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Long run lessons

02 May

On Monday I ran my third ever 10 mile race (16.1km for the metric folk out there). I ran my first 10 miler in September 2009, in a time of 2:02:00. The second was last September, in preparation for the half marathon, and I finished in 2:09:51. On that basis, my run yesterday, which I finished in 1:57:48 was a success, since I managed to set a new PR, but in reality, I should have been able to run it in an easy (consistent) pace and finish in 1:52, with a lot less effort than it actually took me.

Weather
First of all, there was one aspect which was out of my control, and that was the weather. After a couple weeks of near constant rain, which is continuing today, Monday was a flash in the pan hot day with temperatures reaching 22C. The unexpected heat was not helped by the fact that the race was scheduled for 3pm, during the hottest part of the day. Generally speaking I don’t tolerate heat well, as evidence by how much more I struggled in Tel Aviv and Arnhem and this last run as compared to other runs at similar distances.

I did my best to drink regularly, but not having my own water, I was limited by what was on offer at the race – two water stations, one of which had closed shop before I arrived at it for the start of my final loop, and arguably, just when I needed it most, being both thirsty and also rather disheartened by setting out for my last lap when I couldn’t see any runners ahead of me, and I could hear runners finishing behind me.

I had thought about taking my Camelbak, and with hindsight, I wish I’d stuck to that plan. I’ve never run with it before, though, so I was nervous about it making its debut on such a long run. Given the temperature, I would no doubt have suffered a little from having something on my back, but on the other hand, the extra hydration would have probably compensated for that.

I also think that it would have been good to have some electrolyte tablets with me. I’ve finished my small stock of Nuun, and I haven’t been able to get a hold of any more, so that was a practical difficulty. It’s a shame that the race organizers only had water on hand.

Pacing

My plan was to run the race at as an easy long run, and I didn’t hold myself to that. This is, fundamentally, the problem with treating races as long runs, especially when you’re as slow as I am. Holding yourself back at the start is hard.

I ran the first km in 5:50. That’s not much slower than my 5K race pace, so harder than I should have started if I really wanted to race the course (according to Daniels running tables, my 10mile race pace should be 6:05), and definitely too hard for an ‘easy 16K’.

This graph shows my 1km split times for Monday’s race, along with some of the other races I’ve done at similar distances.  As you can see, my speed dropped the whole way through the race, although I picked it up a bit at the end.  The big peak probably also has something to do with the two places on the last lap where I walked to drink some water, which ended up being quite close together because of the time van driver offering me a bottle of water not so long before the final official water point.

I should have been aiming for a 7 min/km pace which would have had me over the finish line in 1:52. The truth is that since I was already well behind the rest of the pack by the end of the first km, I didn’t have the feeling that I was running that fast, it felt pretty comfortable. Once I realized what my pace was, I should have held back, but because I could still see the people ahead, and had vain ideas of sticking more or less with them, I didn’t let up. Silly of me, in hindsight. I might have got away with it for longer on a cooler day, but not on such a sunny day on a course with little shade.

As you can see, whilst I’ve managed to improve my speed on short distances over the last few months, I really need to do work both on endurance and pacing.  Ideally these graphs should be more or less horizontal.

Fueling
Given that I knew I was going to be on my feet for a while, and that I planned to cycle to the race start, I did actually make the effort to figure out how many calories I needed to fuel my activities for the day, and to try to prepare myself.

I even got so far as deciding what I’d eat for breakfast, and for lunch, but ended up not sticking to the plan – not really smart.

According to Fitbit’s calculations, the run would consume about 930 calories, and the cycling to the race maybe another 100. Plus of course, I needed enough fuel to take account of basic metabolism for most of the day, and the fact that I did some gardening in the morning.

In the end, my intake over the course of the day before the race was the following:

Oops

With hindsight, that’s probably about what I might have consumed during breakfast and lunch if I wasn’t running, and was surely insufficient.

On the train back home again I felt pretty nauseous and dizzy at one point, and my guess is that it was a combination of lack of fuel and dehydration.

Time on feet

So, fueling and pacing are definitely things I need to work on. The final piece of the puzzle, I think, is simply putting in more time on my feet. My weekday 6km runs are working wonders for my speed over shorter distances, but I don’t get in very many runs longer than that, and all of those are in race conditions. I still feel quite a mental barrier to running longer distances on my own, and I certainly don’t have a good track record with them in the past. Pretty much every longer race I’ve done, I’ve fallen apart at the end, and I think that a lot of the issue is lack of distance training, and inadequate fueling.

I think I need to simply start building up gradually. My plan is that the next time I go out with my colleague, instead of doing the final 500m stretch back into the office with him, to add on an extra little loop to bump the route up to 8km or so.

Shoes

I did take one of leap of faith on Monday’s run, and that one I’m happy with. I decided to wear my Merrells for the run. That makes it the longest distance, by far, that I’ve ever run in minimalist shoes. Although it was a risk, I had the feeling that I was ready for it, and the results backed it up. Although my calves were rather stiff when I woke up the morning after the race, they loosened up pretty quickly once I was up and moving around, and my feet feel far better than after a long run in my old shoes. That for me is a good sign that I can pretty much ditch the traditional shoes and continue now in the Merrells and VFFs. It’ll take a bit longer to build up the VFF distances as the soles are thinner, but it’s going well.

