Finally - a Triathlon Season!

Deciding to enter a triathlon again feels like agreeing to go out for dinner with an ex who was demanding, exhilarating, needy, inspiring, exhausting and fun. You think, hey, it's just dinner, how bad could it be? You remember the romance, the satisfaction, the highs; then the challenge of making it work day in and day out for weeks and months on end; then the pain, the exhaustion, and finally the sheer inability to do it any more. And then you remember the first time again... and you say, hey, it's just dinner. Well, maybe lunch.

You think, hey, I'll just do a little race - how bad could it be, right? You remember the joy of the finish lines, the satisfaction of the race t-shirts and post-race naps; the camaraderie; then the sore muscles, the early mornings, the blisters, the money you poured out on gear of all descriptions; the injuries, and the chronic fatigue syndrome that hit you right after your last triathlon. Can you really do that again? And then you remember that first race... and say, hey, it's only a sprint. Well, maybe a super sprint. Or two.

How can I call myself the Slow Fat Triathlete if I'm afraid to sign up for a race? Or even announce that I plan to sign up for a race. So consider this an announcement. I plan to register for the Luna Bar Women's Triathlon in August at Rancho Seco Park in Herals, just east of Sac. And then in early October I will do the Golden State Triathlon, which is almost literally in my back yard at Discovery Park. So there. That's Rancho Seco over on the right. Looks hot, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought too. But still. If I don't feel ready, I can always downsize to the super-duper Luna Bar sprint - 200 yard swim (probably not .200 as it said on the website), 5 mile bike, 1 mile run. At the Golden State, I can always just ride home if I decide not to do the run.

I'm feeling pretty good about the swimming now. I'm up to 1400 yards per session; just need to get to 1600 and then start building what passes in my world for "speed." Biking will pretty much take care of itself because I love it, and the bike commute will start again in earnest next month when the light improves. Running... eh. It may be walking. Or walking and jogging. I did buy a nifty pair of running shoes on sale at Sports Authority... not what I recommend in terms of shoe shopping, but they felt nice, they're top of the line ASICS, and they should be fine for the limited mileage I have in mind.

Heck, maybe I'll do Lake of the Pines, too. I need some good t-shirts.

Swimming in the Rain and Pain

Swimming in the rain is so much more pleasant than cycling in the rain. You’re already wet, and you also get a huge boost of seeming tough and determined by swimming in inclement weather, while not actually adding any suffering to your process.

So I was quite happy to be headed to the pool for my second post-January-illnesses swim session. My happiness persisted until I realized that I didn’t have my trusty bright orange swim cap and beat-up pale green swim goggles (clearly color coordination is not a big part of my athletic routine). I waited for ages at the front desk for the helpful CalFit guy to look through the giant lost and found bag, but he came up empty on the goggles front. And to my amazement, the “gear” store at the front of the gym didn’t sell anything related to swimming. You have 3 pools at your place, including a dedicated lap pool, and it never occurs to you that swimmers lose their goggles like, ALL THE FREAKIN’ TIME? And that they would gladly buy a fresh pair at inflated prices? Clearly I need to be made manager at that place.

So I had three choices - go home, try and work out in the assortment of clothes I carry around in the car, or swim commando - no cap, no goggles. Going home was not really appealing, and neither was riding an exercise bike in my cargo pants and Vans. So I blinked a couple times, apologized to my eyes in advance, and suited up for the swim.

It wasn’t that much of a swim. I did a lot more backstroke than usual. Even some Esther Williams sidestroke (no relation, alas), just to give the eyes a rest. But I think I got about 900 yards in, and I felt pretty burly about it all. My arms and shoulders felt the effort. My eyes burned, which is not the kind of burn you are supposed to get while exercising. The cool rain didn’t really help soothe them, but it contributed to my sense of burliness.

I bought groceries and eye drops on the way home.

