Cold front

STAY! STAY!

A lovely -5 C this morning, and then I jogged 8 miles back from an exam in a still decent 11 C and I'm feeling pretty relaxed...I love this weather.  I've been waiting for it for months.  The only drawback is that everybody's bundled up, even indoors, and while I was writing my exam, I could smell cigarette smoke on people's jackets.  For three hours.   Worth it.

But this is a cold front, and not normal temps, and we're going to swing toward the opposite extreme just in time for the weekend, yay!  When I'm supposed to jog/walk 50 miles! Yippee!  At least the previously rumoured forecast of a high of 80 F doesn't look likely, but, man, cut me some slack!  What's wrong with this nice refreshing high of 11 or 12 C or whatever?  So far, it's looking like the low will be that, if I'm lucky.

{remove obscene warm weather in late November rant}

Whatever.  Really, Dixie, is this the best you got?  You pulled this shit when I ran the OBX marathon several years ago (that was the first time I saw another runner pass out, I think), but I got through it.

Even better, I have to start at the ridiculous hour of 5 am (I'm kind of bitter about that because, when I signed up, the start time was listed as 9 am), so I should be mostly almost comfortable for the first few hours, as long as it's not so humid that I stop sweating, and then hopefully I will stay in the endorphin funzone until I get sick/bored of running and/or injured and then, heck yeah, I'll have a walk in the tropics.  Seriously easy going.  Which is exactly the attitude I need for this thing because I've never actually done 50 miles before.  My last attempt was a DNF.

Whatever.

////////////

Saturday: 1/2 hour jog, tide too high (soft sand) but still decent compared to the sand here

Sunday: 2 hour jog, well-timed and nearly perfect except for the camber of the sand was a bit tiring after a while, and there were a couple of loose dogs.

Monday: 1/2 hour jog, even better timed and nearly perfect except for one rather memorable loose dog, once it broke free of a toddler's leg--more about that--

Tues: 3 hour jog, great weather (7-12 C), but back to the soft torn up pocked sand, liberally seasoned with leaves, pine needles, roots, branches, horse poop (but no snakes this time).  Some of the horse poop was fresh. 

Ok, Monday, we ran on the beach, and the sand was practically perfect.  Flat, firm, and not too many shells or loose dogs.  WHY DO PEOPLE LET THEIR STUPID DOGS LOOSE?  There are signs all over the place stating that dogs must be leashed.  I keep thinking I'm going to lose my shit the next time I hear "Oh, but he's friendly" or some other variant, or see that certain apologetic helpless smile: dogs, what can you do, eh?  Heck no, you're better than this!  Buy a leash!  It's not rocket surgery.

Anyway, without loose dogs to wonder about, I got into a zone, and then I saw a large-ish dog sitting with a small-ish kid on the beach, close to an adult surf fishing.  Uh-huh.  Let's see what happens.  I hoped the adult would notice and secure the dog in time.

Nope!  He caught a fish, saw us, but turned back to the surf, according to my husband.  I was preoccupied by the dog and its advance.  It probably weighed as much as the kid; it was no contest.  The leash was around the kid's leg, and the dog hit a decent speed and dragged the kid several metres before the leash slipped off.  Freed from resistance, it bolted after us.

My husband had our dog, so I intercepted the other dog and, after a couple of good pulls (how the heck did that adult ever think that such a small kid could match that strength?), it gave up, but not before it slid out of its collar.  Fortunately, dogs aren't always that observant--every time I've popped or slipped the collar off a strange dog, I've been able to get it back on before it noticed.  Same thing this time; I slid it back on before the dog bolted, and then I looked up, saw the bawling kid and the owner still fishing--it was a rather striking tableau actually.  Tears and ocean spray, one captive hooked by a bloodied mouth, the other breaking free.  I felt bad for the kid, but mainly ticked off because I was still holding this random dog and the owner (father? older brother) was apparently oblivious.  Perhaps he couldn't hear the screaming.  Perhaps he also didn't hear the words out of my mouth: "Come and get your fucking dog." Oh, yeah, oops.  You know, for losing my shit, that was tame.  I didn't even yell.  But I glanced again at the kid and felt exceedingly low.  At least he was too far away to hear me over his own wailing, I think.   The dog heard me, at any rate, and it sat down and gazed at me with beautiful sad brown eyes.  Sometimes, when I'm holding other people's dogs, I look into their eyes and see what looks like pleading.  Take me with you.  Take me away.  I wish I could, but I can't.  Not this time.  I'm sorry.  Finally, the owner grabbed it, said something apologetic, I replied, "it's ok", mostly to the dog, and we ran off, the kid still screaming in the background.  I guess that's a good dose of childhood trauma right there.  Fortunately they were absent on our way back.

