health

I am now in the workout-every-day phase of my season. My hamstring is still bothering me, but it seems to be okay when I consciously stretch it several times a day like I'm supposed to.

I may, however, be overdoing the workouts. I'm not sure yet, because Sunday's practice was so hard for me, with the heat and my hamstring bothering me. Sunday's practice was four hours long, followed by a fairly light Monday workout at Velocity Sports. It had to be light, I was able to finish it.

This morning, Heather and I returned to the Center of Balance, this time in the morning to try another instructor. I suspected that, well, since VS has the hard instructor in the morning, so maybe CoB also has the hard instructor in the morning: only the hard core people would get up early in the morning to work out, right? Right.

Heather and I both broke a sweat in the same place in the workout, about 3/4 of the way into the hour long Pilates/Yoga/Core progression, and near the beginning of the abs set. Once again, there were maybe two exercises I couldn't do, but, because of the much smaller class size in the morning (8 people vs about 30 in the lunch class last week), I received individualized alignment help.

After adjusting both Heather and I on a particularly difficult ab position, the instructor asked if we were both soccer players. Apparently our builds, strengths and weaknesses, all implied the movement of soccer players. When Heather said, no, ultimate frisbee, the instructors face lit up. Clearly, yes, he was close in his first guess, but yes, ultimate made sense.

He encouraged us to stick with the program for a month and see how much better our sense of balance is. I think that's a fine idea, since he teaches Tuesdays and Thursdays, offset from the VS MWF morning schedule.

Of course, this will make me a morning person.

In the evening, I went to track practice. The workout didn't seem too hard on paper: 1 mile warmup run, 2 sets of 200-300-400-300-200. Two steps into the warmup run, however, and I knew this was going to be a very hard workout for me. Not only were my legs total moosh, but my left achilles was shooting up flares of hot-white-poker pains.

I managed to make it through one set of 200-300-400-300-200 with careful running to minimize my achilles aggravation, before I gave up during the break and left early.

Since my legs were moosh, I decided an ice bath was in order, so filled the tub with cold water, skipping the ice. A few screeches later and a magazine later, and I was sitting in the bathtub, the really really cold bathtub. I kept moving slightly to prevent the thin layer of water next to my skin from warming up, which I'm sure made the whole process even colder. Lyndsay swears by these things, so cold water it is.

Three articles later, I was done with my 20 minutes in the water. As I stood up from the bath water, I realized I was about to dump all of this water down the drain, when all I did was sit in it. It may not have been clean enough to drink (or it might have been), but it was certainly clean enough to put on my plants.

After drying off, I wandered to the backyard for a hose. Guy had bought a potable water hose for me last week, as "potable" is the only type of hose I'll buy or use at this point, so I had one that would work for the syphoning I had planned.

After filling the hose with water, I kept trying to figure out how to get the other end out the window and onto the ground without letting air into the line. I gave up after about five minutes, threw the hose out the window, verified the one end was still submerged in the bathtub, and wandered outside.

My plan was to get the water out of the tub, onto my garden. The problem, however, was getting the water flow to start.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to use a 25' hose as a drinking straw for tub water?

It's hard. I bruised my lips in a circle trying to suck the water onto the garden. I mean, hello? How many people do you know have circle bruises on their lips? (Me? I know of only one.) Worse, done to save less than 2 cents of water?

Eventually I realized the suction was going to fail, and I ended up using a bucket and hauling the water from the tub to the garden the old fashioned way: by hand.

Well, bound to happen.

Better sooner than later.

As I reached with a double fisted claw catch for a disc thrown by Will, the wind jerked he disc just over my outstretched hands, and pushed it down after passing over my arms.

CRACK!

I stood still for a moment before I realized the sound I had just heard was about to be followed by the sound of my wailing. The disc had landed squarely on the bridge of my nose, and it hurt. A LOT.

I sat down, as Will rushed over. "Are you okay? Are you okay? Did that just hit you in the face?" he asked.

"I don't know. Let's see," I responded, clearly still in surprise. I took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully out my nose, my hands blocking my face.