Next steps

The next long race in the books is a 20km trail run at the end of May. Between now and then I really need to get a few more longer runs in, but more than anything I need to make sure that I pace myself on the day. Fingers crossed that the weather will at least be a little cooler. I think I’m also going to try running with the Camelbak as practice, and then use that for the race.

As for the half marathon in June, I’m not yet signed up, and I’m still doubting a little. After yesterday’s run I simply don’t think that I’m ready yet, and I intend to hold myself to my promise not to run another half until I’m really prepared for it. It’s important for me that my next half marathon is a significant improvement on the last one, both in terms of time, and consistency of pace. I don’t want to run another one unless I know that, barring the unexpected on the day, I can run strong throughout.

 
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Posted by on May 2, 2012 in running, training

 

I think I may throw up…

01 May

…have just taken a surprisingly nerve-wracking step.  Today the registration opened for the UKCAT – the exam that everyone applying to medical school in the UK has to take as part of the application process.  My exam date isn’t until the beginning of July, but this is the first official step in turning this crazy dream into reality.

Gulp.

 
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Posted by on May 1, 2012 in life

 

Sleeping my way to routine?

28 Apr

Step one in trying to define a bit more routine for myself, I guess, is defining the boundaries of my day.  I like to start work by 8am at the latest, though that doesn’t always work out.  I don’t want to start work too much before 8am, because the canteen doesn’t open until 8am, and after cycling to work, I’m generally more than ready for my bagel and coffee.

So, I’m going to aim for an arrival time of 7.45, with the intention of giving myself a 15 minute buffer period to get my head in gear, or simply allow for running late some days.  Given my usual habits, this means I should be getting up at about 7am.  Practically speaking, I’ve been using the Sleep Cycle app both to monitor my sleeping patterns and as an alarm clock.  Unlike a traditional alarm, you don’t set a fast alarm time, but a window in which the app will try to wake you when it senses that you’re most awake.  I guess I’ll set the window from 6:45 – 7:15, and see how that goes.

These are both graphs from the last week.  The one on the left is from last night, it’s not only the first time in the last week that I started the night deep asleep and gradually slept less deeply as the night went on, but it’s also the first time this week that I didn’t have to fight to wake up and felt alert as soon as I was awake.  Shame that I woke up with a migraine, and didn’t actually manage to get anything done though.  

By contrast the graph on the right is from Tuesday and fairly representative of the rest of the week, and of a frequent pattern for me.  Very often I seem to fall into my deepest sleep at exactly the point when my body should be starting to think about waking up.  No wonder I have so much trouble waking up in the morning so much of the time.  I really hope that if I can keep to more of a routine, I might benefit.

So, getting up at 7am, means that I really need to try to be asleep at 11pm at the latest, I really am a girl who needs 8 hours a night minimum.  More would be nice, but I don’t think I’ll ever achieve that.  Asleep by 11pm, means that I need to be trying to wind down from about 10pm, I guess.  Should be doable most days, if I swim on Wednesday nights then I’d be home a little later, and Friday night’s will also be later, but I think it’s the place to start.

What’s that going to mean in practice?  Well, I guess the first thing on the list is taking the melatonin.  I haven’t always been taking it, but in periods where I’m having trouble getting to sleep, then every little helps.  I hope that if I can use it to help establish a routine, then I won’t necessarily need to continue.

Next on the going to bed list is getting the cats in, something that sometimes takes a minute or two, and sometimes takes an hour, if they’re off somewhere getting into mischief, or simply not interested in coming in.  There are occasions where they stay out all night, but that’s not so frequent.  So long as I see them, I don’t mind if they want to stay out, but if there’s not been any sign of one for a while, I tend to worry – not great for getting to sleep, for sure!

So, cats called, time to get my clothes and bag ready for the next day, change into my pyjamas, take my meds, brush my teeth, and take a shower if I really need that extra bit of unwinding.  Preferably before the getting into pyjamas stage, come to think of it!

Practicalities taken care of, that seems like a good time to do a short yoga practice – I started out a while ago with the Evening Practice from Yogatic, which was only 15 minutes or so.  Probably not something I’d do on evenings where I’m already tired and sleepy, or home late, but nice to try and integrate most nights.  I’d like to find a few more similar practices so I have the chance to mix and match, but on the other hand, it’s nice to have one that you’re familiar with and don’t have to concentrate to hard to follow.

Yoga done, I guess the biggest challenge will be to resist the temptation to post it on DailyMile and then find myself busy on the phone again!  Similarly, it’s so easy to check my email, or have a look on Twitter, I really need to kick that habit when I go to bed, no matter how tempting it is when the phone makes that attention seeking BRRRRR when it vibrates!

I like to read in bed, and if I’m too awake to sleep it can help me unwind, but the danger is often that I read too long, and time passes by without me realizing.  I think my best bet is to go straight to bed at this point, put on an audiobook (my normal pattern, I have to be very tired to fall asleep without some kind of background noise, so I tend to have a well worn audiobook, like Harry Potter that I can half listen to as I doze off), turn the light out and snuggle down.

So all of this sounds well and good in theory, it’s going to be a challenge to see how it works in practice.  I’ve been making good use of the Alarmed iPhone app for reminding me to do the annoying things in life like putting the wheelie bin out, bringing the wheelie bin back in again, checking my to do list.

(yes, really, I may be able to sing a piece of music once or twice and remember it forever, but the practicalities of life, like dealing with wheelie bins, present a huge challenge!)

