Category Archives: My Running

Anatomy of a DNS

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DNS… Three nasty letters that I’ve never had to use before (at least in the running sense).  Did Not Start… DNS…  In my mind I know that a lot can happen between signing up for a race and actually reaching the starting line. A percentage of people get hurt during training, travel snafus, etc…  In my 20 some years of running I can’t recall ever having a DNS next to my name. I can definitively say that I’ve never had one in my post-collegiate career.

So why after 20 years did it occur?  That’s a good question and not really an easy one to answer. It was a combination of things that really culminated in one simple answer.  It wouldn’t be a wise decision.

I felt some reluctance to not start and even though my wife and I talked about it over a week before the race I couldn’t bring myself to announce it to anyone beforehand.  I felt bad for my 1st Covenant – Team World Vision teammates, I was their captain and I wasn’t going to be racing alongside them. I felt bad for my 2015 donors who had given to support me and brought clean water to people in need.  Honestly, I did feel a little bad for myself too – was I a quitter?

But it was the right decision and being at the race actually confirmed my decision.  They day was significantly better than last year, but still warm, humid, and sunny.  Those conditions plus the shadeless, rolling hilly course wouldn’t have been ideal for me.

So why didn’t I run? Simply put I wasn’t in shape to run a half marathon on August 1. That’s the easy answer.  But why wasn’t I in shape?  I’ve been doing Cross-fit, running, biking, hiking, etc.  The fitness should have been there.  But it wasn’t. Why not? I wasn’t being super-consistent with my training but I did the long runs, pushing my kids even.

Ok, let’s roll back the clock. For a period of time now while running I’ve gotten these weird sensations in my chest and my heart has been beating like crazy.  Don’t freak out.  My wife, a nurse, and my doctor have both already grilled me.  I wasn’t having a stroke or heart attack. When this happened I would back off the throttle and let my heart rate come down a bit and be fine.  Sometimes this would take awhile and it would usually come with a loss of power for a bit.  Some of you who have ridden or run with me might remember some of these random instances. I didn’t really think anything of it.

Looking back it has never occurred during a WOD at Cross-Fit or while taking a spin class at the YMCA.  It seems to happen when I pick up my pace while running or biking, or after a long period of exertion.  I haven’t consistently worn a heart rate monitor over time but when I have nothing seemed out of the ordinary.  In April I rode the Dickie’s Scramble 75 mile gravel (and hill) grinder.  It was a brutal ride and I had some trouble with some of the hills, when I pushed hard my heart rate went up.  I wasn’t watching my heart rate monitor but after the ride I remember that it said I had a Max HR of 238.  I mentioned it to the guys at dinner and we all agreed it had to be an equipment mistake.

So why did I sign up for a race? Remember, I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.  Something that would improve with conditioning. I trained, doing long runs and as long as I controlled the pace or maintained a steady, comfortable pace I was fine.  Ok, let’s come back closer to the present time.  On my July 11 long run several odd things happened that kind of messed up the routine. That was the day of the Lifetime Triathlon which makes it really hard to get to where the Team World Vision group runs meet.  No worries, I parked nearby and was going to wait for them to come down.  I even got to cheer a few people I knew racing the triathlon.  As I waited and waited I decided they might actually have gone a different way, so I took off.  After stopping at the porta-pot for Nadia they actually caught up to me.

My usual running partner was racing but I’ve run with some of the others so I fell in with them.  Chatting along the pace got a little faster and I felt my heart speed up, so I slowed down. I was pretty confident I knew the 10 mile route and wasn’t too concerned.  I don’t remember the whole run, but I do remember it was warming up and I was getting tired.  Sure mental games that we all must endure, so I endured.  Some of the group in front of me turned around and passed me heading the opposite direction.  Odd, but they are training for the marathon, I kept going.  Somewhere in there I had another “episode” or two, but kept trudging along.  My run took forever…  And I screwed up the 10 mile route and only ran 8.5 miles (probably a good thing).  I ended up running an average of 10 minute pace which is pretty slow for me, even pushing the kids.  My last run with the kids was 7 miles at 8:49 pace.

