Maintenance

After the Colfax, I had some heartburn. It wasn't anything too serious and I figured it was just my normal "after long run" thing, which does happen. Then on Memorial Day, I headed to the gym where I did five miles on the elliptical and about fifty or sixty crunches on this ab machine there. We then went to the pool and all was well. Until late afternoon when I really started to feel like crap. I felt lots of pressure around my abdomen, around where the lap band is, but no reflux or heartburn. I figured I had some wicked gas, ate hardly anything for dinner and went to bed. The next morning, it wasn't any better and throughout Tuesday it got worse, with pain radiating to my left shoulder and pressure so bad that I really couldn't eat anything at all and could barely drink water. In the afternoon, I called my bariatric doc and scheduled an appointment for an unfill for the next morning. But it just got worse and worse and then I started to get all paranoid wondering if I was having some kind of heart attack or blood clot in my lung, and wouldn't it be just perfect if everyone thought it was just the band acting up and meanwhile I die of something stupid like that, right?

So, Chris gets home and I am lying in bed sick as a dog, and he says we are going to the ER, which I agree to. So, we head to the ER, and we are there for the next six hours. They do an EKG (my heart is fine) and a chest x-ray to look for a clot in my lung. Then they did a CT scan to look at the band, and found that it had slipped. They called my doc, sent her the pictures, and sent me home with instruction to see her first thing the next morning. I got some nice pain medication (was in LOTS of pain until I threw up the contrast stuff they were making me drink and food from my breakfast came up, which to me said a lot about what the problem was, but after I threw up I felt much better) and was ok, knowing that I wasn't having some major crisis, although the band slipping is bad enough.

So, yesterday I go to my doc, and she looked at the pictures and had to take ALL of the fluid out of the band. We talked about the half marathons and I told her I think I should probably just stop doing them, since after every single one of them I have gotten sick with some kind of problem going on with the band. She did not disagree with me, although honestly, nobody seems to know why intense exercise affects the band in this way or if it even is what is causing the problem. I told her the only things I could point to that were different in my routine were ab crunches and that half marathon a week before.

The hope is that the band will reposition itself after having all of the fluid taken out of it, and I have to go for another chest X ray in two to three weeks to see if it has. If it has taken care of itself, then we can start filling it again. If it hasn't, we'll have to "talk about other things we can do" which I am sure means surgery.

I did immediately start feeling much better after the fluid was removed, was able to eat and drink without pain, and this morning I feel even better.

But the bad news is that any assistance the band was giving me in maintaining my weight is gone. Zero restriction.

So, I am back on My Fitness Pal, with my goals being updated to simply maintain my current weight and not gain during this time of trial (not that I have really had any kind of concrete weight loss goal for some time, but now I definitely don't).

We are going on vacation in Hawaii next week, so this really could not have come at a worse time, but Chris and I talked about splitting meals and one treat a day strategies, so hopefully things won't be too bad while we are there.

Wish me luck and friend me on My Fitness Pal (mariannapher)! I need all the support I can get!

Wall Street Guy

Chris and I pulled up to the gym parking lot this morning (it is perfectly nice out, but I decided to do the elliptical at the gym today because I am having some weird problem with my left calf, it is refusing to uncramp and feels tight all the time, since yesterday's run) and Chris goes "Wall Street is here" and he meant this guy that has been going to the gym since we have been doing there and I always refer to him as "Wall Street Guy", since what he typically did was pedal the recumbent bike slowly while reading the Wall Street Journal. But lately, I have been seeing him work quite a bit harder, walking on the treadmill at a pretty good incline.

So, I get on the elliptical and I am behind him, and as he is finishing up his workout, (which he did in his pajamas today) he lifts up the back of his shirt slightly to scratch his back, and I see that he is a tattoo on his lower back!! Some kind of Chinese symbol! And it just blew my mind.... wall street guy has a tramp stamp!!!

Anyways, that and the train with the army vehicles were the most interesting parts of the week for me. We are now getting ready to head to the pool for the first swim of the summer!

5.5

"How's that bricklayin' comin'?
How's your engine runnin'?
Is that bridge gettin' built?
Are your hands gettin' filled?"

