photo by Steve Penland

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Non-Race Report

I think I first did the Roll for the Roses 10K about 18 years ago.  I can't find a record of it in my skating logs; back then I had just started speedskating, and my data obsession record keeping system wasn't quite as highly evolved as it is now.  What I do remember is that the race scared me.  It's quite possible that it was my first inline road race ever; I know I did the inaugural Northshore Inline Marathon in 1996, but I can't remember if the R4R was before or after that.  I'm suspecting before, because one thing I distinctly remember about R4R is that the 90-degree corners freaked me out enough that I decided to forgo using my racing skates, and did the race in my "rec" skates...which were these guys:
Rockin' the 70mm's...

I say "rec skates," but actually these were, for a time, my speedskating training skates.  A lot of thought went into their selection.  My first pair of inline skates, bought around 1990, were Rollerblade Zetra Blades (I think "Zetra" is Greek for "really slow.")  Despite the fact that they barely rolled unless you were actually pushing, the Zetra's still felt wildly out of control and scary to me.  So when I started speedskating a few years later, and then decided that I should do inline training in the summer, I wanted skates that would allow me to "get lower" than the high Zetra boots would permit, but that also wouldn't go too fast for my comfort level.  Enter the above skates: Rollerblade "Racerblade" boots, which are slightly lower than standard Rollerblade boots, with "Lightning" (worst choice of name ever; these frames were not designed for speed!) frames and 70 mm wheels.  A local skate rental place had this boot/frame combo made for renting to folks who wanted to skate around the lakes; I'm not sure why they wanted the lower boots, but they seemed like a perfect match for my needs.

Until I started skating on them at the oval, anyway.  Not surprisingly--given the lower-but-still-high boot, the small, slow wheels, and the short wheelbase--I was having difficulty simulating speedskating technique on these skates.  After a  month of frustration I ran into a couple of actual inline speedskaters at the oval one day and they told me that I needed "real racing skates" if I wanted to practice long track technique. And then they sold me their used skates (but that's a story for another day).  Anyway, I used my rec skates in the R4R and was scared enough by the experience that I haven't done that race again.

Until this year.  This year I decided to lay the Roll for the Roses demon to rest, and skate the event (in "real racing skates," none the less).  I was even excited about it.  And then Mother Nature dumped rain and tree branches and even a couple power lines on the course the night before the race, and the R4R was cancelled--for the first time ever.

So far, that's been the story of my inline road racing season, Version 2013.  Here's how the season looks:
  • The Baxter half marathon, usually held in early June and which my sister Energizer Bunny and I did last year, was cancelled.
  • I discovered that the mid-June Madeline Island marathon was on the weekend we'd be out of town with the Hubster's family.
  • R4R was cancelled due to weather.
  • The next race I want to do, the early August Minnesota Half Marathon, falls on a weekend we'll be at a family reunion.
  • So I looked around and found another marathon in August, this one in Grand Forks. Turns out this one is the weekend that the Hubster will be rally racing, and since I'm his service crew, I'll be rally racing as well.
So unless I can find another race reasonably close to home, I won't be doing an inline road race until the Northshore Inline in September.  And the oval inline races, the Summer Inline Series, haven't fared much better.  The first one was rained out; the replacement date for the rainout was rained out; and I was up north for the first week racing was held.

Tomorrow, though, I'm hoping my luck will change.  The Summer Inline Series races are supposed to happen again; I'm in town, and as long as the 40% chance of rain behaves itself, I'll be racing.  Of course, my legs are fried from three days of workouts in a row (necessitated by another upcoming cabin trip), but you can't have everything.

And at least I won't be skating on my old rec skates.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Dammit, Goldilocks!

So...in the two weeks since my previous post, in which I offered the opinion that my thyroid seemed, finally, to be behaving itself, I am now finding myself once again on a Goldilocks-type quest, searching for "just right."  Fortunately I only seem to be searching for "just right" in medication timing, rather than (as I have the past three summers) searching--with my doctors help--for the right medication dosage.

Still, the quest for "just right" sucks.