Ok, so I had a bad run.  Chalk it up to a crappy day.  I had actually remembered to wear my heart rate monitor for the run and when I looked at the data it said Max HR 238 and average HR was in the 170’s.  Possibly, still an equipment error, but I felt horrible.  It took over an hour for my HR to come back down into the resting zone and by the afternoon I felt like I’d run a marathon.  The next morning, I still felt horrible like post-race horrible.  Not an easy 8.5 mile at 10 minute pace should feel.  That’s when I decided something might be up.  The culmination of all of those things happening at one time made it clear to me that I needed to go find a doctor to check me out.

Understandably my wife got a little freaked out.  Asking lots of questions, getting out her stethoscope.  I do have a low-grade heart murmur and she says I have an occasional arrhythmia. The doctor did his work… And of course everything was fine and normal while at the clinic. He had to listen carefully to hear the murmur and I didn’t have any irregular heart patterns while he was listening. He did do an EKG on me and had some blood work drawn.  He said the EKG looked perfect and my blood work was all in the normal ranges.  So next step is to see a Cardiologist.  He wants me to see a specific guy who doescardiac electrophysiology, or studies how the heart’s electrical system (rhythm) works.  Unfortunately, I can’t see him until mid-September. The doctor who did the exam said that I would be fine to continue working out – running, biking, and Cross-fitting.  But to be careful.

So a DNS, being careful.  Knowing a hilly course and that I’d want to push the pace and “race” or at least PR the course. Knowing me, a DNS was the right choice.  Yes, I’m a little more concerned now than I was over the past few months. I’m being more careful about pushing the pace, running hills, etc.  And I’ve started to pay more attention to what is going on with my ticker.

I’ve started wearing my heart rate monitor on more workouts and wearing my RoadID bracelet more often.  I definitely don’t like talking about this kind of stuff, but it has been good to talk about it.  I’ll keep you updated as I learn more.

August Recap

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August felt really short and really long.   The short part was that we went camping for a few days and then boom, I had to start back to work.  The transition back to working seemed harder this year.  It could be because it was earlier in the calendar and maybe also the fact that my work day now starts at 7:30am.  The good side of that is that it ends at 3:30, well is supposed to end at 3:30!

It was a good month overall though.  Camping, my family visiting, rode in Powderhorn 24, had a friend from college visit, reconnecting with co-workers, and doing a short triathlon at the last minute! I didn’t do any blogging, though I wrote some posts.  We continued to work on getting our house unpacked and settled!

My running and biking stats might as well be non-existent.  It seems pretty much unlikely that I’ll hit my goals.  I’m at 50% of my running at 43% of my biking goal so unless something dramatically changes – which won’t because I’m going to focus on Crossfit for the next 8 weeks. I was much more consistent at getting to Crossfit now that life has gotten more routine.

I did manage to get outside for 15 minutes or more every day but one this month.  I can’t remember why, but August 19 I didn’t make it outside for any chunks of time.

My goal for September is to read one chapter out of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible.

How was your August?

Functional Training

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The idea of Functional Fitness has been around for awhile.  I’m not 100% sure of its origins, but it is based around the idea that going to the gym and lifting weights doesn’t necessarily make you strong enough to do every day tasks. Say that you can bench press 300 pounds but you can’t move a couch across the room – you are really strong, but lack functional fitness. Your 300 pound bench is meaningless in real life. Your fitness lacks a daily function.

Crossfit is a huge proponent of Functional Fitness.  I’m not sure what flipping tires has to do with daily function, but really we don’t do that very often.  Much of our workouts improve or focus on our core strength which can have a huge impact on our daily functioning.  We are also constantly working on improving overall strength in areas that are weakened by our sedentary lifestyle and office/seated working styles.

But my thought today is about more than being functionally fit. It is about using our fitness, but more specifically our daily training as a part of daily life. What does that idea mean to you? To me this could look like a few different things:

1. Stretching or doing yoga poses while standing in line.  You might get some funny looks, but why not reclaim some of that time?

