The Oval is Over

Last night was my last oval workout of the 2012-13 winter season (the oval is open a couple more days but I'll be in Salt Lake City trying not to achieve another SLC Epic Fail race and thus will miss the actual last day of the oval season).  Last year I was moved to poetry by the close of the season.  This year I'm moved to...well, I'm barely moving at all.  I am so freakin' tired right now that I think I--a classic white-knuckle get-me-off-this-thing-now flier--am actually looking forward to my flight to Salt Lake tomorrow...because it will be a fine opportunity for a nap.

Some of the fatigue is probably situational.  I've had stuff going on during the weekends that has prevented me from sleeping in; I've had extra stuff after school several days of the week; today was a full day of teaching followed by 3 hours of parent-teacher conferences and then coming home to pack (OK, and to do a blog post.  Just a little one.).  But I do think some of the fatigue is more than just situational; I think that it's time to get the thyroid checked again.  Along with the fatigue and the complete inability to turn in a reasonable lap time on the oval, a couple of other familiar symptoms are rearing their ugly heads--not the least of which is an all-consuming irritability.  Whee.  I probably should have had my levels checked sooner, but it's a tricky thing--if you check too soon, your levels won't be low enough to be of concern (even though the symptoms will suck at that point) and then the doctor and the insurance company will be reluctant to do another check for many months.  So I've got to wait until things get pretty unpleasant before I go in for a check.

I think I've reached that point.

So tomorrow I'll take my tired, cranky, sore-hamstringed self off to Salt Lake to race. (No blog updates from out there because I'll only have the Android tablet, which I can't figure out how to blog with). My goal is to have fun and to not get too depressed when my times stink.  Then I'll come back and do whatever I can   (in 5 days) to get ready for the Metrodome Inline Marathon on March 9.  And I'll get my thyroid checked again.

And then, finally, starting March 10...I'll rest.

Right now, that's sounding pretty darn good.

The Salt Lake City Curse

On Friday, I'll be leaving for Salt Lake City to skate the final American Cup race of the season (yes, pre-"post season depression" is already threatening to set in, sore legs notwithstanding).  A quick review of my race results from Salt Lake over the past seven years reveals this:

• 2006  North American Championships.  This was a great event for me; I set age-group records in three of the four events (the North Americans were pack style back then, and not many masters skated them.)  I broke 5 minutes in the 3K for the first time ever--4:59.32--thanks to a very generous draft from a talented Senior-age skater who was put in with us "older ladies."
• 2007  US Championships.  Another great event for me.  Personals in three of the four distances, including what is still my fastest 5K ever, 8:16.
• 2010 Masters race.  Epic Fail #1.   3k; my 5:01 was slower than I had skated the distance in Milwaukee earlier in the month (remember, SLC is a high-altitude oval which makes it typically around 1 second per lap faster than indoor sea-level ovals such as Milwaukee; a same-effort skate should result in a 3K that's 7 seconds or so faster in SLC than in MKE).
• 2011  Masters Long Distance race.  Epic Fail #2.  My 5k, at 8:30, was again similar to what I had been achieving in Milwaukee, and about 10-15 seconds slower than what Coach TieGuy thought I should be able to do.  It was also one of the most excruciating races I've ever skated.
• 2011 Masters Camp 1.  In the fall of 2011 I did a 3K at the end of the masters camp; a 5:02 made it Epic Fail #3. (I had done a 5:02 as the first 3K of a 5K just a couple weeks before in Milwaukee).
• 2012  Masters Camp 2.  Having learned my lesson from Masters Camp 1, I signed up for a 500 and 1000 instead of a 3K in the for-fun time trials at the end of camp.  Still, both the 500 and the 1000 managed to end up, not at my usual Milwaukee times, but at my usual (much slower) Roseville outdoor times.  Epic Fail #4 (or is that 4 and 5?)

