Week 2

 Monday: Mountain bike, 3:53, 37.9 miles, 3,969 feet climbing. This week started out with a solid ride on Monday afternoon. I was still grumpy about my weekend fails, so I didn't take any photos, but enjoyed a beautiful autumn ride with bare trees, snow-capped peaks, and temperatures approaching 80. As I was descending the upper (gravel) section of Sugarloaf Road, I swung around a corner at high speed and encountered a cow moose standing on the right side of the road. I screeched my brakes and made a quick stop. She lowered her ears, bristled the hair on her back, and took a few steps toward me. I swung my bike in front of me and backed toward the trees, all but certain I was going to have to shimmy up one of them because she was about to charge. Just then a white car approached. The driver stopped and asked if I wanted him to accompany me past the moose. I nodded gratefully, and the moose went back to grazing on bushes as we rolled past. This was the third most unnerving moose encounter I've had. The first two were in Alaska of course, and one was just two years ago in Anchorage.

The semi that got stuck a week ago

Tuesday: Rest. I'd intended to go for a short run, but I only have about an hour to spare on Tuesdays, and this hour was taken up by failed efforts to dig out a large box truck that had become stuck on our dirt road. This was the sixth installment of Beat's CNC machine delivery saga, after one partial delivery, three no-shows, and one large semi-truck that also became stuck in the middle of the road for 13 hours. Anyway, we're learning more about life on a narrow mountain road, and we hope the delivery company is wiser now as well. The digging was hard work so this didn't really feel like a rest day. Beat eventually pulled the box truck out himself with a Toyota Tundra that he recently bought from a friend.

Wednesday: Treadmill, 0:30, 3.5 miles. Weightlifting, 0:40. My breathing struggles seem to have two triggers — being outside, and sometimes (not always), hard efforts. And "hard" effort isn't the right term, because my worst difficulties usually crop up during moderate efforts (heart rate 150-160bpm.) Anyway, a friend suggested trying a high-intensity workout indoors, which is a good idea. I set out to boost my heart rate to 185 on the treadmill by running two-minute intervals: two minutes jogging at 12:00-minute-mile pace, and two minutes increasing the pace 0:30 each time. I eventually boosted the speed to 6:00-minute-mile pace and got my heart rate up to 192. I made it through two minutes before I felt nauseated and had a horrible side stitch, but had no breathing issues. I think treadmill intervals work because it's a controlled, low-risk environment, which vastly reduces anxiety. As others have suggested and as I've suspected, anxiety about "not breathing" plays a large role in my attacks. So I plan to continue with these intervals during my gym sessions, to see whether I improve. At the very least, it's nice to know that underneath all of the mucous and anxiety, there's still a modicum of high-end fitness left in my body.

I should also talk about my allergy shots, which didn't go so well. I made it through two rounds of shots before I had a reaction — my left arm became noticeably swollen and I felt some chest tightness. The nurse noted some wheezing, so they cut the session short. This was disappointing, as I really want to continue with the cluster immunotherapy and get this over with (if I have one more reaction, I have to go to single shots, which will take months.) At the same time, I experienced breathing reactions when I wasn't exercising. This means it's likely I have allergic asthma. Maybe allergy shots will actually work. One can hope.

Thursday: Mountain bike, 1:41, 13.3 miles, 2,299 feet climbing. This was a medium-effort ride with no issues.

Friday: Treadmill, 0:30, 3.5 miles. Weightlifting, 0:40. I did the same treadmill intervals with the same results. This day I wore my own heart rate monitor and saw 197(!!) I'm not sure if this is accurate, but it was a surprise as I'd long assumed that my anaerobic threshold was in the mid-180s. I also didn't feel nauseated this time and really enjoyed running a six-minute-mile pace, but doubt I could hold it much longer than two minutes. The weightlifting session went well. I was already able to boost a few of the weights on my fourth session overall.

 Saturday: Mountain bike, 2:36, 18.6 miles, 2,948 feet climbing. I tried out this allergy mask, which I got in pink because it's a little less scary, and also felt a little less self-conscious because it's so close to Halloween. Anyway, I didn't love it. Even on my best days, my face is a nonstop faucet of snot, so constantly pulling it down to blow snot rockets probably negated its effectiveness. I don't see myself using it a lot in the winter, but I think it may be helpful in the spring and summer during high-pollen and wildfire smoke days.

