Apparently I Spoke Too Soon

My last blog entry ended with a happy little "so far, so good."  And it was good...right up until I tried to skate this week.

Both skating workouts I have attempted this week have ended early and ugly.  On Tuesday my 3x5K at 50 second or so laps ended on lap six, which took me exactly one minute.  I felt horrible, and in just those six laps my lap times had increased seven seconds.  I really wasn't up for doing the remaining 30 laps, the last of which would likely need to be timed with a calendar, so I bailed on the workout.

I figured there were four possibilities for what was going wrong:  either 1)I hadn't recovered properly from the North Shore Marathon, or 2) my cold was affecting me more than I thought it was, or 3) my thyroid meds were not properly adjusted, or 4) I had eaten the wrong thing before my workout and was having blood sugar issues (what, two blueberry poptarts and a Diet Mountain Dew isn't good pre-workout food?).

I suppose there's also the possibility of 5) some combination of all of the above.

So I decided to try to eliminate as many possibilities as I could before I hit the oval again.  For the recovery, I'd take Wednesday and Thursday completely off from workouts before trying skating again on Friday.  For the cold, well, I'd just have to take vitamin C and hope it got better.  I thought I may have taken too much of my fast-acting thyroid med before skating (although still less than what I've typically used over the past three years), so I decided to adjust my timing a bit to address number three.  And for number four, no poptarts...although the Dew got to stay.

So I did all that...and Friday's intervals sucked harder than Tuesday's endurance.  My lap times were a bit better (for the 3.5 laps I managed), but I felt absolutely horrible.  Lightheaded, wobbly, sluggish--in fact, I wanted nothing more than to pull off the track, curl up on the concrete bleachers next to the oval, and take a nap.  Needless to say, the interval workout did not get completed.

Still, I think the abysmal workout gave me some important information.  The "I need a nap in the middle of a workout" sensation is something I've really only felt when my thyroid levels are high, and the "wobbly" feeling correlates pretty well with high thyroid as well.  Add in the fact that I am almost always hot (even when I'm not having a hot flash), and the fact that, despite being hungry all the time this week and eating like a truck driver, I've actually lost over a pound this week, and you've got a pretty good case for "perhaps we need to cut back on the thyroid meds a wee."  So even though I had adjusted the timing for Friday's workout, I don't think I adjusted it enough.  Time to try again.

Of course it rained today, Saturday, so I couldn't try skating with new thyroid med timing--so I decided to go to my Crossfit gym's Saturday "Bütt Camp."  I've never done the Saturday workouts before, and I'm not exactly a Crossfit veteran anyway, so a Crossfit workout is not the best way to evaluate how well my thyroid is adjusted, but it's all I had to work with.

Turns out that Bütt Camp workouts are...interesting.  This one was a partner event, and a long one:  "Annie" (which is 50-40-30-20-10 double-under jump ropes and situps, except I had to do three times as many jumps because I can't do dubs), then two rope climbs, then some toes to bar, pushups, and air squats, two more rope climbs (don't be silly, I can't climb a rope; I had to scale to three "pull yourself up off the ground" things for each climb) and then another workout named for a woman (unfortunately I can't remember which one)--3 rounds of 400 meter run, 21 kettlebell swings, and 12 pullups.  Oh, and a 45 minute cap to the workout.  Which, due to my inability to do more than five rope jumps in a row, my poor partner and I needed almost all of.

But still, I did it all.  A little PVC action in the 400 meter runs, but otherwise I felt OK (well, as OK as you can feel doing all that stuff).  So hopefully I've got the thyroid going in the right direction.   I won't really know until I skate...but--and this has a warmly familiar ring to it--so far so good.

How Did My Legs Get to SLC Without Me?

This weekend (as in, right now) is the Masters Long Track camp in Salt Lake City.  I went last year and the year before and had a blast, but the timing this year is not good for me; it's hard to take two days off so early in the school year.  So I regretfully decided not to go this year.  I was sorry to miss it--two ice workouts and  two "learn the technique but you're gonna do some work in the process" dryland, slideboard and turncable workouts a day for four days, led by ever-enthusiastic and energetic Olympic Gold medal winner Derek Parra.  A great time and a great learning experience--but also an event guaranteed to leave you sore as heck by the time you get back on the plane on Sunday.

