Karma’s a MoFo
One would think that I would’ve learned in my younger years that making fun of people won’t get you anywhere but into trouble. But then again, had I actually learned that lesson, I wouldn’t get to write about that which I’m about to write about.
So I’m walking along somewhere maybe around mile 5 during my half marathon on Sunday and the really fast racewalkers are walking past me and if you’ve never seen a racewalker, they’re as goofy lookin as all get out, but they’re faster than blue blazes.
So, they pass me, and I’m with some peeps and we’re talking about the racewalkers and I made a comment about how they look funny but they’re so fast and then I tried to imitate them. And my imitation isn’t nearly as good as what they’re doing when they’re out there, but one day, I’ll be able to do it myself.
So, everytime a racewalker would pass us, we would giggle and I’d do my imitation.
These last two days, I’ve paid for that imitation. My hipflexors are killing me so much so that I can barely walk and when I do walk, well, it’s not a pretty sight, and it’s not nearly as amusing as the racewalkers.
Race Day Shoes - A Duke City Half Marathon Race Report
I’ve not seen the light of day since the 5k Skirt Chaser she ran back in September with Lolo. I got put into her tri bag and that was the end of everything because of her knee injury. The only running shoes she wears now adays are her training shoes. Since I’m the racing shoes and she’s not racing, I don’t get worn.
But then, Saturday afternoon, I got pulled out of the bag, put on, walked around in and had a timing tag put on me. That was excitement, I was going out for a race!
Race morning arrived and she was running late. She put me on, tied me and out the door we went. When we got to the starting line she found some people she had known from when she worked at Intel and decided she’d walk with them. She didn’t last long with them, they were out of the gate too fast and shin splints kicked in right before mile 1. It was reminiscent of the Bolder Boulder she did in May, except that time she was running. So we had to slow down a bit.
Considering that she wasn’t trained for this half marathon and that her longest walk since her injury from her first half marathon was only 5 miles, we did well. There were no complaints until mile 8 when she wanted to run and couldn’t because that would be an automatic DQ (yes, automatic DQ, when you register for a walk, you have to walk, you can’t run, if you want to run, you register to run). So her not being able to run frustrated her to no end. We just had to keep walking, and she wasn’t happy with that, that was where she just kind of gave up. That was where time didn’t matter anymore and she just wanted to be done.
At mile 9 the attitude went way down hill as she started hurting, her feet were hurting, for the first time in her life she got blisters on her feet. They weren’t my fault, I’m blaming it on the socks. Remember, I’m a good pair of shoes, I’m what she ran her first half marathon in, and she didn’t blister that day, so it’s all the socks fault. Mile 9 is also where she started feeling low, and sure enough she was. You should see the attitude she gets when she feels low, you think the attitude she gets when she is low is bad, it’s worse when she actually feels it. That’s a feeling she doesn’t like one bit.
We finished the walk, and we finished it strong, we finished it too strong, and she felt that, she wanted to just all out run the last mile.
Her head says it’s about time, her heart says she wants to run, her knee says she can’t run, and so her shoes, me, I say, let’s just finish, even if we have to walk, it’s ok. We can walk 500 miles, and it may not even take us that long if she really thinks about racewalking, she could walk as fast as she could run if she’d just train.
Thoughts for my second half marathon - Thursday Thirteen V4
1) This weekend, Sunday to be exact, I will participate in another half marathon (The Duke City Half). You may remember my last (my first) half marathon, I could barely walk when it was all said and done. This time, I’ll be walking the entire half marathon, so I hope that I can still walk when I finish and that I won’t be in as much pain when I’m done.
2) I’ve done the math, and I should finish in a few minutes less time than I did in my first half marathon where I ran (the first few miles until I destroyed my knee and then I limped).
3) As far as I know, I won’t know anyone out there on the walk course so I’ll be flying solo this “run” but I do know that I’ve got some of my Outlaws on the run course so theoretically, I’ll be running with some peeps. I’ve also got Lolo, said she’d get up and run on Sunday morning and run with me. It’s more enjoyable to do these races and train when I know that someone is out there with me, even if they’re not “with” me.
4) Walking is the new running. It’s kindof like pink being the new black.