The Triumph of the Won't

When I started the idea for this little blog, I must confess that I thought it would be something like 65% physical and psychological triumphs and 30% setbacks, with 5% set aside for musings even more random than my norm. Lately, though, the percentages have been pretty much reversed. At best. And I didn’t really feel like writing about that. So I fell silent for a number of weeks. But is that what real bloggers do? Well, judging by the number of abandoned and half-assed blogs I’ve seen out there, yes, apparently it is. But I’m not going to fall into that pit. I promised you the Big Fat Fitness Comeback, warts and all.

I’m happy to report that most of my setbacks have had causes other than simple lack of motivation. I worked out at CalFit pretty regularly right up until nearly Christmas Eve, mixing swimming with a couple more X-bike classes and a couple resistance training sessions. I continued to walk to and from the train at the Berkeley station, though cold, rain, morning and evening darkness, and a flat tire pretty much convinced me to forgo my bike commute. (Forecast is dry for tomorrow though, and the days are getting longer: perhaps I can brave mere cold and evening dark.)

Christmas is really one of my favorite things about being alive. Even though it’s crazy, fraught with overspending, overeating, overdriving, overdrinking, and overviewing of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” I just love it. No Christmas light display is too cheesy, almost no Christmas music too repetitive. (Not super fond of “Up on the housetop reindeer pause.”) My family’s annual carol-singing fest is the highlight of it all, followed closely by the big day itself.

But the holidays and the concomitant overdoing of everything usually wreak havoc on my immune system. The night after Christmas I developed a slight wheeze in my chest. The next couple of days I felt ill, though not desperately so. Then the hammer dropped, the fever went up, couldn’t breathe, ached like mad. Kaiser said over the phone it was probably H1N1, and would I be so good as to not come in and infect them. Inhaler, cough medicine, Advil, repeat. A couple days of sheer misery, a few more of lethargy, pallor, and weakness. It was a good 10 days before I felt really right again.

And at that point, we were well into the madness of 27 grants all coming due on the same day. Five staff, three contractors, seven clients’ staff and a partridge in a pear tree, working massive overtime to get these things into shape.

Having felt really well for about 2 1/2 days, I was planning my return to the gym. Then my guts started to cramp, I got nauseated and achy, and completely lost my vim again. What the hell? This deteriorated over 36 hours into explosive, virulent diarrhea after the intake of any food whatsoever. So I quit eating food entirely and spent another four days working my way from clear liquids up to white rice, then adding bananas and saltines into the mix. Finally after a week of near starvation and more overtime at work, my system accepted a quesadilla. With salsa! And on the bright side, I could fit into my skinniest jeans…

By this time we were about five days from the big 27-grant deadline, so I proceeded to work through the weekend and the MLK Jr. holiday, along with the six staff, three contractors, four calling birds, etc. Exercise was out of the question, and I was driving into the office more because of my odd hours.

Once the 27 grants were done at 11 pm on Tuesday the 19th, it took me two full days to recover enough to even think about physical activity. On Friday I went back to the gym and managed all of 800 yards in the pool. Saturday I got on the bike for 45 minutes. Sunday I sat on my ass and watched football, and Monday I had a meeting after work. But today I walked, and tomorrow I may ride.

It’s not much of a triumph, but it’s what I got. Call it the triumph of the won’t-give-up, dammit. And February’s got to be better than this.

Gymtastic!