However, after last Saturday's North Shore Inline Marathon, Crossfit on Monday, a 13-hour work day on Tuesday that precluded working out, Crossfit again Wednesday and Thursday (rain kept me off the oval), and an endurance oval skate on Friday followed by a hockey game Friday night, by the time I got out of bed this morning my legs were convinced that they'd just spent the last few days doing Derek's workouts.

Yup, sore and tired.

But a good sore and tired.  Workouts are going well, I'm getting stronger, and I'm thinking about going to Milwaukee next weekend to try a Time Trial.  So even though I didn't make it to the camp this year, things are going well.  So far, so good--and only seven weeks or so until the ice season!

Sail, Part 2

So, when we left me I was four miles into a 26-mile marathon, with no draft, a near-max heartrate, a huge headwind, a nice case of heartburn, and a strong sense of foreboding.

It seemed that "Sail" was about to become "Fail."

And then I heard a glorious sound; the sound of skaters approaching from the rear.  It seems that the paceline had indeed broken up, and a perfectly sized--and paced--faction was now approaching from behind to save my sorry butt.

So I happily jumped into the line, and there I stayed.  I took my share of pulls, and enjoyed the draft when I had it.  Things seemed to be going well as we neared the halfway point--even my heartburn was beginning to behave itself.  So when we passed the "13" mile marker, I looked confidently at my watch, expecting to see a fairly good time.

52 minutes.

Wait...what?

Last year I was at 44 minutes at the halfway point; I knew we had a headwind this year, but 52 was ridiculous!

Still, there was nothing to do but "keep on keepin' on."  So I did, but it was getting harder--harder physically, but mostly harder mentally.  My little friend "Nagging Self-Doubt" had turned up again, and began whispering sweet nothings in my ear.  Stuff like "This is hard.  You can't do this for 13 more miles.  Why don't you drop out of the paceline and take it easy?"  Stuff that I did not want to hear, yet that was strangely seductive.

But I fought it.  I reminded myself of just how many tough things I have done, from marathons to a 10K on ice to brutal Crossfit workouts.  And when that wasn't enough, I reminded myself that, with a headwind like this, dropping from the pack and going solo was likely to guarantee me another two hours of skating.

That was enough to keep me going.

Then, somewhere around mile 14 or so, things improved considerably.

My happy paceline of five or so skaters had been occasionally overtaking single skaters, presumably those poor souls unfortunate enough to be dropped from the previous wave.  Most just looked forlornly at us as we sailed past, but one group stuck.  In fact, they did more than stick.  One, a fellow a bit older than I am, hopped briskly to the front of our paceline and offered to pull.  His daughter, he said, was skating with him, and he wanted to get into a good paceline and pull for her.

And pull he did.  For the entire rest of the race, right up until the final sprint up the exit ramp hill, he pulled us.  In fact, he pulled us so well that we had to ask him to slow down a few times.  He was, in short, a machine.  Since I, happily drafting in third place behind a teammate and not having to take the occasional pull anymore, now had more breath to work with and was feeling quite grateful, I asked our orange-clad workhorse a bit about himself.  His name was Nick, he said, he was 58, his daughter was 18, and they were from Canada.

Apparently they grow them strong in Canada.

And so we followed our Canadian Savior for the second half of the race.  I felt bad when we hit the uphill exit ramp and the paceline from behind us began sprinting past on both sides.  I jumped in front of Nick and offered to pull him up the hill--it seemed the least I could do--but he declined, saying he'd done his job getting his daughter to that point and was happy with where he was.  So I went as hard as I could, up the hill, down the hill, around the corner, and down the final straightaway (finally, a tailwind!).  When I crossed the line I looked at my watch.  1:47 something.  Lovely, I thought.   A Personal Worst.

As soon as I coasted to a stop I began looking for our Canadian Savior.  Here I am, to the right in this picture, shaking the hand of the fellow in orange and thanking him profusely for the pull.

Thanks, eh.

And then EB and I wandered the post-race scene, eating free food, chatting with fellow racers, and waiting vainly for results.  I joined in the Max Muscle post-race picture...

...and then it was time to leave.  We hadn't seen results yet, but we were heading up the shore to EB's and my parents, and we needed to get there in time to make dinner.  Besides, the Hubster was completely worn out from dealing with all of Keira's admirers all morning; apparently every dog lover in the twin ports had mobbed her while I was wandering around drinking chocolate milk and waiting for results.

