Lazy Dog and Low Bottom

Ahhhh...

The baby gates have been removed from the doorways, the carpet "spot cleaner" has been removed from the kitchen counter, the puppy pee has been removed from the big dog's bed--four times, and the earplugs have been removed from the Hubster's ears (although the noises made by a 10-week-old MinPin who really wants out of her crate at 2 a.m. can cut through any earplugs as easily as Apolo Ohno cuts through a short-track pack).

The MinPin has left the building.

I, as chief puppy-walker, pee-cleaner, and "stop that now" enforcer, am relieved. The Hubster, as chief Tolerant Spouse, is relieved. No one, however, is more relieved than our dog Keira.

Keira is a 5-year-old "American Staghound," a mix of Greyhound and Scottish Deerhound. Her lineage would indicate that she combines the speed of a Greyhound with the toughness and stamina of a Deerhound. Instead, she combines the energy of an elderly, overweight toy poodle with the stamina of an asthmatic Basset Hound. So laid back she's usually horizontal, when Keira does run she's a sprinter (but I love her anyway); her chief goal in life, however, is to find a nice spot for a nap.

This, of course, is in direct conflict with the chief goal of a MinPin puppy, which is to wreak more havoc than one would think possible for something that weighs less than 3 pounds, and to wreak it in as little time as possible. Within 30 minutes of her arrival, puppy Belle had stolen Keira's toys, tried to steal her food, peed on her bed, barked in her ear, pounced on her tail, and, in a vain attempt to get Keira to play, pawed enthusiastically at Keira's beard about 20 times (both my parents' MinPins are inordinately fond of Keira's beard).

Keira was not amused. Patient and tolerant, but definitely not amused. And when, after 48 hours of MinPin-fueled aggravation and sleep deprivation, Keira realized that the puppy had left, she literally did a happy dance, prancing and wagging and bounding clumsily about.

For about 10 seconds.

And then she went to sleep on my slideboard.

As for the skating...I thought, for a brief, exciting moment Tuesday, that the bottom had gotten lower. Most 47-year-old women are not remotely interested in achieving a lower bottom, but I am. And not in the usual skating sense, either.

In speedskating, the lower you can get (by bending your knees and lowering your butt, not by bending over at the waist), the more effective your push will be and the faster you'll go. I am a notoriously "high" skater--Coach TieGuy has spent a lot of time intoning"get your butt lower" during practice (I always had to fight the urge to tell him that, if he'd just be patient, time and gravity would take care of that.)

But that's not the bottom I'm wanting to lower. No, I'm referring to the artificial "bottom" that's been preventing me from skating hard lately; the one that makes me feel that, no matter how hard I twist the throttle, I won't be able to use everything in the engine. And Tuesday, it seemed as though that bottom had gotten a little lower. I had some aggression in the corners, some snap in the straights, some lap times that didn't want to make me toss my skates into the nearest pond and take up shuffleboard or something. Yesterday, though, the bottom was right back up there again, saying"nope, you can't go any faster" and causing me to turn in interval laps slower than my usual warm-up laps. I should be incredibly frustrated, but the sad truth is, I'm starting to get used to it.

But now it's Thursday morning, and my "recovery week" has started. No skating until next Wednesday--just whatever "fun, keep moving" activities I want to do. Plenty of time to obsess over my data from past workouts, to Google possible reasons for my impaired performance (since thyroid levels seem to be more or less back up to normal now), to convince myself that when I step back on the track Wednesday morning I'll be able to skate hard again.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Public Service Announcement

PSA: The presence of a puppy in the house will render one incapable of completing chores, sleeping, putting together a rational thought...or blogging.

Fortunately, the above little charmer is merely a visitor, stopping at our house on her way from South (North?) Dakota to my parents' house up north. My brother in law will pick her up tomorrow morning, but it looks to be a long 24 hours!

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming post-puppy.

Body by Crap

"You are what you eat," they say--but I'm pretty sure this is not true, because of the following:

I eat fast food. I am not fast.

In truth, I could be the poster child for Body by Crap (except I'm a little old to be an anything-child). If it's bad for me, I like it: pizza, fries, hamburgers, chips. And diet pop...lots of diet pop. Especially Diet Dew. As the spokesperson for Body by Crap, my motto is "Just Dew It."