If I find that I’m having trouble stopping what I’m doing at 10pm and winding down, then maybe setting an alarm is an option.  For the moment, though, I’m going to rely on the alarm in the Dosecast app (deserving of a post in its own right) which reminds me to take the Melatonin each evening.

I guess that tonight will be my trial run, we’ll see how it goes.  The next few days will be a little exceptional since we have a four day weekend.  Once I’m back at work next Wednesday I think the first issue I will run into is figuring out how to make sure I get the things done that I need to in the evening, in the amount of time available to me, without finding myself losing time to the computer, getting distracted, and then starting on things at 9:30, and working well past my bed time.  But that’s a problem for another day.

What about the weekends?

A challenge, indeed.  I love to sleep in a little longer, but if I wake up too late then I usually feel worse rather than better, and it tends to take me most of the day to really feel alert and functional.  Sadly, I think that as a general rule I can best try to keep as close to my daily routine as possible, something which is backed up by a number of articles I’ve read on the subject of ADHD.

So, given that Friday night’s are generally late, I don’t suppose that I’ll aim for a 7am wakeup on Saturdays but 8am is probably as late as I should make it.  I guess I’ll try and make that my standard weekend time.  Since I tend to find it’s pretty important for me to get up and moving as quickly as possible in the mornings, having a concrete morning routine for the weekend is also important.

Saturdays – well that’s generally my running group, although over the summer apparently that will shift sometimes to Sundays.  And Sundays – well, the swimming pool opens at 8:30, so if I’m up at 8am, I can make it for the start.

Aside from routine, there’s another reason I would like to get some early morning exercise in both weekend days.  I happened upon this article the other day, which talks about beating jet lag with regular exercise, particularly morning exercise, and it struck a cord.  As a kid jet lag never bothered me but as an adult I get knocked into outer space every time I return from a visit to my Gran in Vancouver.  Travelling westbound tinkers with my clock a little – I wake early and go to sleep early, but travelling eastbound usually leaves me all over the place for a couple of weeks.  Last year, though, was an exception.  And the only thing that was really different was the fact that I made a point of exercising every day.  Aside from when we were at my aunt’s cabin, I swam every day, and I also ran most days.  And most of the time, I was out and back before my gran was out of bed.

Thinking about it, given that I virtually always cycle commute, my normal routine 5 days a week is to get up, shower, get dressed and jump on the bike.  Within less that half an hour or waking, I’m usually doing some kind of exercise.  I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it occurs to me that making a point of doing some kind of exercise first thing on the weekends, might also help me jump start my day.  It’s certainly true that since I started the running group on Saturdays, I feel far more alert and productive the rest of the day.  Another reason, then, to try and make some kind of exercise part of my normal morning routine.

 
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Posted by on April 28, 2012 in life

 

Off balance

28 Apr

Somehow April has felt like a very off balance month.  March was busy, busy and I guess I was on a permanent high, what with setting and then breaking a new 5K PR, not to mention going sub-30 more decisively than I ever imagined.  But April?  Well, life has caught up with me a little.  My normal choir routine was disrupted, thanks to a church youth event and Easter, and I didn’t really appreciate until last week when things finally got back to normal, just what an impact that has on the structure of my week.  On the work front, things have been up and down.  We’ve just put our new application into production, and are starting work on the next part, which not only means a lot of context switching between trouble shooting, maintenance, and brainstorming for the next stages, but also that our team is getting larger and work routines are changing as a result.

Up until recently, there have just been two of us on the development side, and we’d settled into some kind of a routine.  Taking coffee together in the morning, discussing problems when we needed, but also working individually for a lot of the time, especially since my colleague travels fairly regularly, so sometimes I’m on my own.  It’s been great, I’ve had a lot of freedom to go running or to the allotment at lunchtimes without worrying that I’m being antisocial, and that’s really given me the opportunity to use my time wisely, get things done, and still have enough quiet time for myself at home in the evenings.

Now, though, our team is growing.  We have a couple developers offsite, plus one in our office who just started a couple weeks ago.  This week, with my other colleague away, it was just him and me.  When I’m working solo I’m used to having a chance to catch up on things, but I’d not factored in the amount of time I’d need to support the new guy, nor the fact that not knowing anyone else in the office, he’d be looking for a lunch partner.   Bang went a couple of my lunch hours, and much of my working time.  All of it well spent, and we had some useful discussions, but none of it according to what I’d planned.

Running wise I feel equally off balance.  I’ve missed the last couple Renergie sessions – this morning because I woke with a migraine, last week because I was just too crazy tired.  The week before, I went, but got separated from my group due to a mix up, and ended up running around the park trying to find them and feeling like a plonker.  I guess that hasn’t really helped my motivation to get back there the last couple weeks, that day knocked me right off my perch, took me back to school days, and being the kid in the corner that everyone was poking fun at.  Stupid, but it played on all my old insecurities.  More than anything though, I’m just suffering from the fact that having missed a couple sessions because of other commitments, my routine has gone, and now there’s a bigger hurdle to climb to get back into it.  Guess that’s what’s happened to my swimming routine too… a couple missed sessions, one bad swim, and all my confidence is gone.

