Ride
To
Remedy

I went and saw Ironman 6 times in the theatre and I’d go see it again in a heart beat. It’s the first solid movie of the year that I’ve watched. I was able to watch it all 6 times without ever getting bored. And with each viewing, I picked up a little more that I maybe didn’t catch the times before. There were two lines that I particularly liked.

Sometimes you gotta to run before you can walk.
That is the attitude I have when it comes to me and sports. Before I can get out there and train for whatever it is that I want to do, I actually have to get out there and do it. Just once, I’ve got to get out there and do it just once and then the bar is set and I can begin setting goals and training to meet those goals and improve upon said bar.

It’s really the way I was raised in the school system when i could run and participate in PE, before diabetes. At the beginning of the year they had us get out there and run a mile (amongst other stuff) to see where we were at. Then over the course of the year we’d do different things, short runs, long runs, etc. Every quarter, we’d run that same mile again to see how we had improved. A baseline was set, and the line was moved every quarter when we were tested again.

It’s very much how I operate now. Back then as a little kid it was run a mile, let’s go, with the coaches in your face, you just did it. Now a days, since I’m back on the athletic train, the events are a little different, when I go set my bar it isn’t just a mile, it’s more, but setting those bars on the smaller of the big events will help me prepare and train for the bigger of the big events. It gives me something to work towards.

For example, I got out there and ran the 10k in Boulder. I didn’t run every mile in its entirety and my times weren’t fast by any means. But I now have a goal for when I run. I know that I want to be able to decrease my hour 20 minute time for a 10k to an hour or less. I know that I don’t want to walk miles 2 and 3. I know that I have to not start out running right from the get go but maybe walk the first quarter mile, and then I can take off and run my heart out. I now have something to work towards. It’s perhaps a bit backwards, running before I walk, but it’s what works best for me.

But this kind of mentality also brings me to the second line that Tony Stark (a.k.a. Ironman) said that is important to me.

Okay, this is where I don’t want to be.
Yeah, I think that a lot too, although, I’m not usually hovering over a 1965 Shelby Cobra with my flames threatening to ruin the car. No, I’m usually on some bike ride wondering what the hell made me do whatever it was I was doing. Like tackling a mountain. This statement for me in the context of running before I walk is all about listening to my body.

I’m a big baby when it comes to pain anymore and so I know that when my body is screaming, it’s not where I want to be and I’m going to slooooooooow down. But it’s also what enables me to run before I walk. I can do anything without considerable amounts of training as long as once I’m out there doing it, I also listening to my body.

Yeah, Ironman/Tony Stark knew what he was talking about.

It’s been a month since I’ve done anything that can be considered as training. The last cycling even was on June 1 and was all of 75 miles. I still can’t get back on my bike for another 17 days. It’s killing me. The last running event I did was on May 26th that was a 10k run. I’ve been released by the doctor to begin running again.

I decided that I would ease into it. I was going to run 5 miles. 5 miles isn’t that far, it would be like a walk in the park. Boy was I wrong. I got all of 1.21 miles before 1) my ass was hurting 2) my lungs were burning and 3) I had shin splints.

I think I did what is called an interval. I started out at a pace of 15 min/mile and then after 3 minutes I went to 10 min/mile and then I went back down to 15 min/mile, etc…

I really thought I could just pick up where I left off. I mean, if you really think about it, I was pretty much not running before I did the Bolder Boulder 10k. I’m thinking that running 3 miles in April really doesn’t count as training. So if you really want to have an honest moment with me, then no, I didn’t train for the Bolder Boulder. But I did finish it, all 6.2 miles.

Given that, since it was only maybe a few days longer than a month ago, I should’ve been able to run 5 miles. My head said so. I was ready to go. I’m tired of not doing anything. It’s killing me. My wound spoke otherwise.

It hurts, and it pisses me off. I don’t have time to let it fully heal to where it doesn’t hurt, I’m tired of not doing anything, I’ve got stuff I want to do. Most importantly, I want to be back on my bike! Until then, tomorrow I will try for 2 miles, and I suppose in the name of taking it easy I will do 15 minute miles (which is so incredibly slow and very much not even running).

I couldn’t have broken my own bike, no, I had to go break Jen’s bike. Of course, the story of how it happened had me ROFLOL (rolling on floor, laughing out loud). I had cramps in my stomach when it was all said and done with.

You see, Jen was trying to ride her bike to work. Her NEW! bike. She was on the bike path (on her bike) and I just happened to be there and I said I was tired and I hopped up on the bike to hitch a ride. I landed on the seat while she was standing up to pedal. Apparently, the weight of me and her on the bike was just too much to handle and the back tire bent and it was all wobbly and she was 3 hours late to work. There’s no telling what happened to me.