Sorry I’ve been so absent for so long. I’d like to be able to say that it’s because I’ve been spending every spare minute at California Family Fitness (or, as I now know the cool kids call it, “CalFit”) working my body back into a semblance of strength, flexibility and endurance. Well, not quite. There have been late days at work and board meetings and hair appointments and whatnot. But I’ve been getting over to CalFit pretty regularly and I have a few things to say about being a member of a gym again.
As a gym person, you feel different. Especially if you’re a gym person who actually goes go the gym from time to time. My perception of myself as a Person Who Works Out inflated to include the capital letters you see before you, and this was just after the first visit. I also became a Person Who Has to Worry About Having Enough Clean Workout Clothes, for the first time in about two and a half years. Sports bras, tops, shorts, socks, swimsuits, towels --- there suddenly seemed to be no end to the things I had to keep clean and dry. I walked a little differently with my gym bag on my shoulder, a little springier, even with the extra weight of all that Stuff.
I had missed the water. Man, how I had missed regular immersion, even in a too-shallow, over-chlorinated lap pool. I even welcomed the once-familiar sensations of leaking goggles and nasal passages stinging from chlorine in places where chlorine was not meant to be. My first lap swim session was slow, with a little rest between every lap, and lots of easy backstroke to catch my breath and try to balance out the load on my shoulders. I could only manage about 600 yards, which used to be less than my warmup, but I was ok with it. With only a couple of sessions a week I’ve already made it up to 1200 yards, and once I can do 1500 again without feeling like my arms will drop off I’ll start working a bit on going faster. Right now I’m just trying to feel symmetrical in the water, working on breathing to either side with equal ease, keeping my elbows high and my head low, rotating with each stroke. All the old stuff.
One chilly, windy evening I decided to take an indoor cycling class, “X-bike (i),” as the flavor of the month is called. The “X” is for the work that you do with your arms on these funny stationary bikes with a movable handlebar unit. It’s not much “X” if you ask me, but it’s a new gimmick. I got to class a bit late, and the lights were down low, with club-style black lights were flashing everywhere. Fitness through disorientation? My cycling socks glowed in the dark whenever the black lights passed over them. The music was pounding and an impossibly fit woman was on one of these funny bikes up on the platform. I hastily arranged my bike and jumped on. Not surprisingly, it was hard for me to keep up with some of the “climbing” bits, since I’ve always kind of sucked at climbing, especially standing up. And now I’ve lived in a pancake flat river valley for a year and a half.

But I pedaled along the best I could, cranking up the resistance when it felt ok, backing off when I got too puffed. I didn’t die in there. I want to do it again tomorrow, even. And afterward (it was a short class), I got out and did some crunches, some planks, some “swimmers” with resistance bands, and some curls and presses, so it was a real “X” workout that left me pleasantly sore the next day.
I still need to get to the point where getting over to the gym feels like a need instead of a pleasant option, but at least it feels pleasant.

Shopping for Gyms

In my ongoing quest to spend ever more money in pursuit of fitness and well-being, I joined a gym last week. The undertaking to unite oneself with a gym in holy fitrimony is a serious commitment, and not one to be approached lightly. In the end, though, it's often about the gut over the head.

I did my research with my usual diligence, that is to say, I sat in the Big Poofy Chair and used the internet. At least at first. I read reviews of about five health clubs on Yelp, CitySearch, and a other places where people spout off. Unfortunately, people tend to spout off a lot more frequently about restaurants and hair salons than they do about gyms. Still, I was able to rule out three options. The YMCA, which would have been my first choice because of its non-profitness and inclusivity, was out. Indoor pool, nasty old building, semi-funky part of town. Alhambra - not close enough, not interesting enough. Capitol - sounded spendy and a bit meat-market-y.

The two front-runners that emerged were the Natomas Racquet Club, which is about two miles from my house, and California Family Fitness, about four miles away. Natomas had several advantages: proximity to the house and no need for freeways; a nice big lap pool; and a Masters swimming program that could help me boost my aquatic prowess to previously unheard-of levels. CFF reviewers cited its brand-spankin' newness, uncrowded pool, uncrowded every kind of equipment imaginable, and schweet locker rooms.

I set out on a Saturday afternoon at about 4:30 to do field research. Natomas Racquet Club didn’t have anyone available to talk to me about membership or take me on a tour of the facilities, nor would the guy at the desk let me work out on a trial basis. Strike one. He did let me wander around on my own, and I saw the usual collection of equipment, fitness studio, racquetball court and so on. The pool was indeed nice and big, and the grounds of the club sported lawns and trees and picnic tables. But the locker room was kind of small, the showers no nicer than my old YMCA in Mountain View, and my overall impression was that the place was in need of renovation and, as the name implied, heavily focused on the tennis set.

A couple of exits up the freeway I found CFF looming over the strip malls, trimmed with neon and looking unappealing, frankly. But there was easy parking and the friendly desk folks told me that Larry would be right with me to show me around and talk about membership. I lounged on the leather couch by the snack bar and watched the flat screen TV as I waited. Not bad, I thought.