I'm not sure how I ended up being the Queen of the Junk Food, because I certainly didn't start out that way. We ate a lot of healthy stuff when I was growing up; all our meals were home-cooked, and I think I was a teenager before I ever tasted McDonald's. And I wasn't forced into eating well by my parents; I truly believed in it. I read Adelle Davis' book "Lets Eat Right to Keep Fit" when I was 12; on a fourth-grade field trip that included a stop at Mickey D's, I insisted on bringing my own bag lunch (OK, so I was health-conscious and a geek); I probably drank 2 cans of pop a year throughout my childhood. According to an article I just read in our local paper, the healthy eating habits of my childhood should have lingered into adulthood.

Unfortunately, not so. I picked up a nice Tab habit in college--gateway drug to the hard stuff, the Dew--and somewhere along the line I discovered the joy of the drive-through. Now, at 47, I can convince myself that half a box of Peanut Butter Panda Puffs cereal is good recovery food, and that a McDonald's breakfast is not only a fine pre-race option, it's actually essential.

Yes, that's right...I have eaten McDonald's for breakfast before every long track race for the past five years or so...except for the one time I tried Burger King, but that didn't end well. Bacon-egg-and-cheese bagel or biscuit for a short local time trial meet; sausage-egg-and-cheese for the longer meets when I need to stave off hunger until 1:00 or so. And hashbrowns. And, of course, Diet Dew (or coffee if I'm in Canada where Dew is scarce and un-caffeinated). I can't eat between races, so I need to eat enough at breakfast to last until the end of the meet.

Or so I tell myself.

And it's worked well--up until now. Now, though, what with the increasingly-tight skinsuit and the increasingly-increasing lap times, I need to make sure that my diet isn't a contributor to my slow-and-pudgy issues. As Coach TieGuy recently reminded me, sooner or later Crap In will equal Crap Out, and I can't expect my body to continue to perform well on McMuffins and Diet Dew (I think there was an implicit "at your age" in his comment, but I didn't ask). I know how to eat well in general, but I'm not sure how to eat so as to lose weight while doing insane workouts, or how to eat to recover from insane workouts. So I signed on with a nutrition-for-athletes service. I'm waiting for my dietitian to get back to me so we can design the optimal eating plan for someone who knows the location of every McDonald's within a five mile radius of every long track oval in North America. While I'm waiting to hear from her, of course, I'm doing what any logical person would do--I'm eating everything I'm not supposed to eat, before she can tell me I'm not allowed to eat it anymore.

So yes, I had McDonald's and Diet Dew for breakfast today. I was, after all, going to a race.

Except I wasn't racing, I was just watching.

I'm afraid my dietitian has her work cut out for her.

Chicken Wings and String Things

Nope, not feeling like an athlete yet. Don't want to dwell on the bad workout, though...so I won't. On to something more entertaining...

"So," you might be wondering (or maybe not), "what's with the belt on the skinsuit in the picture on the right at the top of the blog?" Well, I'll tell you...

TieGuy has spent an inordinate amount of time telling me to “lose the chicken wing.” You can see it illustrated nicely in the above picture—the left arm out away from the body, as though I’m a lycra-clad barnyard fowl attempting to take flight.

So what’s wrong with the chicken wing? Well, it’s not aerodynamic, and it tends to lead to one “bobbing” ones’ shoulders in the corner, as the hand slips off the back. I skate with one arm up regardless of the race distance (most people swing both arms in the shortest races and put both on their backs for the straightaways in the longer distances, but I find that the less things I have to master, the better), so I have a lot of opportunities for wingin’ it.

TieGuy tried lots of strategies to eradicate the wing. Until he moved out of state last fall (some lame excuse about a job opportunity) and started coaching by remote, we used to use FRS radios at practice (“walkie talkies,” for those of you without technically correct Hubsters). I became quite accustomed to hearing “lose the chicken wing” chanted into my earbud, but the thought never quite made it to my left arm. After a couple years of this, TieGuy was forced to try other tactics.

Once, as I exited a corner, he said “did you know that Kentucky Fried Chicken serves grilled chicken now?”

“Why is he bringing that up now…oh!” and I pulled in the wing.

Another time, when practicing on inlines on an otherwise deserted oval in the summer, I came out of a corner to see TieGuy (tie and all) hopping strangely about the track. It took me half the straightaway to realize he was doing “The Chicken Dance.”

