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.