TIKI HUT FORTRESS OF FUCKING...ER...SOLITUDE!!!

So it's really cold here. REALLY cold. And we've had a lot of snow. For the past week or so, whenever I look out my kitchen window at my neighbor's house, this is what I see:
That house has had no gutters on it for about 10 years, and while the new owner began replacing the roof 3 years ago, they never finished because they discovered the wall facing my house was rotted through. DUH!

Anyway, I've been looking at these awesome icicles, and since it warmed up to -5 today, when I got back from swimming, I decided I should harvest some of them and at least make a nice sculpture thingie in my yard, since the ice probably won't melt for at least a few days. So I began grabbing at them to get some really nice pointy ones, but I couldn't do anything with the one that has frozen all the way to the ground--it is just too strong! I didn't get really artistic or anything, but just made something that reminded me of Superman's ice palace, and this is what I came up with:


Not bad for a few minutes of work, eh? Just so you get an idea of how much ice I harvested, here's the neighbor's house after I pilfered:


But then I thought, hey, the Tiki Hut has never been outdoors in the snow...and you guessed it...

Here's the aerial view:

Here's the front view:

Here's the two horn dogs going at it, as usual:

And then I don't know how they got on top of that big hunk of ice, but they did!

Being Used to Pain

As soon as I woke up this morning, while still laying in bed, I could feel that my body was more healed than yesterday without even moving. So I twisted to one side and the next, arched up my back and then swung a leg over the edge of the bed. Still better than yesterday! Then I noticed that my gut wasn't feeling all jumbled up as it has for the past few weeks, which I've attributed to the muscular issues remaining from my back injury in November.

I got up and sauntered around like a cowboy with a swagger. I made coffee and then went to sit in front of the computer. Still feeling better.

Just last week, I said to my massage therapist that I thought I had about 2 more weeks until I'd be all healed up. One more week to go! This is the best my body has felt (in totality; I've been in a good mental place for well over a month now) since early November. Of course, some of my pain has been due to self-inflicted punishment--like my crazy birthday workout, effectively doing a HIM at IMFL and then another one just 2 weeks ago--but underneath has been the mess that I've been from my "accident" on 11/15.

While I've been able to move myself towards a healed state, it's been a slow process. This morning while testing myself out (I'd say I'm about 98% now), it occurred to me that I have become so accustomed to this discomfort, this pain. I'm not even sure what my pain threshold really is. If you asked me to rate how it's been on a scale from 1-10, I'd call it a 3--just something that's there that bugs the shit out of me. But maybe to someone else my pain would register more like an 8. All I know is that I've been able to continue swimming, biking, running, lifting and many other activities without too much restriction. But I've noticed a lack of full range of motion, and I am very flexible and normally my range of motion is well beyond any standards. Yet I'd become OK with limiting myself and being OK with things like not being able to raise a foot to my waist or higher (can't everyone do that?), bend over backwards just because I can--things like that.

And if you restrict yourself like that, eventually it becomes the norm. Even though I've continued pushing my own envelope, I've felt like I might do something at any time that would send me spiraling backwards in improvement. I can think of other times in my life where I've been OK with pain--psychic or physical--and have been just too complacent to try and move forward. Sometimes pain is a sign that we need to push our envelopes more to get through it or know it better so that we can move beyond it.

I'm very happy that as fucked up as I thought my back was that I knew it could have been much worse. It was entertaining to listen to others opine on how long it should take me to recover from what happened, but how could they know how bad it was unless they were there? I knew how bad it was when I was laying on the floor after about 80 pounds of wood had crashed down on my shins and quads after my glutes had already hit concrete and all my back muscles had gone into a protective tightening mode. I knew how bad it was a few minutes later when I was laying on an ice pack and my back muscles were spasming, I was sweating bullets, my pulse was going through the roof, and my body was trying to throw me into shock. I knew how bad it was a week and a half later when I went for my first post-injury run and my shins, quads, glutes and back were screaming at me to the point that I was crying while running--the tears streaming down my face and me wondering if it was a bad idea to try running at all.

So I laughed when one person said I should have recovered from this in 2 weeks! My massage therapist thought I'd be recovered sooner than now, too, but I told him you had to be there to know just how bad it was.