That’s what I was informed of when I got to work, how I broke her bike, good thing it was all just a dream, it’s a $1000 bike and I don’t want to have to pay to replace her bike when I want a new one for myself.

I don’t think that I’ve ever been so anxious to see a blog post be posted (and as of this posting, the post I’m waiting for hasn’t yet been posted, but I’m so excited that I’m going to talk about it). My friend Laura, who’s on the DiabetesSisters Triathlon Team with me, completed her first triathlon today.

I got a txt message early this morning that put a smile on my face (6:47, that would usually get a persons head bit off, but not today). The txt simply read “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done…way cooler than pole vaulting! :)”

I had commented earlier this week how cool it was that she had done pole vaulting, it’s one of those things I want to do. Something about flying through the air, it excites me. She had commented that it was cool. But to get her txt this morning. If she had called me there would’ve been all kinds of excitement in her voice. Having not yet done a triathlon myself, I’m excited to get back to training and get out there and complete one. In the meantime, I’m waiting on her blog entry to hear all about her first tri.

Ok, it’s not really all coming back to me now (the filed away memories), but some of it is, and that spawned a break out session with Celine Dion in my head.

I’ll give you a moment to laugh, it’s ok. Yes, I like Celine, and no, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Ok, ready? Here we go.

I was nonchalantly munching on some Giant Chewy Nerds while I was driving to go get some lunch. I was picking out the pink ones (I eat these kinds of candies one color at a time), and then there was a flash back.

Me eating a box of nerds one afternoon that my Grandpa Ed had bought me. He had taken all of us girls out one day. For breakfast we had donuts at Dunkin Donuts, that afternoon, he bought us all candy. I had gotten a box of grape/strawberry nerds. I’m not sure I ever made it through that box, at some point I had to go worship the porcelain god.

Now, I never had donuts for breakfast. We rarely got our hands on candy. Mom kept us very healthy, but even having a donut for breakfast and candy in the afternoon shouldn’t of made me throw up. Mom looks back on that event and says that was the first sign of me having diabetes. Had I been at home with her that summer instead of with my father, she would’ve seen the signs. That’s what she says.

It’s amazing how the smallest thing can bring back memories like that.

I went in for my annual eye exam this afternoon, although, I must say that it’s debatable whether it was really about my eyes or perhaps my heart was being tested. I went through the normal tests and the good news is that my eye sight has barely changed. That excites me. I won’t ever forget when after a couple months of diabetes I had to go get glasses. And then things really deteriorated when I was 20 and had to get bi-focals. I was 20 for petes sake. (Who is pete anyway?) In any case, I was excited that my sight has only a fraction of a bit continued to deteriorate, the doctor (and me) attribute this to the care I’ve been giving my diabetes over the last 2 years. I just love that my eye doctor gets excited over my 6.5 hbA1c. Of course, he’s diabetic as well, so maybe that has something to do with it.

So, what does any of this have to do with my heart? Well, it was racing because when he was looking into my eyes, that I couldn’t see out of mind you because they were dialated, he spent a lot of long time on my left eye. Looking in it, using different instruments to look into it. Because, and I quote “I want to get a better look”. This went on far longer than normal. So I asked about it. He said that he saw something on the Optomap and just wanted to make sure that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about.

Now for those of you that don’t know, the optomap is a cool alternative (in most cases) to the dilated eye exam. I’m lucky, I have diabetes, I get to have both. Call it eye insurance if you will. Between the dilated exam and the optomap, they get to see all kinds of things from all kinds of views. The optomap, if you can imagine, looks at the inside of the back of your eye. So imagine your eye is a ball, it’s looking at the inside of the ball, but if your pupil is at the front, it’s looking at the back. It’s hard to explain. If you don’t get it, ask your eye doctor, they can explain it.

So, whatever was in the optomap that he saw, was apparently an odd reflection of light that’s not supposed to be there. But it’s me, nothing is as it should be so it was there. But he assured me more than once that I really had nothing to be concerned about.

And, I learned that our eyes can get freckles much the same way our skin can. Last year I had a small one, this year, it looked a little bigger on the optomap, we’ll be keeping an eye on it. Ba-dum-dum-ch.

It was a sit and watch sports day unlike any other. When I think of watching sports I think of going to a game, be it baseball, football, basketball, hockey, etc. Or maybe even going to a track meet. Or perhaps if it’s on TV, I’ll watch tennis or golf. Or the olympics, I’ll watch the olympics.

