Bad Brain! Bad!

Well, it's a mix of triumph and trying. The BFFC stalled out this week when the body/nervous system quit cooperating. Monday I battled inertia and did the bike-train commute in spite of the dastardly daylight savings darkness in the morning. Felt a little underslept, as always on the first day of DST, but otherwise not too shabby.

A little before noon, I looked up from my keyboard and my head kind of did a swimmy thing. A shifty little lightheaded dizzy thing. "Huh." I said. I felt it a few more times. At about noon I got the funny flashing light in the left eye , and realized I was in for my fourth migraine. The previous three had all been different from each other, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but my office mate Sara tossed me a handful of Advil, which I wolfed down to prevent headache. The eye acted weird for a while, so I went and sat in the dark conference room. Came back to the desk, worked through the afternoon. Head still felt odd and I was tired. On the train home felt nauseated, sweaty, and more tired, so I slept. Felt better when I woke up so I decided to bike home rather than call Tim for a rescue ride. Didn't want to be wimpy or anything.

So ever since then, I've felt dizzy. Not like the room is spinning or I can't stand up, but kind of floaty, a little off. I can walk a straight line, I can stand on one leg, I can drive even, but things seem shifty and funny and buzzy, and when I move my head in a certain way, it's more so. It's kind of like having three beers on an empty stomach. I called my doc yesterday, and she had as hard a time understanding this as I was having describing it. She suggested I take some Dramamine, which knocked me out for a three-hour nap and made me feel dizzier.

I took yesterday off work, and most of today, and I was already scheduled for a day off tomorrow. When I saw the doc today, she checked with a neurologist to see if this sort of thing could be expected after an ocular migraine. Apparently it happens. Neurologically, I seem ok. I don't seem to have an inner ear infection or inflammation. My blood pressure is normal.

I'm supposed to take it easy for a few days, call back if things aren't back to normal on Monday. Meanwhile, I mostly feel like napping, or engaging in nap-like behaviors, or nearly-naps, on the Big Poofy Chair.

Watch this space for updates.

So That Worked

After the battering I inflicted on my bod up at Tahoe Donner last weekend, I took several days off from exerting myself, and hadn't really done much with the upper body all week. So when I got an early start to the day today, after miraculously waking up at 7:09 all by myself, I knew I was going to try and do a longish swim this afternoon.

I had tweaked my left shoulder a bit falling down the steps (snow steps, not actual steps) to the lodge at the end of the day. A bruise on the knee and one on the elbow, and the shoulder that ached all the way home. But then it calmed down and I thought no more about it. Until I got in the pool. Huh! I couldn't place it at the time, but after a little googling, I think it was the teres minor that was tight. See pic for details. Not a bad tightness, but noticeable. I relaxed my shoulders, arms, neck, upper back, and everything else I could think of to relax, and tried not to push the pace at all. And after a while I wasn't really aware of it anymore. Just kind of kept swimming and swimming and before ya know it, I was at 1600 yards. And then I did a couple hundred more, just for kicks, trying to see how few times I could breathe with each length of the pool. (Four, in case you were wondering.) So, cool! 1800 yards, longest swim of the Big Fat Fitness Comeback.

I think I'm about six months into the BFFC now, and here's a few things I notice:

• My arms are stronger and more toned, especially the triceps
• My calves have some definition
• My quads are kind of gettin' there
• I recover a lot quicker from workouts, especially swimming. When I first started up again, I couldn't raise my arms after a swim session.
• Estimate that my resting heart rate is down about 5 bpm (need some kind of accurate timepiece to confirm this)

So that's working.

The Destruction Zone

The good people at Union Pacific (or is it Southern Pacific? I can never remember) are working on the railroad tracks and on Tuesday it took like half an hour to cover the 6 miles of track between Richmond and Berkeley. The conductor terms it "the destruction zone." So yesterday I rode the bike, even though I was a little tardy getting up and it was bite-ass cold. I wanted to be able to get to the office five minutes after getting off the train, somewhat minimizing the lateness.

The train was late even getting to Richmond, and then the conductor announced that it would take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to get from there to Jack London square - a journey that should take about 15 minutes. Argggh. I decided to bail and jumped off the train with my bike. I had been a little intimidated by riding from the urban setting of the Richmond train station in the past - partly the traffic, partly the gritty neighborhood, and partly the profusion of broken glass and random sharp objects that tends to festoon the streets of gritty neighborhoods. But using my Droid, I figured out a route that promised to be pretty quiet and led fairly directly to the Ohlone Greenway bike path, pictured above. I just found out that the route used to the be old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroad track. Now it runs mostly along the BART tracks.

