Wednesday 08JUN2016

AM – 50 minutes, with the bulk of it being on a jog from the HS with Greg.  I told Greg about my heel lift and how it was causing an issue with my hip.  He looked at me and laughed and said what should have been obvious:  “You’re an idiot.  Have you put one in the other shoe?” 

So I need to do that.

I had a physical later in the morning (annual required by BSA and needed for upcoming trip to Canada).  TZ told me that my breakfast of three eggs with pulled pork and feta (and plenty of hot sauce) along with a few cups of coffee was a bad choice as it would probably drive up my BP.  As it turned out, I recorded a 110/70 which is the lowest I have recorded in memory.  I am not sure what could have caused that other than a bad measurement, I am less stressed because I am working for myself (sort of), or my running less or that my prior work measurements were elevated because I had some white coat syndrome or because it was in a fasted state.  In any case, it is good it a good number now.

There were other entertaining questions during the physical most of which probably are not best to be shared on the internet.  I was informed that 2 drinks a night, or 14 a week is considered “normal” and so that I was well below that.  Except for the time when I did more than five drinks in the last three months. 

Yup.

Evening – 33 minutes, easy to start and then rolled it up a touch over the run.

Thursday 11FEB2016 Wellness Check

Wellness check results are in:

So I get dinged for being pre-hypertensive again.  I actually probably should have been dinged as such last year but they transcribed the results incorrectly.  They did that again this year as I saw on the form the result listed as 122/82 – not 112/82.  Given that there are such transcription errors on a regular basis it leaves me questioning many of the other results.  In any case, whenever I talk to my doc about my BP, they always shake their head at the BP measurement and say that if I am actually in that range (which is questionable) that I am still fine.

I know my waist circumferance did not drop 2 inches, but that was a matter of the tech measuring about 4 inches above my hips and pulling on the tape pretty hard.

The other number that falls into the unhealthy range is total cholesterol.  I admit I don’t quite understand that, particularly since the HDL, LDL and triglyceride numbers all fall into what are considered healthy ranges.

The numbers on whole seem pretty stable though … at least from my untrained to medicine eye.

Tuesday 09FEB2016

One of my friends once told me that there are two types of people in this world: 1) those who walk in a room like “Here I am!” and 2) those who walk in a room like “There you are.”

I had my annual set of wellness tests at my work this AM.  The blood work will take a bit to get.  The BP reading was 122/82, or about what it has been for the last five years or so.  Or what the corporate wellness program would consider as “pre-hyerptensive” but when I visit my doc they say is completely okay.  Good news is that I grew an inch and am now 5’9.”  Gonna need that to make the BMI calc work for them because I put the LT belt with my knife and cell phone hanging on it to see if I could get listed as obese. 

This is a fasted test meaning I eat nothing AM.  No coffee either.  I mentioned to TZ that a dozen years ago that probably would have been a test of some sort of will, but now it is a “whatever” moment.   Maybe that means I am fat adapted?  My weight came in at 155, but the morning scale at home had me at 149 in my birthday suit.  I am about 10 pounds over what I showed up to summer races at last year.  The lowest I have seen this calendar year is 148 and most the time it is above 150.  It ain’t just the beard.

Listened to this podcast between Prager and Pinsky on the daily slog yesterday.  Excellent.  Not running related but thought provoking on many fronts.

Mid day I was able to sneak out with Shad, Bob, Neeraj and Kendrick.  After some quibbling about what we’d do for a workout, modifying that and the quibbling some more we got to work.  2 minutes, 3 minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 4 minutes, 4 minutes, 2 minutes.  It was supposed to be a 2-3-4-5-4-3-2 ladder (on 2’ minute easy rest) but someone screwed up the 4 on the way up and made it a 3 instead.  So we made up for that on the down side of the ladder.  I felt a bit gimpy with my right Achilles still a bit angry but I managed under six pace for all of the reps except the two longer slightly uphill reps.  I was breathing a bit but this was more about the legs turning over.  Good work and with good guys. 

Shad looks to be continuing his climb in fitness.  I give him crap on these days but I am excited to see what he is going to do at Boston.

Not overly worried about it but I noticed a lot of older blog posts are missing pix.  Not sure why.  If anyone has a bead on that I’d appreciate it. 

Recent interaction with KZ on FB.

September 11-13 weekend

Friday - Mid day – easy forty five minutes listening to the remainder of the Ian interview on ET.  Good listen. 