When I watch sports, there’s usually a favorite, a team at a minimum or perhaps an individual person. Baseball is A. Rod. Football is the Seahawks (simply because I grew out of my Dallas and Denver stages and Seahawks is as close as I can get to a home team, stupid NM…I digress). Basketball I don’t care about much. Hockey, I like the ducks. The mighty ducks, they’re a real team right, the one from the disney movie from when I was a kid (can you tell I really don’t watch hockey either). Golf is Tiger Woods, he was the man all the girls fell in love with when I was a sophomore in high school. If tennis is on, I really only know Venus and Serena. Ok, so truth be known, I really don’t watch sports all that much.

But yesterday, was a different kind of sports day. It was the Ironman Coeur d’Alene. I wanted to watch it, I wanted to have people that I was rooting for. The thing is, it was in Idaho, and I’m in NM. But that didn’t stop me. I had the little news ticker thing open and they were talking about this years favorites (I guess those were the pros) and who was going to win it. That really meant nothing to me because really I’d only heard about the Ironman say, in the last I dunno, 5-7 years or something. It (Ironman) hasn’t been in my sights long, so I don’t exactly know how they work beyond the swim, bike, run part.

Anyhow, I had the athlete tracker page going and I kept refreshing the pages every half hour to an hour. Which I know is probably more than I needed to refresh it, but I was so excited and I wanted to know when the peeps I were watching were passing the time mats. So I checked and checked and checked. And at one point I panicked, because I thought for sure a time should’ve been posted, and I wondered, what happened, where was the time, and then I continued to check and check and check and I think the time was just delayed.

So, who was I watching, well, I was watching a couple of the Outlaws. I didn’t really have anyone else to watch. And being that I had met (if only briefly) GeekGirl during the NM TdC, I figured that if I was going to track anyone, she was the best to track, because I could say I knew her. And then of course, that led to me tracking Baboo, her husband. And of course, since I had been reading GeekGirl’s blog, I was also keeping tabs on SWTriGirl, Mighty and Sluggo (who are also Outlaws).

I was very excited for all of them, they all finished. And that is just such a huge accomplishment. 140 miles in 1 day. 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of cycling, and the a whole marathon (26.2 miles of running). It’s extraordinary. If you asked me today what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d say that I want to be like them when I grow up.

One day…I’ll do an Ironman.

Backpacks and me, we used to get along. This week, the backpack and I had a rough week. We were constantly fighting. Things just weren’t working out particularly well; and then last night, we came to blows. I just couldn’t take it anymore and he was just as angry and we ended up in an all out war.

Backpacks and I go way back, all the way to kindergarten like pretty much every other kid. In elementary school I didn’t mind them, in middle school I was too cool for them, in high school I hated them and only because they weighed one ton because of all the books I had to carry, in college I wavered between satchels and backpacks, and now, as a grown up, out of school, I prefer backpacks to purses. You just don’t ever see me without my backpack. Call it a security blanket if you will. It goes everywhere with me.

Last night it was with me when I needed to put gas in my car. Do you think I could find my visa in my backpack? No, I couldn’t. Why you ask, because I couldn’t find my wallet. So I had to use my precious cash and that was the last straw.

What the problem really boiled down to is the fact that my backpack became that in which I make fun of most women for. It became the endless black hole that contains anything and everything but that in which you can find nothing. And the truth is, it really didn’t contain more than usual, it was just so disorganized and I couldn’t find what I wanted when I wanted it. It frustrated me on numerous occasions. I make fun of the majority of my friends because their purses are basically your run of the mill Mary Poppins bottomless carpetbag, they’ve got everything in there, you have to wonder if the coat rack is in there with the coat. The problem really lies in the fact that their purses are just so big they can afford to carry all the crap they carry (granite to them, what they carry around isn’t crap). So back to my backpack, it was decided that it was just to big.

As a result, a battle between backpack and I quickly ensued.

Of course, I won. Because that’s what I like to do when I’m in a battle. Win, but then again, that’s the point. As a result, I needed a new bag. Not a backpack, not a purse, not a go to school satchel type bag either. Something small but not too small. I needed it to carry my juice box, glucose meter, glucose tabs, glucose gel, glucagon kit, and water bottle. Of course normal things like my wallet, date book, chapstick, car keys, etc…needed to fit in it too.

I walked up and down the mall, hit all the hip stores (Aeropostle, The Buckle, AnchorBlue, PacSun, Industrial, etc) looking for a small bag. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for so it was difficult to get help. I left the mall after hitting all relevant stores (i.e. not toy stores if you get my drift). I decided to go to REI. They’d have non-purse bags that were hopefully not backpacks.

Now, I had to be careful about walking into REI, because I’ve got an addiction to that store. REI to me is like crack to a crack whore. S.E.R.I.O.U.S.L.Y. I never walk out of there without spending massive amounts of money. I’m willing to say that I could live in REI and be perfectly happy. That’s how much I like REI. It’s just the essence of the store and all that it encompasses. If I could marry a store, REI would be the store I married. Sorry, got carried away there for a moment.

