The pre-Strava days were quite different!

 

Thanks for the stories guys, love hearing this stuff. I now see why you guys say things are tame compared to the old days given you were dealing with expats hiding from extradition!

Back then people just accepted your times you claimed without demanding GPS tracking, right? 

I miss the old days. People seemed much more passionate about training hard. Some might have made David Goggins look soft.

 

Ditto.  He taught me everything I know about running (I'm not one to read books...)

I got a little suspicious when he claimed a 68min 1/2M, then disappeared when everyone doubted/challenged him to verify.

He also claimed to have a 2:02 800m PR and I’m not sure why he wouldn’t reveal his identity as I didn’t doubt him and I’m probably the most cynical poster on this forum.  He got banned for some reason and started posting under a different name (longboat might remember the reason and name )   And he started using spell check.

 

I think, not for sure, it was Trent and my memory says it was due to Covid 19...discussions not being in the covid 19 thread.  I believe the covid 19 thread was deleted too.

We need to get a Wild Wild West Monkeypox thread started as covid is sooo last year.

I had a lot of fun with the RW moderators as it was almost like being back at school again with me being a bit naughty!

Didn't SanguineSoul give you a few time outs for bad behaviour?

You're so mature and measured now, people might not believe what a scamp you once were...  "KingDong" (with avatar of Borat wearing a yellow mankini)... posting as Squirrell (with 2 l's) just to irk the real Squirrel...  summoning Paula Radcliff to post... etc

So much high drama back then... eg RunnerBabe and Agarose (who RP met in a later incarnation...)

Wasn't Runnerbabe the one that plagiarized Flo (Girl In Motion)?

As I recall... Runnerbabe stole anecdotes from Squirrel's blog ("running with the squirrel") and put them in her own blog (as though they were her experiences).   GIM exposed her.  Squirrel was livid.

 

We need to get a Wild Wild West Monkeypox thread started as covid is sooo last year.

America will have none of the pox from the moneys...monkeys.  We only get pox from chickens. They currently have bird flu so America has had to shut down egg factories, and no this isn’t a joke.

My week (mostly copied from the half-marathon thread, with a few changes)

58 miles running, 3 hours pool-running, and 1500 yards swimming.

M: 10.5 miles with 3x2400m in 11:04, 10:58, and 10:47 (about 2:50 jogged recovery between each). Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.
T: 60 minutes pool-running.
W: 7.5 miles (9:56), upper body weights/core, and 3.5 miles (9:37).
Th: 10 miles, with 2x1600 in 7:25 and 7:06, and then 8x200 ranging between 49 and 51 seconds. All with full recovery. Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming`
F: 4 miles (9:54) and 80 minutes pool-running.
Sa: 10.5 miles, including 8 Iwo Jima hill repeats (between 2:00 and 2:30 uphill, 90 second jog, 45-50 second downhill stride, and 60 second jog). Followed with leg strengthwork and 500 yards recovery swimming.
Su: 12 miles (9:55), 40 minutes pool-running, and yoga.

More adventures with female reproduction (or the lack thereof).  The third try was the charm for the IUD insertion as they finally got it done on Tuesday, so yay!

This week, I also got some bloodwork done to check my iron, Vit D, and folate, since I have had issues with those in the past and have been dragging the last few weeks.  They were all fine, but what wasn't was my cholesterol.  My LDL, which has always been good (80-90ish) has jumped up to 160.  I've gone from excellent cholesterol to bad cholesterol in about 6 months.

One possible cause of this?  Sharp drops in estrogen.  And guess who stopped taking an estrogen birth control pill at the beginning of the month?  Of course, you would normally expect my body to produce enough estrogen even in the absence of birth control, but that wouldn't be the case if I was in menopause.  Which I'm now suspecting is the case.  One common result of menopause is that women's LDL shoots way up.

So I went to see a doctor who is a  menopause specialist on Friday, and she took some bloodwork and in the meantime started me on estrogen cream (apparently there's a stroke risk from estrogen taken orally that is significantly lessened when estrogen is taken transdermally).  So we'll see how I feel over the next week.  In just the three days that I've been on it, I feel like my energy levels are already higher and I have less muscle soreness/stiffness.

Worth noting:

1) estrogen supplementation is totally legal under USADA, as long as it's not accompanied by testosterone, DHEA, HGH, est.  (just in case you were wondering).

2) if I am indeed in menopause, then the IUD wasn't a wasted effort.  As long as you have a uterus, estrogen supplementation should be accompanied by progestin to lower the risk of uterine cancer.  And the IUD I got is the ideal one for delivering progestin locally to the uterus, where we want it.

3) last year, when I felt all warm and like crap before Grandma's marathon, and then had a lousy race, I raised the question with both my primary care and rheumatologist of whether this might be menopause.  Both said that they didn't think so - I was too young, was not having hot flashes, and was not gaining weight.  (since I was on continuous birth control, there was no way to determine either by bloodwork or by considering the last time I had a menstrual cycle).  Since I'm now off of continuous birth control, this doctor took some bloodwork to check hormones.  If it turns out that I have been going through menopause over the last year+, that may explain a lot of my lousy runnng.  But of course, that's not confirmed yet.