America's Next Sock Model & Other Musings on a Quiet Fall

I was subtly reminded over the weekend that I have fallen a bit behind on keeping up my blog ("Your blog sucks," --Meagan Nedlo.  Oh yeah, Meagan?  Well, spell check suggests I change your last name to "noodle".).  It was the kick in the pants I needed to write an entry despite not being even slightly motivated to do so.

That has really been the theme as it relates to activities other than family, work and fantasy football lately. Although, the fantasy football part is not going all that great.   That sort of lackadaisicalness or perhaps hyper-focus on what is the most important right now has had the most impact on my running and my writing.  I haven't thought much about either lately in hopes that time away will re-ignite some passions.

The most important update since my last update is that things in general are a lot better than they were. I never count my chickens (or is it eggs I should be counting?), but the health issues that plagued me since February seem to be resolving.  Monthly blood tests have shown levels nearing normal and sleep is no longer a chore.  I can't say 100% for sure that it's the new gluten-free diet that's lead to all the positive changes, but if it's not, it's one heck of a coincidence. Plus, I've really learned to love hard cider (served like beer, made like wine), and I don't miss bread all that much, so I think I'll stick with it. Cookies are tough though.  Real tough because cookies are EVERYWHERE.  Cookie dough ice cream? Out! Cookie cake?  Don't even think about it.

During my hiatus, I turned 30.  That was terrifying.  You can use your 20s as an excuse for all sorts of immature actions and naivety.  "Did I forget to pay the electric bill 4 months in a row?  Oh, 20s..."  Your 30s?  Not so much.  Plus, 30 is the age where the internet tells me bad things will start to happen to me.  My metabolism will slow down, my body will heal slower, I'll creak when I walk.  It's when a myriad of terminal and chronic diseases show up.  But regardless of all that,  my 30th birthday was pretty special.  My family and many of my closest friends came out to celebrate and I decided growing old won't be so bad with so many awesome people in my life.

With Dad, Mom and Lauren at the 30th birthday dinner

With the exception of some stubborn tendinitis in my left hamstring, running feels nearly natural again.  I've kept my promise and done only easy running since the Autism Speaks 4 Miler in early September.  It's allowed me to be completely flexible with when I run or who I run with.  I'm coaching Lauren for next week's New York City Marathon and I've been able to sneak in some runs with her here and there.  Like last year, I'm trying to ensure that Lauren's running takes priority over mine as she prepares for her big race.

Yesterday, after a beautiful long run on the Chessie Trail in Lexington, Virginia where we had traveled for Lauren's 10 year college reunion, I started thinking seriously about Boston and how I'd approach it this year.  That required some reflection on what worked and what didn't work last year.  There's a lot more that didn't work than did.  First of all, I'm not very good at coaching myself.  It's self-motivation that's my problem.  I don't lack it.  I have too much of it.  I push through workouts I shouldn't be doing and run too far and too fast on easy days.  I want to make the most of this upcoming Boston experience and it's going to take someone who's smarter than me to make that happen.  So, that's step one.

Secondly, I started training way too early.  With an 18 week training program, I was probably ready to run a great marathon in mid to late February.  Instead, I had six weeks left with which to get sick, completely flame out and run a mediocre marathon.  This year, come December, I plan to be running a little bit harder than I am now, but it will be more of a transitional phase building a base for a 12 week program that starts in 2014.
On a completely separate note, I'd like to talk about my new leg modeling career.  I was halfway through a post-work, pre-bed nightcap when I got an email from a co-worker saying her neighbor, a photographer, needed runners legs.  Flattered and not at all creeped out, I told her I was interested.  The deal was $300 to model compression socks for a very well-known sporting apparel company.  I arrived at the studio in the East Village not really sure what to expect.  I pulled on the first pair of socks and the photographer and I immediately both knew we had a problem.  My leg hair was sticking out of the tight socks and was sure to show up on camera. I didn't want to lose $300, so I asked for a razor, went into the bathroom and shaved my left calf bald.  The rest of the shoot consisted of me hanging my left foot into space to recreate various stages of running.  Now,  I only look mildly ridiculous with one half of one hairless leg.  Contrary to what I have been lead to believe by  many a hairless cyclist, I have not noticed any aerodynamic advantage.

I'm not sure if I'll be contacted for any modeling gigs, or if any photographer is interested in shooting me from the calf up (probably not), but for now I don't think I'll quit my job and/or hire an agent and move to LA.

By the way, when I'm not blogging, I'm not reading blogs either, so if you announced an engagement, pregnancy, job change, sex change, etc. on your blog recently, I missed it.  So, congratulations on getting married, being a parent, your promotion and/or your new gender.