The handful of blood immeduately showed me that, no, I was not okay.

I sat out during the first drill and waited until the blood stopped running from my nose. I was able to run a little bit, but not much, which was probably good, as my legs ached a bit from yesterday's workout.

I'm thinking now, sure, I should have pancaked that catch. It was windy, and I was standing directly in the path of the disc (a habit I've been trying to develop, actually). But this isn't the first time a disc has hit me in the face, where other people can go an entire career without any discs in the face.

I guess if I'm going to have injuries this season, better to get them out of the way early in the season, rather than late in the season.

Tonight's track workout was all of forty minutes of fartlek running: around the track for forty minutes sprinting the first forty yards of each straight and jogging the remaining 320 yards of the track. I managed fifteen minutes before my insides turned to intense jelly balls of pain. I stopped for a minute to let the balls disappate before running around the fields and finding a couple dogs to chase for my sprinting - much easier and far more fun to chase.

I'm not sure what's so special about the first fifteen minutes of a long distance run. I had a very similar problem last week, running the dish: bad cramps at the beginning of the run, only to have them disappear after a minute break, and a good run following. This has to get easier. I can't keep running like this and not have it get any easier.

Normal body temperature is 98.6° The problem with "normal" however, is that normal is a guideline, and very, very few people are truly normal. I never truly wanted to be normal except for a couple of seriously misguided, adolescent years, when "normal" meant having friends. Being extraordinary means you have a life worth living.

There are, however, expections to the desire not to be normal. Body temperature may or may not be one, I haven't quite decided.

My normal body temperature is 97.6°, where "normal" in this case is defined as the temperature I get most often if I check my temperature when I'm not sick, not exercising, not just waking up and not eating. Having done this measurement a half dozen times, all with the same result, I feel comfortable in saying my normal body temperature is 97.6°

So, when I had my second migraine of the month today, I thought about raising my body temperature to see if that would help speed the thing away.

I arrived home from class around 3:30, and noticed the light in the living room was a little odd. I didn't think much past that thought about it, which cracks me up in retrospect. How many times have I gone blind with these things, each one starting the same way? How many times have I thought, "Huh? The light looks odd?" or "Everything is in really sharp focus?" or "WTF? The door is f***ing open!" Oh, wait, that last one was just one time.

At 3:45 I was half blind, sending a note to Kris that I wouldn't make practice that evening, and stumbing to the bed, dragging Bella with me. If I was going to sleep, I damn well sure was going to have a warm dog in the bed with me.

I woke up two hours later, and tried to do something, anything productive, only to have spots reform at 6:45. My first thought was, go to sleep, avoid what's coming. My second thought was, stop, this is a learned response. The shivering, the chills, the shudders, all of these I've learned over the years suffering through migraines. How about trying a proactive approach?

One of the beliefs around migraines is that the headache is caused a constriction of blood vessels which causes blood to leave the extremities, only to rush back into the head when the blood vessels later dialate. If I can heat my hands and feet and head, the theory goes, the blood won't rush back, and the pounding headache won't trigger.

Of course, lots of pain killers can do the same trick.

I took a bath as hot as I could stand the water, then turned it up higher. I started with a shower and a closed drain, sitting down and switching the water once I was standing in 4" of water. After staying in the water, only half of which I could see at this point, for about fifteen minutes, I stood up, toweled off, and left. The visual symptoms didn't disappear quickly, but I had successfully stayed awake through an entire aura.

I'll take the small victory.

When I checked my body temperature again, I was feeling feverish. Clearly I had succeeded in raising my body temperature, but by how much? Did I manage 100°? How about 99°? Even 99° would be good, I thought.

My temperature?

98.6°

I was finally normal.

Of course, a lower body temperature has been linked to a longer life span, so maybe I should stop worrying and accept my body is helping me in my quest to live to 120.

I really wish, however, we could figure out the true cause of the aura. Those are what I hate. I can't trust my eyes. Seeing is not believing for me. If it were, then I have front row seats into regular rifts of the space time continuum.

And people, they're pretty for only so long.