Even this was not successful in eradicating the wing,though, and a couple days later I coasted up to TieGuy after an interval, to find him unbuckling and removing his belt.

“Wow, I didn’t skate that bad, did I?”

Turns out he just wanted me to try using what I now refer to as a “string thing”--a string around the waist to help locate and anchor the left hand on the back. I tried it with the belt first and it seemed to help, so I got a more high-tech solution—an old skate lace. It has a special slip knot so I can adjust it easily; it has to be loose and therefore easy to get my thumb into and out of, because my protective responses are a bit sluggish even when my hand isn’t essentially tied behind my back. I already have one bad tooth from a start-gone-awry faceplant; I’m not looking for another.

So I use the string thing, in workouts and in races (but not during trail skates. There’s a much greater likelihood of needing to use my protective responses in trail skates). I’ve noticed that the ratio of string-thing-usage among male and female skaters is approximately 10:1 in favor of the women; maybe it’s not macho to skate with a string around your waist.

At any rate, it works, and most of the time, the wing is now tucked aerodynamically along my back.

One aspect of technique mastered, 75 to go…

Like an Athlete

I want to feel like an athlete again.

I'm not saying I want to be fast (although I do). I'm not saying I want to be young and not-so-creaky again (although that would be nice, too). I'm not even saying that I want to lose weight (although clearly I need to). I just want to have that glorious feeling of going hard, digging deep, using everything you've got--however much that may be. I miss that.

You expect, of course, to "leave it all on the ice" in a race. I used to have that feeling pretty much every Oval workout, though. No workout planned by Coach TieGuy is easy; there's always a challenge (relax, this doesn't mean I do every workout at 100%; there are plenty of recovery days and easy weeks, as is fitting for any athlete but especially a Masters athlete). So three times a week, 9 months of the year, I have the chance to see what I've got. Can I hold the lap times? Can I complete the endurance laps without having to stand up and rest my back? Can I stay mentally tough through 60 laps and 95 degrees and 25 mile per hour winds? Even when the answer is "no," there's something satisfying about feeling as though I've tried as hard as I can.

That feeling is gone right now. It first left in the spring of '08, when my thyroid started its slow slide into hypoville. It showed up a few times in the next two years, but didn't return with any consistency until the fall of '10, after I was diagnosed and effectively medicated. Last winter, the '10-11 season, was a blast--hard workouts, good races, even a couple Personal Bests at the end of the season (I hadn't had any PB's in almost 3 years).

This spring, though, every Oval workout--every one--has featured what I think of as "hypo legs." Actually, it's not just the legs, but "hypo legs sore back clumsy no aggression" is a bit too much of a mouthful. That's how I feel, though--legs won't go, back gets sore quickly, can't drive the knees, can't keep the tempo up, just can't go--even though I'm not tired when I'm done. The first winter I felt like this, after every race I'd step off the ice saying "I don't know why my time was so slow...I couldn't go any faster but I'm not even tired now." It's kind of like riding a kids' dirt bike with a throttle limiter--I know there's more in the engine, but I just can't get to it. Very frustrating.

Today I had dryland, and it felt good (OK, the left glute is still smoldering, but the fact that it's only the left and not both is merely a reminder that I shouldn't have skipped my Physical Therapy exercises this week. I can picture TieGuy, a state away, happily stabbing a little Kaari Voodoo doll in the left glute with a pin as he cackles "shouldn't have ignored the PT"...but I digress). Anyway, the dryland felt good, the warmup jog felt good...but dryland and warmup jogs don't provide an opportunity to "see what you've got." For that I'll have to wait for tomorrow's long interval workout; to see if the med changes are finally having an effect, to see if I can go hard again.

I sure hope I can, because I can't wait to feel like an athlete again.

If You Don't Use Your Brain, Your Whole Body Suffers

If you don’t use your brain, your whole body suffers.

This is one of my brother-in-law’s favorite sayings, and today I am reminded of its truth: I didn’t use my brain, and now my whole body is suffering. Or at least part of my body. The part I sit on.

