Wow

I've decided not to go to Milwaukee.  Today's workout was another cruddy one, so it doesn't seem to make sense to drive 300 miles (each way) to have another cruddy workout, even if it would be on ice.

But that's not why I'm posting today, and that's not the "wow."

The "wow" is this:

This is my friend Mel.  Thirteen days ago, she had a horrific crash on the oval that resulted in multiple facial fractures necessitating surgery, as well as several knocked out or damaged teeth.  She was in the hospital for several days, and currently has her jaw wired shut.

And today,  she rode her bike seven miles to the oval to do a dryland workout (and gave me some coaching on my skating, as well).  Our friend Danny, who was at the oval when she crashed, told me as he was relating the story that "Mel is the toughest person I've ever met."

I've gotta agree!

Mel, it was great to see you out there.  You are truly a courageous person and a great role model, and I know you'll be out there this winter, skating hard, enjoying the ice--and hopefully having a PopTart or two!

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

To Milwaukee this weekend, that is.  I can't decide.

The reasons to go are: A)  I need to skate a qualifying time (a 52-second 500) in order to skate the American Cup races this winter. B)  I need to see how I'm doing on ice--last year my inline season was bad but I did well once I got on ice; since my inline is similarly horrible (or actually, more horrible) this year, I want to see if history will repeat itself.  And, C)  it's September, darn it.  I should want to go to Milwaukee for some early-season ice time.

The reasons not to go are: I'm not sure I want to.

Of course, it's slightly more complicated than that.  The first American Cup race, the one in Milwaukee, will happen before we get ice here in Minnesota.  So clearly I need to go to Milwaukee to get the qualifying time in order to be allowed to skate the race (we won't mention the fact that I am frequently riding the hairy edge of being able to skate a 52-second 500 here in Minnesota, so even if we had ice before the first Am Cup I might have to go to Milwaukee to achieve the qualifying time, anyway).  This coming weekend is the best, logistically, for me to go.  But, the first Am Cup is on a bad weekend for me to be away from home, so I might not even do it; I would then have plenty of time to skate the qualifying time before the American Cup race here in Roseville, which isn't until January.  Then there's the matter of how poorly my skating (with the glorious exception of the North Shore Inline Marathon) has been going this summer/fall.  Typically my first time trial at the Pettit (the Milwaukee rink) consists of a 500 and a 3000 meter--I'm always anxious to see how I do in the longer races, since those are my best distances, so I like to do one right away in the fall.  This year, though?  Well, this year I'm pretty sure I don't want to see how I'd do in a 3k. In fact, yesterday I was just happy that I could skate 7 laps in a row (a 3k is 7.5 laps) on the oval in my inlines; I'm pretty sure trying to do it fast on ice would not be pretty at this point.

Then there's my misbehaving thyroid.  I'm still trying to get to the point where I was at the end of the summer last year, the point where I feel normal and can ignore the thyroid for a while.  I thought I was there, but now it seems some more tweaking may be needed.  I'm getting mighty sick of it, and it makes it really hard to figure out how well or poorly I'm actually skating.  So maybe doing a time trial right now, when I'm not sure the thyroid levels are where they need to be, is not the best idea.

Then there's the whole matter of that "not sure I want to" thing.  What's up with that?  I'm just not as motivated to skate this year as I've been in past years, and I'm not sure why.  Maybe it's because my summer went so poorly.  Maybe I'm getting burned out.  Maybe I'm just getting sick of making up my own workouts and mostly skating by myself and never quite knowing what I should be doing or how well or how poorly things are going.  Maybe I'd get more excited about skating if I went to Milwaukee and got some actual ice time.  Or maybe I'd really suck and I'd get even more discouraged and disinterested.

Thus, my indecision on whether or not to go.

Currently, my plan is to postpone the decision one more day.  I'll go to the oval tomorrow and try some semblance of an interval workout.  If the workout sucks, I likely will not go to Milwaukee.  If it's good, I'll probably go.

Maybe.