Today I went running on the trail and on my last mile, I saw a train that was carrying a whole convoy of military vehicles headed south. There was this older couple watching it, so I stopped and watched with them. I asked the guy what it was, although I already knew. He said they were headed back to Fort Carson, likely returning from Iraq. He said he remembers standing in this same place ten years ago and watching them going the other direction.

So, I ran the last mile back to my car also remembering the last ten years. I remember attending annual war protests until they got to be too much to bear, this awful anniversary where every year the number of dead kept growing. And more years went by, and the war protests seemed to dwindle (or perhaps I, like many others, simply stopped paying as much attention, the wars being like background music in the grocery store, you hum along every once in a while, mostly not noticing) and my kids grew older and life moved on until all of the sudden you realize it has been ten goddamn years.

I remember being heartened some years back when it seemed to me that the vets of those wars were coming home and taking the war protesting into their own hands, which I believe is what turned the tide.

Anyway, hope everyone has a good Memorial Day holiday. May your barbecues be plentiful and may we all take at least a moment to be thankful that these godforsaken wars are finally coming to an end.

2:41:51

"Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past
You must fight just to keep them alive"

Every half marathon I have done has a specific song that I associate with that particular race, the song that kept me going. This time it was the old stand-by "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor, which for some reason had never made it onto my playlist before last night. I think I must have thought that there were some songs too cheesy for even me to consider, but apparently I could not be more wrong, because it was kind of awesome and got me through the last and toughest 5K of the race.

Bottom line, I did very, very well. Better than I expected. I was able to run all my run intervals (I cut only one about forty five seconds short, it was around mile 11 I think and I got a cramp that I needed to work out, I did the race in 3R/1W intervals) and for the most part keep the self talk positive. I was also able to not look at my Garmin (thus not being discouraged or pressured by what it said) and for the first time I found myself following a "pacer". I've never been fast enough at any of these for there to be a pacer actually going as slow as me, but there was a 2:45 pacer at this race. At one point I had passed him (around mile 9, probably while listening to Eye of the Tiger and feeling invincible, but then again, maybe he was just behind), but he caught up with me and I never did pass him again, but the thing was, he crossed the start line at least five minutes before I did, so I knew that as long as I had him in sight, I must be pretty darn close to my goal pace.

It seems like there was more stuff I wanted to say but I am tired now and I still need to go to the grocery store and I promised my kids (who got up at 3:15 AM and schlepped their butts down to City Park just to support me and watch me cross the finish line) ice cream some time today.

I might point out that I beat my last PR by a full 12 minutes. Sidebar updated appropriately. I might also point out that in my current state of euphoria I am totally convinced that I can do Vegas in 2:30. We'll see how long that lasts. I also feel really good about this race because I freakin' killed it, and there was no altitude advantage, I did it all on my own.

Also, I forgot to add that my bib had my name on it for this race, I've never had that before and it made me feel absurdly important as well as allowed perfect strangers on the course to cheer me on by name, which was pretty cool.

11

Got my eleven done. It went much MUCH better than last week, finished at 12:28/mile. I might not meet my time goal, but I am pretty sure I will beat my previous personal best, so that is good. The weather was much more cooperative, in fact it was kind of cold. I feel pretty good about my time because I had to stop twice, once to pee and once to poo, so what I did was for each stop, I skipped one of my walk intervals in a rather feeble attempt to make up the time. It probably helped though.

I also took some moments before starting the run to focus on what I wanted out of the run, what my goals were (to run my run intervals, to pace well, and to only have positive self talk, to not focus on time) so that was helpful as well.

There was some kind of event going on at the park, some running race, but luckily they really didn't get in my way at all, since I chose to run around the perimeter of the park (about a three mile loop) so they pretty much stayed out of my way.

It was a good run, I was feeling joyful, even on the last mile, which is really nice. Hopefully, next week's run will be as good, and even if it is not it will at least be over.

Outfit Blogging

I got this outfit at The Loft a couple of weeks ago. I'm trying to wear more dresses and skirts these days. I used to not like doing that because I have calves so big they routinely make grown men weep with envy, but they don't look so good on a woman. But these days I'm saying fuck all that shit. My calves are huge.... deal with it!