In short, I have not had a good race at Salt Lake since 2007. And since this season has been pretty much the worst season I've had since, well, since I started skating, 2012 is not looking like the year I break the SLC curse.

So why, you might ask, am I going?  Well, although it sounds a bit lame, I signed up because it "seemed like a good idea at the time."  I was having fun skating, although not going terribly fast; all my friends were signing up and making plans to go; and if I didn't do the American Cup in SLC in early March, my "big races" would be done for the season in January.  I have enough trouble coping with the end of the skating season without it essentially coming 6 weeks early.

So I signed up, I got my plane ticket and my hotel room and my rental car, and I'm setting my attitude on the now-familiar "have as much fun as possible and don't stress about how fast you skate" mode. 

And if the Salt Lake City Curse again rears its ugly head and I have a horrible 3K...well, at least it won't be a surprise!

A Superior Weekend

No, I didn't race...I visited my parents at our cabin--now their year-round home--on Lake Superior (see what I did there?).  Keira and I left the Hubster home to tend the home fires, and headed north for a fun and relaxing weekend with my parents and their four dogs.

Lake Superior is beautiful any time of year and in any weather, but I hadn't seen it in late winter in a few years.  This was the view out the window from the dining room table the first day:

By the next morning a vast sheet of ice slowly drifted across the water from the East, and by noon there was almost no open water to be seen.  Then overnight, the ice shifted against itself and produced a long ridge of window-pane slabs of ice all jumbled together; as I watched from the breakfast table, I could see piles of the sheets of ice sliding and tumbling as the ice completed its final movement to close the one remaining open channel. Here's my attempt to capture the beauty:

Oops--doggy photobomb!

Of course, with 5 dogs around, it was hard to get a picture without at least one of them in it!  The littlest dog, Bumpe ("Boompa") had been neutered on (of all things) Valentine's day, and was under strict "no rough housing" orders from the vet.  He spent much of his time banished to a high chair that he couldn't jump out of:

He's not impressed.

Of course, there were walks:

...and photo opps with Keira the WonderDog:

Isn't she adorable?

For my one workout of the weekend, I planned to go cross country skiing at Pincushion Mountain in Grand Marais.  My cousin and his family were also at the cabin, and they thought they might go to Pincushion as well.  But first, my cousin wanted to do a little "bushwhacking" ski tour of the cabin property.  So we set out, over the river logs and through the woods.  All was well until I felt a strange floppiness in my right foot.  A closer look showed that the plastic cuff on my ski boot had fractured into several pieces.  By the time I wobbled back through the woods (and over a couple more logs) the boot looked like this:

Clearly, I would do no more skating skiing on this boot.  By this time my cousin had decided to take his family on a ski tour of the cabin rather than go to Pincushion, but I was already in my ski clothes, I wanted to ski...and besides, I needed to head into town to get a Sven and Ole's frozen pizza for dinner anyway. So I threw my skis into the car and went to Grand Marais, where the nice guys at Stone Harbor saved the day by renting me some boots:

Thanks, guys!

So I went to Pincushion and had a great ski...perfect trails...

...light snowfall, and beautiful woods.  And one fall and two blisters, but hey, I wasn't complaining.

I was focusing so much on taking the picture that I forgot to smile.

So it was a great weekend.  Of course, my legs are sore from the skiing, and the blisters still hurt...but I love hanging out with my parents, and Lake Superior is, of course, the most beautiful body of water in the world. I'll leave you with some gratuitous dog and lake pictures...because I can.

Holy Thyroid Meds, Batman!

This morning I reconfirmed--not that I needed any more confirmation--my belief that I must properly time my fast-acting thyroid med in order to have a normal workout.  I've known this for most of the almost-three-years that my hypothyroidism has been medicated--in fact, I suspect that I've used this post title before, but I'm just too lazy to go back through all my posts to check--but I still find myself continually reminded of the fact that if I don't take the meds 3-4 hours before a workout or a meet, I'll be a sluggish little lump of poo on the ice.  (Just as a reminder for those of you who might be thinking that thyroid meds are a performance-enhancing substance--they're not.  I had a few instances of being slightly over-medicated this summer when my levels were being adjusted, and the only thing worse than trying to skate with too little thyroid meds is trying to skate with too much).