Photos

So, here are some pictures from the North Shore Inline Marathon.  All photos are taken by Mike Dahms, a Max Muscle teammate who is recovering from an injury.

Here I am at the finish.  It's helpful, when scanning through dozens of photos of your teammates--all of whom  are wearing the exact same skinsuit that you are--if you have a distinguishing characteristic; that way you can avoid having to blow up all the photos to full size to figure out which ones are you.  I'd like to say that my awesome technique is my distinguishing characteristic--but it's not.  My nice bulky kneepads, on the other hand, are.

 After the final corner

 My weight is (mostly) over my gliding leg...

Dang, and I thought I was "low" in those final yards.  Nope.

And here are some team photos:

 "Normal"...

...and "flexing" (we are, after all, "Max Muscle")

And that's that.  Next up:  more oval skating, and probably a trip to Milwaukee to see how I do on ice.

North Shore Inline--Part Two

First, the important stuff:  The ring has been found!  It was right where I thought it would be: sitting rather forlornly on the gravel parking lot at the auto repair shop, where I had apparently flung it in my over-vigorous  seat-cover crumb-brushing.

Welcome back, My Preciousssss...

When we left off in part one of the race report, I was standing on the starting line.  It was a beautiful day--sunny, cool, and with a tailwind.  I was enjoying every pre-race minute: chatting with EB; listening to the music; talking to random strangers, all of whom were very excited to be there.  Then EB moved forward in the wave to a more advantageous location, and the countdown to the start began.

And we were off!  Mindful of how I had started in my previous poorly-conditioned season, 2005--I had eased into skating to avoid triggering my exercise-induced tachycardia--I coasted casually off the line and began skating slowly.  The first six miles of the racecourse were repaved this year, so the conditions were fantastic.  I skated happily along, passing people here and there and keeping an eye open for a paceline.  What a fun way to start, and what a contrast to my usual road races--no frantic scramble to get into the "right" paceline, no frustration with people who blocked my path, no panting redline max heartrate 500 yards into a marathon.  It was at this point that the "wow this is an awesome day" really struck me.

And then a nice paceline came by, headed by a bunch of Rainbo skaters.  It looked good, so I hopped on the end.  Everyone was friendly, and the pace was comfortable but not too slow, so I figured I'd hang out there.  We passed a mile or so like this, and then the usual confusion began: pacelines breaking up as skaters got gapped; other pacelines passing and the two lines mixing; pacelines falling apart and reforming as everyone scrambled up a hill.  It was at this point that I decided I'd try to close any gaps so as not to get dropped, and to go off with the faster faction when a paceline broke up.  I was feeling great, the pace was easy, and I figured I had nothing to lose since I had no goal for the race except to have fun.

And have fun I did!  Skating that race--even when it got hard in the final miles--was one of the most purely fun athletic things I have ever done.

Unfortunately for my paceline mates, when I'm happy I get babbly and for most of the race I had plenty of breath for talking.  I congratulated people on good pulls when they pulled over to pass off the lead; I thanked volunteers at water stops even though, thanks to my Camelbak, I didn't need any water; I commented on the beauty of the lake  over and over again (for those new to the Long Track Life, I have a love affair with Lake Superior); I said, more times than I can remember, "this is just so much fun!"

I'm guessing there were a couple people in my paceline who, after five miles or so of this, would have cheerfully throttled me with my own Camelbak hose just to shut me up.

As mid-race approached I was still having fun and still skating easily.  I told myself that I would not push anything until at least the last half of the race, if not later; I didn't want to blow up like I had in the last three miles of the Baxter Half-Marathon.  Still, I had worked my way up to a faster, and smaller, paceline.  I was in the front 4-5 skaters, which meant that I pulled every so often.  My only problem with pulling is that, when I take over the lead, I'm so concerned that I might go too slowly that I usually end up pulling away from the rest of the paceline.  Fortunately I had a teammate right behind me who would yell to me when this happened and I could rein it in a bit until everyone else caught up.  We were a very polite and cooperative paceline!