2. Changing daily activities like sitting at your desk, to improve fitness.  Get a treadmill desk, standing desk, or balance ball chair.

3. Using your training to complete a task.  Ride your bike to work, the store, etc.  Or even literally run errands.

This cam to my mind recently as I literally ran some errands.  Based on the schedule I couldn’t get a morning run in, but I was dropping the car off the get serviced.  It was going to be a good 2 hour service, so I decided to run the 5 miles home.  I rode my bike back to pick up the car later.  I’ve done this before with the bike, but I needed to get a run in that day so I swapped it around.  Running to work can be hard as you’ll most likely need a shower even in cooler weather while biking is a little more forgiving in that area!

I’ve been using a balance ball chair for over a year now.  Two things I have to remember are to keep it inflated and to make sure I’m sitting properly in it.  Mine has a little bit of a back so it is easy to slouch which negates some of the benefits.  Having it fully inflated makes it harder to slouch!

I have a friend who often would stretch while waiting in line. Of course some people gave him funny looks,  but really who cares. Most of the people you will never see again.  Some stretches are super easy to do and don’t require you to expand your personal bubble too far!

How can you integrate your fitness regime more into your daily life?

8 Weeks to Wellness

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At least that’s the idea behind my organization’s wellness policies.  To be eligible for discounted co-pays (or in my case a gift card) you have to complete a health assessment and some type of wellness activity.  The activity should be based on your health assessment has to be logged into the insurance company’s system and be approved.  A variety of wellness activities can be completed to obtain the rewards.

We gathered a team for a district wide volleyball tournament and in the 2 hours of volleyball playing we earned the desired reward.  I’m not quite sure how 2 hours of volleyball is equivalent to 8 weeks of activity, but that’s out of my purview.  I had already started my 8 weeks of activity before I knew that, but I continued with the plan just to see what would happen.  My chosen three activities were to “be more active” walk 10,000 steps, be less stressed, and to sleep 8 hours a night.

Only one night during the last 8 weeks did I actually sleep 8 hours!! Several nights I got over 7 hours of sleep in, but woke up refreshed.  I think the idea of trying to get as much sleep as possible is good, but 8 hours seems a little arbitrary.

sleep goal

Another goal was to be more active. But really what does that mean? The method of tracking this was to walk more steps.  But really for me, that isn’t an accurate measure of my fitness.  Being more active would be more consistent at Crossfit or running/biking more often.  But why work too hard for this assessment of wellness?

So I set the goal of walking 10,000 steps and used my phone’s step tracking software. The problem with using your phone is that if you ever just leave it sit on the desk or counter then you miss counting those steps. And I’m not sure how the Fitbit tracks this but while riding my bike I would get a lot of extra steps and on some of my runs I wouldn’t get very many.  So this isn’t exactly the most accurate look at the steps I take.  But it was a good look at wow, I was super busy that day and walked around the building a ton! If you use a Fitbit there is direct integration into their website which makes a plan such as walk 10,000 steps pretty simple. In the 8 weeks I monitored this I “walked” 281 miles!

steps goal

My initial health assessment said I had too much stress and that I needed to reduce it. Well duh. I felt like the tracking for this goal was the least objective. Each day I chose certain stressors and then how stressed I was by it.  So there wasn’t a true consistent metric across time to see if you were able to reduce stress in one area or another.  Monitoring my stress over the time frame when we moved made for some stressful days! It is also hard to quantify stress over the whole day in a 5 point scale.  The short-term high stress over 3 or 4 days while selling and buying a house can be averaged out if I said there was no work or family stress that day.  Here is a look at the stress data in two different ways. Obviously work and family are the most stress inducing things in life!

stress goal stress goal1

 

Does your work place have a wellness program?  As of this minute I’m ranked 19th “company-wide” for total number of points.

First Blush: Dickie’s Scramble

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A brutally hilly ride on a super windy day! I finished, it was definitely a challenge to keep moving.

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