 Sunday: Hike, 4:30, 8.5 miles, 3,253 feet climbing. This week was a scorcher, with temperatures climbing into the 80s nearly every day. One positive aspect of record high temperatures is clearing the steep and avalanche-prone mountains of snow, so I thought it would be fun to go hiking on Sunday.

 We headed to South Arapaho Peak. At 13,400 feet, it's one of the more prominent mountains in the Indian Peaks. As we expected, it was very windy and not warm, but in some aspects not all that different from the time my friends and I hiked up James Peak in July.

 Snow-filled wind shelter at the peak. Okay, it was a lot windier and colder than James Peak was in July, but with a soft shell and mittens I was perfectly comfortable. I did have difficulty breathing for the last 1,000 feet to the summit. Up here, my heart was beating 140-150 and I was gasping. I had to stop and take breaks to catch my breath. Beat asked why I was moving so slow, but I couldn't move any faster. It was perplexing. I suppose this makes some sense, though. I've tried to pretend that altitude isn't an issue for me, but I'm beginning to suspect that it may be a major factor. If I'm a poor breather in general, it makes sense I'd do worse at 13,000 feet. Either way, this theory will need more experimenting and I doubt I'll get too many more chances to hit 13,000+ feet before winter clamps down.

Despite gasping slowness, this was a fun hike, although I turned my ankle on the way down and collapsed onto my back, smacking my head. It hurt something fierce but thankfully didn't result in injury. My left ankle has been a bit of a liability ever since I broke it after tripping while carrying a television down a flight of stairs when I was 19 years old, and never went to the doctor (but it was definitely fractured at the very least.) The dumb things we do when we're young, eh? (Says the 37-year-old who's recently become quite bad at breathing.)

Total: 15 hours, 69.8 miles ride, 15.5 miles run, 12,479 feet climbing. All in all, this was a good week. I may have to do 1.5 rounds of allergy shots this week (I hope this works out.) So I'll have to continue to tread lightly. But I'm satisfied with 15 hours of effort. 

First week of something

It's been one week since I committed to winter training and posting workouts on my blog, and I'm already regretting it. This week was a mixed bag of fantastic and cringeworthy outings, with a return to weight training thrown in. I'm still grappling with the uncertainty of whether I'm healthy enough to train for the Iditarod, and this week was not confidence-inspiring. I'm not throwing in the towel this soon, but I will continue to tread carefully.

Monday: Trail run, 1:19, 5.8 miles, 1,472 feet of climbing. I intended to go for a short ride on Monday, but the afternoon brought winds gusting 40 to 50 miles per hour. One gust was so strong that it nearly knocked me off my feet while I was wheeling the bike outside, so I went back inside and changed into running clothes. The wind stayed fierce, and for most of the run I had a buff pulled over my face amid a swirl of dust clouds. I was even hit in the cheek by a fairly large object, which I didn't see because I was squinting against a 50-mph blast of wind. But I felt great. One of the happier runs I've had in a while.

Tuesday: Trail run, 1:10, 5.4 miles, 895 feet climbing. Beat was working from home and joined my usual one-hour Tuesday run. For all of the amazingness I felt on Monday, my experience was the opposite on Tuesday. By mile four I felt tightness in my chest and throat, which tends to scare me into hyperventilating, and then I was dizzy and had to walk it in. Why? I don't know. There continues to be few patterns in my breathing reactions, and the unpredictability is almost more frustrating than the reaction itself. Long ride, short run, medium hike, windy day, beautiful day, spring, fall, 5,000 feet or 13,000 feet — none of that seems to matter.

Wednesday: Weight lifting at the gym, 0:40. I finally joined a gym after seven months away, in which I didn't miss gym workouts one bit. This first session was mostly about testing my limits. The results were unsurprising — I'm a lot weaker than I was in February. But they're also encouraging, because that means my efforts last winter worked. Wednesday is also the day I go into a clinic for allergy shots. This makes for a strange afternoon. Over the course of three hours I receive 15 injections, and each week the dose increases exponentially. For the second session I endured a 1:1,000 dose, and for the first few hours I felt great — perhaps a response to my suddenly amped up immune system? By the evening I experienced the crash that results in itchiness, congestion, and what I interpret as flu-like weakness for the next ~24 hours.