After months of hell, you can only hope that the answer is as easy as giving up beer.

To say that 2013 has been a bad year would be unfair.  I have met a lot of great people and learned so much about being married, living in New York City and producing TV news and I have forgotten half of it.  Instead, I'll call it puzzling.

Looking back at my last few posts, they have all addressed my ongoing health troubles.  They continue.  Every once in a while I'll have a run that doesn't feel terrible, or even a week where I start to feel like myself again, but one step forward almost always is followed by two steps back.  This has been going on for six months.  Through it all, I've had blood tests, brain scans, bone scans, seen an endocrinologist, seen a gastroenterologist, taken breaks from running, drastically reduced running, adopted a consistent work schedule, cut back on sugar, cut back on coffee, increased my iron intake, been medicated, been un-medicated, been re-medicated, and the the list goes on.  All of it with the same result which is no result.  We've ruled out brain tumors, thyroid problems, cancer, etc (all things doctors hypothesized, by the way).  But,  my blood levels are still far from normal.  My bones are still far from strong.  My sleep is still far from adequate.  My running has at the best plateaued, but I think it would be more accurate to say it has suffered greatly, which is of course, the least of my worries.

At my monthly check-in yesterday, I was ending my visit with an acupuncture treatment when the doctor came back into the room in the middle of my relaxation.  She had a lightbulb.  I either have Celiac's disease  or a severe gluten intolerance.  We talked about the signs and symptoms and it all made sense.  It's a hard condition to diagnose because the symptoms themselves are indicative of so many other issues, hence all the other tests.  People often have a lifelong "sensitive stomach."  I do, but I have always just written it off as a minor inconvenience.  The onset of the serious rejection is often marked by increased anxiety (re:insomnia) and as it develops you essentially become malnourished as your body stops absorbing nutrients.  That of course, comes with it's own subset of consequences; fatigue, malaise, fogginess, irritability to name a few of the fun ones.  I eat around the clock.  I would say I eat double the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables every day and I go to great lengths to ensure I get everything my body needs. I take supplements for things like Vitamin B, D and calcium just in case. There is no other way I could be malnourished unless something was wrong internally.

Now for the next test.  Monday, I'll have a blood test to check for antibodies consistent with gluten intolerance.  If the evidence continues to point in that direction, they'll put a tube down my throat which sounds like great fun for someone with a sensitive gag reflex.  But, I hope it's the gluten.  I really do.  I don't love the prospect of giving up breads, beer and cereal (although a quick Google search told me that both Guinness and Fruity Pebbles are OK), but at this point there isn't much I wouldn't give up to end what has been a nightmare.

Beer, no matter how delicious, is probably not in my future

I'll admit, I've been skeptical of the anti-gluten movement.  I've even written it off as a fad at times, but I know too many people who have had drastic transformations by eliminating it from their diet.   In the meantime, I think I am done racing for awhile.  This season just never got off the ground.  Since Boston, I haven't been proud of any workout or any race.  It turns out, it's incredibly difficult to run fast and hard in this state.  I am working way too hard for results that are well below expectations.  I don't see a point in towing the line if I can't run at the level I know I am capable of. The hope is that after a couple of months of recreational running and adjusting to a new way of eating, I'll feel like 1983-2012 Jay again.

Lauren told me the other day that I was a different person than I used to be, and she is right.  Worse than the impact on running, worse than the lack of sleep is that I feel withdrawn and pessimistic and that's not who I am or have ever been.  It's also not fair to the people who have to deal with me every day.  Furthermore, I'm sick of writing blog entries about this crap.  Time to take drastic measures, make sacrifices and hopefully end this year heading in the right direction.

Blogging about a break and about being broken

It's been a month since my self-imposed break from running, and even though I don't feel particularly motivated to write, I am afraid I'll lose the 2 or 3 regular readers I still have if I stay away from this blog any longer (Hi Mom!).

I don't remember the last time I took two weeks off from training and was actually serious about it.  Even when I lived in Syracuse and beer and burgers took precedent over running, my belly and I were still getting out there at least four times a week. 

But since I am always telling people to listen to their bodies and not ignore obvious signals, I knew I had to practice what I preach and truly shut it down.  For me, that meant no running, no ridiculously long elliptical sessions, no spin classes, no swimming (or what I call, swimming.  Most call it "not drowning").  For an entire fortnight, I didn't exercise.  I took a few yoga classes that focused more on relaxing than on breaking a sweat, walked the dog around the block a few times and didn't change my diet.