Right after my previous post, I had a couple bad workouts but I attributed them to a sinus infection.  And then, two days after I finished teaching for the summer, I started on a series of three consecutive trips--which of course wreaked minor havoc with my workout schedule.  First the Hubster and I headed to the cabin to visit my parents, and also to leave the dog there, because immediately after we returned from the cabin we headed to Illinois for a (dog-free) vacation with the Hubster's side of the family.  And then, once we returned from that, I of course needed to head back up to the cabin to pick up the (very tired after spending a week with my parents' four dogs) dog.  (Incidentally, I think the dog is currently embarking on one of her epic 24-hour naps.  Seriously--she won't get up for 24 hours, not to eat, not to drink, not to go out to the bathroom.  We find ourselves checking her for breathing every so often, but we've finally learned that she just has an extremely long "recharge" time when fully depleted).

Anyway, in between trips I managed to get in a couple of skating workouts.  One, a German endurance workout (hard-easy-hard laps) very clearly had the earmarks of a "too little thyroid meds" workout.  Slow, sluggish, couldn't get going--laps that had been 47-48 seconds the first time I did this workout this year were 50-54 seconds...until the eighth, and last, set, when they were suddenly 47 seconds.  Taking 7 seconds per lap off of one's times in the fortieth through forty-eighth of forty-eight laps is not normal, and to me it means "oops, someone mistimed her thyroid meds."  Except I had timed them pretty much as I always do, so that was weird.

(If you're all filled in on the specifics of my thryoid med issues, y'all can skip this paragraph.  For anyone who might be hypo or is just wondering what I'm babbling about, here's the rundown: I take two thyroid hormones daily--a slow-acting one once a day, and a faster-acting one two to four times a day.  The faster acting one is prescribed to be taken once a day but I can't tolerate that (many people can't) so I take less of it more frequently.  And I've discovered that I need to time this med pretty precisely with my workouts or I end up with too much or (more frequently) too little.  I may not notice the "too much" or "too little" if I'm just going about my daily life, but in a workout it becomes glaringly obvious.)

So for today's interval workout, I decided to change up my med timing a bit to try to avoid the "too little" of the previous workout.  By the time I was halfway through my first warmup lap, though, I knew I had gone too far in the other direction.  As I've mentioned before, too much thyroid hormone is much worse, workout-wise, than too little.  Instead of sluggishness, I get shaky legs, instant fatigue, high heart rate, and overheating. Add this to the first 90 degree day of the year, and it all spells "quit the workout after only half of the laps."

And since the workout had been epically horrible, I decided to have my "post workout" snack consist of whatever goodies I could find in the car...which turned out to be a nice cherry-almond scone from the Grand Marais Co-op, some licorice I heisted from my mom, and a Diet Dew.  Not the best recovery food...but that's how I roll.

Or that's why I have rolls.  Whatever.

Anyway, now I need to figure out the med timing.  I'm hoping--if it doesn't rain--to do the Roll for the Roses 10K skating race on Saturday morning, and I'd really like to have the Goldilocks-o-meter end up on "just right" for that.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Tardis Workouts

For anyone who Googled their way here in hopes of finding "something Dr. Who"--sorry!  My knowledge of the Who's in Whoville (oops, different "who's") is extremely limited--whenever the Hubster watches one of his DVR'd Dr. Who episodes, I find something in the other room that needs doing urgently.  In fact, the only thing I really know about Dr. Who is that the Tardis is a time machine (I think).  So I thought I'd throw that into the title, because my "vintage 2007" workouts are my own little personal time machine; I'm trying to go back to the last good spring/summer skating season I had, which was 2007.

And I think it's working.

So far, my skating workouts this spring have been remarkably similar to when I first did them in 2007 (well, except for the poundage, wrinkles, and occasional tendency towards crabbiness that I've accrued in the six years since then).  I'm feeling great, my lap times are very similar to what they were back then, and in general I'm feeling pretty good about my progress.  The workouts seem to be the perfect difficulty level--I can get through  them fine, but they're hard enough that I feel a distinct sense of accomplishment (as well as slightly sore legs) when I'm done.  It's very important that I have workouts written that I can accomplish without having to cut them back.  Last year I was trying to do workouts from 2010 (the last year Coach Tie Guy wrote workouts for me) but I wasn't in shape to do them and consequently had to modify or cut back a lot of the workouts.  Putting me in charge of deciding when I need to do less in a workout is a bad plan, as last year's lackluster winter race season proved.  So this year, so far, it's been nice to step out onto the oval with the workout in my head, thinking "yeah, I can do that."