I am grateful that I have conditioned myself, sometimes in extreme ways, so that I was able to withstand the injury, and I'm coming back. I am done being OK with the pain and discomfort. I am done restricting myself. I am done saying I can't do certain things because it might cause me additional pain.

There was a time in my life when I would be OK being immersed in psychic or physical pain for months at a time. During the last 3 years, it's interesting that despite all the crap that has happened to me, my tolerance has shortened to about 8 weeks. 8 weeks is about all the time I will let myself be subject to crap--whether it be how someone else is treating me, how I am treating myself or going easy on myself because I perceive myself to be injured. I could enumerate all the examples of this and bore you, but I know how it's been.

I observe others and how they have built up this tolerance for pain to the point of staying in unhealthy situations for months or even years. What if everyone just decided to put limits on how long they would let themselves be in them? Part of the game is just making a conscious choice and setting a goal, and saying, "x weeks from now I am going to be in a much better place because I choose to take action NOW."

And now I can't wait to be 100%. My 100% is at least 150% of most normal people, I suppose, but I like it that way. Maybe now I should lower my tolerance to only 4 weeks!

Weekly Workout Totals 01/05-2009-01/11/2009 and Miscellaneous Stuff

As you can see, one of my dirty whore Barbies is enjoying herself while a Kachina doll watches...

I had a great training week. I'd call it a breakthrough week because I had everything fired up--harder and longer swim workouts, harder bike workouts, harder run workouts, and harder strength workouts. Add in a bunch of time moving snow around and a 1-hour (OK I was slow and spastic) cross country ski, and I don't think there is any muscle in my body that wasn't used! I got a great massage from the master, Mike, and was diligent about working on the muscles in my back (erector spinae, quadratus lumborum and iliopsoas) that are still a bit truculent. I had lunch with my friend, Marty, on Friday, and made dinner plans with another friend for next week.

Yesterday was one of those best days ever, which is interesting since it's the middle of winter! It started out well. I cleared the last of the snow from my driveway, took a little walk and took some pics (see previous post) of the snow. It was a beautiful, clear morning, and it was so quiet, as everyone was sleeping in and the roads were still snowy. I had planned on a 1:40 run followed by a :30 swim, but when I got back in the house, I felt a little dizzy or at least that I needed to lay down for awhile. In retrospect, I think my body was telling me that I wasn't fully recovered from Saturday's 3:00 workout plus who knows how much snow shoveling! I'm constantly learning what different bodily sensations mean, and the way this one felt was that I was a bit sinus-y and like my muscles were all out of fuel, despite the care I took on Saturday to refuel (or so I thought). Well, I am learning to listen to my body, so I started drinking Gatorade and got back in bed. I didn't fall back asleep, but it sure felt good to lay down. Also, I felt hot, so I took my temperature just for fun, and it was up--my normal temperature is about 96, and I was at 98.8! So that's almost a little fever to me. But after about an hour or so in bed, I got up, and suddenly I felt pretty much OK.

I suited up to run and headed to the Y. I got on a treadmill, and some guy who's been eyeballing me (he mostly just lifts, I think) asked me how much I was going to run today--9 or 10 miles? It was funny because that's about what I had planned, but I still wasn't sure I could execute on it or not, so I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and said I wasn't sure whether I'd make it that far, but I was going to start on it. He then proceeded to ask me whether I run marathons, and I just told him I do Ironman. I guess there's a part of me that doesn't want to be labeled as just a runner (especially since I don't consider myself one!), because I don't think I look like one. Anyway, I wasn't in the mood to chat, so I fired up the machine, and as achey and sluggish as I had felt just an hour earlier, it felt great to run! I was pleased, but cautiously optimistic, thinking that whatever I got done would be fine.

It was one of those days where I would have been OK with taking a full rest day, but then since I was on the treadmill, I began going over various scenarios--since I knew I might ski later, I could run less, or I could do the last 15 minutes on the elliptical. A 1:30 run would have been plenty. But as I got into it, I felt really good and did 1:30 on the treadmill and then headed to the indoor track.