When I started the new skating season in April (after having the month of March off), I figured I’d be smart. I knew Coach TieGuy would have me jump right into the dryland workouts, and doing dryland when you haven’t done dryland since last fall is a painful proposition. So I decided I’d ease into the program by splitting the first workout and doing it over two days instead of one.

The problem is, when you haven’t done dryland in 6 months, 25 minutes of down time is just as bad as 50--the next day I was hobbling around wondering who was holding the blow torch to my butt. And the next day. And the next. Eventually, of course, the pain went away and I was able to complete the rest of April’s dryland workouts without a problem (other than the stares I incurred from little soccer players as I turnskated around the track in my new favorite dryland location, the local sports dome).

Then May came, and the Oval opened for inline skating. My workouts in May are usually part dryland and part skating, and then segue into pure inlining (on the Oval) for the rest of the summer and early fall, until the Oval closes to prepare for ice and I’m back to dryland again. I think most long track skaters do mostly biking and dryland and weights in the off season, but I like to skate—I’m lucky enough to have an Oval to skate on in the summer, and my technique can use all the time on skates it can get. Plus, I don’t like biking and I really don’t like weights—so I skate.

This May, though, the wheels started to come off (figuratively, not literally—I do know enough to tighten the axles once in a while) during the second workout. Slow, sluggish, hitting the wall at 300 meters into any effort of skate—in short, feeling just like I had before I was diagnosed hypothyroid and got on meds. I got my labs redone, and discovered my thyroid hormones were indeed low again, but medication adjustments take time and there were plenty of bad workouts to come. I fact, the bad workouts are still coming, and this led directly to my once-again-flaming glutes.

In the past, it was very easy to decide when to bag part of a workout. I just skated as hard as I could and if it started to look like falling over or puking might be imminent, TieGuy might tell me to cut the workout short. Now that I’m on my own, though, it’s trickier. At first, as sluggish lap followed sluggish lap, I was determined to do it all, no matter how badly I did it. When you’re really, really sucking, though-- when endurance laps that should average 46 or 47 seconds are hitting 57’s and 58’s, and when tempo laps that should be 41 are 51--it gets harder and harder to stay mentally tough. And, since the dryland is the stuff I dislike the most, the dryland was the first stuff to get abandoned when I couldn’t take it any more in a workout. Add that to a couple of weekends at the cabin when I shirked my dryland duties, and I hadn’t done any down time for about three weeks. (The photo above is of the best possible dryland situation: on the deck at the cabin, overlooking Lake Superior. This photo, of course, is from last year, when I still actually did dryland at the cabin…)

Then I called TieGuy last weekend for the weekly whinefest update. He wanted me to cut back a bit on workouts, since things are still not going well. He did, however, want me to be sure to do the dryland.

So yesterday I did my 3minutes of 5 different exercises (Dryskate, Turnskate, Squat, Karlstads, and Dryskate Squats, for those of you who want to get specific) as well as 1 minute of 4-square in each of 4 different directions, and the skating part of the workout. Turns out, 15 minutes of downtime when you haven’t done any in 3 weeks is just as bad as 25 minutes when you haven’t done any since fall, and the blowtorch has been re-applied.

So it’s true. If you don’t use your brain, your whole body suffers. Or at least part of it.

Next time, I’ll think twice before I skip the dryland.

SCOWL

There are a lot of speedskating teams (Clubs? Groups? Herds?) out there, and it seems like most of them have acronyms—FASST, SWIFT, STEP, and so on. I don’t know what they all mean, but as soon as I realized all these acronyms existed, I felt a twinge of envy.

“I want an acronym,” I told TieGuy the next day at practice. Never mind that I’m a “club” of one, I want an acronym. And, not being one to leave anything to chance, I had already come up with one.

“SCOWL. It’s perfect. Slow Clumsy Old Whiney Lady.”

TieGuy was not impressed.

Still, since I’m the only member of SCOWL, I think I should have the right to name the team. And it truly fits, as follows:

Slow: OK, there have been times when I have not been slow. I want to get back to those times. Right now, though, I am slow.

Clumsy: No one who knows me well will dispute this.

Not Hubster, who has witnessed great feats of my coordination--such as the time I was giving a friend a ride on my dirt bike and was suddenly confronted by Hubster (then just Friendster) coming towards us in his Jeep; lacking any ability to successfully execute an evasive maneuver, I simply dumped the bike, myself, and my unhappy passenger into the raspberry bushes. Or the time Hubster tried to teach me to ride my mountain bike (full suspension mountain bike, I might add, which should have made the whole process easier) over a curb, only to get a close up view of me doing a perfect endo when I dropped the front wheel just in front of the curb instead of on top of it.