We had some nice "freight trains" going down hill, where everyone pushes on the back of the person in front of them and the cumulative weight and momentum leads to some pretty impressive speeds.  I always announce my imminent touch of the skater in front of me with "push." One time, the guy in front of me had his cell phone in his jersey pocket.

"Oh," I commented as I inadvertently pushed on his phone, "I hope I don't butt-dial you.  It might be hard to explain to the person on the other end why they're hearing all this heavy breathing and the occasional "push!"

As we passed the midpoint at 13 miles, I looked at my watch for the first time.  I hadn't set the stopwatch, hadn't looked to see exactly what time we started (although I knew it was around 10:10 or 10:11), and hadn't done my usual agonized counting-down-of-the-slowly-passing-miles.  I really had no idea what to expect for a time, and I was having so much fun that I truly didn't care what it was.  But still, I looked.

10:54.

Hmm, if we started at 10:10, that's 44 minutes.  44 plus 44 is 88, which is one hour 28 minutes.  Which, holy cow, is a very good time for me--my PB at the North Shore is 1:25, and typically my times are over 1:30.  And--I still felt great!

As we worked our way into the second half of the race, I continued to try to go with any faster bits of paceline that fractured off.  At one point, a lone woman (who, as I could tell by her number, had started in the wave two minutes behind ours) came past.  She was flying, and I took off from my pull at the front of our paceline to try to follow her.  I got into her draft but could tell right away that I wouldn't be able to stay with her for long, and indeed, after half a mile or so I had to let her go.  Still, it had been fun trying, so when a younger guy, also solo, came by, I jumped on behind him.

"Not sure how long I'll be able to stay," I gasped, "but you've got a good pace going!"

We skated along for a couple miles.  It was a brisk pace, but I was able to hang on.  It was somewhere around this point in the race, I think, that it became imperative to solve the Snot Problem.

I tend to be a rather, um, phlegmy skater.  I spit a lot, and I also produce a lot of snot.  On the oval, where my workouts are more "skate hard/take a break/repeat," I can blow my nose in the rest intervals.  For extended skates and marathon races, a different tactic is necessary.  Since I'm not adept at the farmer blow thing, I tend to (TMI warning) perform a lovely and no doubt attractive snort-and-hork manuever which converts the snot into something spittable.  However, spitting in a paceline is frowned upon.  So I tolerated the steadily-filling nose situation until I couldn't anymore, and then I did the only thing I could think of: I blew my nose into my palm sliders.

For those not familiar with the intricacies of skating attire, palm sliders are simply half-finger gloves with a bit of curved plastic velcroed to the palm so that when if you crash, your palms slide rather than stick on the pavement and you have less chance of breaking a wrist.  Most racers use palm sliders rather than the more cumbersome and protective wrist guards.

Anyway, my palm sliders were now sporting an extra layer of lubrication, some of which I inadvertently wiped on the leg of my skinsuit during armswings.  Skating is a glamorous sport...

So I skated along behind Solo Young Guy for a while, and then he turned his head slightly and yelled to me (and the rest of the paceline, which had followed me when I attached myself to his draft) "I'm going to go--anyone who wants, come with me!"

I'm pretty sure that's not how breakaways are done in the big leagues, but as I said, we were a fun-loving and cooperative group.

So a bunch of us took off after Solo Young Guy.  We were now about 8 miles from the finish, so I wasn't sure how this would work for me.  But we stuck with him for a couple miles, and dropped part of the paceline.  Then (and this is where my memory gets fuzzy; oxygen deprivation, maybe?) either he dropped us or we dropped him.  I remember some skating and some breathing hard but not much else--and then we hit the grooved pavement at the I-35 tunnels.

I remember the pavement grooves, from my previous races, as being perpendicular to travel direction and thus feet-numbing but not particularly dangerous.  However, the road had been re-grooved since I last skated--regrooved parallel to travel.  As I glided onto the nastiness, my skates began doing all sorts of funky skittering from side to side and I regret to report that I wasted enough breath to drop an F-bomb on the backs of my rapidly-departing paceline mates.  I quickly recovered enough to utter a more politically-correct "Holy longitudinal pavement grooves, Batman!"  (yes, I really wasted the breath, 23 miles into a marathon, to say that out loud), but I couldn't catch up to the paceline, who had dropped me like a snot-covered palm-slider.  Dang.