 Thursday: Mountain bike, 4:13, 40.3 miles, 4,002 feet climbing. I woke up with a headache and flu-like weakness, but still went out in the afternoon for a medium-length bike ride. It should have gone badly, right? It didn't! For inexplicable reasons, again, I felt good and had no issues throughout. I've been exploring different ways to ride from my house to town via trails or Nederland or both. This was more of a dirt and paved road ride, but it included my favorite descent yet, Sugarloaf Road. I love smooth paved descents, and this one screams toward the prairie at what feels like warp speed. It was actually pretty cold on this day — low 40s in Ned, with a dusting of snow in shady spots. I was wearing short-sleeves and shorts, so I froze on the descent. But I secretly (or maybe not so secretly) enjoy this in small doses. Awesome afternoon.

Friday: Weight lifting at the gym, 0:55. I got back into my normal routine of 12 exercises, 12 reps, 3 sets at embarrassingly low weights. I also started out by testing how many pushups I can do before collapsing ... (four), and this time finished with 20 minutes on a wobble board doing various exercises. Will this help improve my balance? I doubt it. I'm pretty pessimistic right now.

 Saturday: Trail run, 4:46, 20.8 miles, 2,301 feet climbing. Boulder is home to a seemingly endless array of group outdoor activities, and since I moved here I've managed to avoid them all. The main reason I've avoided group outings is fear that I'll have some issue and be humiliated in front of all these people. Well, on Saturday I put this fear aside and joined the Boulder Banditos for their group run from Lyons to north Boulder on a series of trails I've never explored. It started out great. We hit the trails in Heil Ranch, the group was relaxed and I was feeling strong. It was a warm day — 83 degrees — but after 90s in the Grand Canyon last weekend, the heat didn't feel too bad. Half of the group stopped at mile 11.5, and several more left at mile 17. The group leader informed the remaining three of us that there were two or three more miles to the cars. I felt as fresh as I did at the start, so I continued.

Thing is, there wasn't actually a trail for two of what turned out to be four more miles. Instead, we schwacked through knee-high grass. Obviously not a problem for most people. But I am confirmed to be highly allergic to grass pollen, which I suspect extends to grass itself. Blades of grass were whipping against my legs and cutting my skin. My usual congestion worsened. After about a mile I started coughing and felt an unnerving tightness in my throat. To alleviate this sensation, I drank sips of water until all of my water was gone, and quickly felt desperately thirsty. We moved up a hill to parallel a fence, stumbling on uneven terrain. My throat became tighter, my coughing worse, and I was desperate to get out of the grass. The fence increased my anxiety, because even though I could see Highway 36, there was no quick escape. All I could think about was this epi-pen I now own, but didn't bring because it's not $%*! allergy season. But my doctor did warn me about increased sensitivity during allergy shots, and now I was going to suffocate out here on this grassy slope less than a mile from a highway.

Maybe it was the allergies and maybe it was anxiety, but I felt my throat close up and I launched into tearful, high-pitched gasping. Wendy, the woman who invited me to the run, sat me down and coached me through using my inhaler, because I was in full panic mode and not functioning well. The inhaler worked and she insisted on walking in with me. I'm very grateful for her help and patience. My nightmare about group runs had reared its ugly head. But if I had been alone in the wilderness and something like this happened, it would have been worse.

Sunday: Rest. I admit, I was despondent on Saturday afternoon. My limbs were quaking, I felt nauseated after rehydrating, and then had to rush off to a party at our neighbors,' where I was already late. The party was fun, but it was tough to meet new neighbors and describe past adventures while quietly thinking, "But I'll never be able to do that again." I'm not trying to be melodramatic, but this is the way it feels at times. Still, I woke up feeling much better on Sunday, and took a rest day anyway because this seemed best.

Total: 13:03, 32 miles run, 40.3 miles ride, 8,670 feet climbing. 

These training logs are about recording what I did and how I felt, so that's what I'll continue to do. I'll continue to tread lightly, and avoid grassy slopes like the poison I think they are. Although it was a discouraging week, I continue to hold onto optimism that I'll find a way to continue doing the things I love. And I know these reports aren't exactly upbeat. Earlier this week, a reader commented on the seeming self-destruction of all of this. I wanted to post the reply here:

"'Overtraining' is a possible diagnosis, but far from certain. I've seen two different specialists about my symptoms, described in depth my activities over the past 10 years, and suggested my own theory that over-taxing my body during the 2015 Tour Divide brought all of this on. Both doctors seem reasonably certain that my symptoms are more likely related to asthma than the nebulous overtraining syndrome.