I decided to just run a mile and see how long it took. My pink Timex watch had finally died (I knew the battery was going because the LED display was fading in and out), and so I had to wait for the second hand of a wall clock to come up on 12 so I could time myself. I wasn't trying to push it or anything, but isn't it funny sometimes how if you don't actually have a watch on you run faster? Seriously, I didn't think I was running faster than maybe 8:45, but it turned out I was running at my 5K pace! I was like what the fuck where did that come from? I ended up running 11 miles. And I was pretty happy to go for a recovery swim.

The pool was stinking hot, but it still felt good, and I knocked out a leisurely 1500 yards followed by about 5 minutes in the sauna (I would have stayed in there longer except there was a woman in there who seemed to be gay for me by the way she was looking at my naked body), then headed home.

I ate a Lean Cuisine and drank a bottle of Endurox R4, and knew I needed a lay down, after sorting through the Sunday newspaper for the sections that I read (I toss Sports, Business, Classifieds and all the ads) so I could take it into bed with me. Side note: I love my bed, and I had just changed the sheets in the morning, so how nice to finish up working out, showering and sauna and come home to that!

I had a message from a friend to meet for skiing at 6PM, so I figured I should try and get my nap on! After about 5 minutes in bed, I figured a beer would be tasty and probably knock me out, so I went and got one, got back into bed, read a little of a book, drank the beer, turned off the light, and I was out cold. I woke up an hour later feeling pretty awesome except for the right side of my back was a little stiff. I got up and had a snack and began drinking more Gatorade, since I was going to be doing another workout, got some laundry done and got things ready to fix dinner once we were back from skiing.

Skiing was great, except that I suck, while my friend is awesome at it. I need to learn to skate ski, as that's the kind of skis I got. I was a little stiff, ginger, wary of the whole thing since in a way I was a little afraid of doing something else to my back. But I managed, even though I sucked. It was beautiful out in the dark and so quiet, and I was mostly just happy to be doing something in the snow! There was one decent downhill, and I thought I had it, but then in a flash I did a huge face plant, and laughed my ass off while getting up. It's fun to fall in the snow when you won't hurt yourself.

I'm not sure of the distance of the course we were on, but it was at least a few miles. This place has lessons, so I think I'm going to do that next weekend and let that replace my run.

After skiing, we cracked open some wine, showered up and I fixed a simple but tasty dinner--Porterhouse steaks, pasta with the red pepper, bacon and Gorgonzola sauce I'd made on New Year's Day, and steamed asparagus. And a good bottle of Zinfandel. I had looked forward to that meal since I was finished running!

After all that, I slept like a baby and this morning I am just doing a :30 swim and think maybe I'll run outside in the snow later on. This week's training is going to be killer, here let me show you:

We are supposed to get more snow (blizzard warning tonight!) today through Wednesday, which is fine by me except it's going to be really super cold, too. But I'll get a little extra strength training done moving the snow.

Hope everyone had a great week and is starting out another good one! I did not include the skiing or the excessive snow removal in the numbers below--it was a solid training week anyway!

Weekly Workout Totals	01/05/2009-01/11/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by snow!!! There is no shortage of it here!
Swim:	8400 yards (4.77 miles) in 2.88 hours; 22% of weekly workout time; approx. 1009 calories burned Canadian: 7680.96 meters
Bike:	Approx. 78.82 miles in 4.33 hours; 32% of weekly workout time; approx. 2384 calories burned; Total TSS=276 Canadian: 126.85 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 23.41 miles in 3.72 hours; 28% of weekly workout time; approx. 1691 calories burned Canadian: 37.67 kilometers
Strength:	2.45 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 613 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 107 miles in 13.38 hours; approx. 5697 calories burned Canadian: 1 kilometers
Sleep:	7.04 hours avg./night
Stretching:	3.22 hours. Massage: 1 hours

Snowy Morning

It is such a beautiful morning that I decided to take a few more pics of all the snow. It looks like my town got about 8" from Friday through Saturday afternoon! There may be a little on the way again today--who knows?

Pink sunrise!

Pink sunrise!

My humble abode

The creek that seems to overflow every time I do a NothingMan!

Ash tree in my backyard. I like how the snow drifted up the 4 trunks.

Snow-covered Griffen

Beautiful sky with wispy clouds