So we headed north.  Finally, at about 8 o'clock that night (after a fabulous steak dinner topped off with cupcakes in honor of Sherpa Boy's birthday), I remembered that I hadn't yet checked the results online.  So I pulled out my phone and looked them up...

...and found that EB had come in second in her age group!

And then I looked further and found that I had come in second in my age group as well!

Apparently the head wind was so hideous that my time--21 minutes slower than my time last year--was actually not bad.  Second is my highest place ever in the NSIM, so I was thrilled.  EB beat me by seven minutes, though, which doesn't bode well for next year, when we'll be in the same age group.

Still, if I remember not to attack at three miles and if I find a nice Canadian to draft off of, maybe I'll be able to keep up with her...

Sail

Years and years ago I heard "Bad Time to Be in Love" as I milled around the starting line for the North Shore Inline Marathon, and the song chased itself through my head for the entire race.  Every year since then, I seem to get a song stuck in my head for NSIM.  Last year it was "One More Night."  This year, it was "Sail," a song I first heard in a video about wingsuit pilot Jeb Corliss.  (Go ahead and check it out on Youtube--it's pretty cool.  I'd post it but we have a data limit on our computer and there was this Shutterfly incident and, well,  now I'm a bit gunshy...).

Anyway, given the conditions for the 2013 NSIM, "Sail" turned out to be a fitting song.  If I'd had a sail when I skated this year, I'd have gone really fast.

The wrong way.

That's right, we had Headwind from Hell this year.  But despite that, it turned out to be a pretty darn good race and, while not as much "just plain fun" as last year's, it had its own high points.

So here's the race report:

At 4 am on Saturday, my first task was to wake up this...

And this...

That hurdle cleared, we hit the road.  I had my blueberry poptart (not poptarts--I was kind enough to share one with the Hubster) and coffee right after we left the house, and then topped it off with McDonald's further down the road.  We made it to Duluth without incident, and I picked up my race packet.  Because it turned out that they didn't have my shirt set aside, I got distracted with ironing out the shirt-picking-up details and didn't really look at my packet or the bib number scribbled on it.  Once in the car, I reached into the envelope and pulled out my number...and burst out laughing.

If you get in trouble during the race, just call me...

And then we drove to Two Harbors and picked up my sister Energizer Bunny and her husband Sherpa Boy at their motel, and then we all drove to the race start.  The men (and a still-groggy Keira) accompanied us down the road to the "staging area."  Keira fended off dog-worshippers and tried to keep her exceptionally long toes out from under skate wheels, while the husbands milled around handing us caffeinated Gu packages and holding our gear bags while we went to the Porta Potties.  Canadian/American Hubster was appalled to hear the anthem singer forget the lyrics to "Oh Canada" not once but at least three times (I had to fight hard to not have Oh Canada chase Sail right out of my head; I didn't think it would be a suitably motivating song) and Sherpa Boy had to deal with EB's unwisely tucking a half-eaten Gu into the waistband of her shorts and then complaining about having "sticky fat."  Just another morning at the races!

And then it was time to line up.  Due to her four-minutes-faster-than-mine 2012 NSIM time, EB was in the wave ahead of me.  My wave seemed quite small--maybe 30 people?--but I did find some teammates and a guy from the Wednesday night races, so I figured I'd start next to them.  I tried to focus on my two most important pre-race tasks: think about having fun, and pop that final caffeinated Clif Shot at just the right time.

Turns out I may not have exactly nailed those two tasks.

First, when the "time to go" airhorn sounded, I apparently forgot that "having fun" was linked to "starting easy."  I hopped into a pace line that seemed to contain all 30 skaters from our wave, and although I was near the front and was taking my turn pulling, it seemed that the paceline was just too slow, especially on uphills.  So (completely forgetting that "too slow" in mile one of a marathon may well turn out to be "just right" another few miles down the road), I devised a plan.  I'd wait for a likely-looking uphill, then I'd make a break for it and hope that a few of the faster skaters would go with me so we could form a smaller, faster paceline of our own.

So I did.  I picked a nice uphill, pulled out of the line, and exhorted my Wednesday-night-race-pal to join me as I sprinted ahead of the paceline.  And my little attack worked splendidly; we dropped most of the line, and about five guys and I formed our own paceline   It worked, that is, until the guys that had gone with me continued to skate at my "surge to lose the pack" pace--and dropped me.

Well, damn.  There I was, three miles into the marathon, with no paceline and my heartrate at a near-max 198.  