5) Things with my diabetes should be interesting because I’ve not ever trained to “walk” so I don’t know what to expect from my blood sugars. A large piece of me really doesn’t care. It’s a walk, so a large piece of me just wants to get out there and walk and throw diabetes out the window and just got at this as though I don’t have diabetes.
6) This race will give me some idea of what I’ve got to do in preparation for the marathon I’m “running” in January at Walt Disney World.
7) This race will give me an idea of how fast I gotta swim and bike to be able to make it through a half ironman before the cut off time.
8 ) I’m already thinking about how I want to run this race…I gotta stop that
9) I probably shouldn’t worry about time considering I’ve not really trained to walk this distance. I mean, the longest distance I’ve walked since my first half marathon is only 5 miles…
10) I don’t think it matters though that I’ve not trained to walk, I mean, I walk everyday at least 2 miles. Anyone can walk as far as they want as long as they believe they can, and I believe that I can walk 13 miles…actually, I can do better than believe, I just straight up know I can walk 13 miles…I just may not enjoy walking it as much as I semi-enjoyed running it
11) This run is on the river trail which is great because it’s flat, the trail isn’t sloped for rain runoff like a normal road which is good because I fully believe that the worst part of my last half marathon was when I got put on the road and the road was sloped for rain runoff, that just really caused me all kinds of pain.
12) I just thought about running it again, but then I had this image in my head of my feet hitting the pavement and the pounding of it revibrating from my foot to my knee and how it’s going to hurt…I gotta keep thinking “walk walk walk” and I’ll be good.
13) I’m really excited for this run because…well, I don’t need a reason, I’m just really excited.
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In Which The Pancreas Does More Than I Thought
Today was one of those 3 month appointment with the CDE days.
The majority of the appointment seems insignificant compared to the realization that my pancreas serves more of a purpose than to just give my body insulin. That even though it’s dead to me, it’s not dead to the rest of my body. Or if it is dead to the rest of my body, it still retains the right to rot and kill the rest of me. I mean, seriously, I have diabetes, I never thought that I’d hear the word “pancreas” again in conjunction with any other illness I may come up with. I just kind of figured that since it wasn’t worth replacing (read: transplanting) that it was just one of those organs that could work or not work but it didn’t matter either way because it could just stay there in it’s little corner of the body, end of story. Apparently, that’s not the case, as I so learned when the word “pancreatitis” came up in conjunction with my stomach aches, nausea, and vomiting. Tests are being run for pancreatitis, although, they’re just running them so that they’re doing their due diligence, they really don’t think it’s pancreatitis, but they’re making sure. (at least, that’s how I rendered what I was told)
It’s more likely that my issue is celiac, they’re testing for that also. (But celiac didn’t cause any bright lights to turn on in my head, it’s just one of those things where I think life could become more closer to impossible to handle than it already is…i mean, seriously, think of starbucks, something tells me that will be leaving my list of good places for breakfast if I have celiac, and that will be a big bummer)
In other news, well…there wasn’t other news. My A1c was 6.8 and it really didn’t matter to me this time because I really didn’t put anything into my diabetes in the last 3 months. And me not putting anything into my diabetes actually brought my A1c down a who tenth of a point from last time. (Last time it was 6.9)
Abalisciousness
It’s been a while since I’ve actually taken the time to really do any training/working out…in fact, it’s been a couple weeks. I fell off all kinds of wagons what can I say…
So, last night, I called Lolo and asked if we could do 2 bike rides, a swim and a run this week; but when I was asking that, I forgot all about her triathlon that she has on Saturday and that she’s tapering this week. Luckily for me she’s all about meeting me in the middle so I’m getting in a bike ride, a swim, and an ab workout. Tonight’s hardcore ab workout. If I keep this up, I’ll have nice abs and a good core.
Tonight’s workout came from Women’s Health Magazine and it’s entitled Gold Medal Abs. I couldn’t do all the moves because I didn’t have all the equipment (and one of them is near impossible anyways, The Wicked Wiper, which if there’s one person I think can do it, it’s Nancy because she’s got a rock solid core).
I was able to do 7 out of the 9 moves and for the 2 I couldn’t do, they were substituted with the plank and the bicycle crunch.
I did the whole routine and then I did it again. I was hurting when I was done. Heck, I was hurting before I was done. But, pain is beauty, and aren’t these abs beautiful:
Yup, those are the goal…and when I get there, I’ll be abaliscious.