Anyway, this morning we had ice time but no time trials, so I decided to do the 3K-pace interval workout that I missed out on Thursday night when I forgot my skates.  (Why, yes, I am still sore from the impromptu dryland workout that I threw together to make up for the missed ice time; thanks for asking).  I knew the med timing might be a bit of an issue; a cold and general end-of-the-week fatigue had made me resist doing my usual "set the alarm for the time I'll need to take the meds" strategy.  I figured I'd just take the meds whenever I got up, and let the timing be what it would be.  So I ended up heading out for my first set of  four "400 on/400 rest" laps less than two hours after my meds.

And I felt OK.  It was warm but super windy, so when my laps, which I had hoped would be 42-43 seconds, turned out to be high 41's and low 42's, I was satisfied.  True, I had felt like I had no power down the into-the-wind backstretch, and my usual 10-12 stroke straightaways had regressed to near-Bunny-on-Crack-level 16 to 18 strokes.  Still, I figured things were fine.

Until I got back out on the ice from my foot-warming break for set two.  By this time it was almost three hours since my meds.  Historically my second set of intervals can either be similar to my first, or a huge fatigue-induced slowdown.  Today had given no indication of which way it was leaning, so I headed into the first lap with no expectations.  I also headed into the first lap with a posse; I had picked up Mel, Inliner Boy, and Cross Boy, and they all--although they're faster than I am--were kind enough to skate behind me to let me indulge my "I have to know how fast I am without a draft" obsession.  So I led out the paceline, completed the lap, and looked at my stopwatch.

38.7

Let me repeat that.  38.7 seconds.  Exactly three seconds faster than the first lap in the first set.  It had felt like the same level of effort; I would have guessed the lap was a 41-something.  Hmm.

The remaining three laps were similar, although I backed off a bit because let's face it, 38 is not my outdoor 3K pace and these laps were supposed to be 3K pace.  By the last lap I was beginning to wonder if there was some sort of "reverse draft" effect from leading a paceline that was making me faster, so Mel and the Fast Boys obligingly dropped back so there was absolutely no chance that they were somehow making me faster.

39.4.

So clearly it was all me.  And interestingly enough, my straightaways were back down to 12 laps with the wind and 14 into the wind.  Apparently I just have a lot more power when all systems are functioning normally.  This might just be convincing enough evidence that next time I'll set the alarm and get up early, tired or not.

On another note, Mel finally got a chance to skate a mile--or at least a couple laps--in my shoes skates.  She wanted to see whether my inability to "carve" was due to me or to the skates.  Results were a bit inconclusive, and Mel, like Coach TieGuy, is capable of delivering a lot more technical information than I am capable of assimilating.  So I did a lot of "yeah, um hum" but I'm not really sure I got the whole point (Mel, you had to suspect that, right?).  I think what she was saying, though, is that I should be able to do the proper technique on my skates, but I might have to change my approach a bit.  So we'll see what happens.  In the meantime, I decided to drop my skates off to get them radiused (have the curvature of the bottom of the blade redone), so if I skate tomorrow (weather pending) it will need to be in my old skates, which could lead to a whole 'nother kind of bad technique.

Here's Mel, taking my skates for a spin:

My skates are probably thinking "oh, so this is what we're supposed to be doing!"

And that's part of the fun of skating...whether it's med timing or technique tweaks, there's always something new to learn!