Oh, and some lovely heartburn.  Turns out that, while a caffeinated Clif Shot right before racing might give you a nice lift, it might also give you a nicely smoldering esophagus for the next ten miles or so.

And this seems like a suitably suspenseful place to leave y'all for the night.  Besides that, it's my bedtime and I'm still making up for Saturday's 4 am start...

So back with Part 2 tomorrow.

NSIM in the AM

Tomorrow morning (very, very early tomorrow morning) the Hubster and the hound and I head north so I can skate the North Shore Inline Marathon.  Last year's NSIM was one of the most fun things I've ever done, so I'm hoping for a repeat performance.  To increase the odds of having an incredible amount of fun, I figured I should look at last year's detailing of how I prepped (in other words: ate and dressed) for the race. Thankfully I was nauseatingly detailed reasonably thorough in my recounting of my previous pre-race preparations, so I am now properly equipped for tomorrow with blueberry poptarts and softball sliding shorts in my gear bag.

I've also packed enough caffeine to wire the crew of a battleship.

Although my main goal is to have fun, I'll admit that secretly I'm hoping to turn in a relatively good time, as well.  My training has gone much better this year than last, my thyroid has behaved itself all summer, and I've had a couple of really good trail skates recently, where I've gone faster than I thought I could.  Maybe, just maybe, this will translate into a good race.

So bring on 4 am... good race or just fun race, I'm ready!

Caffeinate Me

I've been a big fan of caffeine ever since I cracked open my first can of Tab in college (yes, for you young 'uns out there, I did just date myself).  Over the years I've bounced from Tab to Diet Coke to Diet Dew to coffee; I currently have a nice regimen of coffee in the morning, Diet Coke at lunch, and Diet Dew on the way home/pre-workout.  (Yes, I'm trying to quit the diet pop.  No, I haven't been successful--and I've been trying for 30 years.)

Anyway, despite all this daily caffeine I've never really tried a "performance enhancing" dose immediately pre-workout.  My sister Energizer Bunny, though, is the queen of the pep-up juice; she manages a GNC nutrition store and loves mixing and matching their energy products before lifting or skating.  A 300-milligrams-of-caffeine "pre race" drink makes her happy and peppy and hell to try to keep up with on the trails (and she's too short to provide a good draft!).  Still, despite her enthusiastic (and somewhat hyperactive) endorsement of energy products, I'd never deliberately timed and dosed my caffeine for a workout or race.

Until last week.  On Labor Day, EB and I did a 25-mile trail skate to prep us for the upcoming North Shore Inline Marathon (next Saturday).  I felt decent the first two 6.2-mile laps of the trail, but was becoming very hungry.  So we stopped after two laps and I had a Clif Shot--with 100 milligrams of caffeine  I didn't think much about the caffeine dosage, I just wanted some calories.

What I got was more like a turbo-boost.

When we hit the trail again, I was energetic.  I was strong.  I cruised merrily along behind EB (I always used to "pull" when we skated together, but in the past few years I've had to go behind when we go fast, and often I can't keep up even with a draft), singing out loud to my iPod and occasionally charging past her yelling "c'mon, let's go!" I felt awesome for two full laps--or, well, almost two laps.  My heart arrhythmia kicked in a couple times in the last 400 yards, and EB dashed past me to win the unofficial sister-fest. (And no, I don't think the caffeine precipitated the heart arrhythmia; I still get it occasionally, and the only triggers I can identify are drinking cold liquids and lying in certain positions.  Fortunately, it happens less during workouts than it did last year at this time).

Anyway, that was a fun skate.

And definitely worth seeing if I could replicate, especially since I have a marathon coming up.  I've always been very cautious about what and when I eat pre-workout or race, and now I'm beginning to think I've been shorting myself on energy--or at least, energy enhancers.

So I decided to try the experiment again.  EB and I were planning another pre-marathon trail skate for yesterday; she was going to do four or five hard laps of a 3.5 mile course, and I planned to do three or four "recovery pace" laps.  Then a friend of EB's and a couple friends of the friend decided to skate (and bike) too, and suddenly we had a group.  A very fast group, that I was not planning to try to stick with.

For my experiment, I had my usual coffee about an hour and a half before the morning skate.  Then I had the only energy product I've been using, an FRS energy shot (these have about 35 mg of caffeine, but are mostly other "energy ingredients" and an antioxidant).  Then, about 10 minutes before we skated, I added the finishing touch--a 100 mg caffeine Clif Shot.

