Wow, Am I Tired!

Thursday is interval day.  You can tell I'm tired because it's 5:45 on a Thursday afternoon and I'm sitting at the computer typing instead of going round and round the oval doing an interval workout. I truly intended to do intervals today--at 6:00 this morning I packed up my skates and my skating clothes and my Clif bar for before skating and my bottle for my recovery drink for after skating.  By the time I left work at 3:45, though, I had made the executive decision to drive straight home and spend the evening surfing the couch and the computer rather than fighting traffic, skate park punks, and fatigue.

I guess I have plenty of reasons to be tired.  I'm a teacher, and we're in the last two weeks of school.  Everyone is getting squirrelly and sassy and is ready to be done for the summer--and that's just the teachers.  Last weekend didn't help much in the rest-and-relaxation department, because the Hubster and I spent Memorial Weekend at my parents' place in Grand Marais; we headed out on the five-and-a-half-hour drive at 7 pm Friday, and headed for home at 4:00 pm  Monday, so we pretty much used up every minute of the long weekend.   Fortunately it was the end of my "easy week," so I didn't have any workouts over the weekend.  Once Tuesday came, though, it was back to work and back to the oval.  I did a (mercifully short) endurance workout on Tuesday--5x4 minutes, which, at my pace, meant 5x5 laps.  It was OK--not super duper, not mega crappy--just a very windy endurance workout that I dutifully trudged through.  And then last night, the Summer Inline Series races started.

I didn't really feel ready for a race yesterday, but my workout plan called for tempos, which means laps at race pace, so doing the tempos in a "real" race seemed reasonable.  The SIS is being run by Local Skateshop Boy (LSB) again, after being run by a couple of different groups over the past two years.  LSB tends to lean more towards having us do longer races rather than the sprints we've been doing the last couple of years, so I thought it was likely that the races would fit right into my workout schedule.  Unfortunately, LSB had a bit higher aspirations for the racers than some of us did for ourselves.  Since attendance at the race was light (as in, there were only two of us in the women's class), I was able to whine my way into getting him to reduce the length of the races persuade him that a 4 lap and 7 lap race was really a better plan for the women than the 8 lap and 10 lap races that he initially proposed. And it's a good thing I did.  My (what I presume is a) heart arrhythmia reappeared in lap 3 of the 4 lap race and laps 3, 6, and 7 of the 7 lap race, leading to laps 6 and 7 being what I believe are the slowest laps I've ever turned in for that distance: 51.7 and 51.8 seconds.

At least I was consistent.

But now I'm tired.  I still need to do my interval workout, so that will happen tomorrow, after work and the chiropractor.  I've got a lot to do this weekend, including a recovery skate, some stuff for school, and all the cleaning/laundry/grocery shopping that didn't get done last weekend when we were out of town (I swear, I don't know how people that have kids do it.  It's hard enough keeping up with stuff with just me and the Hubster and the dog--and the Hubster does a ton of stuff around the house.  The dog just sheds and drools on the Pergo flooring and spits her dogfood on the carpet before she eats it,  though, so she's not so helpful.)  I also need to decide if I'm going to pursue figuring out what this heart-arrhythmia-or-whatever is.  I had kind of hoped it would just go away during March and April when I wasn't skating, but no such luck, so I'll have to spend some time figuring out what my next step is.  Then next week I have a horrifically long endurance workout, a long tempo workout, and intervals...and then probably a half-marathon out of town Saturday morning.  In addition to the last week of school.

So I have plenty to do to keep me really tired for at least another week.

Damn You, Thyroid Meds

I've been diagnosed hypothyriod, and consequently taking thyroid meds, for just over two years now. And when I say "thyroid meds," I definitely mean the plural form: I take Synthroid, a synthetic version of the thyroid hormone T4, once a day, and Cytomel, a synthetic version of the thyroid hormone T3, four times a day.  T3 is apparently the "active" form of thyroid hormone, while T4 is the "storage" form, hence the Cytomel four times a day--it's used up quickly.  Indeed, I've discovered that I need to time my Cytomel quite exactly, relative to my workout or race, in order to feel normal for said workout or race. This can lead to some stressful times at skating meets, because I need to know exactly when my race will be in order to time the meds, and I need to know at least four hours in advance of the race.  It can also be tough for morning workouts; if I'm skating at 8 am, I need to take the Cytomel at 4 am.  Fortunately us middle-aged ladies get up frequently throughout the night to go to the bathroom...