On Friday, we headed down to Heritage HS for the Liberty Bell XC race.  Seems like folks either love Liberty Bell or hate it.  It is not really a cross course and a lot of folks call it a road race.  But some kids love it because it gives them an opportunity to measure themselves year over year, and get a faster time.  And for some kids, that is a big deal because they often can stack up on times against kids at lower altitudes.  It is a zoo of an event though because there were 89 schools there … and so thousands of runners.  Both KZ and JZ PR’d and that made for happy kids.  JZ PR’d by over a minute and about by 50 seconds in the race before that.  At this rate he will be the WR holder in about a seven or so more races.

JZ and I bolted for Peaceful Valley early Saturday AM for a weekend with his OA chapter.  I got in an easy hour of running, exploring some of the old trails down there that seem to be growing over.  It was good to get away from it all and into the quiet that is PV. 

Ended up peeling a bunch of lodgepole pines down there for some teepees they are gonna build.  We soaked them in the lake for a bit to make the peeling easier, but it was still a good back breaker of work after a few hours.

Got wind that Justin won the Victor race.   Glad to hear that he secured another win for LVR.

This is entertaining, even though I am not a U of O guy.

Sunday afternoon I got out for about an hour with Bob.  We caught up on a variety of topics, including the Russian uniforms at the 100k Worlds. 

I ended up with about 40 on the week. 

The last of my lab results came back:

I exchanged some emails with the doc and basically it is that I am dealing with some decreased kidney and liver function but given that the issues seem to be improving, there is no action that will take place at this point.  I actually had urine that was yellow versus clear this weekend.  The overnight thing seems to have passed.

Imogene results.   Good to see Scott S back at it after not racing PPM.

Other weekend pix.

Blood test results

Blood test results came back.
So on this portion it looks like my RBC (red blood cell count) is down.  Everything else falls into an acceptable range.

This series has me at normal on everything except ALT which is a liver test.  That might be because I had three IPAs the night before.  Oops.  CO2 is a little outside the range.  I  I have to look up what a gloumlar filtration rate is but that appears to be slightly out of limit as well.   Creatine is at the upper limit.  Again, all follow ups with the doc.  I pretty much figure they are going to shrug on most of it and say that I messed up my kidneys some and they are on the mend.  It appears to be generally true, as my need to urinate in the middle of the night has gone from four times to two to one now. 

Centaur XC

The urinalysis results from yesterday

Kids has XC meet up at Waneka Lake / Centaurus today. 

The kids seemed generally happy with their races, but KZ was a bit irked over her performance in the last mile.  She simply described it as “I couldn’t keep it together.”  Both kids improved their times over last week – and this race was a quarter mile longer (although with a lot less vertical). 

The more I watch kids race at HS XC the more I see how their headspace impacts their physical performance.  Yes, there are great difference in physical abilities, but how a person performs within the tools they have varies dramatically based on their state of mind. 

Saw Shad over there.  His kid ran well. 

At the meet, I got questioned by a parent.  “Are you that guy who runs with mules?”  “No ma’am, I run with burros.  See the difference between a mule and a bur-“ “Sounds like animal abuse to me.”  “Well, no, they seem to like it actually.  Whenever I go to the paddock to get one out the others want to come too.”  “Yeah, I think 100 miles is too far for a donkey.”  “Oh, 100 miles?  Yeah.  We don’t go that far with a donkey.  The longest we go is 29.”   I am not sure she completely believed me because I still got a firm look.

Afternoon – I agreed to run with Bob with the understanding it would be slow, short, and that we would exchange some Leadville stories.  6.3 miles of mind blowing analysis.

Selling tours, not beer and a lot of pee

I hit a local brewery last night.  I learned that Georgia laws on how they manage these sort of establishments are significantly more restrictive than CO.  I went in to buy a beer.  I could not buy a beer.  I could buy a tour of their brewery and that got me complimentary beer, up to 36 ounces.  They also were clear that they could not sell their six packs they had bottled, but they would be happy to sell them for off site use as souvenirs.  Apparently the big distributors have a choke hold of the wallets of the legislators here so that the laws won’t be changed.  Hooray. Of course the guys tending the tour (bar) thought that the CO laws were nuts (given our legislation around marijuana). They did have a good IPA though.

AM – easy half an hour of jogging.  And I traveled back home from ATL.