Bags. I spent an hour in REI in the bag section looking over all my choices. There was everything from Timbuk2, Sherpani, The North Face, Eagle Creek, Haiku, etc. There were bags of all choices. Most of them, I didn’t like. Many of them were to big. And then there was this one that I fell in love with.

It’s a messenger bag. It’s maybe a little bigger than I’d like, but it’s not overly big so I went for it. I walked around the store for quite some time with it on to be sure that I could handle the idea of a messenger bag as opposed to my usual backpack. I wore the white one around the store because it was the only one. And then I added the black one to my shoulder and wondered around with both of them. And then because I couldn’t make a decision on whether or not I wanted black or white. (The black was kindof blah in comparison to the white, but white gets dirty easily.) I took them both up to the counter and asked Drew (the cashier who always checks me out) what color. He said black, so I bought the black one. And I love it!

The backpack has been replaced.

It was during the NM Tour de Cure when I was passed by GeekGirl and S. I followed them for quite a ways until we came to a downhill and I sped along. At one point the conversation turned to outlaws. GeekGirl was discussing how for the Cordy Lane (Ironman Coeur d’Alene) she was renting a cabin with some other outlaws.

Now, before I proceed, you’ll need to understand my line of thinking.

Outlaws don’t rent anything, they live in forests, they carry guns on their hips in holsters, maybe a long piece of wood to hit you in the back of the head with and knock you out. They build fires, live in caves. Maybe, somewhere hidden, unbeknownce to us, they have a cabin, it probably doesn’t have electricity, and their water comes from a well or a nearby creek. They steal farm animals and kill them for themselves to make stew in a pot over an open fire. Maybe they’ll go into town to sell the creature, but they take far less than it’s worth as they don’t want to cause too much havoc with bargaining because it could get them caught.

That’s what was going through my head. We may now proceed.

So, GeekGirl is renting a cabin with some outlaws. This just sounds out of whack to me, outlaws don’t rent anything, they take whatever they want, and stop whatever may cross their paths and try to stop them. If you’re friends with outlaws, you don’t need to rent a cabin. And thus, I pipe up. “But they’re outlaws, why do you need to rent a cabin?” She’s probably rolling her eyes at this point.

She explained to me that the Outlaws (capital O) was a triathlon racing team.

And then it all became clear. They weren’t real outlaws that she was staying with, they were teammates.

Well, I hope this is the end of the tail, because truth be known, I don’t want to go through this ever again. 2 surgeries this year to take care of a problem that began in 2006. Enough is enough. Yesterday I went to the doctor and had him once again cut out the cyst, this time, instead of just stitching closed the skin at the top, he packed it with 2 layers of cow cut and stitched it on 3 layers. In 10 days I go back, he’ll remove the outer stitches, the inner ones will dissolve. The cow gut will encourage my own body to fill grow back and fill in the gap that was left by digging a hole in me (something that wasn’t done last time). He’ll put steristrips on me once he removes the stitches. Once it’s ok for those to be pulled off, I can begin swimming, but no running or cycling. I’ll be glad when I can do something more than just yoga and upper body strength training. Up till this point, I’ve not even been able to do crunches for my belly and I won’t be able to return to those either until the steristrips are gone.

As I was putting the little sticker reminder of my next doctor’s appt in my date book I saw that it’s 2 days before the Danskin Triathlon (June 29), I started flipping through my book to see what else I had had hopes of competing in but will now be unable to. There’s the bottomless lakes triathlon in Roswell on July 12th, there’s the City of Santa Fe Tri on July 19th, there’s the run for the cure next weekend (the 15th). If I’m lucky I’ll make it to the 10k Alien Chase in Roswell on July 5th. But even then I may be pushing myself too hard. I’m not sure I can do another 10k without having trained and only 3 weeks after surgery in a rather uncomfortable place.

But enough talk of all that I can’t do. There are some things I can do and I no longer have “exercising/training” as an excuse not to do them. I can do a complete round of basal testing. A month or so ago I started it, but I got all of 3 nights and didn’t do any daytime basal testing because I didn’t want to not be able to go for walks, etc. I’m hoping that since I’m out of the game (in a sense) for a minimum of 4 weeks at this point that I’ll be able to get all my insulin rates under control. It will help me immensely when I do get back to training if I don’t have to fight with my blood sugars because my basal rates are off.

I also intend on putting some good habits into place. Eating at the same time every day for all meals, eating healthier, taking all the vitamins I currently refuse to take (because it’s one more thing I have to do that I’d rather not), getting those 9 blood tests in every day (6am, 8, 10, 12pm, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, despite my strong opinions about how worthless checking every 2 hours is). I need to start putting good habits into place so that I can be on the right foot when I get back to training. It’s important to me.