Still, after two years of tweaking the med timing, I thought I had it nailed.  And my first two weeks of workouts this year supported that; although I was slow, I felt "normal" slow rather than "hypo" slow.  So today, when I headed out for my first long endurance workout of the year--5x4K--I was only thinking about how hot it was (90 degrees), how windy it was (20+ MPH), and how glad I was that I had someone to skate the workout with (my friend Mel).  And when my first couple sets of 10 laps were abysmally slow, and my back got excruciatingly painful at, oh, two-and-a-half laps into the first set, I still didn't put two and two together.  It wasn't until I set out on the fourth set--laps 30 through 40 of 50 for the day--and found myself suddenly skating much faster, with much less back pain, and apparently with no more effort, that I finally realized that my Cytomel timing was off.  (I have no idea why being low on thryoid meds makes my back cramp up so much sooner, but it does.) It sucks to just be starting to feel good 30 laps into a 50 lap workout!  Here's how my sets went, as far as average seconds per lap: 56.8, 56.9, 56.8, 52.3, 51.0.  Yup, that's right--laps 40-50 were almost 6 seconds per lap faster than laps 1-10.

So all in all, I guess it was an OK workout. Even though the laps were slower than last year's 5x4K at this time of year--a workout which I recorded as "the worst endurance workout ever," I might add--it was encouraging to see the lap times I ended up with at the end of the workout, once my meds kicked in.  I also saw, when I looked back in my workout log at this workout last year, that I had used the same med timing as I did this year--and I had speculated that it was wrong, and that I needed to take the meds earlier.  Wish I'd have checked that before the workout rather than after...what's the point of obsessively collecting data if you don't look at it?  Which reminds me, I need to change my watch alarm so I remember to take the meds earlier tomorrow!

Oh, and I'm injured.  It's a skating injury, but fortunately not something that will affect my performance.  I finally realized the origin of the strange left-thumb soreness and stiffness that I've been experiencing for almost a year. I couldn't figure it out--what could a right-handed person be doing with their left thumb that would cause it chronic pain? Then, as I started out on my second set of 10 laps, and reached behind me with my left hand--the hand that is always resting on my back--to hook my thumb into my string thing, it hit me.

I have String Thing Thumb.  (say that 3 times fast!).

My thumb apparently takes exception to being hooked into a string around my waist and then forced to be responsible for keeping my arm in the appropriate position on my back every time I skate.  Fortunately, I discovered that I can just as effectively keep my arm on my back using several combinations of digits other than my thumb, so I'm pretty sure I can soldier on and keep training through the injury...

Trust

I do not trust myself.

Actually, that's too broad of a statement; there are many areas of my life where I feel reasonably sure that I know what I'm doing, I trust my judgement, and I go forth with confidence.

Planning and tweaking my skating workouts is not one of those areas.

I've been lucky that I really haven't had to design and monitor my own workouts for much of the past 8 years--lucky because, before I found a coach, for several years I was responsible for figuring out my own skating program...and it turned out to be a nightmare of overtraining and frustration.  Then I found an online coach in the spring of 2004, and then found Coach TieGuy in December of 2006. So I had someone writing my program for me and tweaking the workouts via email on a weekly basis from May 2004 until December 2006, and then from December 2006-November 2010 I had someone standing on the track for nearly every workout, telling me whether to go faster or slower, push harder or ease up, tough out the final set or throw in the towel early.  And I loved it--as long as I have someone that I trust telling me what to do, I'm happy to do my best to do it, no matter how much it hurts.  When I have to be the one telling me what to do, as I did BC (Before Coaching), well, I start questioning my decisions.  And for the past 18 months, I have been somewhat in the position of decision-maker again.  Coach TieGuy is still my coach, but due to his moving out of state, followed by a move back, a job change, and his taking on several new career-related activities, he no longer has the time to stand on the track telling me what to do. Which leaves me in charge of deciding whether to go faster or slower, to push harder or ease up, to tough out that final set or throw in the towel early.  And I tell you, I am definitely not the best person for the job!

When I first had to plan my own workouts, back in the '90's, I was in my mid-thirties and tended more towards the overtraining end of the spectrum.  "Oh, I can do this workout...and that one...and that sounds good, too.  Yeah, no problem," I'd think, and then become increasingly fatigued, slow, and frustrated as the season--and the overtraining--progressed. Now I'm in my late forties, and age, thyroid issues, and (perhaps) creeping laziness tend to lead me more toward "ooh, I'm a little tired; I'm sure it's in my best interest not to finish this workout."  Take, for example, the past couple weeks.

