tired. I ended up pushing through the wimp factor on Saturday and did 20 miles, but then we had a big snowstorm on Sunday and I totally wimped out of my other 20 mile run.

Completely and thoroughly wimped out. How bad was it?

I went over to Island Grill, a little bar and restaurant in our neighborhood, with Dennis, and sat on my butt and drank beer and ate...french fries. And did not run a step.

I did shovel snow twice, if that makes up for it. Maybe that makes up for one french fry, but as far as the other dozens of french fries in the basket, I don't know what to say. I'm sure I am carrying them around on my butt somewhere now. They were greasy and salty and I washed them down with beer and I stared at the Daytona 500 and some golf tournament in Arizona where they were freezing, and sat there like a barfly.

It's not my fault though, Dennis contributed to my delinquency, after just the day before, he convinced me that I was being a wimp and I should quit whining and get my butt out the door to run 20 miles. How can I trust this man? You'd think after 23 years I would know him, but the evil Dennis was lurking on Sunday, probably came out of the snowstorm like Sasquatch with size 14 running shoes.

I hate to admit it. At this point, tapering feels like a weakness, like I'm wimping out. But when I go back to my original plan for the year, I should be tapering. Things are a little off because of my involuntary change of plans, but it really shouldn't make all that much difference.

The plan was to run Delano Park as a race, and to run Cornbelt as another "training run" to go to Oklahoma City and run 24 hours for a PR. So, here I am a little over a week and half away from Delano and I'm finding myself wanting to keep training through it. The last two weeks my mileage has been lower than what I've been averaging over the past several months.

I'm planning on doing just 40 miles this week to get a really good rest week, and then I won't do too much other than very short easy runs before I go out to Alabama next week.

The thing about this mid-season taper is, I don't want it to throw my training off too much. I want to get away with just one recovery week after the race and then jump back into training, to do as much as I can before North Coast. I won't have much more training time before it. I feel unprepared for 24 hours at this point.

I have to remind myself, I'm not SUPPOSED to be prepared for 24 hours at this point. I'm training. North Coast is a TRAINING RUN. The race I'm peaking for is in October, not April.

Just reading what I've written so far, I think I'm doing that anxiety thing again, with my brain spinning in my head like a top.

How did I become such a head case? For so many years I have been calm and relaxed about going into races.

So tonight, to make myself feel better, I went out and got a new pair of shoes to wear at Delano Park, a pair of Brooks Adrenalines in the new neon green color. They look awesome. I saw the blue ones too, might have to get myself a pair of those one of these days. Maybe before North Coast.




The moonrise and sunset were amazing tonight. I didn't get a good picture of the moon, but it looked huge over the eastern plains as I was driving to Runners' Roost to get my shoes. I stopped east of Zeigler Road to take a picture, but the iPhone camera doesn't do justice to the moon at all. It was huge and yellow and dominated the sky.

The other problem with tapering is that you end up doing all kinds of strange, normal things while you wait for your race day to arrive. Like cleaning the bathroom, doing those long-procrastinated errands, and staring at the giant moon wishing you could go for a run, instead of actually doing it. It's just weird and it messes with your brain.

I'll need to find a way to exterminate the taper worm, once it's crossed the blood-brain barrier, the damage might be irreversible...

Sunset Run, No Whining

I did the post-nap evening run and got my 20 miles for the day. I woke up around 4:30 and got out the door by 5. It's nice to have daylight in the evening again. I went down the Power Trail and took some pictures of the sunset on the golf course and at the park. It wasn't the most colorful sunset, but still beautiful with the clouds.







When it got dark I was near Warren Lake and the geese were sitting on the water, in a place where the ice had thawed. I'm glad I got my butt out the door. It was cold all day, and warmer this evening than when I did my track workout this morning, but I froze anyway. I don't stop freezing until it gets to be about 75 degrees.



Tomorrow is a group run in the morning up at Horsetooth with the running club, and I'll finish out my 20 miles somewhere. One more day until the taper. One more. Whine not.

Whine Not...

It's COLD!

Where did this cold blast come from? It was getting so nice, and I was looking forward to March, and then we got this wimpy little snowstorm that hardly dropped any moisture on us, all it did was bring COLD air!

