Test week.
Gulp. I’d been worried
about this week for a while. What
if I hadn’t made improvements?
What then? Was I going to
be deemed a total slacker? Yes, I know
I worry a lot about silly things - zero
to overkill as Joe says…
Having a rest day on a Sunday was quite bizarre. My body is so used to getting up at
4:30am each Sunday now to do my long run, I didn’t quite know what to do with
myself. It was nice to actually
sleep in a bit, but Monday and my bike test were now looming in front of me.
Let me just say that after eight weeks, I still HATE the
bike test! Biking is not my strong
suit and, while I didn’t want to vomit too
much, I felt like my lungs were made of cellophane and that someone had torched
them. It was like those little
animated creatures in the Mucinex commercials were roasting marshmallows in my
lungs with a flame-thrower! And, I
hadn’t even ridden outside! If I
had, I think I would have just laid down with my bike in the grass, still
clipped in, and waited for someone to come and steal my bike.
Since I’ve recently switched my workday to Monday, I had to
do the bike test and then head into work.
Ugh! Can you say
compression sox?! I was short of
breath all day, despite my puffs off of my inhaler. I think I actually took the elevator instead of the stairs several
times – a huge concession for me as my coworkers will tell you, and then
snigger behind my back. No, on
second thought, they’d actually snigger in front of me, and I thank them for
that.
Wednesday was the Run Test. Yay, I got to run, but I must confess: I always feel like I’m
cheating when I run on my treadmill, particularly when I have to go really fast
for an extended period of time because I have to hold on. I liken it to those ladies on the elliptical
machines who hold on and barely break a sweat during their workouts. Unlike them, however, I sweat enough to
fill a kiddie pool when I run on my treadmill!
So what gives, you ask? Surely I can run at some pace on the treadmill and not hold
on! The truth is, I have poor
balance. I have since I broke my
leg when I was twenty-one. Chemo,
and the number that it did on my overall body, made it even worse. Seriously, I have to hold on even when
I’m walking on the treadmill. Ask
Joe. I sway and stumble and look
like I’ve hit the post-race liquid refreshments a little too hard even at a 15 min/mile pace. Since I do
most of my runs in wee hours of the morning and because I’m trying to protect
my knees and hips to keep running, I run on the treadmill, holding on so that I
don’t end up in the emergency room explaining how I had fallen off of my
treadmill and sustained a broken arm, clavicle, leg....
While the run test was better than the bike test, it wasn’t
fun. I knew I would do better than
I did on the bike test, but it wasn’t until Joe was crunching the numbers told
me, “You’re not gonna like these paces” that it was confirmed. I knew, holding on or not, I was gonna
get my run on for the next six weeks and it was gonna be fast and fun.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been having some circulation
issues. Dr. C told me last year
that I had Reynaud’s syndrome, which is why my hands and feet get so cold so
easily. For a while now, I’ve also noticed that if I don’t jump in the shower
right away after a workout, I start to shiver and shake uncontrollably. Saturday, I noticed that my fingertips
were turning purple as I stood talking to Joe after my workout. Of course, he immediately hustled me
into a hot shower, but that got me wondering if there was anything I could do
about it. Usually, they just got
cold, blue, or white. Or, perhaps
I’d never noticed the purple phase.
Hmm. Joe thought I was cyanotic;
that my body was pulling all of the blood from my extremities to keep my vital
organs going. I think he was
afraid I was gonna start doing the chicken-bob next (for all of you aviators
out there that have ever been in the centrifuge).
I felt compelled to delve further into this new
symptom. Again, I turned to my
friend Google. One site Google led me to was the LiveStrong
website. (** No matter what your feelings
are about Lance, you can’t deny that his organization has done quite a bit for
cancer.)
Anywhoo, while there, I stumbled across an article about
asthma. It talked about exercise-induced
asthma and how people with asthma should not do endurance sports, but that
moderate exercise like walking as good for them. Walking? That’s
all they had for me? I walked when I was nine-months pregnant
with my first baby – by the 2nd one I was doing aerobics the day before
he was born, and I did yoga w/#3 when I was three days overdue!
What about those of us that were endurance athletes before
being diagnosed with asthma? Never
mind being an endurance athlete and cancer survivor whose chemo triggered the
asthma. I wonder what the
“experts” would recommend for me?
Speed knitting? Nope. Couldn’t do that either – my fine motor
skills are significantly reduced from the neurological damage secondary to chemo
and the Reynaud’s syndrome. I’m
stuck either way. I guess I will have
to just get an assistance dog to carry my rescue inhaler, and take up sedate
walking. Whoo-hoo! Or, I could just soldier on, gasping
for breath as I go. Isn’t that why
they have medical tents at races - for foolish endurance
athletes-asthmatic-cancer survivors like me?
Surely the experts have dealt with someone like me
before! Don’t you always read
those feel-good stories about so-and-so who was undergoing chemo for xyz cancer and just completed an Ironman
in less than ten hours? I, like
everyone else, is impressed and humbled as all get out, but secretly I think
they make the rest of us look badly.
Where are their doctors? I want one that doesn’t just shake his
head at me and look at me like I’m intentionally poking a pencil in my eye
after I’ve been told not to.
Oh yeah, and I forgot: I have lymphedema. I need to add that to my title. I’ve had lymphedema since my
mastectomies, which is exacerbated by strenuous exercise. Apparently, this week’s workouts were
particularly taxing to my lymphatic system as my left arm swelled up not quite
to sausage-casing proportions, but enough so that Josie pointed it out with
alarm. Perhaps that was why my whole arm was aching and tender to the touch,
I thought to myself. Well,
duh! And, it was so hard you could
bounce quarters off of it. Ooooh! Maybe I will get invited to my kids’
college parties after all…
Normally, I only wear my compression sleeves on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays. I actually
had to wear the compression sleeve for five days in a row for the swelling and
pain to subside. That adds another
wrinkle in the Gen as an endurance
athlete puzzle.
Endurance athlete + asthmatic + cancer survivor +
neurological damage the extremities (and cerebral cortex) + lymphedema = one
hot mess.
What’s a gal like me
to do?
Well, if you were to
ask me –
Hold on and enjoy the ride, one roasted marshmallow at a time.
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