So….. it’s time to start trying to make a routine again for myself.  I don’t want to make a schedule that rules my life, I wouldn’t like it and I know I wouldn’t stick to it.  But, I do need to have some kind of template that I follow as far as possible.  More concretely, I think I need the following:

A fixed bedtime, and wake up time – preferably a constant as possible through the week, although things like Friday night choir practice will mean that there will always be some variation.  Since I’m going to end up spending more time at work interacting with others, and most likely sitting in a shared office some of the time, I need to make sure I have enough ‘alone’ time at work to a) get things done, and b) stay sane.  One of the easiest ways I can do that is by making sure I get into work early so I always have some quiet time at the start of the day.

A fixed bedtime routine - I’m not always great at unwinding and getting to sleep, I’m certainly far too inclined to be using the computer, or the iPhone late in the evening.  So, now seems like a good time to try and reintroduce my night time yoga session.  Doesn’t have to be long, the 15 minute practice I found would be a great place to start.  I also want to try building up the habit of always getting my clothes etc ready for the morning before bed – a good mindless activity to finish the day with, as well as making the mornings less stressful.

Concrete reasons to stick to my morning wake up time in the weekends – Saturdays I have one, namely Renergie.  Sunday, will that seems like a good time to try start building up the swimming again.  Since my confidence for joining the swim class seems to be knocked back, going to the Sunday lane swimming session seems like a good beginning.  That’s at 8.30.  I think that having two regular swim sessions would also benefit me because of the introduction of redundancy.  I find it so hard to pick something up again if I missed one week, particularly if I know in advance that I can’t go the next week because of other commitments… it’s just too easy to think ‘well, I might as well wait until the week after.  If I have two slots a week and miss one, then I hope that picking it up again will just be that bit easier.

Regular date with the supermarket – I hate grocery shopping, but it has to be done.  And if I don’t do it each week, then I easily fall back into the takeaway trap.  Sunday mornings post swim seems to be a good time, and also not busy, definitely a bonus.

Preparing food in advance – the downside of using my lunch hours productively is that I usually end up eating sandwiches at lunchtime.  Generally speaking they don’t really satisfy me, and they’re not the healthiest choice, especially since my breakfast is generally a bagel.  All that bread, and no veggies doesn’t really work for me.  So I really need to start rethinking things so I have a couple fallback options for work lunches.

Keeping appointments with myself – I had two running dates with colleagues this week, both of which got me outside.  Two other days I planned to go out alone, one running, the other to the allotment, but ended up bailing because I felt guilty leaving my new colleague alone.  I don’t think that was the wrong move, but I don’t want it to become a habit.  I want to make a commitment to myself not to bail out on my plans.  Maybe plan in that I always do the social thing once a week, but I shouldn’t be afraid to take my own time out either.  On the other hand, if I manage to get into a good morning routine, I might also consider going to the allotment before work sometimes instead of at lunch.

Try and keep a ‘me’ day – I like spending time with people, I like (need, even) to keep busy, but I find that I very easily find myself overcommitted, and before I know it, overwhelmed.  Last month’s busy racing calendar was fun, but I don’t plan to keep up like that!  Not that it would physically exhaust me so much, but the lack of home time gets mentally tiring fast.  Not that I’ll always have a choice in the matter, but I want to really try to keep one day in the weekend free always to either go to the allotment, or do things around the house.  Doesn’t matter so long as I feel like I keep on top of things, and have a bit of active but non-social down time.

Goal for the week – there’s always going to be uncertainty, and there’ll always be the unexpected, but I think I’d benefit by spending a little time each Sunday thinking through the week ahead, and trying to make a plan for myself.  I might not always know in advance which days I’ll go running with my colleagues, for example, but I can at least decide up front how many times I want to go out, and whether I should sacrifice a joint run for a solo run on the trails, or doing the specific training from my running group.  Similarly, I can try and at least think ahead what meals I should prepare during the week, rather than deciding on the spur of the moment and finding  out I’m missing ingredients, or buying food at the train station because I don’t have time to cook before choir.  None of this has to be fixed, but I think I need more guidelines.

We had our last ADHD group meeting a couple weeks ago, and it also made me conscious that I haven’t been putting as much effort in as I should at keeping on top of the general organizational/planning side of things.  One of the positive things about my discussions with my new colleague is that he’s very keen to help us put some structure into our working methods, something we’ve sorely lacked in the project up to now.  This is something we’re going to try and get a start on next week, and I think that having a bit more structure at work will also help me put a bit more structure into the rest of my life.

So far this all remains a little fuzzy.  I want to take the next week as an example and put down something a little more concrete, but I think that’s the job of another post.

 
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Posted by on April 28, 2012 in adhd, life

 

Goal slaying!

24 Apr

Poor old blog has been rather abandoned of late – plenty going on in my head, but not enough time to write it all down!  Nearly three months on, I figured it was time to revisit the health and fitness goals I set back in February and see how things were going.

Looking at the summary below, I think it’s time that I think about setting some new goals for the next 3 months or so, but that can wait for another post!  We have a long weekend coming (accompanied by a long run!), which seems like the perfect time to think about such things, and perhaps I’ll even find time to write them down.

The concrete number-based goals, try and set some new PRs:

Beat 12 minute Cooper Test distance (1995m, 2011)

haven’t yet had a chance to attempt this yet, but given how much my running has improved in the last 3 months, it should be more than possible.

Beat 5K PR (33:02, Zandvoort Circuit Run, 2011), make progress towards sub-30:00

done and done in style.  I ran my first 5K this year in the beginning of March, and amazed myself by knocking almost 3 minutes off my old PR, and finishing just over 30 minutes.  2 weeks later I ran my second 5K, back in Zandvoort, and flew around the circuit to finish in 28:22, far better than I anticipated, and one of the proudest moments of my short running career.  To top it off, it was the first race I ever ran in my Vibrams toe shoes.