I listened to the latest ATC during the jog this AM and I got a mention.  Lucho specifically calls me out for a being a bit too hard on myself in regards to my Leadville race.  Some of that is in my wiring and choices.  It is hard for me to look at a race and say, “that went perfect.”  And in a 100, as there are so many things that can be considered, and my lack of experience, it is very easy to pick at improvement opportunities.

My mind also is geared to this sort of improvement thinking because of my work.  It is what I do.  I go to various parts of my company and I work with people to consider opportunities, consider risk, and how we can get better.  I am sure some of that carries over to running.

But, yeah, I had a helluva day out there.  It was not perfect in how I performed but that is exactly what makes it so wonderful.  It gave me the opportunity to go right up to those limits, and get punched in the mouth by them.  There is the blessing in that I get to learn from that.  We learn nothing when everything is perfect.  We learn a lot more when things start to go wrong.  Or at least we have the opportunity to.

And of course, I was reminded of how wonderful my summer and my life is.  No mile went by without me considering how gifted I am to get to run in the Rocky Mountains for a 100 of those increments, and that people wanted to come and help me.  People ask how it felt and I think they want to hear how physically brutal it was.  And it was.  But it really felt lovely because that is what I got from people.

That said, I confess … I can see the addictive allure of that race.  “If I can just …” … fill in the blank with manage food or keep my legs together down the Powerline or not barf at Hopeless Pass or whatever you like … the quiet chant in the back of my head of the possibility of improvement is hard to ignore.

But … as I have said, it ain’t the race part that I am worried about.  It is the after impact of the race.  Since Leadville I have been urinating.  A lot.  Full bladder loads, so it not that I have just some urgency but there is actually a need to empty the bladder.  So essentially I am not holding on liquids appropriately.  The urine is dilute (clear, pale yellow).  And that probably reflects that my kidneys are not holding water.  It seems that this is more of an issue at night while I am sleeping, but it might be that I am just more aware of it then because I have to wake up to relieve myself.  For the first week of this, it was also combo’d with some pretty nasty head aches at night.  I imagine this might have been a dehydration thing but I really don’t know.  That part has seem to have subsided and the number of times I get up in the middle of the night has dropped from four to two. 

Obviously this is concerning because it is a symptom of many possible diseases, including some forms of diabetes.  I set up for a visit to the doc today as soon as I got back from ATL to start the process of evaluating this.  The visit went well – I had a good candid conversation with the doc and they got a urinalysis done on a quick turn around.  That gave them a pretty good set of data to conclude that it was not diabetes.  Blood work will take the weekend to process, but the general thought is I beat my kidneys up pretty well and they are on the mend.  More when the lab work comes back next week.

Catching up on a few shots over the last couple of weeks.  I may have already posted some of these.

Justin got a pair of balls.  There is some speculation he might be the only person who has been second in every Triple Crown Burro Race.

It is quite a crowd in the Park County HS gym for the pre-race pep rally.

Carner, a Leadman from years past and a burro racer himself, catches up with this year’s Leadman class members Shad and Ray.

Both these guys got Leadman done.  Whole new level of respect from me on that event because it is a just a consumer of the summer.  Shad had the season of his life and had me wondering if he’d roll me up on the Boulevard. 

Those buckles get big for those folks who do this race a lot of years.

At this point, I am pretty sure this is the only one of these I will get.

Saturday 022115

AM – the snow rolled in but not too bad yet. 7.2 miles.

Afternoon – the snow rolled out in reprieve, and I got another 7.2 in with the dogs.  The snow really started to fly after that though.  Definitely a slow jog with the dogs.  I was feeling a bit of the last two days.

More USATF crap.

Apparently carbs now cause concussions.

Good read on the current state of Trason.  Buried in there is a stat:  70000 something runners did an ultra in 2013.  Hmm.  So essentially in a year, some number less than the number of people who attend say a few baseball games.  Or less than the attendance at the Daytona 500.  The sport is still niche folks, even if it has grown in 20 years.

All I can think of is “why the f*ck do I do this to myself?”

My lab results from Thursday came in today.










Admittedly I have not done any analysis on this other than to notice that they recorded my BP as 118 over 72 versus what they told me when I got it done which was 112/82.  Frankly, with that sort of weirdness, it does make me begin to question the very integrity of the other numbers.  I get it – people write stuff down and errors are made. 

I have to assume that my triglyceride numbers from one of my tests is wrong.  My doc visit on Tuesday had it at 36.  Historically my numbers with this program have been in the 50s and 60s, and my numbers with Kaiser have been WAY higher than that.