The whole place was sparkling clean, and despite its name, completely devoid of children (a plus). Acres of cardio and weight machines, free weights, exercise balls, and mats covered most of two floors. The indoor cycling studio held 50 bikes, and the aerobics room was massive. The outdoor lap pool was smaller than NRC’s (6 lanes vs. 8), but it was totally empty. There was also an indoor aqua aerobics and general use pool, which meant that the lap pool was all laps, all the time. A huge plus. The Jacuzzi looked big and hot, with reasonably powerful jets. Larry sent me in to tour the locker room, and there my decision was essentially made.

The real estate crowd says that bathrooms sell houses, and CFF had clearly transferred this adage to the gym. Glass tile accents in the showers, faux burlwood finished lockers with electronic keypad locks, flat panel TVs in the locker bays, modern looking sinks, and new paint and fixtures everywhere. It looked like HGTV had swept through and done a makeover.

I sat down with Larry and pretended to negotiate, and took a few days to “think about it,” but I was hooked. Even though CFF might be a little tough to get to at rush hour and I have to provide my own towels, I smile every time I look at those glass tile accents in the shower.

I’ve been to the pool a few times since that initial tour, and I’m still in the honeymoon stage. Happy to be in the water, happy to be a person who belongs to the gym, happy with the electronic locker technology.

Digging out of a Hole

[I wrote the stuff below a couple of weeks ago. Even though things are sort of getting moving again in the BFFC, I still think there are some good things in there so decided to post anyway. More current update soon.]

After my previous anxious musings about Chronic Fatigue Immunodeficiency Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, I was hoping I’d have something cheerful to post. However, other than dragging myself off the Big Poofy Chair yesterday afternoon for a 20 minute amble around the neighborhood, there hasn’t been much going on to inspire anyone. I’ve been tired, fuzzy-headed, stiff and a little achy, unable to muster any enthusiasm for movement. Last week featured a number of meetings and a visit to my folks that led to me driving to the office, so I didn’t even have my commute exercise to keep me going.

I need a plan. I feel my Big Fat Fitness Comeback is going into reverse, and I need to put the brakes on that momentum and then turn it around. I need to find a way to energize myself without injuring myself, and do something physical where I can see quick results and feel better.

I think I need yoga.

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with yoga. Over the years I have taken some classes and, thanks to some outstanding instructors, really enjoyed almost all my experiences. Christa Rypins, in particular, was patient, humorous, challenging, and very Zen without being all Zennier-than-thou about it. (One of the things that irks me about yoga is the hippy-dippy over-earnestness of some practitioners.) I especially enjoy the way I feel after the yoga is done: all long and loose, balanced and relaxed. And exhausted, generally. I think the breathing and meditative aspects of yoga are incredibly good for you, and the stretching and strengthening is fantastic for injury prevention in other sports, including the cubicle-computer ultrathons in which so many of us overindulge.

So why don’t I do yoga all the time? Excellent question. It’s always been one of the things I planned for myself when I got to be a certain age. I believe that regular yoga practice is probably the best possible way to help your body fend off the aging process. I think there are three main reasons why I’m not a yogini:

1. It feels static. Even though much yoga is a fantastic workout, you do the whole thing in two square meters worth of space and your only views are of other people’s butts or your own knees or feet. One of the things that I love about exercise is the sensation of movement through space. Even swimming laps feels more interesting to me than holding yoga poses.
2. It requires emptying the mind. My mind likes being busy. Probably too much so. Even though I recognize that I really benefit from the focus on nothing but the breath and the sensations of the poses, it doesn’t attract me.
3. I kind of suck at it. I know this hasn’t kept me from being a triathlete in the past, but when there are already other factors at work, the sucking just kind of piles on. I’m not naturally flexible, and my body shape makes a lot of poses difficult or impossible. There are ways around all that, modifications and so on, but yoga brings you up close and personal with your own fat in ways that can be physically and mentally uncomfortable.

However, it’s time for me to suck it up and do some downward dogs. The downward dogs and I need to get reacquainted. Watch this space.