Beat 6K PatentRun time (42:18, 2011)

I haven’t done this one officially yet, but I run this route regularly with a colleague, and last week we ran it in 37:57.  Even taking into account that the official route has another 50/100m at the end, things are looking good for the official route in June.

Beat 10K PR (1:06:52, AsthmaUK 10K, 2008)

this is another one that happened faster than I ever expected.  I wrote the original goal setting post on the 1st February, and on the 12th I ran my first 10K of the season and set a new PR.  Last week I ran another 10K in Rotterdam, and knocked almost another minute off my time, finishing in 1:04:03.  I’m still gunning for a sub 1:00 10K, and hoping to meet that goal next month in my home town.

Beat 15K PR (1:49:37, Bruggenloop 2011)

again, done sooner than planned.  I ran a 15K race up in the dunes a few weeks ago.  I did my best to run it as an easy paced training run, rather than to race it.  Despite that, and the fact that the course was mostly on trails and hillier than the Bruggenloop, I set a new PR of 1:45:23.  More notably, in December at the Bruggenloop I ran all out to finish, whereas last month’s run was very relaxed.

Set a new Sprint Tri PR (1:43:31, Triatlon Maarssen, 2011)

first tri is on the agenda in June, second one in July.  I still hope to set a new PR or two, and hopefully manage to improve my time across all three disciplines.

The how to get there goals:

These aren’t looking quite so impressive!

Include proper bike training, beyond just cycling to work and back

So far this hasn’t happened.  I had an invitation to join a cycling group on Tuesday evenings, but so far I haven’t managed to take part due to other commitments.  The problem is not so much that I’ve been busy every Tuesday, but that I’m finally learning to respect my need to have quiet time at home as well.  Knowing when to say no is a challenge for me, but I’m slowly getting there.  Unfortunately next week, which would have been perfect for me, won’t work because there’s a public holiday, so my next opportunity looks to be at the end of May.  In the meantime, I really need to try and get a bit of long riding in on my own, something which would anyway stand me in good stead if I join the group, as their current speed and ride length are rather more than I’m used to.  I really think I need to work on general bike handling skills with the road bike too.

Minimum 2x week running, preferably 3x.

This is the one area where I really have succeeded as the numbers in the previous section indicate.  Whilst there have been a couple weeks this month where I only ran once, most weeks I’ve been out 3-4 times.  I’ve also fit in a lot (you might say, a crazy number) of races in the past months.  In fact, this past weekend was the first weekend I didn’t race since the end of February.

Minimum 1x week swimming, preferably 2x

Total disaster.  I missed a couple weeks in January when I had a sinus infection, and never really got back into the swing of things.  Partly it’s been mental – my last couple swims felt really bad, and I really struggled with my breathing, and that knocked back my confidence a lot.  Partly it’s also just been an issue of time and energy, and a couple occasions where I was committed to other activities on Wednesdays.

At least 1x week long yoga session, daily short yoga sessions

I lost track of this one too.  I really liked doing the 15 minutes sessions before bed, but it was far too easy to skip a night or too when I was really tired and then never get back into the routine.  Along with swimming, I really would like to add yoga back in to my schedule.
1x week strength training at the gym

I haven’t been doing this either, but I don’t mind so much.  It would definitely be smart, but I have to say that given the choice I’d rather put my energies into swimming or yoga.  The biggest hurdle here has been that now I’ve come to really enjoy running, I have no desire whatsoever to stay inside in the gym.  I’d far rather go outside, especially when the weather is nice.

Living healthy:

Get into a more regular routine, with regards sleeping & eating

I’ve made some progress here, though I think it’s time I put a bit more focus onto it.

Get into work by 8am each day, to make time for sport & allotment

This has been fairly successful.  It’s more usual that I’m at work at 8:30, than at 8:00, and I’d like to work on that, but generally things are going well. 

Visit allotment at least once per week during lunchbreak

This is also going much better.  I’m doing my best to make use of all my lunch breaks either to go running, or to go to the allotment.  Now that Spring is upon us, things are growing like crazy at the allotment, so I’m trying to spend some time there every day, either at lunch or after work.  I still have a lot of clearing work to do, but I’m also trying to use my energy in preventing weeds rather than chasing around after them.  There’s still a lot of work in that regards, but I’m slowly making progress.
Bring lunches into work 3x week

I haven’t managed at all with this one.  I’m doing a little better a shopping more regularly, but I’m not quite at level of preparing food in advance for work.  Having so many Sundays taken up with races lately hasn’t helped, as I don’t tend to be very productive afterwards!

I did, however, harvest my first rhubarb of the year this past weekend.  I even got it cooked up on Sunday and took it into the office with me yesterday.  So that at least takes care of breakfast – it’s pretty good when paired up with some yoghurt, and optionally muesli, though since I didn’t add sugar, it does need to be accompanied by something a little sweet as I learnt yesterday!

Health

Try and reduce asthma medication (Foradil)

No progress here.  My lung doc says that I’m welcome to try, but at the moment I don’t feel like things are really stable enough.  Whilst the more regularly running is definitely improving my level of fitness, it also has an impact on my asthma.  I’m getting by with my current level of medication, but I’m definitely more symptomatic than I was 6 months or so ago.  So, for the moment at least, no changes.

