Mornin' everyone.

Saturday’s workouts:
RunnerKSA (3.3 slow, humid miles from sister’s lake house, without deer selfie + paddleboard cross-training)
Tomwhite (40 min PoolRun with letters + 65 min HH 3-1s in 98° temps)
Henrun (steamy morning 3.5 miles with DW shout-out)
C-R (humid local 5K in 21:25 - fastest in 3 years)
Quickadder (11.2 mile Saturday morning group run with bathroom detour)
Jlynne (1 hr on the elliptical + 30 min of weights/core at the Y)
Dave59 (3.04 morning miles with rain, between 13 hr. drives)
anneb (7 miles in 83° with 70 dew point)
pfriese (relay done - 6.5 miles of rolling hills at 7800 ft, starting at 43° with wind)
SPUNKY57 (7 miles at 10:31 pace)
Evanflein (race at 1:52:43 for 1st AG and 11th woman OA)
Surly Bill (5.1 EZ miles)
Mike (60th birthday 5K in 19:07 for 5th OA and 1st AG)
Fatozzig (1 morning hr of core)

I hope you're having a good visit with your dad, Holly, and that you being there lifts his spirits.

Twocat, I am so sorry for the back and hamstring distress you are dealing with, as well as for the docs' lack of communication skills.

Jlynne, I was walking up the hill to the farmer’s market when it started pouring, so I ran back to the car and headed home. You got a great haul! Moving is always a thrill, isn’t it?

Wildchild, I hope the surgery is a complete success, and that the recovery is quick. However, as C-R  and Surly Bill said, take all the time you need so you recover completely.

SPUNKY57 - you are inspirational as well!

Mike, I’m very glad your dad survived, but that is a heck of a way to spend your birthday!

Fatozzig, I believe you’ve done this before, but maybe it is time for another talk with your firm to tell them what is acceptable to you, and what will force you to consider leaving. You can do it in a very professional way. If you are that unhappy (and overworked and stressed), there is noting to lose.

I had 7 people at our racewalking training session yesterday - all women. 4 have been with us for quite a while, and the other 3 were newbies. They had some very good but tough questions for me as we all talked about the technical aspects of racewalking. It’s good to be challenged. I got in just under 6 RW miles before the session, and about another mile during the session.

Last night, we and our company made cauliflower-crust pizzas and chocolate cupcakes: Good eats! They'll be heading to home this morning, after we take a few shots at the office of the young boy for our next products catalog.

4.54 EZ RW miles this morning in dense fog, 70° temps, and very muggy air. I had planned to go farther (further?), but it was tough to breathe in that muggy air, and I had to back off. So it goes.

Have a greta Sunday.

Jay

Okay folks, so here’s my spill. You are welcome to skip over it if you like.  For those of you who are also FB friends, please do not share anything there about this.  FB is for fun stuff, here is where I share personal stuff.   I hope you all take that as the compliment I mean it to be.

Let me start with the fact that for years I have had trouble sleeping (like many of you, I expect – seems to come with middle age). I actually get very stressed about it, as I lie awake worrying that I will be exhausted the next day at work, which of course makes it even harder to sleep, and I have a lot of anxiety over the whole issue.

Add to this (and part of the reason) is that I have had arthritis in my neck for about 15 years or so (caused by a whiplash injury in my youth) that has grown progressively more painful.

So, several years ago my doctor proscribed one 3.25 Vicodin/day at bedtime (not to be taken on the nights we were drinking wine). This gave me a good 4 hours of sleep anyway before I started my wake/stress/doze cycles, but it was enough to keep me reasonably satisfied.  During the rest of my day, I was taking Ibuprophen.  For several reasons (too long to go into here), I did not ever tell my husband about any of this.

A few months ago, my doctor cut me off. The law changed, and GPs are no longer allowed to dispense pain pills of any type (at least in Ohio).  I had no idea how dependent I had become on that one pill until that moment.  I don’t think you can become physically addicted to one 3.25 Vicodin/day, but I am here to tell you that you can most definitely become MENTALLY addicted to it.  My biggest anxiety was the sleep issue.  How was I going to be able to sleep now?

So, I did the smart thing (not) and began drinking regularly instead. Three glasses of wine and a Benedryl before bed were getting me to sleep.  However, they were not filling the mental hole that was missing.  And this was having other ramifications in my life.  Mostly it was keeping the SECRET that was killing me, buying the wine on the way home from work, hiding it, drinking in secret, etc.