This week sort of sucked. I felt super tired after my early in the week runs. I was going to do 15 on Thursday but we had the snow that day and I don't have any excuse other than I wimped out. I know, it's pathetic. But I was tired, and sleep has been less restful this week. So instead of running on Thursday, I took care of personal business, got things like papers for doing our taxes organized, spent a little more time figuring out my upcoming trip to Cleveland/Columbus in April, and basically tried to have a lower stress day.

Then Friday I worked an 8 hour shift, and it started out as a great day. It was relaxed at work, I was busy but not running too much most of the time, had my favorite kind of patient, a first time chemo that goes all day, and all my other patients for the day were "easy". Our massage therapist was hanging around, giving patients massages, and had time to give each of the nurses a short little chair massage. A rare and perfect work day. Except.

My last "easy" patient of the day decided to have a reaction to her infusion, right at the same moment that my chemo patient was finishing up. Damn it. I hate that. I always want my first time chemo patients to have a smooth ride. And it was, except I wanted to be there through the whole thing, to the very end of the day. But that is the life of a nurse. It's always something...

When the "easy" patient went south, I asked one of my coworkers to finish up the chemo patient. As it turned out I didn't even get to say goodbye to the chemo patient because I was on the phone with the doctor. As it turned out the "easy" patient was okay, but when told me she thought her tongue was swelling that sort of threw everything off...

I made her wait while I paged the doctor, and while she waited and I watched her and checked her over thoroughly, I finally determined that her tongue was NOT swelling but not before she was questioning why she couldn't go home right away? Why did she have to wait there while I checked her vitals again, looked in her mouth, listened to her lungs and called the doctor?



Some people are just not all that bright. After I did all the charting on THAT incident, I got out of there. More like 9 hours.

Advice to everyone. If you tell the nurse your tongue is swelling, you're going to be detained. But you do have choices. If your tongue is swelling and you don't want to be detained, go ahead and don't say anything, leave the hospital and collapse out on the street in respiratory arrest. There is one advantage to the latter scenario, you might qualify for a Darwin Award. Nice way to be remembered.

It was a nice sunset and Dennis and I went out for sushi. But I did not run, and I had hoped to after work. I was too fried and tired when I got home, and it didn't seem worth it to deal with rush hour traffic for a little 5 mile run. I wimped out.


As a result I ended up with two days off running, and I had to get my speedwork in this week, since I missed it last week. Twenty-one degrees at the track, and that was when I finished up. It was 13 degrees when I woke up this morning. I did 12 x 400 meters, they were slower than I've been doing recently, but still respectable. I felt like I was freezing in between each one.

When I got home I whined about having to get 20 miles in for the day, and another 20 tomorrow. That is what my plan was. I was having a weak moment again and I tried to justify and rationalize and weasel out of it, I talked to Dennis about it and asked him what he thought, and he told me I was being a wimp.

If Dennis tells me I'm being a wimp, I'm being a wimp. He would tell me to rest if he thought I needed to rest. So I took Iris out for a couple more miles, and I am eating lunch and blogging and I might take a nap, but I will somehow have to get another nearly 10 miles in late today or this evening. Dennis won't let me get away with wimping out.

It is pathetic. All I have to do is get through this weekend and then I am tapering. Two more days of long miles. I've been doing it for 4 months, I can do it for two more days.

Tomorrow I will force myself out the door and go run at Horsetooth with the running club, that will keep me honest. After I get my 20 in tomorrow, it's taper time. I think I've earned it, as long as I finish my miles this week. Whine not.

Work Hangover Wednesday: A Change of Plans

Halfway through the week, and only a week to go until March. Where is the time going?

I can't complain about winter going by fast, as it is my least favorite season, and...we'll be changing the clocks again soon. On my birthday, this year. I'll be in an airport somewhere, probably Nashville, on my way home from the Delano Park race. That means I get to enjoy my birthday for 25 hours instead of the usual 24.

I got the bad news late last week, the time off I requested in May to run Cornbelt was not going to happen. I was really annoyed at first because I put in for that last October. But we are slaves to this merger now, and we are being held hostage May through July. It was time for creativity in scheduling. I've been training my ass off since last fall. What was I going to do?