Not my parents; my mom, who taught exercise classes when I was in high school, once had to ask me if I could please stand at the back of her class instead of the front—I was righting when everyone was supposed to be lefting, and I was throwing the whole class off.

Not my ninth grade PE teacher, who had the good grace not to laugh when, during the punting test in the flag football unit, I missed the ball completely.

Not my twelfth grade “Outdoor Education” teacher, who told me that he wasn’t quite sure how to grade me on the archery unit since I had gotten 100% on the written test--and 15 out of 200 points on the practical test.

And certainly not TieGuy, who has had to put up with almost five years of watching me fumble my way around the rink. My specialty is “suddenly” grasping a concept that he has been explaining to me for the past two years, and then working for the next two years on trying to execute said concept.

Old: I’m 47. Either that counts as old or it doesn’t; right now, 47 feels old.

Whiney: I try not to whine, really I do. My standard line is “I’m not whining, I’m conveying relevant information about my physical status.” Trouble is, I usually convey this information before I’ve even started a workout, listing all current aches, pains, and mental traumas and speculating aloud about how these issues may limit my ability to complete said workout at prescribed paces. And then going out and nailing the workout. This has led to TieGuy responding to my “relevant information” with his own standard line: “Don’t tell me how you feel. Go out and skate and I’ll tell you how you felt.”

Lady: This one is a bit iffy; I qualify in the gender sense but not, probably, in the genteel sense. I needed the “L,” though…

I'm trying to work my way out of SCOWL, but right now it fits. What's your acronym?

Wrestling with Demons

I was an American Studies and Creative Writing major in college (I know, I know, but a teaching license and a Master’s degree later and I ended up a happy Special Ed teacher—who writes a mean IEP). One of my more vivid memories of my writing classes was a conversation I had with my creative writing prof, Dr. Polansky. I apparently frustrated him a great deal.

“Most of my students,” he said, holding my latest offering like he was looking for a bird cage to line with it, “have great things to write about but have no ability to write. You,” he continued, “you have great command of the mechanics of writing; you just have nothing to say.” He paused, then delivered his ultimate bit of creative writing advice:

“You gotta wrestle with some demons.”

“Dude,” I wanted to say (except this was 1982 and no one in Minnesota said “dude”), “I’m a 19 year old college student from a good family. I don’t have any demons.”

Actually, I think I mumbled something inane about reading to be entertained and thus wanting to write to entertain, and scampered off. The comment stuck with me, though, and I do remember wondering what, if any, demons I would face as I got older; how would I deal with them, and would I want to write about them?

Now, almost 30 years later, I’m happy to announce that there are still no demons. (To be fair, Dr. Polansky was from the East Coast; I think they have more demons out there). Oh, sure, there are things that make me sad: watching my parents age and deal with health issues; seeing people be taken from this life far too early; seeing any kind of animal in any kind of distress (our dog Keira capitalizes on this last one regularly). And, of course (and most relevant to this blog…you were wondering when we were going to get back to skating, weren’t you?), it makes me sad that I can’t skate fast anymore. Still, that’s not really a “demon,” and despite how much I might whine about it in upcoming weeks/months/years, I know that it’s truly not a big problem in the whole scope of life. As I once said to the Hubster when he was complaining about something not going well in a rally (he races in car rally races), “if your biggest problem in life concerns your hobby, consider yourself lucky.”

So, while this blog is about skating, it’s also a way for me to do something I enjoy—use my command of the mechanics of writing to entertain myself by writing about “nothing.” If my writing about skating and “nothing” happens to entertain anyone else, so much the better.

Sorry, Dr. Polansky—still no demons.

Wii be Jammin’

TieGuy has me do some interesting workouts. My recovery workouts (done on the weekends) typically include an easy skate, run, or bike; some Yoga; possibly some slideboard or light dryland; and TaeBo or WiiFit or balance board.

Now, the TaeBo/Wii/balance board is probably not something he’d have every skater do; it’s just an attempt to deal with my poor proprioceptive sense, bad balance, and mediocre motor planning. TieGuy, who is a physical therapist in real life, says that the technical term for me is “Motor Moron.” Whatever.