Because it’s cool and it’s important to me
Every time I open firefox or safari, the page opens to Google. Most of the time, there’s the normal Google Logo.
On cool days, we get a special image, a Google Doodle. Ok, not “cool” days, (although, I think they’re cooler days because we get an abnormal picture), but days where some important person had a birthday,
like sir Arthur Conan Doyle
or an anniversary worth remembering,
like the Lunar Landing
or holidays,
like the winter ones
or St George day (which I just liked the picture so I’m including it)
or important days, like World Diabetes Day on November 14th, oh wait, we don’t have a doodle yet 
But we want a doodle, because our day is just as important as all the rest of the days. And we’re hard at work to get our doodle, but we need your help. And it’s really easy to help. It’s so easy, it only takes a couple seconds to help. We’re in pursuit of 20,000 signatures on our petition. Will you please be one of them?
Bicycles - Thursday Thirteen V3
I have good strong memories when it comes to bikes in my life. They’re easy to remember and they put a smile on my face.
1) The first time I ever had to get stitches was because of my first bike. My strawberry shortcake tricycle. I was sitting on it and apparently (as so told by my mom and grandma) the wind knocked me off my bike and my head hit the edge of the brick steps and cracked my head open. They tell me that they could see my skull. I’ve got a scar now still because of it. I was 2 years old.
2) Between the ages of 4-6, I was upgraded from my strawberry shortcake tricycle to a big wheel (pound puppies big wheel). All 4 of us kids had them. At that time we lived in a mobile home and so we had stairs going up to the front door. And so we’d run up one side of the stairs with our big wheels, sit down, and ride down the other side (they were A frame-ish stairs). One after the other, those were good times. And we’d walk our bikes up the big hill all the way to the top and fly down it.
3) I got my first 2 wheeler when I was 6. I was in South Carolina for the summer visiting my father and my grandparents and my father bought my sister and I these purple-ish 2 wheelers with training wheels. The training wheels didn’t last long. I learned to ride it without the training wheels in the big back yard which was more like an open field with some trees. Guess it wasn’t quite an open field. But I do remember it didn’t take long for me to learn to ride without the training wheels.
4) I got my first bike with hand brakes when I was about 9. I remember that one night my cousins came over and one of them crashed my bike and scratched the handlebars. I was so pissed off because the bike was practically still brand new at that point.
5) In the third grade, I decided that I was going to ride my bike to school even though it was strictly forbidden. But I figured that since dad had to ride his bike to work he wouldn’t be home for lunch and since mom worked downtown, she wouldn’t be home for lunch either and so they’d never find out. They found out and I got into some serious trouble. I was grounded for like a week. I never did find out how they found out, but I suspect that my friend’s dad contacted my parents and asked why I was riding my bike to school if I didn’t have my own bike lock.
6) My papa, he taught me how to ride my bike without using my hands. I used to even be able to turn corners without my hands on my handlebars. It was all about leaning into the turns. It’s been a while since I’ve done that…I should attempt it again.
7) Back when I got my first bike with gears, all 15 of them, it was just that, a bike with gears, I had no concept of mountain bike vs road bike at that time in my life. What’s funny about that is that dad had a road bike, but it never clicked with me that there was another kind of bike with gears.
8 ) Papa used to take us out to the mesa, and one time, we took our bikes with us, and he drove us to the top of a big big big hill out there in the mesa and we got out and rode down the hill until the sand got too deep and then the front wheels got stuck and we went flying feet over head.
9) My friend got a mountain bike one christmas and only rode it once. I used to ride it from her house to work. Then when she moved, she gave the bike to me. That was back in 2001. Back then, and for several years afterwards (like until last year when I bought a new mtn bike) that bike was the coolest bike ever.
10) The first time I ever rode a road bike, I didn’t get very far. I crashed and the tire exploded and I flew over the handle bars. It was at that point that I decided road bikes were far to fragile and that I needed to stick to mountain bikes. (that thought barely made it a year)
11) Last year I bought a new mountain bike. It was ok. I was content with it until I went to CO to ride in the Tour de Cure and heard the whizz of road bikes flying past me on a horrible hill. That was the last time I rode that bike, it got sold it this past May.