I quickly learned that the grooves were manageable if I didn't coast and didn't get on my outer edges.  Once I figured this out I began skating harder again, and at some point re-encountered Solo Young Guy.  Either he caught up to me and skated by me and then slowed, or I re-passed him; at any rate, he was beginning to falter when I encountered him, so I yelled some encouragement.

"Hey, number ####, " I yelled, "come on, let's go!  You pulled my ass all that way, don't give up now!"

Solo Young Guy shot a startled glance at me and then took off, my cheers following him down the road.  What the heck, he contributed a great pull at a critical part of my race; I figured the least I could do is encourage him!

Then it was off the freeway to the exit ramp and up the hill to the stoplight, and another encounter with the now-struggling Solo Young Guy.  I yelled more encouragement, he speeded up (probably just to get away from the crazy old lady who kept yelling at him), and I finished the last 400 yards of the race with no one else near.  Left at the stoplight, down the hill, left at the bottom of the hill (I did crossovers around this corner because there was no one else around and I had plenty of room to pick whichever line I wanted), then down the final straight to the finish.  I got down and did as much "long track" technique as I could for this final stretch, which started off well but, due to the length of the run-up to the finish line and the strong headwind we were now skating into, quickly degenerated into a desperate scramble.

Then I was over the finish line and done.  I still felt pretty good and was incredibly happy, but I also felt like I was pretty much used up; I definitely didn't feel like I had held back.  As I funneled into the finish chute to take off my chip, I saw Solo Young Guy in front of me. He gave me a thumbs-up.

I had no idea what my time was, but I figured it had to be pretty good because I felt like I hadn't slowed down the second half of the race and may have even sped up.  So I wandered around happily, chatting with whoever I encountered and keeping an eye out for EB (I knew she must have had a pretty good race because I had never seen her on the course, and she had started in front of me).  I ran into another long-track friend who, it turned out, had been on the oval with Mel when she crashed.  As he pointed to various parts of his face and described the hardware that she had had implanted to stabilize various fractures, I was reminded again of how important it is to be aware of and grateful for all the good times that we have--because you never know what's just around the corner.  Get well soon, Mel--we're all thinking of you!

Eventually I found EB and Sherpa Boy, and discovered that EB had also had a fantastic race.  In fact, a quick look at the results board told us that both EB and I had skated our second-best NSIM times ever: mine was a 1:26.40, hers a 1:22.22.  Little bugger is fast!  We had both also, it turned out, placed fifth in our age groups, she in 50-54, I in 45-49.   This led to a dilemma--medals were awarded for first through fifth place.  Did we wait around the 4-5 hours before the award ceremony?

Of course we did! It's not every day you get on the podium (besides, sponsors like to see their brand name up there, so it's always good to stick around for the awards when you can).  So we set about the enjoyable task of killing a few hours in Duluth.

There was time for the Max Muscle team photo (I'll post one when I get it), and for the distribution of more team goodies--T-shirts and window clings.  Max Muscle is a generous sponsor!

Max Muscle T-shirt-and-window-cling feeding frenzy.

There was time to pose in front of the iconic Ore Boat...

 Remember, the camera and my softball sliding shorts add 10 pounds.  Each.

...as well as the giant Rollerblade sign.  Those specks are EB and I.

I got some quality time with "my" lake...

...and Energizer Bunny and Sherpa Boy got a pretty good candidate for a Christmas card picture.

We had lunch at Red Lobster, and shared some mini-donuts from Crabby Ol' Bill's...

And every minute of the post-race was just as fun as the race had been.  I wish the Hubster could have been there--usually the after-race time isn't nearly that enjoyable, but this time I think he would have figured it had been worth getting up at 4 am for.  I'll have to keep that in mind for next year...