I used my downtime to analyze how I got where I was.  Why was my body turning on me now after years of running high mileage and high intensity while working long and often odd hours?   Once I identified the problems (anxiety, lack of sleep, holes in my diet), I began looking for ways to fix them. Since giving up hard training is not an option yet, I accepted that I had to make some lifestyle changes if I wanted to keep running competitively.  Running wasn't causing the problems, but in the situation I found myself in, it was contributing to them.

The first problem I had to tackle was my ongoing struggle with insomnia.  I don't know what started it all back in February, but I believe it was the beginning of the downward spiral.  If you have ever had insomnia, you know how it goes.  You can't sleep, so you worry about being able to fall asleep which in turn, causes your mind to race, therefore keeping you up even longer.  After a couple of nights of this, the mere thought of bedtime itself becomes a source of stress.  It's torture.

I got into a real bad place trying every method possible to cure my insomnia.  Teas turned into pills from the health foods store which turned into pills from the pharmacy.  You don't want to see my medicine cabinet.  I could knock out a elephant.  Here's the problem with sleeping drugs: You aren't getting quality sleep when you use them.  It's fake sleep.  I didn't sleep without some sort of sleep aid for more than four months. During that time, I rarely got REM sleep which is when the body produces the chemicals and hormones it needs to function properly.  Thus, the disastrous blood tests that scared me into making my health my only priority. 

A good friend who knows a lot about sleep told me the drugs were only going to exacerbate the problem, so one night at the very beginning of the break I quit them cold turkey.  Before I did that, I had to summon up courage and confidence in my ability to sleep naturally.  I decided if I couldn't sleep, I'd get up and do something until I was tired.  I accepted the fact that I might go days without sleeping before this deeply-dug hole was filled.  I practiced nightly meditation.  I eliminated the computer and the television in the hour before sleep (this is difficult since my job consists of putting things on television).  I bought a face mask and ear plugs to eliminate the lights and noise of living in the middle of Manhattan.  Ya know that whole "city that never sleeps" thing?  There's truth to it.

So far, it has worked.  I sleep soundly most nights and am gradually feeling more like myself again.  I really didn't know how bad it gotten until I experienced "normal" again.  While, I have yet to get follow-up blood tests, I can tell that I am a different person.

Fourteen days is a long time for an addict like me.  By the end of my detox, I was itching to get back out there again. While you don't lose a ton of fitness over the span of two weeks, you can't just pick up where you left off.  My first run back was spent running alongside Lauren in a 5K race in Brooklyn.  I followed it up with two weeks of easy running with no stress workouts.

At the top of Conejos Peak in Colorado

The final piece of the puzzle was a week-long vacation to Colorado last week with Lauren and her family.  In the middle of the mountains with no cell service and barely any internet connection, I was forced to disconnect from the world for the first time in months.  I could actually feel the tension release.  A tight spot in between my shoulder blades where my stress gathers relaxed and I think I grew a couple of inches as a result.  I ran free and easy at 8,000 feet elevation every day with no watch and no preplanned route.  Sometimes, when the view was particularly pretty, I stopped and just took it all in.  It was all quite cathartic. 

Home again, I expect the anxiety will return, which is just unfortunately, how I am wired.  But, I'm armed with new weapons with which to fight it and a fresh knowledge of what I have to do to keep myself healthy and strong.  Next week, I'll hit the track for some light speedwork and then see how I race at Team Championships on Saturday.  I'm not expecting a PR, but it will be a good fitness test in the build up to the Philadelphia Half in September.  Refreshed, rejuvenated, relieved.  This is a new starting line.

Time to Shut Down and Retool

It dawned on me tonight as I shoveled prune after prune into my mouth, that I actually don’t know what fruit prunes come from.  Until now, all I have known about prunes is that they are found in cardboard boxes in old people’s fridges somewhere near the bottle of Italian dressing that expired last February (but, it’s still good!  That stuff doesn’t really expire!) AND that they are the source of some not-so pleasant tasting juice.

What am I doing eating prunes?  Plums, by the way.  They come from plums.  It turns out they are high in iron.  Furthermore, it turns out that I am low in iron.  Very low.  Alarming low.  Upon seeing my ferritin level, the doctor asked if I was having my period. 

I hadn’t been feeling energized in weeks.  Every run felt like work.  Every workout felt like death.  I was pushing as hard as I could, but the results showed otherwise.  I wanted to get to the bottom of it, so I went to the doctor and asked to have some blood work done.  I thought perhaps I was hypothyroid and maybe I could get some of those drugs that all of Alberto Salazar’s athletes get to take.  But while the tests found out-of-whack levels of almost everything else (including, but certainly not limited to my iron levels), my thyroid is just fine.