Get a proper ‘sick’ plan in place for asthma & sinus flare ups

I didn’t get anything done with this one at my last appointment either.  Whilst I’d still prefer to have something in place, the good thing is that I haven’t been getting sick so often, so it’s also a little less important.  I’ll revisit it in the autumn when I have my next follow up, and decide whether or not to bring it up.

Weight Loss

Well, I’ve lost about 14lbs since the start of the year, although I must say it’s been going rather slowly the last month or so.  A lot of that is that I haven’t actually been working at it very hard recently, and I really do need to get back to being a little more conscious about what I’m eating.  That said, a number of pairs of trousers that I’ve been saving for a rainy day, or at least that magical day when I was slimmer suddenly seem to be slightly on the loose side, so I suppose things are going well!

 
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Posted by on April 24, 2012 in health, life, running, training, triathlon

 

On lungs and living

22 Mar

Just got back from my 6 monthly check up with the lung doc.

Apparently my lung function is fine, above predicted even. He said it was about where it was in 2010, when they last tested, which, it occurred to me afterwards, is perhaps less than good, since that test was done unmedicated in a period where I was doing less well, as opposed to today’s post-medication test.

The doctor was happy with me, despite the downwards trend of my peak flow graphs and my reports of continued symptoms, and was happy for me to keep doing what I’m doing and come back in 6 months.

However.

I guess it’s a luxury problem. Compared to most of the people in that waiting room, 60+ and using mobility scooters, compared to many of the other asthmatics I know, I don’t really have anything to complain about. For the lung clinic at the hospital, I suppose I’m a success story, I’m doing far better than I was – I’m out there running and singing, and until I started running more seriously, I suppose I was also pretty asymptomatic when I wasn’t sick.

I just can’t get rid of the feeling that I could perhaps be doing just a little bit better. That it would be nice not to struggle so much compared to my running colleagues, that I could recover more quickly from each run. I love that my running is improving, but I also always see that I never have the chance to really push and see what my legs can do, because my lungs always give way first. The reality is that I’m able to do the things I want to do, but it does come at a price.

I still have the feeling that there is a background level of inflammation in my lungs and sinuses that just doesn’t go away, and being realistic, running doesn’t really help that. I suppose I just have to accept that I’ve probably hit the best it will get – increasing the steroid medication might help, and really I’d rather up the steroids if in the long term I could drop the long-acting bronchodilators to a lower level, but I guess that with my current level of activity, you could say that it’s not really necessary.

A few months ago I signed up to be a guinea pig in the SARP research study, which is looking at asthmatics at all levels of severity, in order to investigate the particular case of severe asthma. There are a number of reasons I want to do it, a little to learn about my own lungs, but primarily to contribute to the research, and also because they’re giving me the chance to see behind the scenes a little, and to shadow one of the doctors. One of my aims for today’s appointment was to ask for a copy of my records to take with me – I failed, was simply too embarrassed to ask the doctor. Guess I’ll have to call up the hospital and hope the receptionists can organize it for me.

I’ve been having doubts along the way, going all the way to the States to do this seems a little crazy, even if it does contribute to my long term goal of apply to medical school at the end of the year (there, I said it out loud, finally!), but after today’s appointment, I feel again like I can use the opportunity to do SARP to learn something about my own body. I’d like to just have a bit more insight about why I seem to be so damned atypical sometimes… not a severe asthmatic, but on more medication and more persistant than your average asthmatic.

I also need to learn how to go into my doctor’s appointments with lower expectations. In the past I was always frustrated because it was hard for me to communicate, hard for me to complain about how I’m feeling. Now that’s a lot easier – since starting the ADHD treatment, I’m more prepared, more relaxed and much more able to pick up a problem and tackle it – everything seems to be easier.

Unfortunately, the fact still remains that not all problems can be easily fixed. All this time I’ve never dared aim for the stars in case I failed… now I’m learning to go for it, be it in running, by making life changing decisions, or by trying to do the best for myself with regards to healthcare. But I suppose I also have to learn that sometimes failure happens, and that 95% is also not really failure.

 
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Posted by on March 22, 2012 in adhd, health, life, running

 

Audacious goals

17 Mar

Looks like I’ve just mentally committed myself to running a second half marathon. Registration isn’t yet open, but my mind is now made up. I had to stop and think about it a bit, mostly because I promised myself at the start of the year that I wouldn’t sign up for any longer distances without stopping and having a good think about whether I was truly ready for it.

I’ve done one half marathon, so it’s not really a question about whether I can make it to the finish line. After all, I’ve proved that I can manage that, even when spectacularly undertrained. No, the question was ‘can I get my act together to really train for a half marathon, and to run it in a time that I’m proud of?’. Running has been going amazingly well lately, but I suppose that in some ways I’ve just been waiting for the bubble to burst. I want to believe that it’s going well because I’ve changed, and that ups and downs aside things will continue in this vein, but it’s so easy to think that maybe this is only temporary and I’ll get sidetracked by something else, or my asthma will get worse again and I’ll have to stop.

Of course, the truth is these things could happen. I could also suffer a running injury, be knocked off my bike or any other number of things. But on the other hand, it could just be that I should believe in myself and give it try.

I’m not going to go into it like the last one though. No pressure this time around, no fundraising, and no worrying that I’ll be letting other people down if I don’t make it. This one will be just for me, and for my DailyMile friends who give me non-stop encouragement, and particularly Ger who will be running this in his home town as his first half marathon.

