Browsed by
Tag: goals

April 2018 Training Recap

April 2018 Training Recap

Comments 2 comments

The difference a month can make is pretty incredible. In my March training recap, I opined that all month long, I was hoping that things — running and life in general — would continue to feel like normal and that I could put all the “stroke stuff,” for lack of a better phrase, behind me. A month later, now heading into May, I am ecstatic to say that as far as I am concerned, life is — and feels — normal.

normal.

A mental shift occurred sometime this past month — fortunately — because until then, as irrational as it is, I often entered each weekend feeling a bit anxious and scared and just stewing on the fact that OMG X number of weeks ago today was the stroke. X number of weeks ago was when everything got upended. It was as though I was dreading each Sunday because it was on a Sunday that the stroke happened, as though somehow, Sunday rolling around each week again was going to put me at a greater risk for future strokes (irrational, right?). (Imagine what it must have felt like to drive back to Sacramento, on a Sunday, for a race in early April, since that was the same setting just a handful of weeks earlier when I actually had the stroke). Anyway. Sometime this past month, some sort of transition happened. I went from sorta fearing the weekends to a couple days ago, on the last Sunday of April, actually looking at a calendar and realizing oh. It has been 12 weeks, three months in a few days. Okay. I don’t want to overstate the importance of this mentality shift, but I have a hunch it’s pretty damn important for my post-stroke psychological recovery. It’s beginning to feel less like it happened and more like it was just a weird-ass, very life-like dream.

hello to downtown SJ behind us, from Sunday’s 18 miler up in the ARP foothills. It wasn’t until I was home and done with this run that I realized that for once, I hadn’t at all stewed over the otherwise mundane fact that it was a Sunday. I smell progress. (PS, people in this picture are training for marathons, Ironmans, a World Championship 50 miler and representing a country in the process, and a 100 miler! I feel like a slacker)

…that is, until I talk to insurance each week. The insurance company and I have this completely ridiculous song-and-dance routine that consists of me calling them each week, usually on Thursday, to find out the status of a bunch of outstanding claims. I am literally on a first-name basis with two different insurance reps at this point, women who are “handling” my “case” while things get “investigated” or “researched.” Eyeroll, eyeroll, eyeroll. As you can imagine, I satisfied our family deductible pretty quickly by being in ICU for a week, but because of some mistake somewhere — honestly, what I’m guessing amounts to someone’s clerical error — insurance thinks that I’m going to pay in the upwards of $15k out of pocket for costs that they are claiming were out-of-network but weren’t because of that whole emergent care detail that supersedes everything else. Yeah, nope. 

I am usually pretty excellent about compartmentalizing my life — be it family stuff, school stuff, Girl Scout stuff, stroke stuff, running stuff, whatever — but my weekly insurance call is the one time that I can’t *not* think about the fact that yeah, no, that stroke thing apparently wasn’t a dream; it actually did happen. While I luckily don’t have the physical repercussions from it, I still get to deal with insurance bullshit until The Unknown Person(s) gets their act together and fixes things. It’s so very annoying.

There was a time not that long ago when talking to insurance each week would wreck me and leave me pretty emotionally distraught; friends, let me assure you, you haven’t lived until you’ve cried on the phone with a health insurance company because you’re so enraged over someone else’s incompetence. I could go so long without thinking about or ruminating over the fact that this bad thing happened to me, but lo and behold, every week when I’d make this phone call, reality struck me in the face and reminded me that it wasn’t all a bad dream. In fact, for many weeks post-stroke, it would take the better part of the day the work up the gall to make the call to find out WTF was going on. Honestly, sometimes I’d only phone in if I were having a shitty day in the first place because talking to Those People all but promised to put me in a sour mood for the rest of the day. These days, fortunately, the tears have turned more to the direction of action (and anger, for better or worse), compelling me to stay on the phone on hold in the upwards of an hour+ if need be so someone, anyone, The Unknown Person(s), can get this crap straight. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we’re put on hold, gang!

This whole ordeal is so, so frustrating and infuriating, but if bitching about insurance 3 months after having a stroke that could have ended me is the only thing that I’m complaining about, then I have it pretty good. It angers me to no end though that this is what we apparently have to do in the United States in the year 2018. There is so much that is so profoundly wrong with this situation.  