I moped around for the weekend and early this week. It definitely contributed to my poor sleep over the weekend. I've been so frustrated with so many aspects of this merger. It's affecting everyone in so many ways. I had no idea what I could do, I'd signed up for a 50 miler in late April, but the only option to lengthen that was 100K, and I needed a longer race.

I'd considered North Coast 24 hour earlier in the year but thought the spring race was the same weekend as Cornbelt. I always wanted to run North Coast because I've heard so many good things about it. But the trip would be expensive, with airfare, rental car, hotels, big city expenses and hassles like parking and traffic, and where to shop for race supplies.

Cornbelt on the other hand, is a long day's drive from home, or can be broken into two days, there is no traffic, it's very low key, midwest, rural, cheap hotels, no air travel, no rental cars, traffic, parking, or bad parts of town. I can haul everything I need in my vehicle.

I was back at work on Tuesday, eating lunch, turned on my phone to Facebook and saw that one of the runners I know from the east coast had signed up for North Coast, but it was April 20th! The lightbulb turned on. I immediately emailed the schedule goddess, and asked her if those dates would work. She wrote back and said they would. I had an alternative!

So I spent most of today figuring out arrangements for North Coast, and things came together nicely. One of my longtime ultra friends from much earlier in my running days, Lynn Newton, lives in Columbus now. I've known Lynn and his wife Suzy, and their daughter, for many years, and we all lived in Arizona for a while. I wrote to Lynn and asked him about North Coast, and if he knew about Cleveland. He suggested I fly to Columbus instead and stay with them, and drive to Cleveland just for the race.

When I looked into it, it turned out to be a much more economical alternative. The airfare and rental car were much better in Columbus. So I've made my plans, signed up for the race, and all I have to do now is buy my ticket and book my hotel room in Cleveland and rental car. It will be great to spend some time visiting with Lynn and Suzy.

Tonight it is sleeting outside and we're supposed to get 3-4 inches of snow by morning. We need any moisture we can get, but it really won't put a dent in our drought. No, there's no climate change...I'm fearful that we will have a horrible fire season like last year. And unfortunately we'll be stuck here this summer...

Today I was off work, after just one work day. As a result, I can't really call today a work hangover but I was tired anyway, slept until 8:15 this morning, missed my nap this afternoon. I called in sick to work on Monday. I wasn't sick, but I was sleep deprived.

I've been describing this anxiety thing in my recent posts. I was up during the night on Saturday, my brain spinning around in my skull again, over all sorts of things that I can't do anything about, but I couldn't get it to quiet down in there. When this happens, I'll be up for several hours, and then in the morning I feel like crap.

Sunday my sleep pattern was all messed up. I went for a 21 tempo mile run, most of it with Wheaties Boy. It was a great workout, but I was tired later in the day, a combination of the beer tour, high mileage, lack of sleep, and the anxiety thing.

After the past several weeks of bad things happening at work in the evenings, including the night when I was there alone and the patient had that reaction, I wasn't looking forward to the possibility of that happening again if I was already exhausted at the beginning of the shift.

I'm getting sort of tired of having to stay late and do paperwork on transfusion reactions at the end of a 12 hour shift, and if I'm sleep deprived to begin with, and I'm stuck closing, and something goes wrong with a patient, I really don't want to be having to think on my feet with an emergency when I'm brain dead myself. If I were a patient in trouble I wouldn't want my nurse being sleep deprived and unable to think clearly.

So I took a "mental health day" and saved myself the agony of schlepping my body through a 12+ hour shift as Zombie, RN. I slept in, took a nap, and it was windy as hell, but I went up to the foothills and did a 10 mile trail run. More like a trail crawl. Absolutely dragged myself up the trail, my legs were screaming. I texted Wheaties Boy and told him I'd be thanking him on race day, after I was whining on the trail.

I'm going to make this a high mileage week and then next week I'll cut my miles and do a 2 week taper before Delano Park. After that it will be just 6 more weeks to North Coast!

Oh yeah, one more thing, has anyone noticed their local McDonald's advertising something called "Fish McBites"? Are they serious? That is gross. Obesification knows no bounds, or decency.

McBite Me.