The other thing I’m going to do is I’m not going to commit myself strictly to a training plan. I know how easy it is for me to make a beautiful plan, colour coded to death and full of great intentions, which only ends up being used as procrastination and later becomes intimidating in it’s incompleteness. That’s not to say that I’m not going to put some thought into making sure I’m doing the right training, but that I need to keep this low key if I’m going to manage it.

I’ve had a quick look at some of the half marathon plans out on the internet, and my basic conclusion is this: they mostly advocate 2-3 shorter runs a week, 4 if they’re more advanced. Mostly those runs are in the region of 5-8km. Other plans that work on a time basis are still fairly consistent with that, talking of 30-40 minute runs.

So, conclusion number 1 is that my current baseline running of 2x a week with colleagues which mostly work out at about 6km, and the Saturday running group, have this pretty much covered. I still have to see how I balance out the colleague runs with the homework I get from the running group, but I think they should end up being fairly compatible with each other. For the beginning at least, I think I’ll work on the principle of continuing what I’m doing during the week and I should be about right. In a month or so I may revisit this and see where I stand.

The scariest part of the training is then the long runs. I always find these daunting, because of the need to find a good route, the fact that they traditionally always fall on the weekend which is the time when my running generally suffers the most, because I don’t do well without structure.

At the moment, I have 5 more 10Ks booked, with 4 being over next month or so, and then last one being the middle of May, about a month before the half. These should already help build up a better baseline at slightly longer distances, which I can then work off for the remaining long runs. When I was trying to train for the last half marathon, the idea of running 10K was already rather daunting and everything above that just seemed too long to get my head around, with the result that I went into the half with one 16K and one 10.5K run under my belt. No wonder that I completely bonked in the last 5K then!

Conclusion number 2, then, is to do what is working so well for me know and find more races to sign up for at slightly longer distances. Especially now that I’ve discovered just how many smaller events take place around and about, some of them with very wacky distances, I think I should be able to manage this, and hopefully also fulfill my desire to very the terrains I’m running in.

Fundamentally, I know that the baseline I have now is already far, far better than when I went into the half marathon. According to Daily mile, I averaged about 30km a month in the three months leading up to the last half marathon. In the past 3 months I’ve built that from 60km in January, to 90km in February, and 56km already this month. I’ve also been smashing PRs left, right and centre!

The last time around I didn’t really believe in myself, and I wasn’t aiming at anything more than finishing. Now? Well, according to the fancy calculations, my CPC 5K time predicts a 2:18 half marathon, which in itself would be more than a half hour faster than my previous one. Clearly, aiming only for a PR would be underselling myself!

Right now, this minute, I think I’m aiming then at about 2:15, but I have to admit that there’s this small part of me that does just wonder if I could manage to get down as far as my previous 16K PB of 2:02. Not only would that have huge significance in itself, but the fact that two of my friends who also run seem to have a habit of running 2:02 half marathons, makes that a very enticing time to beat indeed.

It’s a wild thought. But then again, 3 months ago a sub-30:00 5K was also pretty wild, and that’s suddenly within my grasp, so who knows?

 
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Posted by on March 17, 2012 in adhd, half-marathon, running, training

 

So much for planning

13 Mar

I’ve been really good about putting all my appointments into my google calendar, I followed the instructions of my task list last night and prepared my pf charts and a list of questions/comments for my appointment with the lung doc today.  By some miracle I even remembered at the last minute to look for my hospital stickers, which they’d no doubt need at some point.

… and in looking for them, I discovered the appointment card, which didn’t have today’s date on it.

I still have no idea how I managed to put the appointment into my calendar wrong, and I have to say, it’s pretty frustrating, given that use of Google Calendar/iPhone is generally the one area of organization in which I feel fairly confident.

On the bright side, at least I discovered I had the wrong date before I biked over to the hospital and cost myself an hour or more of my working day.  I used the time I didn’t expect to have today to get in a short run, and to log an hour of overtime.

Unfortunately, it now appears that I have two appointments at the hospital next week on consecutive days.  Hardly convenient.  Also, thanks to the fact that the other appointment was only in my private agenda, and I hadn’t copied it to my office one (syncing the two doesn’t seem to be an option), I also had to decline a meeting invitation I previously accepted, since I didn’t realize there was a clash.

I guess I have some work to do on my agenda system after all.

 
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Posted by on March 13, 2012 in adhd, health

 

Call yourself a runner?

01 Mar

Yet another post that started off in one place and ended somewhere else :)

It’s a theme that comes back time and time again – the discussion about the distinctions between running and jogging, the question ‘do you consider yourself a runner’.  Yesterday I read this blog post on the subject, and I realized that something had changed in my mind.

I’ve never really considered myself a runner.  When I first signed up for DailyMile, and had to choose a profile ‘athlete’, ‘walker’, ‘runner’, ‘cyclist’, ‘triathlete’, I didn’t really feel that any of them fit.

Athlete?  You’ve got to be kidding.  Athlete in my mind means Olympian, World Champion, someone with both natural ability and dedication to the sport.  Walker?  Well, yes, I do walk.  I like hiking, but in a fitness sense, that didn’t really fit either.  Cyclist?  Nope.  Sure, I cycle to work every day… but on a city bike (at least at the time).  Runner?  Well, no.  I mean I signed up originally with the primary intention of tracking my running.  But I didn’t really consider myself a runner.  There I was, on the podgy side, struggling with my asthma and only just getting moving again, slow as a snail.  Runners are fast, lithe, everything that I’m not.