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Today started out on a fairly craptastic note.  Keira the WonderDog (as in, "Sometimes we wonder about you, Dog") started my day 50 minutes before the alarm rang with a tag-shaking, ear-flapping, toy-squeaking request to be taken out to poo.  This from the dog who typically has to be prodded awake at 10 am and dragged outside for a potty break.  And, of course--this being Minnesota in February, me being someone who doesn't trust my dog off leash, and Keira being a polite sort who believes that the "poo zone" doesn't start until the edge of the woods 200 yards from the house--the whole process required coat and boots and mittens and hat and enough time that I never did get back to sleep.

My day didn't improve much after that, and by evening I was very ready for my stress-relieving, endorphin-inspiring skate.  I had it all planned out: a nice set of 3K-pace intervals...not fast enough to tax my coming-down-with-a-cold body, but demanding enough to make me feel like I'd done something.  And my friend Mel was planning to skate a couple laps in my skates, to see whether my recent failure to figure out the "carve" should be blamed on me or on my skates (I think we all know how that one is going to end up, don't we?).

So I drove the 30 miles to the oval, happily indulging in my pre-skate ritual of iPod playlist and FRS energy shot and a couple of Gu Chomps just to be sure I didn't run out of energy mid-interval.  I pulled into the parking lot, found a spot amid the hockey-game-attending crowd, got out, opened the back door, reached into the backseat...

...and realized that I had left my skates at home.

Now, practice is 90 minutes long, and I had arrived uncharacteristically late--right at the start of the ice time instead of my customary 30 minutes early--so I had no time to go back for the skates.  But there I was, all wound up and cranky and energy-shotted and Gu'd...getting back into the car and driving home was not an option.

So I did a short dryland workout.  And, given that I haven't done dryland in a couple months and that the first dryland workout in a while is always a painful experience for several days afterwards, I'm guessing that for the next three days or so, every time I take a step I'll be reminded of how dumb I was to forget my skates tonight.

Stupidity...the gift that keeps on giving.

Roller Doom

I went to the Roller Dome for a little inline skating tonight.  Due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances I only got out on the long track once this week (although if you're going to miss a couple days of skating, the ones where the wind chill is -20 are as good as any).  So the Dome seemed like a good plan. For those who have never had the pleasure, in Minnesota we get to inline skate in the stadium where the Vikings play football.  We skate around the concourse, past the beer stands and condiment shelves.  It's a cool place to skate; they even have a marathon in the spring. Unfortunately, the dome will be torn down sometime next winter to make way for the new football stadium. Bummer.

Anyway, I skate in the dome every so often.  In 2008, when the thyroid problems began, I had a really hard time doing endurance work outdoors and so did pretty much all my endurance workouts that winter in the dome.  So when I decided to make up for Wednesday's and Thursday's lost workouts by going to the dome, I simply looked back at my 2008 workouts and picked one.  5x5 laps, or about 5 x 3K.  Seemed simple enough.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten something that I just reminded fellow middle-aged-lady-skate-blogger Sharon about.  Sharon has (in addition to her short track adventures) signed up to do a triathlon this year.  She's all kinds of crazy brave.  So today she posted about how she was a bit surprised, given the massive increase in workouts she's currently engaged in, to find that skating wasn't any easier.

I told her what I believe to be the (sad) truth: when you get older, there is no such thing as "in shape."  There is only "in shape for (insert your sport of choice)."  See, when you're younger, you can run or bike or swim or skate and all your muscles seem to benefit from that.  Then you can go out and play frisbee or mountain climb or ride a skate board, and you feel all fit and strong and nothing complains the next day.

Over 40, the situation is not so rosy.  If you bike, you can only bike without incurring sore muscles.  If you run, you can run.  If you long track skate, you can long track skate.  You would think that slideboard and dryland and inline skating are close enough to long track that there'd be some crossover (no pun intended), but no.  When I launched into my 5x5 laps tonight, not only did the skates feel funny and the floor slippery, but things started to hurt pretty quickly.  Which is why the 5x5 laps turned into 5x4 laps, and why I'm pretty sure I'll be feeling all 20 laps tomorrow.  And the next day.

Which should be interesting, because I plan to go to the dome again that day.