Anyway, today's run was far less uneventful.  I met one other person, another runner, about halfway through our first loop.  I got excited because, even though I have no way of knowing what route a random runner will take nor even if they'll do a repeat, I want to beat them.  Even with fit guys (and there are a number of SF guys living here), I have to try.  Worse still, I was intending an extra-relaxing run, but I decided to squeeze some ping out of comfort.  Just a bit.  While I was back at the ranger station drinking out of a water fountain, she passed us and went back into the forest.  Yeah, it was still on!  I still took the hills lazily--I've been envisioning the hills lasting an hour apiece, in order to sink into the true lack of effort I'll need during a super long run--but I pushed on the nice downhills sections.

There are two, when I go clockwise.  One of them isn't the best, still some sand and roots, but it's decent.  The other is my favourite stretch.  Even uphill/counter-clockwise, it's pretty nice.  Downhill, though, it's a great mental and physical break.  Pea gravel and dirt, gentle undulation, very few roots...even the snakes like it.  Yeah, I've seen the most snakes on this stretch, including one of the copperheads.  The trail had more dead leaves on it this time, and so my first pass was rather hesitant and a big downer because I was deprived of the best part.

However, on the second loop, I was on to beat the other runner and, as I approached the lovely snake stretch again, I remembered something I've learned recently thanks to an assignment: the appropriate antivenom, CroFab goes for all pit vipers.  This is a great relief!  Honestly, I've been a bit concerned about getting bit, failing to study the pattern adequately, and getting injected with the wrong antivenom.   Nope, turns out that all the poisonous herps here are pit vipers, and pretty much all of the harmless ones are black.  Surely I can hack that.  It's not rocket surgery!

With that reassurance, I tore through that section.  Wakey wakey, Snakey!  I figured if I went fast enough, I would--actually, that's a really lousy attitude for avoiding predators, but it works great for picking up speed and a bit of a thrill.

But we didn't see the other runner at all!  I was beginning to wonder if maybe she'd gotten bit instead, and we'd find her and run back to the ranger station and ask them to call an ambulance and rev up their four-wheeler or whatever their SOP for snake bite victims is.  I think I overthink things but, honestly, running here is really, really, boring; I'm not into nature that much.  Some weeks, my highlight has been reencountering the "Library Viking" guy (sadly, I haven't seen "Serious Green Shirt" guy or "Shirtless Zen" guy (who actually won the ultra last month here) in a while).  I prefer urban rec paths because it's more interesting seeing a bunch of other people than trees and horse poop--actually scat can be intriguing, but I rarely see anything here but horse poop.   There's no mystery in that.

We didn't get bit, we didn't see the other runner again, but I still felt a bit amped up so we did a third loop.  52, 47, 51 minutes.  Total jogged just over three hours.  No walking except down a short steep stretch that always makes me stumble unless I walk (it's a bunch of closely-packed roots covered with pine needles and then a few stairs, and I've failed to find a good line through it).  This was decent though still easy run--I wanted to run relaxed for a while to get my body primed to soak up whatever it needs to soak up in prep for the ultra this weekend. 

And now it's time to eat sensibly and rest.  I'm undertrained but in decent shape.  My guts are better now and the only weird glitch I seem to have is a pinch or something in my left hip (it happens when I squat or lunge with poor form: muscle and the hip bone have a bit of an altercation, and the hip bone wins).  Funnily enough, I also rammed that exact area into the sharp corner of our counter earlier this morning.  I am kind of bouncy and I get hurt in the house more often than outside it because of the corners and stairs and doorframes and so on.  At least I don't have stairs in this place--two of our former dwellings didn't have enough clearance above stairs and I used to hit my head--and I'm short!  At any rate, I have to tone it down for the next few days.