In other random bodily systems news, with our insurance switch in 2018 came all new providers, and included in that mix was a new GI for me. Long story short, she completely refuted my former GI’s microscopic colitis diagnosis, so in the past month, I’ve begun another battery of tests to figure out WTF is going on with my insides at any given time. So far it sounds like my intestines are about on the same level as that of a newborn; basically, my guts are just hyper little bastards that don’t ever apply the brakes when they should, amounting to a vicious eat-then-poop-eat-then-poop cycle all the time. You’re welcome. More tests throughout May should help elucidate things a bit.

filed under things I’d rather not do again: chug barium

But in the running compartment of my life — which is what we’re all here for, anyway, right? — April was really good to me. I posted just over 180 miles for the month (183), raced at the Sactown 10 miler, the Silicon Valley half, the Food Truck 5k (taking third!), and started building my long runs in earnest (on trails!) with Janet as she ramped up her MTB training. Meeting and running with Meb was as awesome as I had hoped it would be, too. Nestled in the mix of all my own running this month was my eldest daughter’s Kids’ Race at the Food Truck 5k as well as her first triathlon of 2018 this past weekend (RR forthcoming!), so suffice it to say that weekends were fairly busy, yet super gratifying, in mi casa.

from the kids’ race at the SV half weekend

 

finishing up a 16 miler in ARP and honing those ever-important “taking selfies while running” skillz

The end of April and beginning of May also marked the beginning of SF Marathon training, which is pretty exciting. I feel like I’m in a good place physically and mentally at this point and look forward to training and to seeing what I can do this cycle. Marathon training cycles can often be great teachers, and I’m just elated to begin the grind again.

—

 

Reading: There’s a lot of really good stuff out there right now. I really enjoyed Endure and wrote a recap of it earlier in the month. Tara Westover’s Educated was also really good but also incredibly sad and pretty disturbing, if you ask me; honestly, I was pretty pissed most of the time I read the book (but I’ll refrain from saying anything so as to avoid spoilers). I’ve gotten through most of Meb for Mortals since Meb signed a copy for me and like it a lot as a solid resource for training, though it’s not exactly something you’d read all the way through as you would a regular book. In the past couple days, I’ve also started Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run, which I’ve really enjoyed and will likely recap sometime in May. Maria Shriver’s I’ve Been Thinking has been satisfactory so far, and I’ve really liked Enlightenment Now, though I think I’m going to have to renew it several times before I actually finish it.

major life points unlocked

Life: Lots of running but also lots of fun and exciting family and home stuff was the norm for April: enjoying spring break with the kids at home; getting new floors and replacing our beat-up carpeting; flying down to LA to see my childhood BFF for about 18 hours; following along from afar the craziness that was Marathon Monday; and surely more that I’m forgetting. April was the beginning of the end of the school-year, and I think it just made everything feel as though it was moving at light-speed at any given time. Experience has taught me that if I think April is fast, just wait until May…

spring break, new floors, and QT in the kitchen (once there was flooring down)

Listening: Every post-Boston podcast I’ve listened to was just awesome, particularly with Sarah Sellers, Boston’s 2nd place woman finisher. I still haven’t made it through all the post-Boston episodes, but I’ve really liked those I’ve heard so far. I love how so many non-professional runners just owned the day and ended up finishing on some of the biggest stages of their lives. That’s just an incredible storyline.

Racing: April meant the inaugural Silicon Valley half and Food Truck 5k for me and the Kids’ Run for my eldest, as well as the Sactown 10 miler for me. I was going to run another PA race, the Stow Lake 5k at the end of the month, but opted to stay home and run long instead, which I think was the right decision, even if it meant missing the fun social opportunities that race day provides. Right now, I don’t have any racing plans on the calendar for May, just good ol’ fashioned marathon training. It’ll be great. Do I write weekly training recaps, now that I’m beginning training? Or just keep it in this monthly format? Does anyone even care? Decisions…

the blue hour’s my fav.

Watching: Anytime I include this section, it just makes me realize exactly how little TV I watch or how infrequently I see movies. It’s sorta pitiful. I am, however, looking forward to Deadpool 2 (is that even what it’s called?) coming out in May, and we already have double feature date night tickets.

Writing: A fair bit here last month with all the race recapping and book reviewing, plus a healthy volume of freelance stuff. It’s all feast or famine with the latter, and it seems to be freaking Thanksgiving right now, luckily.

Anticipating: Everything. It’s that time of year.

no fun to be had in the woods. no fun at all. (PC: Saurabh, I think)

Dreading: An obnoxious and super restrictive GI test I get to have done at the end of the month. Basically, if I understand it correctly, if I have diarrhea at all in the weeks preceding the test, that could alter my results (ok, so that’s already surely strike one against me). For about 2 days before the test, I can only consume plain white rice (and a bunch of meat and poultry that I wouldn’t eat) because … something about results getting skewed otherwise … and then the day of, I think have to fast for about 12 hours prior to the test. This will be after another test I get to do that’ll have me at the doctor’s office (with my two year-old in tow) for a good 3+ hours doing various breath tests to test for … something. I’m not even sure, to be honest. Sounds pretty rad, right? I swear I’m keeping the medical establishment in business.     

May!    