12) 2 days after the CO Tour de Cure last year, I bought a road bike, 2 days after that I spent a week in ICU. I didn’t touch that road bike until October last year when I rode in the Fort Worth Tour de Cure, then it was winter, and then I had to have a surgery, and so my bike didn’t see pavement again till the Orlando Tour de Cure in February. Since then, that bike has seen over 1000 miles and only 1 crash. I love that bike.
13) I have two bikes in view for my next bike purchases. Both of them are very yum yum bikes. One will be for training and one will be for racing. The one for training will be the Quintana Roo Dulce (it’s probably the one I get first, it’s the cheaper of the two) and then my racing bike, mmmmmm, the Scott Plasma LTD (that will take me a year to save for).
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Seriously. Bored.
For well over a week now, I’ve been seriously bored. I don’t ever get this bored. Except for now. I’m so bored that I can’t describe how bored I am.
It’s because there’s nothing going on.
nothing.
nothing exhilarating.
nothing exciting.
nothing adventurous.
nothing life threatening.
nothing breath taking.
nothing.
Training is well, blah. I’ve cut half my diabetes out of my life and all that did was leave me with a hole in my brain where the diabetes stuff was. Space Raiders on Facebook has become, well, boring. Blogging is bleh. Books aren’t engaging my mind. Conversations have regressed to topics like hippos.
Yes, hippos. Hippos and how we look like them when we’re wearing 1 piece tri suits. At least, that’s how I feel (and some other people). I won’t wear a 1 piece tri suit simply because I feel like a hippo in it. And even though I may still look like a hippo in a 2 piece tri suit, I don’t feel like a hippo in one and so I prefer 2 piece tri suits. We can be fat hippos or skinny hippos, hungry hungry hippos, heck, we don’t even gotta be a hippo at all but we put on a 1 piece tri suit and we have tight skinned hippos, flabby skin hippos, we could put a tutu on some of the hippos and they’d be cute.
Heck, wet suits have the same effect too. I digress.
And then there’s thoughts like “if they say no bikes on the highway, how illegal do you think that is? you think they’d cart me off to jail?” because there’s this one hill I want to go down because I’m fairly sure I could achieve a speed greater than 50mph.
But then there’s also the, I’m gonna sit down and calculate acceleration and the grade of a hill and how long that hill would have to be for me to hit 50mph (I got lost in my quest to figure that stuff out). And how much is the rocky road going to affect my speed as opposed to a perfectly smooth road and what if I have a head wind and how much would a tail wind help me.
I’ve been so bored lately that I’ve started to realize just how poorly educated I am and how the people that don’t live in the US and aren’t citizens of the US know about the US and our history and our government better than I do. If I had to take the citizenship test, I wouldn’t be able to answer but maybe 50% of the questions. Do you know how pathetic that is? Cause it’s pathetic.
I’m even bored with some of my normal TV shows. I don’t watch much TV, but the shows I do watch, I’m loyal to, and those shows are boreding me this season. Which means, that by the time I’ve wasted 15 minutes on those TV shows, I’m back to twiddling my thumbs mumbling about how bored I am.
I need something new to do. Something that will cause my adrenaline to run high and my palms to sweat and that tingly feeling in my feet.
Recommendations welcome.
Saturday Morning Courtroversy
Main Entry: cour·tro·ver·sy
Pronunciation: ‘kor-’trä-”v&r-sE
Function: noun
1 : a state of dispute or disagreement which either involves Courtney or in which Courtney has an opinion.The resolution to any Courtroversy is the admittance that you’re wrong and that Courtney is right. (Remember, Courtney is always right, even when she’s wrong, she’s right.)
For the record, this morning, I was right.
People that don’t have diabetes, they just typically don’t understand. This morning was one of those non-understanding moments.
My blood sugar was 300 when I woke up and a conversation like such happened:
Mom: Why are you so high? Did you rip your pump off in the middle of the night again?
(and this is where I should’ve lied, but lying about my diabetes is the reason mom has no trust in me these days and so I told the truth, but I still think I should’ve lied)
Me: No, I did that 3 nights ago.
Mom: Why?
Me: because it wouldn’t let me sleep and it kept beeping at me.
Mom: why was it beeping?