Goodbye, hills

I finished and submitted my essay--did you know that tuberculosis has its very own journal?--and now I have to throw a few things in a bag because we're going to the beach for a few days!  That means more sand, but flat, and fresh fish.  Gotta hand it to the Outer Banks.

I'm especially pumped because, for the past few days, I've been living on sweet potatoes and rice noodles.  Fellow hosts of intestinal turmoil might recognize this as a variant of the classic bananas and congee/rice gut-calming diet.  Throw ginger ale in there too, and it becomes a surprisingly comfortable menu.  The longest I went on it was about two weeks.   This was before I knew that gluten was the culprit, and so I gorged myself on it during Christmas before going to Asia, where my system jumped at the chance to purge itself once it realized that I'd switched completely to rice.  Bye bye wheat, bye bye appetite.  It was actually not unpleasant. 

The only problem with the banana-rice-ginger ale trifecta is that I despise bananas.  As bland and soothing as they are lower down, they provoke revulsion higher up.  I loathe the taste and the texture often makes me gag.  The more I eat them, the more I hate them.  But their convenience can't be beat and so I choke them down. 

Fortunately, there's also a good chunk of potassium in sweet potatoes!  I'm probably missing out on vitamin C by nuking them, though, but a few days won't bring on scurvy.  Plus, Emergen-C.

Even more fortunately, I broke my diet last night with a small slice of gluten-free pizza without ill effects, and so it's on.  Fishies, beware.

I'd thought about lifting before we leave, but I still feel kind of drained.  Maybe just a few power cleans for funsies.

weights

Just a walk in the forest today.  Matters have improved, and the forest is rather a forgiving environment, but the sustained internal jostling of running would have tempted fate.

But that's not a factor during weightlifting, especially in my garage with a bathroom steps away.  Yeah!  Although, I didn't do squats, just in case.

I repeated the impromptu workout I did last time:

power cleans
delt flies
pike situps
power cleans
clamshells

X3

It's short and targets what I can't neglect.

The power cleans were better today.  I ended up with two sets at the heaviest weight I used last time and they felt fine.  And I got reacquainted with a certain moment.  Just after the starting exhalation, just after the first impulse, when muscular force is countered by mass X acceleration, the deciding tension yanks against my fingers (more so than my palms)--that tug tests commitment.  When I haven't fully invested, the pull is spongy and slow, and the outcome is sloppy.  However, if I've focused properly, the pull is sharper and stronger, and it provokes a violent response that strips away mass and fatigue.  The bar disdains gravity and sails serenely upward.  As though it launches from a dark pit of spikes into a cerulean sky, dragging me with it.

THIS is why I like this exercise!  After weeks of struggling, it's back.

I tried to find music to capture this feeling, but failed (best I could think of was a combo of Autechre Fol3 and Lully's Te Deum, but I have no idea what to search for, what it would be called, nor even if it's been composed yet), but I discovered the Shredlord instead!

!!! not about running at all!

Really shouldn't've sipped that beer.  Blammo!

Eh, I didn't get enough sleep anyway for a decent run, once again.  Distractions.  The final stage of my final assignment for a immunology course includes an essay about a pathogen, and naturally I didn't start thinking about this until going to bed at about eleven because I'm most productive at night.  Pick a Pathogen, Any Pathogen!  Usually Pathogen picks YOU.  Nice to have the choice for once!  So I lay back and thought of the possibilities.

C. tentani can't be beat for individual drama, I think.  There are other bugs with shocking symptoms and larger swaths of destruction, but risus sardonicus leading to full-on tetany is particularly spectacular.

And then, I turned to more noble considerations.  The essay prompts include describing vaccination.  What if I somehow found the missing key to crushing malarial merozoites?  Millions of children would then survive and prosper, wiring their villages for electricity and internet = blogging.