2018 PA USATF Sactown 10 Mile Race Report – Sacramento, CA

2018 PA USATF Sactown 10 Mile Race Report – Sacramento, CA

Comments 2 comments

A week ago Sunday (4/8) was the SacTown 10 mile race up in — yup, you got it — Sacramento, a PA race, my first 10 mile race in a decade, and my first PA race post-stroke. I think at every big marathon I’ve ever run, I always see someone holding a sign that says something to the effect of “do something every day that scares you,” and let me assure you, as irrational as it was, returning to Sacramento to race — the very place where just 9 weeks before, I had driven to for another PA race and ended up sitting it out last minute because I had a blinding headache stroke, unbeknownst to me — yeah, that mightily qualified as “doing something that scares me.” Clearly, driving two hours to Sac and then racing there in February didn’t cause my stroke, but even though I had been medically cleared to run for the preceding 4.5 weeks come Sactown race day, it still felt a little weird to return. The wound was still fresh, though fortunately not as gaping as it once was.

Before I had gotten sick, I was really looking forward to this race — having not run a 10 miler in a literal decade, since the Perfect 10 Miler in NE Ohio back in summer 2008 — and to the possibility of utterly shattering my 10 mile PR, which was as soft and low-hanging as they come. Getting sick and sidelined for a bit changed all of that, though, so my focus shifted accordingly; the victory would come in finishing the thing and in helping to field a full women’s team that day. Those two components would be sufficient; anything else would be gravy.

In the weeks leading up to Sactown, I had cautiously bumped up my mileage, with my longest continuously-run run topping out at 11 and change over some great, hilly terrain in my ‘hood. I hadn’t done any speedwork whatsoever, so my pacing plan for Sac was something along the lines of “do what feels good” and “remember that you’ve only been running for 4 ½ weeks.” I figured that the pace would amount to something in the 8s, maybe flat-to-mids, but honestly, more than anything, the name of the game was to rely on feel. My Garmin was there just to capture data, not to dictate how I ought to be rolling.  

Once my teammates and I arrived to Sac on race morning, we ran a couple mile warm-up and then settled into the corrals pretty easily. The course was somewhat weird, though I imagine much more logistically easier to manage than other alternatives: two 5-mile loops, with scenery that included brief residential sections, a bike path, some industrial/office park area, and then a quick little jaunt through the mall area outside the Capitol. The race also offered a 5k distance — not part of the PA race — that began earlier in the morning, so I imagine that it was much easier to cordon off such a comparatively smaller section and less scenic portion of Sac and West Sacramento than, say, what the city had to do for a bigger race, like CIM. The Sactown 10 course, itself, was pretty average in my book, not really anything to write home about, and not particularly memorable, though with its very few inclines, I could see how it’d lend itself to some fast 10-mile times (which would make it memorable for many!).

Without a lot of fanfare, we were all off and running our two laps. It was a sunny and gorgeous spring morning, and by the race’s end, it felt like it had warmed up considerably. I felt pretty good throughout my race, just chugging along and doing my thing, and reminded myself how lucky I was to be there, doing what I was doing, given what could have been a dramatically different outcome just nine weeks earlier.

right off the yellow bridge, coming through the Capitol mall area, and going out for round two. (PC: WRC)

I tried to stay as evenly-paced as possible and ended up with a 7:40 average, with about a 20 second positive split, on a course that seemed to be at least .1 mile long, based on what I had heard from many of my teammates and what I had read about from last year’s race. (GPS and race distance discrepancies are part and parcel in this sport, it seems, and I try not to get too hung up about it. I’m assuming that it was USATF certified, since it was a PA race and all, so I figure being off .1 or so probably falls within the suitable discrepancy range for certification. For their purposes, it’s surely better to be over by a little than under).

 

the yellow bridge, not far from the finish line, IIRC

By the end of the day, I had posted 14 miles, with the warm-up and cool-down miles I shared with my team, which amounted to my biggest volume day post-stroke and just shy of 40 for the week, another new volume record post-stroke. It was honestly fantastic to be in Sac with my team, to be able to share the miles and the experience with them (including some awesome PRs!), and even with me being the DFL Wolfpack finisher that day, I honestly didn’t care; I was (am) just happy to be there, doing what I love to do. A little perspective can go a long way.

team cheesin’ (PC: WRC)

 

Running Sactown also gave me some good feedback about how my fitness was shaping up in the 4.5 weeks of running that I had been doing post-stroke and would help give Lisa and me both some direction as I begin training for the SF Marathon in earnest. Plus, Sactown was an excellent and fairly low-key and low-pressure stepping stone for me in April in advance of the Silicon Valley half marathon a week later and a couple April 5k races, too. There was definitely a point in my life where I’d only sign up for a race if I felt like I were in “racing shape,” but now — post-stroke or otherwise — I’m more inclined to sign-up and just run without expectation, being happy with whatever I can do on the day, with whatever effort I can muster. Race day is so fun, besides, and the feedback it can give you — the feedback I get from racing, anyway — is pretty invaluable. That, coupled with the social aspect that the morning brings — you can’t get much better than that.