Me: because i’m either high or low
Mom: then it’s doing it’s job
Me: it’s keeping me awake at night and I don’t currently like it (which really, that wasn’t the whole truth, it was only half the truth, because i’ve not liked it since day one, I much rather sleep than be woken up). I’m back on shots.
Mom: weren’t you just saying yesterday that you have this equipment so that you can take better care of yourself?
Me: mom! I need a vacation!
Mom: you can’t take a vacation. not from your diabetes. you almost…(this is where I cut her off)
Me: I’m back on shots. I’m testing my blood 4 times a day. I’m on vacation.
As a diabetic, I’m allowed to take a vacation. I’m allowed to let my care go a little slack. Sometimes, we just need to do that. I need to do that. I’m doing it.
13 Things I Loved About Diabetes Training Camp
It’s been a month since I’ve done Thursday Thirteen. I’ve been busy, what can I say? One of those weeks that I disappeared from the planet, I was in Snowmass, CO at Diabetes Training Camp being run into the ground mentally and physically (although, since I was injured it was more of a mental thing than it was a physical thing, but still, I was getting run into the ground).
As far as I can recall, I don’t remember blogging about DTC. And so, without further ado, I welcome you to Thursday Thirteen Volume 2: the 13 things I loved about Diabetes Training Camp.
1) I got to finally meet Laura, who I’d been talking to on the phone since May, and we’d send txt msg’s back and forth before events, and on training days there’d be txt’s about what that day was all about. It was so cool to finally put a face to the voice, to have met her in real life instead of just talk to her on the phone and email her. Plus, instead of just running with her in spirit, I got to run with her in real life.
2) Dr Matt, he cared. He cared more than the doctors I’ve been seeing for the past 16 years cared. I’ve never had someone take my data and analyze it the way he did and to have him offer suggestions and get me from doing something that was really just not great from an athletic perspective (and really caused me to hit walls during races) to a place where that wasn’t a problem. That just meant a lot to.
3) The laughter, there was sooooooooo much laughter. One night, I was laughing so hard I was on the ground, unable to breathe, and I swear, in just 5 minutes, laughing that hard, it helped me get a little bit of a six pack. There was not one day in the entire week where there wasn’t some kind of giggling and deep laughter from the belly.
4) The peeps, I met mostly new people, some of them I knew in person, some of them I knew via email and phone calls, but the majority of them were new.
5) The food, I ate well, very well. And by the end of the week, I was over the fact that I was eating from a buffet style setting, and over the fact that 90% of the time the plates weren’t clean, and I’d just go grab food and enjoy it (it also could’ve been that by that point, I was just so hungry I didn’t care).
6) Breakfast. I’m not a morning person. If anything, on a good day, a normal day, in my normal non-camp life, I’m a growly bear in the morning. You don’t want to look at me, you’ll get your head bit off. But not at camp. It was difficult to be that way when everyone all around was all happy and they just wanted to talk and it was fun and enjoyable to talk to them. I really enjoyed getting up and going down for breakfast in the morning.
7) Snowmass. The elevation killed me, but the views were spectacular and the colors, and the nice clean air. The feeling that I was so far from the world and yet very close to a city. It was just amazing.
8 ) Celeste, the swim coach, she helped me become a fish that’s stealthy in the water, almost bubbleless when swimming instead of a shark attacking a seal. I could swim fast but it was all muscle and no technique. And now, if I actually take the time to slow down, I can swim further than 50m without tiring out so quickly.
9) All the staff was excellent, they each brought something to the table and they were great to talk to and get suggestions about whatever I needed to ask about. They were all very helpful.
10) I learned a lot. A whole lot. A whole lot that i’ve not blogged about, but there was a lot learned. One of these days, I might get around to blogging about it.
11) I got to meet and speak with Rick Crawford, who was once Lance Armstrong’s coach. His teachings hit me in the head, hard like a massive boulder, they may have even left a slight dent…
12) It was an awesome feeling to be in an environment where diabetes was normal and being a non-diabetic was the abnormal.
13) For the most part, I was there at camp present in all forms. It was only at the end of the week when I could’ve been in FL with my peeps and a daily call to a friend to tell her all that I was doing and learning at camp when I was mentally not there. I was very present, which is very not normal for me, usually my head is very far away from what’s going on around me.
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1. (leave your link in comments)
The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
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