Tag Archive: illness

Kinder to myself

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Tue. January 3, 2012

I’ve been battling a cold for the past week or so. It hasn’t been pretty. No man should be able to generate that much mucus. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, yesterday I decided to try to make it to the gym to make a 10 o’clock class. I woke up about half an hour before but didn’t feel so great. I decided to sleep through it and go for the 1 p.m. class. I got up at about 12:15 or so feeling groggy and off-balance. I hadn’t eaten yet. My mouth was as dry as the deserts. All the same, I was determined to make it out there. Perhaps that wasn’t a great idea. For about half the class we worked on our back squat. After completing every set of five I had to sit off at the side just to catch my breath. I was becoming really light-headed. After completing my sets it felt like my strength was leaving my body. I was suddenly hit with severe fatigue. It was absolutely frustrating.

The workout at the second half of the class consisted of an alternating ladder of thrusters and pull ups for 11 minutes. Prior to doing it we tried practicing a few thrusters. The light-headedness finally caught up to me there. I could barely get the bar above my head. It was there that coach saw me struggling and put me on a lighter bar. I was completely annoyed with myself. There was just no power. My body was rebelling against me. I still went ahead with the workout. I got it done, but I struggled. I know I did less than I could have under better conditions. By the end, I just felt like burying my head in the sand.

I’m not unreasonable. I mean, I know that I am capable of doing better. I know that not having eaten, being dehydrated, and being sick all played a part in my poor showing. Come to think of it, it’s rather dumb. I mean, why did I push myself to perform when my body was simply not ready for it? God knows, if it was someone that I was coaching I would have told the person to go home and rest. Why should the same not apply for me, right? Dumb, dumb, duuuuumb. Perhaps I was caught up in the whole new year spirit. Maybe I just wanted to desperately get back into a good habitual schedule? I don’t know. What I do know is that I need to take better care of myself. I need to be kinder to myself. If I’m ill, I need to hold back. The next time I plan to go is Wednesday. If I’m not ready, I’ll stay home and get the rest I need. The world will continue to work without me.

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Set up for success

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Mon. October 3, 2011

So back on Sunday morning I woke up listening to the radio. I was trying to push myself to get out of bed, but I just couldn’t without putting in extra effort. I knew that my cold was making things difficult. I wanted to get ready to meet with my running group. Sunday was scheduled to be our longest run in the clinic. I really wanted to run it with everyone to show solidarity. Even without the shutters open though I heard the sound of rain pounding the window. I reluctantly got myself to the bathroom, but in that short walk I felt light headed. I was coughing hard as well. With all of these symptoms apparent I knew that a 21K run in the rain would make everything much worse. The general rule of thumb is to not run if any symptoms happen below the neck. Well, the chest cough was enough for me to know I’d be better off staying inside.

I emailed my group leaders asking them to cover for me. I was slightly worried that people might get confused over the route. At one point I was even considering just driving up to send everyone off from the store. That’s a bit insane, really. One responded telling me that all would be fine. It really wasn’t enough to placate all of my fears. I ended up making a comment on Twitter about how I was concerned whether my group would be fine. Of of my followers replied with perhaps the perfect comment for my worry:

Yes! I’ve worked my ass off to make sure they’re prepared for anything. They’re race-ready. They can do it. There was truly nothing more I could do. And with that reply I went back to sleep.

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Merely human

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Sat. October 1, 2011

A few days ago I was genuinely concerned about how I’d manage to wrangle with October and stay on top of everything. All in all, I know that I can keep up if only because I have the capacity to be able to deal with everything. It’s kind of maddening because I don’t deal with having long stretches of inactivity all that well. It’s a known fact that I get twitchy when I’m not productive. Plus, I get some type of high off of being productive. It’s why I fill my time the way I do. So, anyway, I was more than ready to tackle the month off with gusto, then illness struck. I started showing symptoms of a common cold on Wednesday, and I’ve been battling it since. Mucus is clogging my sinuses and my windpipe. I’ve been coughing badly. I tried to beat it into submission by taking meds frequently. I even tried heading downtown this evening to prove that I can go about my life without illness getting in the way. Oops. By the end of the night the cold air was making me feel gross. I’ve been in a bad state since I’ve gotten home. So much for that. It’s all a reminder that beyond whatever overachiever guise I’ve got I’m merely human. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s emphasizing that I really do need to take care of myself better. Does it mean that I’m going to scale my activities down? No, but at least I’m not going to kill myself trying to be everything to everyone.

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Check up

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Tue. August 9, 2011

It’s been a while.