So the 2007 workouts, so far, are "just right."  But that's not the only way that 2013 feels like 2007.

I think that maybe...just maybe...my fingers are crossed and I'm almost afraid to type it...maybe 2013 is the first spring since 2007 that my thyroid hasn't thrown a hissy fit.

I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism in April of 2010 (and consequently spent much of that spring and summer getting meds adjusted to the right level), but my thyroid had definitely been misbehaving since spring of 2008.  And then in the spring/summer of both 2011 and 2012 my thyroid levels dropped out of range again and I spent most of the spring and summer adjusting  meds again--and dealing with all the bad workouts that come when your thyroid medication is not optimal.

This year, though, everything seems good.  I've had a couple days when I've mistimed my meds and those workouts were, as expected, sluggish...but I've felt nicely normal for the rest of my skates.  I've missed feeling normal.

So I'm really hoping that this spring segues into summer the same way it started: with "just right" workouts, a happy thyroid, and optimism for a decent winter race season.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Time For Some More Bullet Points!

It's the weekend before my last week of school.  It has rained here (I believe) nine out of the last twelve days.

These two facts should give you sufficient information about how things are going here in Longtracksville, but as usual, I feel the need to say a lot more about very little.  So, bring on the bullet points!


  • It's a little-known fact that, along with vultures, hyenas, and carrion beetles, elementary school teachers are some of the most effective scavengers on the planet.  Put food--especially food containing sugar--in the staff lounge and within minutes it will be reduced to a plate of lonely crumbs.  End-of-the-school-year is a particularly good time to scavenge; everyone has some sort of celebration going on,  all seem to involve food, and most eventually result in a lot of leftovers making their way to the staff lounge.  Yesterday we scored "make your own trail mix" (this was part of the regular every-other-Friday "treat day"), cookies, pizza, brownies, chocolate-dipped pretzels, and muffins.  I hope my "fat pants" can hold out for another week, because my willpower certainly can't!
  • On a related note, I'm still enjoying the increased fruit, vegetable, and protein consumption afforded by my Nutribullet blender.  I'm just adding a lot of treats to it when I get to school.
  • Rain.  Lots and lots of rain.  I'm getting sick of rain.  Still, so far I've managed to get in all of my workouts.  I can't do the spacing I'd like--last week was three days off, then four days in a row of skating--and some oval workouts have to be moved to the trails because the trails dry faster than the oval and often there's precious little "dry time" before the next rain.  This week I may end up one workout short, though, depending on how closely the actual weather adheres to the dire forecast.  As I type this, I'm switching back and forth from blog to the skatetheoval website (with its live "how wet is the oval?" webcam) to see when I need to head out to do Tuesday's endurance workout (yes, today is Saturday).
  •  Because of the rain, I actually did a dryland workout on Thursday. I'm blaming Mel; she said the oval was fairly dry so I headed out after school, only to drive into a downpour about five miles from the oval.  Since it's an hour drive in bad traffic, and the return trip would be just as bad if I didn't wait at least an hour for traffic to die down, I decided that as long as I was there I might as well do dryland.  So I did, and it went fine (only 10 minutes of down time, though).  So--thanks, Mel!
  • The rainy weather is wreaking havoc with my ability to time my thyroid meds for workouts.  The best timing seems to be a dose four hours and another three hours before a workout.  What with suddenly impending rain and a slowly-drying oval, I've had to move workouts up or back by several hours, thus totally hosing my med timing.  And I've definitely felt it, with a few notably sluggish workouts.
  • Nets!  We have nets!  The oval has finally done what I've been begging them to do for years--they pull the nets that go between the track and the skate park.  So now there's a barrier (at least for half the straightaway) between me and the Skate Park Punks.  Five year old with skateboard wobbling down the ramp five feet from the track?  No problem--he's on the other side of a net!  Teenage punks  want to start their run-up to a ramp from the middle of the track halfway around the blind corner?  No problem--they can't, there's a net!  Kid falls off his board and the board is headed right for the track? No problem--there's a net!  
See the net that ends just past the blue garbage can?  Now that right there is a beautiful sight!

And now, the oval is close to dry...time to head out for some endurance work!