But laziness and self-loathing prevailed.  A virus is a simpler target, and influenza is just as epic.  Antigenic variation pretty much screws the pooch (NOTE FROM THE DOG: STOP SAYING THIS ITS NOT FUNNY (the dog doesn't understand punctuation)), but it might be fun to describe the limitations of vaccines that are shots in the dark. Oh, let's pour millions of dollars into R&D for flu season next year, and meanwhile that devilish little bug is like, nah, I'm going to change this instead, 5'-GUAUUAAUAAXetc is the new black, smell ya later!

My hubris quickly led to despair, which led to fungi.  Unfortunately,  the only agent I could think of at that hour was C. albicans.  Yeast infections.  Yep.   This led my ungenerous mind towards chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis and a certain Canadian large-breasted starlet and Josephine Bonaparte (who was possibly rendered sterile from a gonorrhea or chlamydia infection).

And then, in pursuit of lost innocence, I thought of childhood vaccinations.  How about those diseases kids don't get to experience these days? Odd story about the MMR combined vaccine...when I was going through the U.S. greencard process, I had to pay an approved USCIS Civil Surgeon to sign my form I-693, and so my chest was x-rayed, blood was drawn, and my immunization records were looked at.  I actually didn't meet the doctor in person and I don't know if he did much except notice that I hadn't been vaccinated for chickenpox = $$.   I had had chickenpox but wasn't taken to the doctor because it was just chickenpox--I had no proof.  I didn't think chickenpox was on the USCIS go list or whatever, but the doctor had latitude and it would've cost more to pay another Civil Surgeon to start over.

So, I got the shot for chickenpox (and possibly an invitation for mutant shingles later in life), and then Surgeon Greed took another look at my records and, oh, it was unclear that I'd had an MMR re-up= $$.  Guess there wasn't enough of my blood sample left to check antibodies.  The prospect of I-693's cost proliferating to four figures was dismaying; I was already out several hundred bucks.  An army doctor (unfortunately not an approved Civil Surgeon) took a look at my records, re-transcribed my shot record, and put my dual MMR vaccinations in clearer context.  Surgeon Greed signed my I-693, but he was evidently stripped of his Civil Surgeon designation by the time I had my USCIS interview.  Yep, massive sketchiness, and potential complications: more $$, another random doctor off a list (no customer reviews available), another virtual rectal exam added to the routine.  However, after a few anxious minutes clicking on the computer, my USCIS interviewer decided to just let it go.  RELIEF!  However, later on when I was working at a hospital and my blood antibodies were screened, it was discovered that I needed an MMR booster.  So maybe Surgeon Greed was right after all.  I could've caught mumps!

Meanwhile, I still haven't picked a pathogen.  Present conditions remind me C. diff  but feelings are still too raw.  Not a nice way to wake up.  No soup for you.

I have until Thursday.  Back to the books!

Tapering!

I'm once again dealing with a dietary reaction, but the weather is very agreeable.  Only 10 C this morning!  Easy 80 minute jog. 

At any rate, the last back-to-back runs didn't happen this weekend, and now it's time to rest.

Easy running so I don't forget how to run
Lots of fluids to eliminate present gut inflammation
Lots of sleep to get out of debt
Supplements, mainly iron to plump up those RBCs.  Even on trails, I squash a fair number of them and it doesn't help that I seem to be back to renting food.  (The bright side is, dropping a few pounds sensibly will make things more comfortable on race day!)
A bit of weight lifting to keep the springs

I feel undertrained but in otherwise decent shape.  The back tightness I was dealing with recently is mostly gone, and though the previous glitch in my left Achilles returned, it was not en force and I didn't even feel it this morning.  The gluten-related inflammation is a bummer, though, and the same seemingly disparate quirks have returned: sore guts, yep, left knee somehow slides out of joint in my sleep and locks, yep (my right one does too, but my left one leads the way), weird respiratory discomfort, yep, right shoulder tightness, yep.  But nothing is that bad and I have almost two weeks to get rid of it all. 

Time to play gluten FBI.  Possible culprits include a certain "gluten-free" beer--the gluten is removed and the batch tested to below 5 ppm, which seemed fine.  Gluten-free food, at least in the States, just has to test below 20 ppm, and I don't think I've ever had any issues with that limit. And I had just one sip.  One delicious sip, followed by a sinking feeling: I don't think I should be drinking this.  Maybe I was right.