Skinny Mirror

I've been going to my gym for almost three years now. For the first two years, I believed that the mirror in the women's locker room of that gym was a "skinny mirror". I definitely looked thinner in that mirror than any other mirror, and it did not seem implausible to me that a gym would put such a mirror in the women's locker room. I used to look at myself in it and giggle a little bit and then move on with my life. I once asked Chris if they had such a mirror in the men's locker room and, after looking at me like I was sprouting a potato for a head, he said no (but he didn't even know such mirrors existed, whereas I, a veteran of weight watchers, knew good and well that such things existed).

A while back I had occasion to have both of my sisters visit my gym (at separate times, they weren't together) and I asked them both to visit the skinny mirror. My one sister decided I was completely insane and said that mirror was absolutely not a skinny mirror, and my other sister agreed that it was not a skinny mirror (although that sister seemed to have much more empathy to the fact that I might have thought it was, but this was the same sister who had to force me to go into The Loft because I was convinced I wouldn't be able to find an outfit there at a size 14, but I digress). Anyway, the point is, they both agreed that there was nothing special about that mirror, and when I went up and asked the lady who happened to be manning the front desk the day that the other sister laughed and implied I was crazy she said, after looking at me like I was sprouting a potato for a head, that she really doubted it was any kind of special or skinny mirror, although she admitted to not really knowing for sure.

So I figured, okay, I am a bit crazy. This was plausible given my history of believing I am much bigger than I actually am, so I accepted it and told the story to my third sister when she was visiting, and we both had a good laugh.

But the other day, I ran into the owner. She caught me sizing myself up in this very same mirror. So, after confirming that she was, in fact, the owner of the establishment and therefore in a position to know for sure, I asked her if the mirror was a skinny mirror.

She said it absolutely is! She said what she does is tilt the mirror upwards at the bottom (she puts like a prop behind it), and this gives the illusion of being thinner. She also said she doesn't do that in the men's room mirror because guys generally don't want to be seen as smaller, they want to be seen as bigger.

So, my question to my husband and my sisters is who is the crazy one now motherfuckers? WHO'S THE CRAZY ONE NOW!?!?!?!?!?!?

Pic taken yesterday at the gym, where I did four miles on the elliptical and some upper body weights. I am not this skinny in real life. This has been confirmed by an independent individual in a position to know for sure.

From Scratch 2, And 10 Miles

I did ten miles yesterday around City Park. I knew it wasn't going to be great when I got there and realized that an MS walk for the cure was going on. It was a very large event, like thousands of people sized event. I got there about an hour before it started. The other thing that I knew was going to be challenging right away was the heat. I was sweating before I even got started on the run. It has been unseasonably warm in Denver lately, and I am just hoping to god that it is not that hot for the race in two weeks. But the race in two weeks starts at 6AM, and I didn't get started yesterday until 8:30, so really I should have just gotten there earlier.

But at any rate, so the first seven miles went okay, but then things kind of fell apart. The MS walk actually started (prior to that they had been confined to one area of the park, and I was able to navigate through them), so there were slow walkers and wheelchairs EVERYWHERE, forcing me to run around them, walk behind them and just generally get pissed off with everyone and everything. The heat was killing me and my body just did not want to run. I downshifted to 2R/1W intervals hoping I could still keep up a halfway decent pace, but even that did not work very well. So, the last two miles were lots of walking for me so my time ended up at 13:22/mile. Oh well. At least I finished the ten miles, there were at least two separate times when I was ready to just call it off. But I knew that while I would not give myself a hard time for a bad run, if I cut it short, I would be beating up on myself all damn day, and I really didn't feel like dealing with that, so I just completed the miles, even if I was walking a good bit.

Next week I need to do eleven. I still plan on going down to City Park, but I will get there at 6:30 instead of 8:30! That way any events that are going on will be getting started after I am done and it won't be so hot. We'll see how it goes.

Then I came home and Chris made this wonderful albondigas soup and spoon bread in honor of Cinco De Mayo! All from scratch.

And here we are lovingly consuming it!!!