As I've whined stated in several posts, I'm slower than I've ever been at this point in the season, and my heart rate is a bit higher.  While I'm not freaking about the lap times (as I have in the past), I find myself wondering if, due to missing most of the first three weeks of (dryland) workouts of the season, I'm in poor enough shape that I should change the workouts that I'm doing.  I'm basing my workouts on what Coach TieGuy had me doing last year at this time; I adjusted the program slightly to account for the different opening date of the oval this year, ran the resulting month's workouts past TieGuy, and got the thumbs-up to proceed.  So I did.

But as the workouts progressed and the laps ticked (slowly) by, I started wondering.  Am I doing too much? Am I too out of shape to be trying to do this whole workout right now?  Should I cut this down by a set or two?  Am I really ready to do a tempo this early in the season?

I think I've mentioned, once or twice, that I tend to overanalyze.  Just a bit.  Maybe.

Fortunately, before I got too far down this road, Coach TieGuy called to answer some questions I'd emailed him.  He reminded me that it takes time to sort out my fitness level and reaction to workouts; that I need to re-start taking my morning heart rate to watch for overtraining, if that's something I'm concerned about; that I need to stop overanalyzing and trying to tweak every lap or even every workout.

Or, and I quote, "shut up and skate."

Coach TieGuy has always been good at cutting to the chase.

So for the next couple weeks, I'll be shutting up and skating.  Or, well, not really shutting up, because I like to write about my skating...but I'll try not to overanalyze, at least on a lap-by-lap basis.  I have a direction for the next two weeks, and since someone who knows his stuff gave me that direction, I'll be happy to follow it.

Because I still don't trust myself.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast...NOT!

It's been a busy week (thus accounting for my lack of blogging).  My parents were staying with us from Saturday night through Wednesday morning, which was a lot of fun but which meant that I spent the first half of my week cooking and socializing rather than skating.  Along with my parents, of course, came the pack of ankle-biters: Bronko, Birdee, and Belle.  As always, Keira enjoyed having doggy visitors but paid a heavy price in sleep deprivation (it's hard to get in her usual 23 hours a day of sleep when she has Min Pins bouncing around all the time).  Here, she's putting in some serious effort at reducing the deficit:

After my parents left, I resumed my regularly scheduled workouts.  Wednesday's endurance was slowish but not too bad; Thursday's tempos, like last week's workouts, were horribly slow but I felt normal.  This morning, I did my final oval workout of the week, four fairly long sets of intervals. The workout was made better by the fact that my friend Mel skated with me, and by the "too early for teenagers" Punk-free status of the skate park. On the minus side, though, it was hot and windy, and I skated pretty much the slowest interval workout ever. Last year I did this particular workout at an average of 45 second laps; this year they averaged 48.  Last year's max heartrate was 184, this year's was 196.  Last year I felt flat and sluggish and hypo (because I was!); this year I felt fine but was just--as I was last week--slow. And still strangely laid-back about it.

On the funny side, after we completed our 11.2K of intervals, Mel and I took a look at her extremely noisy bearings.  First, I picked up one of her skates and spun the wheels.  Three of the five stopped within about two seconds.  Then I took off a wheel and attempted to spin it while holding it by the bearings, between my finger and thumb.

I couldn't get it to spin at all.

I then proceeded to remove the bearings and tried to spin one.  It was completely locked up, and felt as though someone had dumped a load of Class 5 gravel in it.

"I think you need some new bearings," I said, which was probably the understatement of the year.

So next time I see Mel at the oval I'll bring her some of my used-but-still-spinning bearings which, given the fact that she finished every lap today about five seconds ahead of me despite skating on what might just as well have been square wheels, will probably mean that she'll lap me in our next workout.

And with my new laid-back attitude, that probably won't bother me a bit.

Random Thoughts...

...after the first full week of oval workouts:

• I am slow.  And, strangely, I am not concerned.  How slow am I?  Well, my endurance workout on Wednesday and my interval workout on Thursday were 3-5 seconds per lap slower than the comparable workouts last year...and last year, at this time, my thyroid levels had dipped again and I needed a med adjustment.  Last year, I knew something was wrong--I felt sluggish, couldn't get going, and had a hard time pushing myself.  This year, I feel normal--just slow.  My heartrate is a bit high (5-10 BPM higher max than in the same workout last year), but I feel normal when I skate; I can push myself, I get out of breath and tired (which I don't do when hypothyroid), I feel like I'm working hard.  I'm just not going very fast.  Last year I'd look at my stopwatch after a set and freak out when I saw a 45-second-lap; this year, I'm looking and thinking "hmm, I held 48's for all of the laps.  Not bad."  Whether I'm just out of shape or am actually "over the hill" and heading down the other side, only time will tell.  Whatever it is, I'm not worked up about it.  I'm not sure if this laid-back acceptance of my newfound lack of fleetness of foot is a good thing or a bad thing, but I do know that I'll be a lot easier to live with this year than I was at this time last year!
• Skating with someone is much more fun than skating alone.  I did my Monday and Thursday workouts basically alone; fellow masters long track skater Sprinter Boy did my Wednesday workout with me.  Wednesday was way more fun.  Even when you don't have a draft, it's better to have someone else out there.  In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that Sprinter Boy did lead one of the 5 sets; he could easily have led all 5 of them if I hadn't insisted on leading the others so I could compare my lap times to last year's; and the only reason I could keep up with Sprinter Boy at all (I am, after all, old enough--barely--to be his mother), is that Wednesday was his first time ever on inlines on the Oval). I need to make a concerted effort to find people to skate with!
• I have no idea how Gatorade makes any money on their recovery drink products, because I don't know why anyone would buy that crap more than once.  The clear recovery drink is tolerable, although it tastes just bad enough that I couldn't make it through the whole bottle.  The "recovery smoothie" in the little foil carton was truly vile; after two sips, I tossed the rest in the trash.  Gag.  Who decided that the product was marketable with that nasty flavor--and does he or she still have a job?
• The Oval has been playing music the past couple times I was out there.  This is not entirely unusual; occasionally we'll hear 50's tunes during our evening long track workouts, and sometimes we've been able to ask rink workers to put on some music while we're inlining.  This week, though, the music was...different.  I'm not sure what the musical genre is called, but the only song I recognized was some vintage George Winston.  I love vintage George Winston, but it's not what I'd expect to hear at a skate center/aggressive skate park.  I can only conclude that the mellow music is a sort of "Punk Repellent," rather like those ultrasonic rodent repellents.  Sadly, it doesn't seem to be working...
• There is a very unfortunate detour now on my route home from the Oval.  Traffic is shunted off the main road onto an exit ramp; at the top of the ramp is a stoplight.  If you go left at the light, you follow the detour.  If you go straight, you end up in the parking lot of a McDonald's.  Where they have ice cream cones.  Which are pretty tasty after a workout on a warm day.  Clearly, I need to work on my ability to turn left in my car, as well as on the Oval.
• Despite being slow, I may be getting back in shape.  I did a whopping 4.5 minutes of dryland after my skating workout on Wednesday, and wasn't sore at all on Thursday.  Hey, it's a start!
• Despite the Skate Park Punks, the slowness, the not getting home until almost 8 on workout nights, and the difficulty resisting the lure of McDonald's, I'm really glad that the season has started!

Here Ya Go, Sharon!

This one's for my cyber-friend and fellow "middle aged lady speedskater" Sharon, of speedskatingmom.com.  Sadly, Sharon lives in a place where there is no long track, so she skates short track...and she's asked for a video of inline skating on the oval so she has a visual of "the long track life."  So, in my usual "obsessive overkill" fashion...here ya go, Sharon!

This first video is from last fall; I had the Hubster tape it so I could show out-of-state Coach TieGuy my technique improvements.  I like this video because you can continually see the bikers coming out onto the track behind me and in front of me, and at one point Hubby zooms out so you can see the craziness of the infield skate park.  The only thing missing that night was 40 or 50 roller derby girls; they typically stay in the infield right next to the hockey rink, but they certainly add a unique aspect to the atmosphere!

And here's a nice blast from the past--an inline race from 2007 which I (barely) won.  Yes, that's Coach TieGuy in the tie, off on the left side, yelling at me and giving me my lap times.

And finally, here's me doing a 500 race on the same oval this past winter (I'm the one in gray).

So...now you have a visual!  (Hmm, I can't see the first two videos but I'm not sure if it's a problem with my computer, or if y'all can't see them either.  If you can't, someone let me know and I'll try to fix it!)

Aaaahhh...

The oval opened for iniline skating yesterday, and I managed to get there for a short workout.  And in a way, it was as though I rediscovered a lost part of me...a part that, strangely, I hadn't even known was missing.

Usually I am acutely aware, during my "off month" of March, that I'm missing skating--missing the endorphins, missing the physical challenge, missing the socializing, missing my "obsession fix."  This time--even though the "off month" stretched to an "off two months" due to illness, injury, and (yes, I'll freely admit it) laziness--this time, I didn't notice that I was missing anything.  I just went merrily about my way working, walking the dog for my daily "exercise," sitting on the couch at night watching the Twins steadily work their way down to the worst record in baseball (but I love them anyway), and, of course, blowing my nose every 3.5 seconds.  I really didn't feel like there was a hole in my life.  In fact, I was worried that my skating mid-life crisis might just have segued into "I'm not sure I really want to skate anymore; in fact, I'm pretty happy just sitting right here on the couch."