Adults do occasionally have incidents that ramp up their allergies. The decisions I made during the Tour Divide may have sparked this, but I can't take that back now. There are still a lot of unknowns, of course. But I lack most of the other symptoms of overtraining — adrenal fatigue, injury, appetite changes, insomnia. My EKG, blood work, etc. is all normal. I'm still fine in my day to day life. Even my exercise symptoms come and go. They usually crop up during shorter efforts. I'd pretty much have to quit altogether, or take up non-cardio exercise.

I complain about breathing a lot here, because this is my outdoors/activity/endurance blog. Whatever issue I have is less of an obstruction in my daily life than I may make it seem. I'm going through a difficult round of allergy shots right now specifically so I can potentially be more comfortable and happy when I'm outdoors. I probably wouldn't choose this treatment otherwise.

"Rest for a few months" is an oft-cited solution, just like going gluten-free, dairy-free, drinking green tea every night, etc. There's just no concrete evidence that any of this will actually help. If it's asthma, it won't. Perhaps you can understand why I'm (as of yet) unwilling to make major lifestyle changes on a vague possibility. I'm not ruling out that my outdoor hobbies are all of the problem and quitting is all of the solution. Just explaining why I'm going this route for now."

Looks like it's the on-season

I'm back at the asthma clinic for weekly allergy shots, with three hours to kill ... always a good time to update the blog. Now that the Grand Canyon trip is over, I've committed to launching my winter training. Over the past few weeks, I've considered whether I should do this at all. Occasionally, I still struggle with relatively meager efforts. It's these times, when I stumble back home feeling beaten after a five-mile run, I think I should just withdraw from the ITI. Let it go. "Listen to my body" and become the couch potato I was clearly meant to be.

In the past, I remember having some level of high-end fitness that would allow me to run full-bore up a steep hill. Now the best I can do is a brisk walk before I become so winded that I begin hyperventilating, and everything goes downhill from there. But if I maintain a moderate pace, I rarely have issues — I can keep it up for ten hours, probably longer. I suppose I take comfort in this. My aim is to be strong and consistent, not fast. But I sure do miss that "fire." Where it went is still a mystery.

I cling to hope that one day I'll walk outside on a snowy afternoon, inhale a deep gulp of cold, sharp air, and feel it flow into the depths of my lungs. Then I will take off like a banshee, unhindered by any tightness in my chest or anxiety in my head. Someday, once again, I'll run so fast that my vision blurs and my quads burn and I can feel my pulse pumping in my feet. I'll run without fear of losing my breath, gasping and coughing and then feeling flattened for the rest of the day. Someday, even if only for few moments, I will sprint. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss that.

For now I'll continue to tread carefully, and work on becoming stronger. I don't need a lot of wind to lift heavy weights, go for long snowshoe slogs, or push a bike, so I'm going to work on that kind of stuff. I finally joined a small local gym today, after seven months without weight training. I only had a few minutes to try the machines, but I couldn't even do one rep of weights I was pumping at high volume back in February. Sad. I also can only do three or four full-body pushups before my right arm more or less fails. Sadder. Carpal tunnel syndrome definitely put me below even my usual base strength, but it's my intention to get that back.

I'm going to start tracking training weeks on my blog again, which in its own way helps keep me both motivated and honest. Breathing difficulties make outdoor play a lot less fun than it used to be. It's gotten to the point where I find myself making lame excuses to avoid working out. This is not what I want. So I'm fighting to get that back, too — that zeal. It goes along with fire and strength. All things I want. So I'll keep fighting.

It's true that the main thing I'm fighting for right now is the 2017 Iditarod adventure. Sometimes I wonder why I want to go back, yet again, to that cold, lonely, often brutal place. But then all of my memories rush in, with the squeak of wheels on cold snow, the soft chiming of subzero air, unbroken darkness, flares of Northern Lights, vast open space, and absolute solitude. I have to go back. Perhaps soon I'll feel differently, but for now, well — Mike Curiak said it best himself once, before he ultimately stopped returning to Alaska year after year. "If I wasn't here with a bike and a big bag of junk food at the end of February, the sun might not rise for me tomorrow. It's just that simple."

I suppose it can be that simple. Time to start training.