And then it was back to the DECC for the awards.  I got my time on the podium...

Well, technically I guess I'm "next to the podium."  My, those reflective stripes on my pants really work, don't they?

...and then it was EB's turn.  She's missed the podium spot by one place several times in her most recent races, so it was great to see her up there!

And then, finally, at almost 6 pm, it was time to climb into the car for the drive home.

Why, yes, yes...it does look as though my gear bag has thrown up in the back seat...

As I drove, I ate various sugary substances to keep myself awake, and amused myself by making up skating lyrics for songs.  With apologies to Maroon 5, I present you with "One More Mile."  (sorry--I couldn't come up with anything beyond the chorus. Probably just as well.)

Paceline there you go again, there you go again,

making me love you.

I tuck in behind you, in behind you, 

Let it all go

Got snot stuck on my skinsuit

On my skinsuit

Like a tattoo

And now I'm feeling toasted

Feeling toasted

Falling off of you

So I cross my heart and I hope to die

That I'll try to stay with you one more mile

And I know I said it a million times

But I'll try to stay with you one more mile

Yeah, body, give me one more mile...

(I apologize if I've now ruined that song forever for anyone!)

So today, a day later, I'm still happy.  A little sore and creaky, but happy.  My thyroid meds seem to be optimized, I'm apparently in better shape than I thought I was, and I have the memory of a really fun time.

Oh, yeah, and I have my wedding ring back.

What more could you ask for?

2012 North Shore Inline Marathon Report

This is going to get long, so I'll provide a one-line summary for all you folks who have other things to do today:

This race was, hands down, no question, absolutely, positively the most fun thing I have done in a long, long time.

And now, in classic Long Track Life Oversharing Style--on with the details!

Things weren't looking too auspicious the night before the race.  I had decided to drive up the morning of the event, which turned out to be a good thing since my little Subaru was still in the shop Friday night, having just survived some major, and thus very expensive, surgery (you know the bill isn't going to be pretty when the repair receipt lists "remove engine" as one of the services).  The Hubster likes to use a friend's not-exactly-local repair shop for Subaru stuff, so we had to drive the 30 miles to the shop to pick up the car after work Friday.  When we got back home we walked the dog, and then I began packing for the race.  As I tossed my gear bag into the back of the $ubaru, I looked down and saw:

No wedding ring on my left hand.

The Hubster and I had matching rings made when we got married.  Mine has no stone (with my active lifestyle and clumsiness, that would have lasted about 2 weeks before being knocked off), and thus isn't terribly expensive--but I love it and it has huge symbolism and I never take it off.

Unless it falls off, which, because it's always been a bit too big, it does every so often (why can't my fingers grow along with my ass?)  Anyway, this ring had an adventure, 5 years ago, that involved being flung off (as I fell facefirst off a small waterfall I was descending--don't ask) into a Northern Minnesota river, where it remained for 3 weeks until it was found by a friend's snorkled-and-masked son.  I should have had it resized then, but...

So anyway, there I was, looking into this:

Good luck finding a ring in there!

I looked through the car, thoroughly, twice.  No ring.  We went back to the park where we'd walked the dog and looked, in the dark, around the spot where I'd stopped to fish out the poo bag--no ring.  Finally, I remembered that I had brushed some crumbs (now how did those get there?) off the seat cover in my $ubaru--with my left hand--before climbing in at the repair shop.  Suddenly, this seemed like the most likely place for the ring to have been flung off.  However, it was now 10:30 at night and I had to get up at 4:00 the next morning.  The ring would have to stay where it was for another day.

I got up at O'Dark Thirty the next morning (or, actually, O'Dark O'Clock--see?):

I had told the Hubster (who had gone to bed at 3 am) that he didn't need to accompany me on this venture, since I didn't think it would be terribly exciting from a spectator standpoint.  So I staggered blearily into the car and headed off solo.

The first order of the day was breakfast.  I wanted my traditional McDonald's pre-race breakfast, but wasn't sure that a) McDonald's would be open that early, and b) eating at 4:00 would provide adequate fuel for a race that started at 10:00.  So I did the only logical thing.