I've also eaten a bit of Hallowe'en candy, just stuff that is gluten-free according to manufacturers, but it's not stuff that's tested and I don't need to be eating it anyway.   It had been a few weeks since I'd eaten candy, and I'd lost the taste for it, and I ate it mainly because I was bored!  Serves me right!

I haven't eaten out in weeks, and haven't eaten anything else that I usually don't eat except for a new kind of almond meal; there's not much else that can account for it.

Multitasking!

While I'm making pancakes (in this case, hopeful long run fuel), I might as well try to figure out the vigorous highlights of a 1/2 week that apparently got swallowed up.

Every morning: walk/half-hearted short jog.  It's been warm and humid.

On Friday morning, we met two loose dogs in the forest, a pit mix and a mystery.  No owner in sight.  So I stopped and moved so that the dogs wouldn't come straight at us, for my dog usually doesn't like meeting canine Lord Nelsons: "Never mind maneuvers, go straight at 'em!".  Meanwhile I talked to the dogs and did my best to keep the mood light.  I didn't know these dogs from Adam, but they didn't appear to be aggressive, and they weren't after all.  The pit mix, another male, was pushy, but tempers didn't fray.  The owner showed up after a minute, but failed to call off her dogs .  By this point, we were on our way again with the dogs trailing us--and when I passed the owner, I managed to reciprocate her pleasantries with a smile (I'm taking a Bless your heart attitude to these people who either can't read or can't leash their dogs), but she stopped me.  She said our dogs looked alike.  As it turned out, they did: their heads were a similar shape, and, as it turned out, both of them had had their ears cropped off with scissors before they were "rehomed" with us.  :(  I told her that scissors were the scumbag tool of choice, and she laughed.  That was nice.  Very few people laugh at my jokes below the Mason Dixon line, even though I keep them very clean and non-political/non-religious.  We talked some more, and while I don't agree with her dog-handling completely, especially since she admitted that her pit mix could be belligerent with other males and yet lets him run loose, we found some common ground.

Yesterday: 2 hr 15 min jog with the dog, and then weights.  The jog was about as typical as they come: warmish weather, 21-22C and humid, but no major issues.  The weights, however, were dramatic.  I warmed up with some power cleans, 40 pounds below my all-time best, and then I cleaned and squatted 20 pounds below my all-time best--but just one rep.  The clean was horrible and almost incomplete, and the squat was about as good.  I'd miscalculated: I was tired out. 

Yet I didn't walk away.  Maybe I needed more of a warm up.  I could still do the injury prevention stuff (delt flies and clamshells) and throw in some pike situps--but, above all else, I couldn't leave the power cleans messed up like that, not again.  So I took off 20 pounds again and started over.  I alternated between power cleans and other exercises.  Once I felt more comfortable, I put 10 pounds back on and did some more reps.  10 more pounds, and more reps, and more confidence and, unexpectedly, more aggression and more speed.  I realized then that I'd been overly cautious; I had to trust that my form was well-practiced enough.  I had to become that pit mix and/or Lord Nelson: "Go straight at 'em!"  Just fling it up.  ASAP

And then, finally, I did three reps with 10 more pounds.  Still 10 pounds under my all-time best, but that dates from a while ago--I was actually at my present max.  It felt brutal--not painful or hard at all, but emotionally vicious.  It was actually thrilling and cathartic.  I would have done more reps, but my dog distracted me.  He was lying on a pile of packing mats, like he usually does, and he knows better than to step on my square when I'm lifting stuff, but perhaps he sensed my sudden burst of temper and was coming over to check it out.  Fortunately, he was not, and I completed my set.  I wound up 10 pounds heavier than the first failed clean. Success!

I'm not so sure we'll salvage today's long run after all...we both seem to have a cold, or allergies. 

EDIT: aw, I forgot to mention that 50 minutes of that jog was a fartlek session.  I pushed on the parts of trails that I like, and slacked off on the annoying stretches.  This was considerably slower than pushing through the entire loop, but I don't think my breathing dropped much at all during it.  And it was more fun because I went faster on the nice bits.