And then we skated.

EB and I headed out before the rest of the pack got there, to get in a warmup lap before the hard stuff started.  I felt so good in the warmup lap that I decided to go hard with the group and see if I could stick with them.

And I did.  For two fast, fun, flying laps.  Just like last time, I felt marvelous--skating hard, digging deep to keep up and loving it, and even singing occasionally (quietly, though--I know better than to inflict that on anyone).  After the two fast laps--the second of which was the fastest I've ever gone on that trail--I was cooked, and I did a fourth lap as a cool down, accompanied by the Hubster on his bike.

So. I seem to have learned something.

Caffeine before workout=good.

Can't wait to try it in the North Shore Marathon.

There's No Crying in Crossfit

There's no crying in Crossfit...but yesterday I sure wanted to.  Not because the workout was brutally hard or painful--but simply because I sucked so. horribly. extensively. completely.  at it.

It was something called Angry Annie: 50 pushups, then "double under" jump ropes, situps, and push presses in sets of 50, 40, 30, 20, and 10.  And then 50 more pushups.  If you couldn't do double unders (I can't), you had to do twice as many single unders.  Oh, yeah--you had to finish all that in 25 minutes or less.

Now, I am not normally a cry-er.  Neither physical pain nor sappy movies typically turn on the waterworks (although the advent of the "hormones that happen when you're almost 50" appears to be changing that a bit).  But by the time I was five minutes into the workout, I was almost in tears.  Because five minutes into the workout, everyone else was finishing their set of 50 or starting their set of 40.

I still had 15 pushups to go before I could start my set of 50.

And by the time the 25 minutes was up, everyone but one older gentleman had finished the whole workout.

He was working on his final set of pushups.

I was finishing my "30" set of 60 jump ropes.

  When I thought about it later, I realized that if I'd wanted to craft a workout at which I would fail miserably, "Angry Annie" would be it.  Usually, in the Crossfit workouts I can "scale" (reduce the difficulty) enough that, although I'm doing much lighter weights than everyone else, I can complete approximately as much work as the fitter ones do.  "Angry Annie," though, seemed to be an endurance-type workout, which means that the weights should be fairly light so you can do many repetitions, fast.  The trouble is, though, you can only make pushups so easy.  In my case, I started with "toes on the way down, knees on the way up," which is how the coaches encourage us weaker folks to do them.  By the time I'd done 20, though, I had to do "knees on the way down and up," and by 25 I could only do two in a row before stopping to rest.  Same with situps; you really can't make them easier, you can just rest a lot between them. Jumping rope?  Well, I had to do twice as many as the coordinated folks who can do double unders, and although I was able to do at least 10 jumps in a row before missing (rather than my usual two), it still took me a long time.  And the push press?  Well, the lightest bar is 15 pounds, and that is heavy enough for me that I had do the work in sets of 10 (the guy in front of me banged out all 50 in a row with his 45 pound bar without even pausing).

So I sucked, and I didn't like it.  Which is weird, because I've sucked at a lot of athletic endeavors before (including speedskating, when I started) and usually it doesn't bother me much.  Still, I'm proud that I didn't quit (or burst into tears), and I finished as much of the workout as I could.  Cleary, though, I'll need to get used to sucking in Crossfit, because I have a long way to go in the strength department.

How I Spent My Last Weekend of Summer Vacation

So what did I do on my final weekend before school officially starts tomorrow?

Well, there was some of this...

And a bit of this...

There was a bit of this...

But also a whole lot of this...

But mostly, there was this...

This is my annual last-week-before-school starts nightmare.  It's the schedule for my students, myself, and the paraprofessionals that work in my class.  Ten kids, six adults, all scheduled in five-minute increments for a six-and-a-half hour day.  For a five day cycle.  And I can't start working on my schedules until the building master schedule is done, which is usually sometime during the week before school starts. It's a logic-type problem ("seven people need to cross a river in three canoes but John can't sit with Cindy and Joe can't be in the middle of a canoe..."  Oi.)  I used to be really good at these type of logic problems, but as I've gotten older my brain has gotten less flexible with such information and now I find myself staring vaguely at my little post-it flags for inordinate amounts of time.  But now it's done (at least, until I get to school tomorrow and discover how many things I need to change), and I'm ready to re-enter the world of the working.

Sort of.