It was quiet. Eerily quiet. All the gangbangers were still tucked up in their cribs, I guess. I cruised over to the bike path. The greenway was more populated than the streets of the Iron Triangle. And to my intense annoyance, pedestrians littered the bike path even though there were clear signs saying bikes on the left, pedestrians on the OTHER path on the right. Grrrr. At one point a group of about 30 young people (college students?) strolled along the bike path, blocking the way completely. I yelled, "BIKE PATH! PEDESTRIANS OVER THERE!" but it didn't have any effect except to crystallize my irritation. That made me ride faster though. Channeling my aggression. After a while I forced myself to chill. The weather was warmer, it was a lovely way to get to work, and I was getting an extra eight miles of cycling in under the guise of getting to work. Not so bad.

The train was late on the homeward journey too, so I rode home in the serious dark, having left my headlight on the kitchen table after changing the batteries. Slightly tense, but successful. I applied some Anti-Monkey Butt Powder to my chafed behind (no time to find bike shorts this morning, big mistake!), and for dinner ate a big plate of pasta with porcini/tomato sauce.

Cow on Ice, Redux

I had a comp day after a busy couple of weeks at the office, and I had planned to test my Anti-Monkey Butt Powder on a long bike ride, make a trip to Trader Joe's, and do other amusing things. And then I said to myself, "Self,we're going skiing." Since moving to Sacramento, I had not availed myself even once of the great winter sports just a couple of hours away. I had been completely obsessed by the Vancouver Olympics and was inspired to get out there. I'm afraid of downhill these days, plus it's expensive, and I suck at it. I did some quick googling for cross-country and found that Tahoe Donner has a great XC ski center, with lots of nice flat-looking meadows for beginners, because I've been on XC skis maybe four times, total? The forecast was perfect; 38 degrees, no precip expected. I put on my cold-weather bike tights, gathered some tech garments, a fanny pack, and victuals, and jumped in the car.

Two hours later I was opting for striding skis over skate skis in the rental shop, largely because I thought that it would be easy to putter along on the former when I got tired, whereas skate skis seem to require a lot of effort all the time. I bounded up the snowbank and onto the bright white snow behind the lodge, and I clicked in. "Whoa!" I said. I had forgotten how incredibly light, skinny, and edgeless striding skis are. And long. They just wanted to go all over the damn place. I made my way cautiously toward the nearest set of tracks and tried to establish a rhythm of kick, glide, kick, glide.

Fifty yards later, I stopped, panting. This shit is hard, man! Plus I was dealing with 6600 feet of altitude. I caught my breath and set off again, a little more slowly. It felt great. I imagined myself with an Olympic bib, breaking away from a pack of people with names like Boergsen and Hakkipukkennen and Krystkowa. And then I stopped again to catch my breath. There was hardly anyone about - most of the people who wanted to ski on a Friday afternoon were out on the advanced trails with their own skis and boots. The snowpack looked to be about five feet deep, with some new fluffy stuff around the groomed trails. It was gorgeous. I started off again to where two trails intersected. The tracks vanished and a little undulation snuck in right at that spot. I promptly fell over.

The only time I had been on XC skis in a real cross-country situation was on a weekend retreat at Salmon Lakes with a bunch of outdoorsy types from Project RAFT, in about 1992. I did OK on the trail to the lodge, but during the orienteering challenge the next day, I was hosed. We were going up and down ridges, across deep snowfields, every damn where. I fell down early, often, and hard. I was surrounded by expert mountainy people who could do anything on skis, on water, with climbing gear, whatever, and my competitive ego was still a problem for me back then. I got very grumpy and whiny, and to this day I remember my behavior with some embarrassment. Our Siberian buddy Sergei kindly likened the sight of me on skis to "cow on ice," which made me laugh in the midst of it all.

But in 2010, the Cow on Ice picked herself up and strode forward with a pretty sincere smile. I fell down again at the next tiny downhill, scattering loose change, lip balm, and my Droid in an impressive pattern on the snow. I didn't even find the Droid again until the next loop. Exercising extreme caution, I made it upright through the biggest downhill turning bit on the second-easiest loop in the whole resort, and sailed down the home stretch back toward the lodge. I stopped at the end of the tracks and promptly fell over. Exhausted, I lay quietly in the snow for a while, collecting the energy to get my skis off and get to my feet.

It's not the falling I mind, or even the landing (by and large), but the getting up. It's so awkward and so strenuous. I would happily fall down ten or 15 times on packed snow (though not ice), if a giant hand would only reach down from the heavens and pluck me out of the snow, brush me off, and set me down on my skis again.