What’s next?  I did another round of blood tests to make sure the numbers from the initial test are accurate.  If they are, the first step will be finding the root of the problem.  It could be caused by a number of things, but the most likely culprit is a nervous system imbalance due a constant state of anxiety.  There are a couple of much more serious causes that are not outside the realm of possibility, but at this point they are not likely.  Let’s hope it stays that way. 

Of course, all of this is somehow related to a struggle with insomnia that has now lasted four months.  It has evolved from the inability to sleep most nights to the inability to sleep every night.  It's not that I am not tired.  It is that my brain seems to have forgotten how to shut down.  I am relying on Ambien every night (something I once swore I would never do) which does not actually induce sleep.  It induces amnesia.  Once it wears off, I am awake and no matter how tired I am, I cannot fall back to sleep.  Words don't properly illustrate how torturous this is. The question is: Is the insomnia causing the abnormal blood tests or are the blood abnormalities causing the insomnia. 

Following yesterday's five mile race in the park that felt like I was dragging a pickup truck behind me, I am hanging up my running shoes for a bit and focusing on letting my body restore itself.  While there is no proof running is causing any of this, a break would certainly allow my body to produce the hormones and nutrients it needs to function properly without having to restore muscle tears and other stores depleted by running.  I believe it's important for athletes on any level to know and listen to their bodies.  In this case, I knew something was wrong and now I know I need to be vigilant about fixing it.  Taking a step back from the daily grind of training could be the key to consistent training in the future. Continuing to push through workouts could prolong what has been one of the most trying periods of my life. 

The solution is much easier said than done.  I need to find the off switch and hit it as hard as I can to get it into place.  It has proven it's jammed in the "on" position pretty tight.  Ideally, I'd go to my parent's cottage for two weeks and leave every electronic I own in New York.  But, as an adult with real life responsibilities, that's not possible.  Instead, I'll control the variables I can and reduce physical and mental stress to the best of my ability.  Once the ball is rolling, hopefully, everything will fall into place.

Keep on Trackin'

Every muscle of my lower body aches right now.  Saturday’s speed session on the track and today’s moderately brisk long run combined with a lack of sleep (yes, that’s still happening) are the main contributing factors.  Although, I’ll give honorable mention to my desk chair which is slightly more comfortable than a subway bench and the layer of dust that has accumulated on my trigger point roller.

Let’s go back to Saturday.  Up until that point in the week, I had put in a pretty solid week of training, allowing me to build up some confidence for two upcoming points races.  Tuesday, I had done mile hill repeats at 5 mile race pace and for the first time since Boston my training runs weren't feeling like a chore with my hamstring keeping relatively quiet.  That’s why I really needed Saturday’s speed session at the track to take the oomph out of my mojo. Here’s the thing. I’m not fast.  I never have been and with 30 much closer than I like to admit, I probably never will be.  Even when I am firing on all cylinders, I’m a total dud at intervals that range from 800 meters down.  Some coaches will tell you that you have to master every distance.  You’ll only nail the half marathon if you can crank out back to back 60 second quarters.  Can that lead to success in longer distances?  Absolutely.  But,  I don’t think that’s applicable to all runners.  Not everyone has every gear.  It's science.   

 

On the track in Charlotte in 2011.  I think I was running the 800 and I am positive I was getting my ass kicked

However, what I lack in speed, I make up for in stubbornness.  Knowing full well that I am going to look like a fish out of water, I go into every speed session thinking “this will be the workout in which I break through”.   Why the misguided faith?  Because when you go into a  session already accepting a struggle you always become an accurate predictor of your fate. Even if the results aren’t earth shattering, the effort and the exertion that comes with going all out are beneficial to the big picture.   So you have to believe in yourself even if there’s no past examples to draw from.  Saturday morning, I arrived at the track, head held high, ready to take on the world and I ended up sucking the wind of my faster teammates.  I was much more in my comfort zone as I logged 16 miles along the Hudson River today feeling like I could log 10 more.  

No Sleep at Brooklyn

For better or for worse (ok, worse) my insomnia and its impact on my running are becoming themes on this blog.  I was certain putting the Boston Marathon in the rear view mirror would be the end of the sleepless nights as I had determined it was the cause of my anxiety.  I even wrote an article about it.  After Boston, I bumped running down the priority list a notch replacing it with my quest to get healthy and feel like myself again.  Let's just say I'm not there yet.  There are currently more nights I don't sleep than nights that I do.  I've swallowed my pride and started swallowing Ambien when necessary, which I once vowed to never do out of fear of the side effects.  So far, I haven't woken up in the neighbor's kitchen making pancakes in my underwear  (Whether you read that as I'm wearing only underwear or that the pancakes are being cooked inside the underwear, both are fears I have).