I had a pre-breakfast PopTart.  And my coffee with protein powder.

Then, another hour down the road, I stopped at the now-open McDonald's for my bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit and an orange juice.

And then, another hour down the road, I had to stop for gas.  Should have looked at the gas gauge when I stopped at McD's...

All in all, though, the trip went well.  I had plenty of time (it's a three-hour drive to Duluth) to contemplate my race strategy.  Since my summer training had, thanks to my thyroid, sucked, I had a plan:

Forget partying like it's 1999.  I want to skate like it's 2005.

2005 was not a banner summer for skating.  In fact, due to some tachycardia issues, it was (up until The Suckiness That Was the Summer of 2012), the worst summer of skating I've ever had.  But I had signed up for the NSIM early in the summer, before the tachycardia emerged and when skating was thus still going well, and so I had decided to go ahead and just do the race for fun.  And it had, indeed, been fun.  I had started off slow, chatted along the way, looked at the lake, had a blast--and actually ended up with a fairly decent time for me, all things considered (1:32). So I hoped to replicate that experience this year, with, perhaps, the exception of the time; I figured I'd be looking at more the 1:40 range, based on how dismally my Baxter Half-Marthon had gone.

I arrived at the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center (DECC) at 7:00, and after a couple minor hitches (including a too-small race shirt--people, when you're going to have gender-specific shirts for the first time, you have to tell us so we can request the correct size) I was waiting to board the shuttle bus to the start in Two Harbors.  After passing up an almost-full bus, I was able to claim the claustrophobic-approved front seat on the next bus.  I did question my choice slightly when a nice older fellow settled onto my seat next to me and said "I always like to get the front seat.  I get motion sickness."

Great.  

But the 26-mile ride went fine, and soon we were disembarking at the start.

I found my team, Max Muscle, pretty quickly; they had set up camp at the start of the long road to the starting line.  We had a great location: Porta-potties, lots of chairs, and a loudspeaker blasting good music and race announcements.

Then, there was nothing to do but wait the two hours for our start.  I have a very good idea of what to do pre-long track race, but haven't done a lot of marathons lately so had no idea when to put my stuff on, how much to warm up, and just generally what to do and when.  So I did the only logical thing.

I ate.

Specifically, a Clif Bar, a 100-milligram Caffeine Clif Shot, and half a pack of Gu Chomps.  I'm pretty sure I was adequately fueled for the race.

Then I hung out, socialized with the Max Muscle teammates, had a fun conversation with a woman that I used to race off-road motorcycles against over 10 years ago, and kept an eye out for my sister Energizer Bunny and her husband Sherpa Boy.

Oh, and I used the Porta-potties.  A local athlete blogger, Steve of Steve In a Speed? Gross!, always posts pre-race-in-the-porta-potty pictures.  All I can say is, if he can manage a camera as well as his clothing, runners must have a lot less to deal with, logistically, than inline skaters do.  I had to contend with:  bottom layers, above the standard underwear, of softball sliding shorts, skinsuit bottoms, and wind pants; top layers, post-underwear, of skinsuit top, long-sleeved T-shirt, and team jacket.  All of the above had to be successfully removed and reapplied while avoiding having anything fall onto the floor, into the toilet, or into the wall-mounted urinal.  (Aside: Why do the men need urinals?  If they can't hit the hole in the toilet they certainly can't hit the smaller urinal, thus guaranteeing that they will pee not only on the floor in front of the seat and on the seat, but on the wall surrounding the urinal as well.  Nice.)

Finally, it was time to put the skates on and head to the start.  I gave up trying for any sort of warmup, since the road was now extremely clogged with skaters and walkers.  Besides, I hadn't yet found Energizer Bunny, and since I thought she started in a wave ahead of mine, I figured I'd better get up there and find her so I could wish her luck before her start.

On the way to the start I had another Porta-potty adventure, this one without extra clothes but with the added complications of being on skates, and having a Camelbak that needed to be removed and needed careful juggling to avoid having the hose and mouthpiece fall into anything it should't fall into.