I got myself re-situated, skiied over the trackless, slick snow toward the big trail map and -- you see where this is going, don't you? -- promptly fell over. A kind soul came over to pull me up, but I felt that my knees would not take the strain and I politely declined. I set out on my second loop, still in good humor. The weather was great, I was getting an intense full-body workout, and I was in the mountains. I made it around the second loop without a single fall, starting to feel a better sense of balance. I asked a nice man who skiied by me, coaching his flailing girlfriend, for a few tips, and those helped as well. People in the cross-country world are invariably nice, sincere, and helpful, as far as I can tell. It's a No-Snark environment. Weird, but not unpleasant. I went back to the lodge for a little break and refueling, chatting with the nice man and the girlfriend and a nice woman from Wisconsin who was freaked out by how big the hills were on the more advanced trails. I saw a woman whose skis seemed wider and more stable than mine, and I commented on that. "Yeah," she said. "It looked like they rented you some Death Sticks." Death Sticks. That had a nice ring to it.

I managed another uneventful loop, but the fourth time around I let myself get a little too much "speed" going into the "big" downhill turn. I sailed through the air and did a spectacular face plant into a fluffy snowbank by the trail. Ahh! Refreshing! I got out of the skis, struggled to my feet, wrote my initials in the snow with my pole so that those who came after would see the marks of my glory, clipped in, and strode on. My triceps, shoulders, quads, butt, and calves were all getting pretty tired after this effort, so I did one more mini-loop and called it a day. Unfortunately I took my hardest fall of the day as I was carrying my skis back down the snow steps to the rental shop, doinking myself pretty hard and tweaking my left shoulder, which ached all the way home.

This morning, though, after a massive dose of ibuprofen, a great night's sleep, and a very hot shower, I feel pretty decent. A bruise or two, a lingering stiffness around the shoulders and knees, and a strong urge to spend the rest of the day in a hot tub, but otherwise, pretty good. I want to get up there again before the season ends, maybe try some skate skis next time. At least they have edges.

Zzzzzz.... huh? .... Continued

So... I was writing about sleeping. And, ironically, after trying to go to bed early that night, I was still awake at 2 am, watching reruns of Law & Order: SVU. Sometimes, I get a bit of insomnia just to spice things up. Thankfully SVU or the original L & O is always on when you need it.

But usually, it's sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleepy sleep sleep. Mmm... Yeah, sometimes I used to sleep an extra hour in the morning as an escape from stress and strain, a way of procrastinating, a sheer indulgence. But a lot of times I was just knocked out.

When BBKS struck me, the compulsion to sleep became overwhelming much of the time. I would have to pull over sometimes in the middle of my drive to work and nap in Fremont or Hayward. A couple times I had to lie down under my desk at work,not to be a slacker (cause that's why God invented the internet), but because sitting upright was just impossibly difficult.

As an overweight, extremely fatigued person, I suspected sleep apnea pretty early on, but my caring HMO decided not to test me until I insisted. Sure enough, I was either not breathing or struggling to breathe some 23 times an hour. This is only moderate sleep apnea; some people have it much worse than that. Mostly it was struggling to breathe, or hypopnea, not the more serious apnea, where the airway completely closes. But it explained why I've been a loud snorer and long sleeper, and someone who woke up with headaches thinking that was just a normal way to wake up.

I don't know how long I had the apnea, but people have been begging not to room with me since I was at least 15. And I don't think I suddenly developed sleep apnea and that it then suddenly caused BBKS. My hypothesis is that the ongoing apnea worsened as I gained weight back, and then I had a ton of stress that I couldn't recover from, because I wasn't getting any actual restorative sleep. It all culminated in a kind of multi-systemic overload.

So anyhow. By the time I got diagnosed the BBKS was starting to recede. I was working full-time, able to socialize, able to run errands and do housework, even go through the exhausting process of buying a house and moving. I was still pretty wiped out some days, but I knew I was getting better. I had hopes that fixing the sleep apnea would catapult me into actual wellness.

A few more wrangles with the HMO and I ended up with an extra-fancy Auto-Positive-Airway-Pressure machine with a warmed humidifier and a tube connected to a "sleep mask" with "nasal pillows." I call the whole setup the "nose hose," and believe me, it's incredibly attractive. Oh, and I had to pay for it myself because of my crap health insurance.

It took me several months to get used to sleeping with this thing on my head and having air blowing up my nose all night. But lo and behold, it started to work. I started to wake up some mornings feeling strange. After a while I identified that feeling as "alertness." The morning headaches became less frequent. Sometimes I'd find myself bouncing on my toes a bit as I waited for my tea water to boil. After about six months I noticed that a night without the nose hose left me feeling hoarse and a little groggy. Two nights without it and I'd really be dragging. It was definitely working, and the little efficacy data menu on the APAP machine showed my apnea-hypopnea index going down from 23 to 6 or 7.

So if you're an overweight (or even underweight) snoring person who wakes up with headaches and feels tired all the damn time, do yourself a favor and get tested.

Next up: It ain't no silver bullet.

To Sleep, Perchance to... zzz... What?

