photo by Steve Penland

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Apparently I Spoke Too Soon

My last blog entry ended with a happy little "so far, so good."  And it was good...right up until I tried to skate this week.

Both skating workouts I have attempted this week have ended early and ugly.  On Tuesday my 3x5K at 50 second or so laps ended on lap six, which took me exactly one minute.  I felt horrible, and in just those six laps my lap times had increased seven seconds.  I really wasn't up for doing the remaining 30 laps, the last of which would likely need to be timed with a calendar, so I bailed on the workout.

I figured there were four possibilities for what was going wrong:  either 1)I hadn't recovered properly from the North Shore Marathon, or 2) my cold was affecting me more than I thought it was, or 3) my thyroid meds were not properly adjusted, or 4) I had eaten the wrong thing before my workout and was having blood sugar issues (what, two blueberry poptarts and a Diet Mountain Dew isn't good pre-workout food?).

I suppose there's also the possibility of 5) some combination of all of the above.

So I decided to try to eliminate as many possibilities as I could before I hit the oval again.  For the recovery, I'd take Wednesday and Thursday completely off from workouts before trying skating again on Friday.  For the cold, well, I'd just have to take vitamin C and hope it got better.  I thought I may have taken too much of my fast-acting thyroid med before skating (although still less than what I've typically used over the past three years), so I decided to adjust my timing a bit to address number three.  And for number four, no poptarts...although the Dew got to stay.

So I did all that...and Friday's intervals sucked harder than Tuesday's endurance.  My lap times were a bit better (for the 3.5 laps I managed), but I felt absolutely horrible.  Lightheaded, wobbly, sluggish--in fact, I wanted nothing more than to pull off the track, curl up on the concrete bleachers next to the oval, and take a nap.  Needless to say, the interval workout did not get completed.

Still, I think the abysmal workout gave me some important information.  The "I need a nap in the middle of a workout" sensation is something I've really only felt when my thyroid levels are high, and the "wobbly" feeling correlates pretty well with high thyroid as well.  Add in the fact that I am almost always hot (even when I'm not having a hot flash), and the fact that, despite being hungry all the time this week and eating like a truck driver, I've actually lost over a pound this week, and you've got a pretty good case for "perhaps we need to cut back on the thyroid meds a wee."  So even though I had adjusted the timing for Friday's workout, I don't think I adjusted it enough.  Time to try again.

Of course it rained today, Saturday, so I couldn't try skating with new thyroid med timing--so I decided to go to my Crossfit gym's Saturday "Bütt Camp."  I've never done the Saturday workouts before, and I'm not exactly a Crossfit veteran anyway, so a Crossfit workout is not the best way to evaluate how well my thyroid is adjusted, but it's all I had to work with.

Turns out that Bütt Camp workouts are...interesting.  This one was a partner event, and a long one:  "Annie" (which is 50-40-30-20-10 double-under jump ropes and situps, except I had to do three times as many jumps because I can't do dubs), then two rope climbs, then some toes to bar, pushups, and air squats, two more rope climbs (don't be silly, I can't climb a rope; I had to scale to three "pull yourself up off the ground" things for each climb) and then another workout named for a woman (unfortunately I can't remember which one)--3 rounds of 400 meter run, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups.  Oh, and a 45 minute cap to the workout.  Which, due to my inability to do more than five rope jumps in a row, my poor partner and I needed almost all of.

But still, I did it all.  A little PVC action in the 400 meter runs, but otherwise I felt OK (well, as OK as you can feel doing all that stuff).  So hopefully I've got the thyroid going in the right direction.   I won't really know until I skate...but--and this has a warmly familiar ring to it--so far so good.





2 comments:

  1. your workout symptoms sound like what used to be a bad day but now is the new "normal" for me. Heidi thinks it is low iron/ other hormonal related issues that I am dealing with. how IS your iron? vitamin D?

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  2. Yeah, they're also similar to what I experienced when I was hypo...but just enough different (the shakiness, sleepiness, weight loss, etc) that I'm now (usually) able to differentiate "too high" from "too low." My D is good; haven't had iron/ferritin checked lately, but i will if this continues and I begin to suspect that it's not simply a thyroid glitch. How about you? Have you had blood tests? You want to be ready for the ice season, you know!

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