And then I got in the car to drive to the oval yesterday.

Within minutes, I was singing along to my "skating playlist."  My heart, which must have sensed the upcoming exertion, was throwing out more PVC's than I've had in any other 45-minute period the past two months.  And my mood, which I hadn't known was anything but content, began to lift until I was downright cheery.

And finally, there it was: the John Rose Oval.  And on this first day of the season, it was already populated with the usual cast of characters:  little kids on bikes riding the ramps under the watchful eye of mom.  Mid-teen bikers constantly riding out onto the track in flagrant disregard of the rules, and conversing only in the word "dude."  The one older guy on a bike (OK, he might be 20) who's always there and who I actually feel a mild fondness for because he has never strayed from the skate park onto the track.  The chatty roller-derby-guy on quad skates, sporting a blue mohawk.  And last but not least, I was happy to see, a fellow inline speedskater--SmartAss Boy.  I've known SmartAss Boy for several years (if his lips are moving, he's lying/joking/saying something sarcastic).  Due to the merger of his team, Max Muscle, and my former team Media Machine, we're now teammates.  It's always nice to have another speedskater (especially a big guy) whizzing around the track to keep the Skate Park Punks Patrons properly intimidated.

So I skated a "get the feel for things again" workout that I made up.  For the balance of May I'll be trying to repeat last May's workouts that Coach TieGuy had planned for me; there may be a bit of adjustment needed, to accommodate my "out of shape" status, but in general I'll be following the plan.  Or maybe not; I also hope to skate with more people this year, so I may end up doing their workouts sometimes.  And I want to skate some inline races with my new team, so that will shake things up.  But I digress; yesterday, I just skated.  And it was fun.

It was also, unfortunately, a little alarming.  Due to my cardiac issues last season (exercise-induced PVC's, and another symptom that hasn't been diagnosed yet but may or may not be PVC's, or something else cardiac, or...?), I decided to wear my heart rate monitor.  You can never have too much data, you know.  And that was the alarming part--my maximum heart rate, achieved after a set of 3 laps at 49 seconds and one at 44 seconds, was 202.

Yes, that's high, even for me.  In fact, it's the max I'm capable of, according to the exercise stress test I did at the Mayo in March.  True, I do have a genetically high max heart rate, but 202 is a number I rarely ever see when skating--not even at the end of a race.  And 49-second-laps are, honestly, typically my warmup pace, while a 44 is endurance pace.  Definitely not something that should trigger a max reading.  Oh, well...I'll just keep going for a couple weeks, and see if it settles down after I'm completely recovered from my sinus infection or whatever it is.

So I finished my workout, said goodbye to SmartAss Boy, and got back in my car for the drive home.  And as I sat in the parking lot, mixing up my post-workout recovery drink and listening once again to my skating playlist, I realized...I've missed this. I need this.  And I'm glad I'm back.

Blessing

Yeah, 14 days and I'm still sick.  I probably have a sinus infection, which I usually get antibiotics for, but it finally seems to be getting better so I'm holding off on the antibiotics this time.  I've gone through enough Sudafed in the past two weeks that the pharmacist is probably going to refuse to sell me any more next time I go in, though.  Still haven't done any workouts in those 14 days except the one trail skate the weekend before last.  The only physical skills I've been honing in the past two weeks have been my nose blowing talents (why yes, yes, I am a joy to be around lately, thanks for asking).  I went through an entire "industrial quality" box of Kleenex, the kind my school district provides for us for our classrooms--about 125 40-grit sheets-- in about four days last week.  So then I bought a nice jumbo-sized box of 300 sheets of soft, fluffy Puffs...and it's now three-quarters gone too.  This has led to quite a bit of work for my poor students.  My students are kids in grades K-5 who have cognitive disabilities.  They are sweet and compassionate and very well-mannered; a sneeze never fails to elicit a heartfelt "Bless You!" from at least two or three of them.  Unfortunately, my students have not yet learned to discriminate which bodily functions merit a blessing, so every sneeze, cough...and noseblow...is met with a "Bless You." I've been keeping my kids so busy blessing me that it's a wonder they're getting any work done!

On the plus side, the oval will be opening any day now; my ears are becoming unplugged and I can finally turn the TV down to normal levels; I bought a new pair of inline skates, and I'm just waiting for the frames to be shipped and to get the boots heat-molded before I try them out on the trails; and my chiropractor cut back the list of stretches/exercises he wants me to do--twice a day--by about two-thirds.  So things are looking up...