So after last Sunday's triumphant mile-ish swim, I proceeded to piffle all the triumphant feeling away with three straight days without even a walk to and from the train station. I blame it mostly on the Olympics. And my brother. The Olympics, as we know, were shown on tape delay in prime time, even in their OWN TIME ZONE! Finally there's an Olympics where the coolest events weren't happening at 3 a.m. my time - and NBC mucks it up with tape delay and endless profiles of Lindsey's shin. I would stagger to bed at midnight or even beyond, if I stayed up for Mary Carillo and her moose. Then I'd sleep late and miss my train and have to drive to work. This happened a few times, actually.

And then I agreed to go down to San Jose Stage on Wednesday and see my brother as Jan the Czech in Tom Stoppard's Rock and Roll. On a weeknight! What was I thinking? It was awesome, but after dinner at Original Joe's, we didn't get home till almost 2 in the morning. Ouch. So I slept late again on Thursday and almost didn't get any kind of workout in. Just as the dark was creeping in, though, I whipped out my new Asics Gel Kinetics in Super Bowl Champ New Orleans Saints Who Dat! colors and went for a brisk walk-jog around the neighborhood. OK, more walk than jog, but it was brisk. I was out there by myself and I was springing down the street. Lovin' it. Nothing makes me feel peppier than brand new shoes. If I could afford it, I'd buy new running shoes every month. Or if any shoe company (preferably ASICS) would like to sponsor me...

But I was really planning to write about my problems with sleeping too late. For many years, even before the onset of Boo-Boo Kitty Syndrome, I slept a lot. Tim used to say, "You need your nine and a half hours," and he was not really kidding. I absolutely could not understand how people would function normally on four or five or even six hours. I would feel bleary with seven hours of sleep, and I might still feel wasted after eight or nine. I never, ever felt "awake" when I woke up. I often used the sentence, "I feel like I've been clubbed on the head" to describe my mornings. I once hit the snooze button so many times that a mockingbird outside the window started to imitate it. I hated, hated, hated getting up. At pretty much any time. I always wondered how much more I would accomplish if I felt better after less sleep.

Unfortunately - and I'm not even kidding here - I'm going to have to go to bed now if I'm going to get up and ride the bike to the train tomorrow morning. So this will have to be continued.

Sweet Dreams.

Serious Triumph! Longest Swim since 2007

Wow. When I think back 24 hours to how draggy and awful I felt all day yesterday (and most of the week), it amazes me how quickly things can get turned around. Pretty much all I did yesterday was watch Olympics interspersed with other stuff on the TiVo (Bells Are Ringing, Ace of Cakes, last week's Damages), and eat crap (Cheetos, Haagen Dazs Caramel Cone, French bread pizza). I felt like I needed to have my skin taken off and cleaned from the inside and put back on, after having all my joints and muscles realigned and lubed. It was all I could do to manage two loads of laundry and a blog post.

Felt a little worried after sleeping till 10 this morning, but as I started to move around I could tell things were improved. Finally I made my way out to CalFit and took the plunge. I had set this weekend as the timeline for reaching a 1500 yard swim, almost the distance of the swim leg of an Oly tri, but I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it because of how bad I'd felt all week. Still, as I eased into the water, I felt reasonably strong.

Warmed up for 400 yards, alternating 100s of easy freestyle and 100s of easy backstroke and my patented Frankensteinish "breasterfly" (dolphin kick plus breaststroke), or drills, or sidestroke. Then 400 easy freestyle, focusing on smooth breathing, rotating the body along the long axis, not splashing. Another hundred of back/breasterfly, another 300 of freestyle, still not pushing the pace at all. Hey, that's 1200 already. Another 100 of back/breasterfly/sidestroke. Hey, 1300. One more set of 200 and I'm there. I set to it, tracking my lengths by visualizing neon colors. The 25 of each 100 is blue, the 50 is green, the 75 is yellow, the 100 is fuschia. No, I don't know why. I let myself put a little more power into each stroke now, I'm almost done and the arms are still feeling pretty fresh. Voila! 1500 and it actually felt easy.

Then I remember that an Olympic distance tri is really 1500 meters, more like 1650 yards, so I do another 100 of backstroke and miscellany. My backstroke is never fast, and it's rarely in a straight line, but I do manage to keep my head back and rotate the bod. Then 50 more of free, this time focusing on breathing every 5 strokes instead of my usual 3. There we go. I wiggle halfway across the pool and back just for sheer happiness, grinning like an eejit. So 1675. Just for fun. And I'm seriously not even tired. Granted, I was deliberately trying not to go too "fast," but I'm still impressed as hell with myself.

This is plenty of distance for an aspiring sprint triathlete, so now I can focus on adding some "speed."

I promise not to give you blow-by-blow accounts of all my workouts, but this really felt special for me. Both because I haven't swum this far in almost three years and because yesterday was such a day of ick. It's good to have at least one leg of an Oly tri seem doable.

More soon.