At the start, a thorough search of waves A and B revealed no EB.  Finally I bumped into Sherpa Boy on the road shoulder, and he told me that EB was actually in my wave, Wave 1.  Once I was looking in the right place I quickly found her.  I told her about our friend Mel's crash (in retrospect, telling her that 5 minutes before a race probably wasn't the best idea!), and we re-confirmed our strategies--she was going to skate hard, and I was going to do whatever I could and hopefully have fun.

Wow, my fingers are tired.  Also, we need to go search for my ring now.  So, this is will become a 2-part race report.  See ya soon for the details of the actual race!

Bad Things and Good People

I had a nice (hopefully) amusing little post half-written in my head about the North Shore Inline Marathon I'll be skating tomorrow morning.  But I really don't feel like amusing posts right now.  Bad shit keeps happening to really good people.

Last weekend, a co-worker's college-age son incurred a severe head injury.  He's in the hospital now, and his mom is posting daily updates on his Caringbridge website.

My cousin, her parents, her husband, and their 22-year-old daughter are all in Miami right now.  They are not there for a family vacation, but because the daughter is undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer that she was diagnosed with just before Labor Day.  Miami is where the best treatment is, so Miami is where they are.  My cousin is posting updates on her daughter's Caringbridge website, too.

Kids that age shouldn't have to have Caringbridge websites.

Then, when I got home from work today I spent a few minutes on the computer before packing for Duluth.  When I logged onto Facebook, I discovered that my friend Mel--who is an awesome long track ice skater, has been tearing up the roads in her first serious season inline racing, and who is also one of the most genuine, nice people I know--crashed on the Oval this morning in her last pre-North-Shore skate, and is currently in the hospital with facial injuries that require surgery.  She obviously hasn't been able to post anything herself yet, so all I have is second-hand info, but it doesn't sound good and I feel so bad for her.

So really, how a chunky middle aged hypothyroid skater does in an inline marathon tomorrow is pretty irrelevant.  While I skate, and however I skate, I'll just be grateful for my health and for all the good things I have in my life.  And I'll send some good thoughts to Luke, and Siri, and Melissa.  Hang tough, guys, and get well soon.

It sucks when bad stuff happens to good people.

Just Right?

My thyroid meds, I mean.  I think they may be, finally,  just right.  At least for now.  And it's about time.

As I'm sure y'all know, I've spent pretty much the whole summer trying to get my thyroid levels back in range.  They were too low in June, so my doc upped my meds.  Still too low at the end of July, so he upped the meds again. Then, by the end of August, I began to suspect that my levels were too high; blood tests confirmed that one thyroid hormone was at the top of the range, which is apparently too much for me.  I skated a couple of weeks "high," and let me tell you, after skating many workouts with low thyroid levels and a few with high, I'd any day, hands down, much rather try to workout "low" than "high."

When your thyroid levels are low and you try to workout, you feel like a slug.  No energy, low heart rate, no snap or mental drive.  For me, though, once I stopped working out I usually felt fine.  It was only this summer that I had a couple workouts, when I was "low," that I was so tired afterwards that I collapsed into a two-hour nap.  Usually, hypo workouts ended with a glum trudge to the car for the drive home, but no lasting ill-effects (at least not physical ones).

Working out with high thyroid levels, though, is brutal (at least for me).  I get very hot very fast; my heart rate is high, my legs are wobbly, and I feel generally craptastic.  And it doesn't end when I stop skating.  No, the high heart rate, the overheated-ness, and the craptastic continue for hours after the workout.  In addition, my legs feel like I just did a first-class high-volume high-intensity workout, when all I did is skate a few laps or a few trail miles.  Ugh.  I therefore repeat: For anyone who is thinking that thyroid meds might be a performance-enhancing substance...they most emphatically are not.  At all.  You have the "sweet spot"in the range (where all you normal-thyroid people live), and then you've got crappy above and below that.

