The "Device" and Fashion Update

Yesterday I went back to the hospital to get what they term a "holter" (I once dated a Steven Holter is that the same?), which is like a continuous EKG thing.  You wear the electrodes and the little pack that collects the data for whatever period of time your doctor wants.  Last week, my doctor asked me if I wanted to do this because I'd periodically experienced what feel like palpitations.  Since I have now given myself over to all the science experiments on me, and this is just a mechanical test, NOT drug-induced, I said sure, why not?

I did not know what the thing looked lie or how big it was.  I guess I was thinking standard heart rate monitor stuff, so a strap around my ribcage.  I wasn't looking forward to that, since when I fell last week, I strained and/or bruised my left pec major (also the external oblique, but that's just fine now and I'm left with pec strain but it's coming along nicely), and my ribcage is a bit bony as it is, and I dislike heart rate monitor straps.

I went into the room with 2 techs--primary and a guy who is learning.  I figured I'd have to strip off my shirt so they could put the thing on, so I told them I had no self-consciousness about nudity, but the woman just began attaching electrodes to me, and then she showed me the measuring device, which is smaller than many phones, and all the electrodes hook into it.  She asked if I wanted a belt for it, and I said yeah, I will be biking and running with it on.  No hospital nudity was required--she just lifted up my shirt and felt me up a little!

I had a nice chat with the techs about my bizarre physiology (a bit manic yet hypothyroid; bradycardic yet a Crackhead), and I think they enjoyed hearing about someone other than a couch potato.  I also told them how I could feel my left pulmonary artery pulsing where I'd injured my pec, so the pec inflammation must be irritating it.  I tell you, I know more about the human body than many medical people!  But it's my business to know about my body in order to do what I'm doing and attempting to stay healthy.

So the deal is to write down when I feel weirdness in my heart and at what time.  I am keeping a small spreadsheet of the main things I did yesterday and this morning, just so when the graph of the EKG comes back I can see what my heart does when I am doing certain things.  I am particularly interested in what happens about 1.5 hours after I take the levothyroxine, because I can usually feel my heart start to get all excited.  I am sure they will tell me this doesn't really happen, but LET'S GO TO THE EKG DATA, WOLF (I'm thinking of Wolf Blitzer here LOL).

Anyway, here I am all electroded up:

There are 5 electrodes on me, and you can see the battery-powered measuring device on my left hip.  It doesn't weigh very much (maybe 4 oz.), and since once upon a time in a land far, far away, I used to wear a Walkman on a belt when running, it didn't really bother me. In fact, I had to remind myself to write stuff down for a few hours there.  To date, I experienced what felt like palpitations to me twice, but I'm expecting them in another hour, as I took the levothyroxine about 40 minutes ago.  2 weeks ago when I felt them, it was more central under my sternum, but now they are by my left pulmonary artery.  I suppose it's possible that because I fell on that pec that I have just inflamed that area.  Whatever, we will see what we see.

I had to do a 2-hour ride yesterday, and it was raining and crappy, and I needed to monitor something at work anyway, so it was hop on the trainer.  My training schedule calls for 11.5 hours of biking this week, and I'm pretty sure it will ALL be on the trainer.  That will be a first to do that much all on the trainer!  But I couldn't give a fuck, it has to be done, I have plenty of HTFU and tunes and movies and Infinit!

Here I am ready to start my ride.  I busted out a vintage Zoot outfit that I hadn't worn in a few years.  I think I look really fat, but the shorts seem to fit just fine.  I got that cool silver skull at Walgreen's yesterday on the way home from the hospital!  I check Walgreen's every October, because I usually find some sort of cool Halloween thing, and I was happy to find this because it reminds me of Terminator:

I really didn't notice the monitor while I was on the bike since I had all the electrode cords channeled so I wouldn't get all tangled up on the bike!  I think it was a good idea I was riding on the trainer, because if I'd gone outside with the device, I might have got it wrapped around the bars and crashed!