I need to go see a doctor.

I need to check if everything’s OK.

Far too many people around me are falling ill.

Ideally, I’d rather not be part of that group of people.

It would be far better to tackle any issues before they manifest.

I would have done this earlier…if only I wasn’t so bloody damn lazy.

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Experience with dehydration

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Sun. June 5, 2011

Hey, good thing about running is that I’ve become familiar with symptoms of dehydration. It doesn’t happen as often these days because I tend to adequately prepare, but long ago I used to always get these horrible migraines after my long runs. Like I’ve commonly mentioned, it felt like someone took a steel rod and shoved it through my head. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized it was due to dehydration and generally not drinking enough fluids. As soon as I started doing a better job of preparing the headaches stopped coming.

And so we come to today. I went for a walk in the heat at about noon. When I came back, I was sweating a fair bit. I decided to nap on the couch with the electric fan blasting at my face. Also the air conditioning was bearing down from above. All of that acted to dry me out even more. The TV was on the whole time adding to the heat in the apartment. I woke up with a bit of a headache. Figuring the air conditioning was causing some issues due to the temperature differences, I shut it off and opened the balcony door. The temperature in my place quickly rose to about 30°C. I fell asleep, but when I woke up the headache was even worse. I tried to go about my day, but every moment made me feel like I was going to vomit. Bad! Of course, I knew how to remedy the situation. I filled a zipper bag with ice, put it in a sock so that it wouldn’t be directly in contact with my skin, and placed it under the base of my head. That seemed to be where most of my pain was. Within an hour or so the headache faded. The temperature in here is still freaking hot, but I can deal with it.

Hurrah for experience with self-remedy.

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Sick days exist for a reason

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Fri. May 13, 2011

Took a sick day today. When I got up out of bed my gut cramping pretty badly, and I was light headed. I already had my work clothes on, but when I went to put on my shoes I had to spend a few moments leaning on the closet door to regain my sense of the vertical. I figured out pretty quickly that that was a side-effect of being severely dehydrated. Anyway, it was at that point that I had to give up and write to work saying that I wouldn’t come in. I spent a lot of the day sleeping and resting hoping that the symptoms would ease up. Still…nothing.

I remember the day before we my colleagues and I were discussing sick days. I’m of the opinion that taking sick days when necessary is an important thing. Presenteeism isn’t a good thing. When the body is aching, how can you focus? You can’t. And if you’ve got something contagious, there’s a good chance you’ll pass it on to someone else, and that would also hurt overall team productivity. We’re given sick days for a reason, right? And so here I am, recovering over something that’s really just horribly uncomfortable. Make it stop!

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Listening to the signals

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Sun. May 8, 2011

So this was my last update to my Facebook wall from earlier today.

There’s a subtle difference between the body yelling “Stop, I’m a bit tired,” and “Stop, you’re going to do some damage to yourself.” The key is paying attention to the latter.

It’s a very good point if you ask me. There are times when the body is just fatigued but is capable of pushing onward. There are other times when the body really needs rest and pushing it would just be ill-advised. This morning I experienced something of the latter. On Saturday evening I prepped my stuff to head into the Running Room on Sunday morning. When the morning came, I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed. There was no pep. I just felt extremely heavy. By about 9 a.m., I figured that since I didn’t make it up north to RR I should at least run around my place. I put on my running gear, mapped out a 17K route and set out. From about 4K onward, I figured something was up. I was running, but it was feeling more difficult than it should have. Time seemed to drag on. I could feel my body going through the movements, but it just didn’t feel right. At the 8K mark, I decided to cut the route and head home. I felt almost disembodied. My mind felt like it was elsewhere because the body wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do. In the end, I still got 11K in, but it wasn’t what I had planned. Sure enough, about an hour after I came back I finally realized that I was running a bit of a fever. Oops. My body was under the weather. Good thing then that I stopped. See. That’s the importance to listening to the signals that the body is sending out, right? No big loss. In time I’ll be back out there and feeling better than ever.

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Jason’s 2010

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Fri. December 31, 2010

I actually started writing this post out a few days before tonight. There’s a lot to cover in a year and I wanted to make sure that I spent more than a bit of time getting my thoughts together. Yeah, without thinking about it too much, my first response is to call 2010 a banner year. Yes, there were hardships along the way, and a lot of hard work was needed just to continue moving forward. All the same, I wouldn’t take any of it back. There’s so much that I wouldn’t have even dreamt of in 2009. It was that kind of year.

This is a big post, so the remainder will come after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

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