Faint Fatigueiness?

When I came down with Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome on August 16, 2007, I had no vocabulary to describe it. The headache wasn’t technically a migraine, since it was my companion every waking minute, but sometimes it felt migraine-y, aggravated by overhead lights, headlights or neon that also made my vision swim. I’d have sharp pain in the lymph node areas of my neck, but the nodes weren’t swollen. My throat would be sore, but not red. I had a constant sensation, somewhere between tingling and burning, in various parts of my body. Sometimes I had constipation, sometimes diarrhea, cramping, gas, and bloating; sometimes a delightful mélange of abdominal woes.. My body ached like I had the flu, yet it was a little different from the flu. I felt feverish without a measurable fever. My muscles twitched and cramped for no reason, in no discernable pattern. My brain was fuzzy, and my project management skills felt impaired. I was lightheaded but not dizzy like vertigo dizzy, though I suffered from serious head rushes after standing up. And of course there was the

I could and did fall asleep pretty much anywhere, any time. I was lucky to be able to keep my job, though there was a period where my boss wondered if I needed to go on leave or work part time. I couldn’t afford to lose my health insurance or much income, so I dedicated myself to sticking it out at the office for a full day, four days a week (I already worked at home one day) even though sometimes I fell asleep in my chair or had to crawl under my desk for half an hour because sitting up made me so tired I hurt all over. When I got home, I’d flop into the Big Poofy Chair and, more often than not, fall asleep for two hours. I’d recover enough to watch TV until it was time to go to sleep for another nine and a half or ten hours. Sometimes on my way to work I’d have to pull over in Fremont or Hayward and nap for 20 minutes. Exercise, even easy walking, made things worse, so eventually I stopped altogether. Even walking 100 feet sometimes made my legs burn like they used to during the last 500 meters of a race. Now that I feel pretty much better pretty much all the time, I can’t believe I got through that ordeal without cracking up completely or losing my job. I’m not exaggerating my symptoms. In fact, I realize as I write this that just listing the symptoms doesn’t do justice to the miserable synergy of having them all at once.

Not having a diagnosis made it all much worse. I saw four doctors at Kaiser and one outside doc; but as I became more and more convinced that it was one of the many flavors of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Chronic Fatigue-Immune Deficiency Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, it became clear to me that having a diagnosis wasn’t going to help me in any way except to help me validate my horrid experience.

Now there’s a new study that claims to have found a particular retrovirus in the blood of 85% of CFIDS/ME patients tested. While there are still some methodological questions about the study, and it’s still not clear whether the X-somethingy retrovirus is a cause or effect, it’s encouraging to know that researchers are working on the issue. Even though the CDC recently published its own study claiming that CFIDS/ME sufferers tend to have a history of childhood sexual abuse (um, no) and an “inability to deal with stress” (hard to say), at least some medical folks are looking for a non-psychiatric explanation for the all-around awfulness.

In the midst of all this news, I have noticed a few disturbing trends. I’m sleeping longer lately, the last few weeks or so. Wednesday night I slept for ten hours and could probably have slept some more, though I hadn’t been particularly sleep deprived. I’ve had a few sporadic days of brain fuzz and dizziness - I have a bit of it right now. On weekends I’ve really had to push myself to get out and move around; I haven’t had the urge to exercise that I had even a month ago. In homage to Stephen Colbert, I coined the term “fatigueiness” to describe how I feel when the old symptoms flare up. It’s not the good, honest fatigue of three hours on a bike, or even a session mowing the lawn and sweeping the patio, or even working a couple of 12-hour days on a project. It’s fatigueiness, and I’m not happy to feel any trace of it. I don’t know why it’s cropping up now. My CPAP machine is controlling my sleep apnea just fine, my medications are unchanged, and I haven’t been under undue stress lately.

Michelle, who is my mentor in all things CFIDS/ME, reminds me that there isn’t necessarily a reason, or not one that we can easily discern. Her relapses don’t follow a logical pattern. I don’t think my couple of months of regular, not super strenuous exercise can be causing my faint fatigueiness, but I’m not sure. I’m not going to back off yet, anyway.