I had a great ride of 2 hours.  I lengthened it from 1:30 so that I can ride 1/2 hour less on Sunday, when I'm cooking dinner for 2 girlfriends, Lori and Shelley.  I ran :25 on my treadmill, Hal, at a super easy pace.  Turns out I wasn't supposed to run off the bike, oh well, I guess my coach will punish me for that!  I couldn't take a full shower afterwards, so I got in the tub and hung the device on the shower door handle, washed from the waist down, then did my arms and neck.  At 5:30 I went to get a haircut and asked my girl Clorinda to shave my head.  It's really short again, because with all this riding, I can't stand extra hair, although I let her leave slight bangs.  My final haircut before IMCOZ I will get totally shaved down, cuz that's how I roll.  It was nice to finally get my hair washed after walking around being a disgusting pig after working out.

On Saturday I'm riding 5:30, and me and my girls are going out for sushi (I will try not to pass out on them), and then on Sunday I'm riding 3:30 and running :40 off the bike, will lay down for a bit after that and pass out or not, and then I will complete the prep for our Sunday dinner.  Below are the Elvis Presley pound cakes that I baked on Sunday, and following that is the full dinner menu:

• Cheese and crackers while I'm cooking
• Asparagus bundles with fontina and prosciutto.  These are easy to fix, and will take me no more than 1/2 hour to cook the asparagus, make the bundles, and then ready them for the final baking in the oven.
• Fettucine with bacon/Gorgonzola sauce.  I made the sauce last night except for the addition of the cheese, so that will take all of 5 minutes.
• Roast chicken with garlic, lemon and rosemary.  This will take maybe 15 minutes of prep time and then into the oven for just over 1.5 hours.
• Dessert will be the Elvis Presley pound cake with gelato (I have hazelnut and coconut) drizzed with optional Grand Marnier

Sounds like a good meal, huh? We will drink good French champagne with dinner, as there is much to celebrate!  There will, of course, be leftovers, and I expect to send some home with both my girls.  I do love to cook, especially when I can do a whole meal like this for others.  I don't really have a whole lot of time to cook right now, but with planning, I was able to put this together with my schedule.  This will be a great reward for my big training week, too!

I only have about :45 left to wear the monitor, then I will strip off the electrodes, take off the strap, and go for a swim. After that, I will drive to hospital to drop off the device.  It will take them about 2 weeks to look through the recorded data.  Should be interesting.  I do know that I have a mitral valve prolapse that is nothing to worry about (I had an echocardiogram some years back to confirm), but it will be interesting to me to see what my heart is doing while I exercise now, since it's been so long since I've worn a heart monitor.

Meanwhile, we've upped my levothyroxine so I take 75mcg twice a week (I'm doing it on Monday and Friday), and then we will retest me during my taper.  Man, I really would like to be dialed in for race day, but who the fuck knows what is happening with my body yet?  The fucking science experiment continues...

But despite all this hassle, I continue to be grateful that I am able to keep training and living life to the fullest possible for the moment. Aspects of my life are a royal pain in the ass right about now, but things could be much, much worse.  At some point, we will get my thryoid function dialed in, and then I will get to see how/who I really am!  Can you imagine what my body might be able to do with all my mitochondria working at 100%?  The prospect of that is what keeps me from freaking out about all this.  I mean look what I've been able to do with sub-optimal thyroid function for years.  I think it will feel something like this when I am finally fixed up:

Reflections on Nothing

I'm assembling all my stats for my 2007-2008 triathlon season, which officially concluded with NothingMan. I thought I'd get around to posting that this week, but I'm lazy so not until next week.

But I am looking back on the year and just this past weekend and all I can say it's been some kind of ride. I feel kind of like the Phoenix, in that I truly, honestly felt like I was in an abyss from November through mid-February, and then things just got better and better, but still with bumps along the way, leading up to the reemergence of everything that is good and right with the world.

You, or should I say I, can't stop the inevitable cycles of energy/inertia, bliss/despair, success/failure, and believe me, I had it all this past season, and know there will be more of it in my future. But on the plus side, when you've been at your lowest point, like I was last winter, anything not that is like frosting on the cake. If nothing (!) else, I've become much, much more appreciative of not bad stuff and grateful in general.