Eventually I set it to runner for lack of anything better, and when I started training for my first triathlon I changed it to triathlete, to at least reflect that I was busy with all three sports.  But it still grated on me that I was selling myself as something I wasn’t.  Even after completing my first triathlon, I didn’t feel like a triathlete. I’ve left it at triathlete, though it still doesn’t feel right, and I haven’t done a tri since last August.

And the last few months I’ve plodded on with my running.  Completely a half marathon.  Extremely slowly.  And whilst I was proud of that achievement, I still felt like a fraud if someone called me a runner.  After all, I wasn’t good at it, and for all that I thought about running a lot, and always intended to train regularly, that little thing called ADHD got in the way.

But in the last couple months something has changed.  Taking Ritalin has meant that my body and brain work more harmoniously together.  I used to spend a lot of time feeling like my brain was sending signals to my body to do something, but someone had cut the wire and the signals were getting through.  Now, finally, when I my brain says ‘I should do xyz’, my body responds, and things happen.

Having run regularly now for the last couple months, I finally feel like I’m improving, I finally think ‘I WANT to run’, not ‘I OUGHT to run’.  It’s possible I’ve become an addict.

It wasn’t until I read that post yesterday that I suddenly realised that for the first time, I actually consider myself to be a runner.  If I had to answer the question ‘when did you become a runner’, I guess I’d say ‘on my 36th birthday’.

That was the day I raced my first race, and realised at the end of it that instead of standing at the starting line wondering if I would die (really, I did used to go out on every run with this in the back of my mind… is it any wonder I had a hard time motivating myself), I was standing there playing through my race strategy in my mind.  Yes, I even had a race strategy, and it didn’t involve trying to get to the finish line before the sweeper car.

Previously I used to sign up for races because I needed a goal, a deadline.  I’d spend hours working on a training plan, and yet never manage to follow it for more than a couple weeks.  Now?  Well, I’ve been signing up for races galore.  And yet I haven’t actually been following a plan at all.  I haven’t even THOUGHT about following a plan.  Not to say that I haven’t been geeking out about the numbers, mind you.  And guess what?  Despite the lack of plan, I’m running more regularly, and getting faster too.

I started taking Ritalin at the end of November.  Whilst I’m sure it’s not the only factor in my improvement, I think it’s made a big contribution.

For years I’ve heard people say that if you really want something badly enough, you’ll make it happen.  I know of at least one person who considered my inability to follow the training plans as a sign that I was not motivated enough, and not committed enough.  She couldn’t have been further from the truth.  I obsessed over that plan, I spent hours online reading up about running, thinking about being out running.  Lack of motivation, lack of interest and commitment, they were never my problem.  Unfortunately, the more I thought, the less I managed to do.

The sad truth is that for those of us with ADHD, all the motivation and commitment to something in the world is not enough.  Without that missing link that allows us to transform thought into willful action, all that happens is that we have hundreds and thousands of brilliant ideas… but no way to put them into practice.  And I can tell you that hearing countless times that ‘you must not want it hard enough’ does untold damage to your self-esteem and self-image.

For the first time in my life I’m developing belief in myself, in my abilities.  I know that there are challenges ahead, I know there will be hurdles along the way, but I’m ready to face them… ready to throw myself at them, ready to succeed, and maybe even ready to fail and then pick myself up and try again.

So perhaps, the main reason that I’m proud to call myself a runner now is simply that it’s a tangible indication of how far I’ve come in the last few months, and a indication that I really can achieve things that I once thought were impossible.

 

 
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Posted by on March 1, 2012 in adhd, life, running

 

One step at a time

27 Feb

One of the messages that keeps coming back in my ADHD reading, and in the course, is to take things one step at a time.  Don’t try to change everything at once, don’t try to fix everything at once… easier said than done sometimes.  It’s easy to get frustrated when progress is slow, but looking back at the last few months, I can see that progress is slowly sticking.

The house isn’t miraculously tidy and organized yet, and I still have plenty of junk to clear out, but the small areas I’ve worked on are staying tidier.  After three months, I’m willing to concede that that’s progress and not coincidence.

Tonight’s small house job: taking some glass bottles & jars down to the bottle bank.  A small thing, but one backpack worth of clutter removed from the kitchen.

As well as trying to bring some clarity and structure into the ‘things’ in my life, I also need to start getting a better handle on the less tangible, like finances.  One of the items on my mental to do list for this year is to manage finances better, and especially to not leave gym subscriptions and the like hanging.  So, this evening I made one step – I went and cancelled my membership of the kickboxing club.  A pity, but I haven’t been in ages, and I just don’t see managing to change that at the moment – concentrating my exercise efforts on things which I can do on my own, and on my own schedule just seems smarter.

Swimming costs money, of course and is a little schedule dependent, but on the other hand, I only pay when I go.  One of the reasons I decided to sign up for the running course was the fact that you only sign up for one session of 8-9 weeks at a time.  So, if I decide that enough is enough, then I just don’t sign up for the next course.  My policy, as far as it’s possible, is to try and keep financial commitments to those things which don’t require a long term subscription.  Just one less thing to worry about.

 
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Posted by on February 27, 2012 in adhd, life

 
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