This culminated Wednesday when DH and I had an argument (about DD of course) and I stayed up drinking wine. So much so that I was so hungover the next morning I called in sick to work.  Okay, this was the last straw.  When DH came home from work I told him everything.  At my request he removed all of the beer and wine from our home (we don’t keep spirits), and stayed with me through my hangover misery.  He even took the next day off work together to make sure I was going to be okay.

I have decided to do a full cleanse from alcohol for at least a few months, and DH has agreed to do it with me. Maybe I will lose some weight.  However, I will NEVER allow a doctor to get me on any daily longterm (even low dose) pain meds or any other habit-forming drugs.  Anyway, that’s the scoop.  Even people attempting a healthy life can get hooked (physically or emotionally) on opioids.  Hope I have not over-shared....

3 miles for me today, followed by 30 minutes of weights and core, and an hour of weeding.

4 miles here in the Poconos.  Butt wasn’t as good today.  I think the movement of going from kneeling on the paddle board to standing was not the best thing for it.  Got it done!     My son is still healing from breaking a rib mountain biking in Utah a couple of weeks ago so isn’t working out.  He is planning on going to China for 2 triathlons in October/November and staying a month.  That makes me extremely nervous....with him lots of things go wrong.....

Holly: Yeah, it can sneak up on you. I know a lot of people with about the same story. Even myself, this last year, found that I had progressed to 1-2 beers an evening on weeknights, and 4-5 on weekend days due to my exploration of craft beer. I made the decision to have no alcohol on weekdays, and after a few weeks of that noticed I'd lost weight and was sleeping better without any other changes.I think for people like us it becomes more about ritual rather than the physical effects (like getting drunk does for an alcoholic). Replacing those glasses of wine with fruit juice of your choice, in the same wine glass, will help the transition. You'll be right as rain in a week or two.

OK, here's a story of "it could be worse": I know a guy, a professional, highly educated, socially mature, who had an eating problem. BUT, it wasn't like you think. He ate regularly during the day, same as anyone else. BUT, in the middle of the night he would get up and eat thousands of calories of food, whatever was at hand. He was sort of sleep-eating because he didn't have much memory of it in the morning, but there would be empty boxes of cereal and bread bags on the kitchen floor, the fridge door open and stuff rummaged through and bites out of things.He and his wife finally decided to put padlocks on the cupboards and fridge because no therapy was working. This really was out of his control. He said he woke up one night in the kitchen because of the noise he was making trying to open the locked cupboard doors.

Some heavy-duty stuff here the last couple of days...fathers, addiction, surgery....  I'm glad folks find some use in sharing and see this as a safe place to do so.  Best to you all dealing with a wide range of events and issues.

Belated happy birthday to Mike who will be tearing up the new age group!

51 mile ride today.  Very humid at the start but we finished up early enough so the temps weren't too bad. The good thing about cycling is that you have a built in breeze. I find that if I stop, I immediately feel overheated, which is strange. It keeps me moving.

Oh Holly, thanks for sharing. I’m so glad that you’re H is supportive. I completely understand the mental addiction. From the other side, my H was taking ambien for years until it ultimately stopped working (and led to other bad things like getting up and not remembering&hellip And then more recently the ambien was replaced with xanax and even though it’s not enough to be physical I know it’s a mental addiction. This stuff is so common.

On in the running front, I was smart this morning and ran at 7am instead of 9! So while it was still hot (78) and humid, it was at least cloudy so my 5 miles actually felt easy. I’m waiting for this heat to break, though.

Leslie, so sorry about your work stressors.  I hope you can have a meaningful dialogue with the powers that be to help alleviate the load you're carrying. 

Holly, thanks for sharing that here (although you do know this is a 100% public group right? I don't think there are any privacy measures in place here).  that's  a heavy burden you've been carrying but I'm glad that when you did decide to share it with your husband that he was supportive of helping you through this.

busy day getting ready to leave for camping at the coast. I try to do pretty much all the meal/food prep before we get there so I don't have to spend much time getting meals ready: grilling chicken for quesadillas, baking bacon, cutting up fruit and veggies, mixing up waffle batter, etc. just takes a lot of time doing that for 4 days worth of camping. Anxious to leave our smokey valley for some ocean air. even looking forward to having to wear sweatshirts and maybe even long sleeve running gear. 

have a good week all! see ya next weekend!

 

 

Tammy: where are YOU when I'm camping?! I eat out of a box and only make heat for coffee!

oh, thanks for the reminder. coffee, creamer, irish cream syrup - for my morning latte's.