After IMLP, which ostensibly was not a good race for me, I was happy to keep training for NothingMan, because, well, I was just happy to be able to do it, and I really now feel like that Phoenix in that I feel really, really physically and mentally strong right now. And then NothingMan was way, way better than anything else all year, and I felt like I was celebrating during it, and still am. I had water in my house, the streets were flooded, it rained all weekend, but that was all just the background. The thing about NothingMan is that you go into it knowing that it has the potential to be way more problematical (from a logistical perspective) than a normal Ironman, and you just have to be OK with it! And then move beyond it, and let the experience be and unfold under the guise of you're swimming, biking and running, which also recedes into the background. And so to be ready for NothingMan, I guess what I'm saying is it's not so much the physical training that counts, but the mental aspect and really, really being able to let go of everything so you can move through it (I suppose for the sake of saying you did x distance) in a state of receptivity to what you can learn about yourself.

Hard to explain, but you are doing the physical activity and maintaining awareness of your surroundings, but it's your mind that really gets to exercise. There were some interesting thoughts I had during the weekend that sometimes I'd share and sometimes not. A new one I had this time around was, "I hate myself." But it was funny--almost like I was disassociating from my own self, or maybe from my physical self. Hard to explain. Anyway, there was no time during NothingMan that I felt any true physical pain or concern over my ability to keep going. In fact, I think I could have just kept going, but sometimes you do need to stop :)

I had my first glimpse of NothingMan-ness in 2004 when I think I was finally able to absorb all the training I'd done the prior 3 years and just enjoy my mental state during the marathon at IMC, which is why that race holds a special place in my heart. And then I got that same thing going during the marathon at IMH 2004. And it made me think, how do I get that more often in my life? And that's when my real journey into Nothingness began. In 2005 I went and ran a marathon by myself. I mean, you know, trying to PR and all, which I did do. And it was good Nothingness, because it prepared me for the next year when my Mom died. I don't know why I waited again until 2007 to do my first NothingMan, but something must have guided me, because it prepared me for the death of my Dad.

And so I think that I really got my Nothingness together (if, in fact, it's possible to get nothing together) for this last weekend's NothingMan, because I was able to transcend all the physical stuff and just float through it, knowing that at some level it's preparing me for something else--what, I have no idea, but I'll know it when it happens. Like my body was just a vehicle that was enabling my mind to do its preparation for what will come next. And I got lucky in that my co-NothingMan was in the same place mentally so we could do it together but allow one another to be wherever we were in our heads, which is the whole point. But then again, a person knows they can do Nothing or else they wouldn't sign up for it, right?

I think at some level that a regular Ironman now just sets me up for Nothing, and I am good with that. I'll eventually be able to stop doing Ironman and just do Nothing. I think I'm getting to be pretty good at Nothing! Don't get me wrong--I think you can get some of your Nothing doing actual events, too, but for me actual events can sometimes be way too distracting what with people trying to shake you loose from your own mind--what's up with that? But both actual events and Nothing do serve to awaken you to more possibilities so you can go, "gee, I could do that." I almost think there is nothing that I couldn't do, but sometimes it just needs to be presented at the right time. You can't force the Nothingness to happen. But to me, it's better than some stupid PR for doing something! Although, again, don't get me wrong--I do not want to suck while doing something or nothing, and I know that the physical preparation is also necessary. Holy shit--did it really take me 12 IM's to get here? I guess so.

What's funny is that I think I'm going to go run a 50K in a few weeks. It won't be nothing, but that's what I mean about sometimes doing nothing awakening you to other things. But I already am excited about doing a 1/2 NothingMan in a couple of months. I'm still not locked in on anything between now and May 2009, but I know it's going to be good stuff one way or the other.

And so I will end this post with a pic of me from the weekend that to me captures just how great it was. I can still feel that smile on my face deep down inside, and hope I can hang onto it for awhile! It was taken after we finished riding in the rain at Fermilab on Saturday.