So, after finding out that my levels of one thyroid hormone were at the very top of the range, I asked my doc for permission to lower my dose of the faster-acting thyroid med.  Remember, this is the one where I split the  dose into 4 smaller doses per day.  In the past, I had to "time" this med carefully with my workouts: 2 doses, one hour apart, 4 and 3 hours before the workout/race.  By the end of this June, I was taking 3 of the doses together before a workout with no effect (the drug is prescribed to be taken just once a day, but most people don't tolerate that because it works quickly and then has a short half-life).  The last couple workouts, I've been taking less of the med overall, and making sure I don't take it (single dose) any closer than 5 hours before a workout, to try to reduce the horrible "high" workouts.

And...my last two workouts went well!  Yesterday's oval workout was pretty decent, but today was particularly good--a trail skate with my sister Energizer Bunny, to tune us up for the North Shore Inline Marathon that we'll be doing next Saturday.  We ended up getting a nice draft from an (unknown) fellow who started out behind us, passed us, and then was kind enough to let us enjoy the draft for the next few miles.  I had to work hard to stay with him (EB blew by us for the second 3-mile lap; she's much more serious about the upcoming marathon than I am!), but I felt great.  No sluggishness or tiredness.  No overheated high heart rate craptasticness.  It was awesome, and I'm really hoping that my meds are, indeed, finally just right.

And I hope like heck that they stay that way for a while!

Random photo of the beautiful John Rose Oval yesterday, during my "just right" oval skate.

Update Time

Since I was at the cabin for the past few days and didn't skate, there's not much significant to report on that front.  Plus, school starts tomorrow so there's still a fair amount of scrambling to do today if I intend, tomorrow, to: wear clean clothes to work; bring actual food to work for my lunch; have a plan for what I'm going to do with my 10 students all day.

So, a few brief updates it is!

• Yes, I was high.  Or, almost.  I got my thyroid bloodwork back just before we left for the cabin.  My Free T4 is nicely in range, but Free T3 was at the top of the range.  Which, apparently, is too high for me. (For those of you lucky enough to have properly-functioning thyroids, the "range" is a somewhat vague thing; different people feel best at different parts of the range.  The fun part, when you have thyroid issues, is trying to figure out just where in the range that is for you, and then to adjust the med dosage so you can stay there.  Since most of us don't test our thyroids when we're young and they're functioning fine, finding the right spot in the range becomes somewhat of an adventure).  So anyway, we dropped my "fast acting" thyroid med, which is the T3, a bit, and we'll see what happens.
• Last Wednesday was the last night of the Summer Inline Series.  I'll put it down in the record books as a "mental victory."  I was feeling lousy before the races and had to work very hard not to make excuses, before I raced, for why I was undoubtedly going to skate so badly.  But I didn't make excuses, I didn't skip any of the races, and I actually had OK times (well, OK for the past couple years, anyway; abysmally slow relative to my best times) in all three races.  A moderately successful end to the SIS.
• It's September, isn't it?  That means I need to plan my September workouts.  I have no idea what they will be.  Well, I know that on September 15 my workout will be "skate 26.2 miles from Two Harbors to Duluth."  But the rest of the month is up in the air.  I guess I'll take a look at what Coach TieGuy had me do  the past couple of Septembers.  Then (after I gasp in horror at the amount of skating he'd assigned and I'd completed in the past), I'll adjust the workouts to accommodate my current state of "slow and squishy," and I'll go from there.
• Grand Marais, where our cabin is, does not excel in the grocery-options department.  There are two nice small grocery stores, but both with somewhat limited options, at least relative to my supermarket-mega-store-littered suburban home.  However, Grand Marais does have something that I have been unable to find locally: unfrosted Blueberry PopTarts.  Blueberries grow wild around Grand Marais, so maybe the flavor is more popular there than downstate here.  So there are currently two boxes of unfrosted Blueberry PopTarts residing in my cupboard.  Or, well, a box and a half, actually...

And that's that!  My short term focus is surviving the first week of school with enough energy to get to the Oval for 2-3 workouts.  We'll see how that goes...