On a more natural note, I have found regular meditation to be tremendously beneficial. However, meditation, while relaxing, is not easy. Completely shutting out the outside world takes practice.  Much like running, the more you do it, the better you get.  I'm definitely still in the walk-run stage of my meditation training, but making progress.

With all of that going on coupled with a lack of fitness due to a month of minimal running and few workouts (read: 3), I went into Saturday's Brooklyn Half Marathon with no expectations whatsoever.  It is the first race I have lined up for in years with no goals.  I was running because the team needed bodies and because I thought 13.1 miles at a harder pace would be a good indicator of where I was as I got ready to get serious about running again and start training for summer races.  As long as I finished without walking, I'd be happy.

I worked until 12am the night before the race and bag check closed at 6:20, so insomnia or no insomnia, the window for sleep was small.  We got to Brooklyn in a cab with 15 minutes to spare. Walking into bag check was eye-opening.  Thanks to what happened in Boston, checking your bag for a road race has become akin to going through airport security.   I took my shoes off out of habit after the security guard looked in my bag. 

We were in the corrals a half-hour before the race and I was surprised to not feel completely exhausted.  When the gun went off, despite no real warm up or strides, my legs actually felt springy.  Of course, 13.1 miles is a long way.  I tucked in with the chase pack and selfishly, let two guys from another team do most of the work as we ran around 5:30 pace for the first couple of miles.  When the pack pulled away, I stayed on pace through Prospect Park and coming out of the park, I thought I was either going to have a really good day or an epic blow up. 

Photo Courtesy: Da Ping Lao

What happened was somewhere in between.  According to the timing I did in my head (which I should point out is flawless as I time TV shows for a living), I was on pace to run about 1:12:30.  It's not a PR, but it would have been totally unexpected.  Then, around mile 10, I started to slow down.  It wasn't that my body was feeling fatigued, it was that my legs simply stopped turning over.  One of my teammates caught me and encouraged me to come with him.  I tried, and I couldn't.  I spent the next three miles struggling to not get passed by a guy who thrice stopped to stretch his calf on the curb.  He got me the first two times, but the last time I prevailed -- or he ran out of real estate.  Either way. 

I finished in 1:13:24.  I didn't set the world on fire or even create a smoke condition, but it's a respectable time that I can build off of in the coming weeks and months.  I'm going to keep trying to tackle the sleep issues, but now that my post-Boston downtime is over, I am gong to stop letting it interfere with my running.  If I have to move a workout here and there, fine, but it's time to get back on the horse.

Of course, the headline of this blog should not be my run at all.  This race was a benchmark on Lauren's training and she PRed by six minutes!  That's a huge 5K PR and a huge Half Marathon PR n the span of five weeks.  Talk about setting the world on fire...

Lauren celebrates her Half Marathon PR with a giant beer

Slowly getting back on my feet (really slowly)

I haven't run much in the past 10 days.  There's been a short jog here and there, but for the most part, my energy outside work has been reserved for finding ways to avoid putting on pants and looking for new foods on which to spread peanut butter. (Admission: most of the time, I just eat it out of the jar by the spoonful).

I promised myself I would take ample time off after the Boston Marathon; at least one week of no running followed by at least two weeks of minimal running.  I was planning for the physical recovery, but the mental recovery has turned out to be a longer process than I anticipated.

Not to insinuate that there is a positive spin to what happened, but in a sense, the need for an emotional cleanse has kept my ambition in check.  I have a habit of jipping the recovery process.  In the past, this has resulted in a broken foot and an inflamed IT band that according to one doctor, "looked like a Christmas tree" on the MRI.  Both injuries have called for much more time off than I should have taken immediately after the marathon.  But, what happened on April 15th put running in perspective.

I've enjoyed going for walks since the race.  We found Tanya while walking near the reservoir in Central Park.

Tragedies have a way of making you appreciate the basics.  In this case that's the ability to run when I want, where I want and with who I want.  No one has taken running away from me like they did from hundreds of people who came to the Boston Marathon for the sheer joy of spectating at a road race.  There will be plenty of time to live by the Garmin and cheat unconsciousness in a workout meant to push physical limitation, but I consider myself fortunate to be able to control when and if I will start doing that again by the choices I make now.  

Until then, If I'd rather go for a walk, or sit in the sun and read the paper, drink a beer or three or hell, eat peanut butter right out of the jar until I can't stomach it anymore, I'll do that instead.