Anyway, I tried the TaeBo, but Billy and I just didn’t get along. Putting aside the part of our disagreement that was undoubtedly my fault (that is, the part that is the reason I was supposed to be doing TaeBo in the first place, and the reason that I sometimes had to play the DVD at half-speed in order to figure out the moves—in other words, my Motor Moronity), there were issues. What particularly got to me (and got me yelling at the DVD) is that Billy would lie to me. “One more set,” he’d say, then he’d start talking about being all that you could be, and somehow he’d end up doing two sets. I just couldn’t deal with Billy. So, I switched to the WiiFit. And it was fun (if I could overlook its occasional gasp of “OH!” when I stepped on it after an overindulgence in pizza). But, after today’s experience, I don’t think I trust my Wii anymore…

I had been shirking my Wii duties for, oh, um, at least 6 months. I had done some balance board stuff, but the Wii…well, I don’t think I’ve actually been on it since last fall. So I hopped on today, as part of my “ My thyroid sucks and so does my skating so I need to be sure all my other stuff, including diet and recovery workouts, is as perfect as it can be so that I’m not limiting my progress any more than my stupid thyroid already is” plan. So I get on the Wii, and first of all, it doesn’t tell me how long it’s been since I’ve Wii’d. The Wii ALWAYS tells me how long it’s been. All I can think of is that maybe it can’t count that high….

So then I do the body composition and balance test stuff. My Wii is happy to tell me that I’ve gained 10 pounds since I last stepped foot on it (damn thyroid). My balance tests were average—one was better than my previous, one was worse. And yet my WiiFit age was…wait for it….30.

Now remember, I’m 47. I don’t think I’ve ever had a WiiFit age under 34 or so. And yet, 10 pounds heavier and no improvement in balance tests—and I’m suddenly 30.

So Billy lied and made me do more work than he said he would. Wii lied and told me I'm getting younger.

I think I'll stick with Wii.

Hi, There!

So I think I’ll start a blog. Why? Well, (in addition to the fact that “everyone’s doing it”), there are a couple of reasons. I'm a speedskater, I love reading athlete blogs, and there just aren’t that many speedskater blogs. So I’m reduced to reading things like cyclist blogs and triathlete blogs which, while entertaining, don’t have a lot of relevance for me (for example, I discovered that apparently many triathletes have bowel issues while training—it certainly makes one appreciate the fact that one is participating in a sport that does not regularly result in one pooping oneself)…anyway, since I like reading about speedskaters, I figure there may be other skaters out there who do, as well, so this is my selfless attempt at entertaining them. Plus, I like to write about my training and racing—it’s a good way to help me remember exactly when that nagging pain first appeared or when I started skating like a slug in lycra, so that I can analyze and hopefully solve the problem. It’s also a good way to remember how the good times felt. That, and I need a place to whine on a regular basis…

I am 47 years old, and began speedskating in 92 or 93 (I think). People ask me why I started speedskating and the answer is “I really have no idea.” I didn’t grow up skating—my sister and I would venture out onto the pond by our house once a year or so and I would last about 15 minutes before arch cramps, cold feet, or ominously cracking ice would send me to shore. Still, at the age of about 30 I found myself, for some reason, intrigued by the oval plowed on a local lake. I signed up for a community ed “learn to speedskate” class and by the end of the first session (which I wobbled through in my plastic $30 hockey skates), I was hooked. I took a few years off after getting married in 1996, then started up again in 2001. My obsessive nature really got fired up when I found an online coach in 2004 and began improving at a rapid rate, and then got even more fired up when I found a local long track coach in the winter of 06-07, someone who could work with me on technique as well as planning my workouts and coaching me during races (and who shall, hereafter, be referred to as TieGuy). My speed increased dramatically during the next season, and I had great plans for the future—until my workouts began to go downhill in the spring of 08. I was finally diagnosed as hypothyroid in the spring of 2010. I had a great winter season in 2010-11, but now, in the early summer of 2011, I’m again dealing with low thyroid levels, med adjustments, and the lovely mental and physical symptoms that accompany these issues.

Really, what better time to start an athlete blog than when you’re fat, cranky, and slow?