Stress

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Here is a graph of my watch’s interpretation of my stress levels over the past few months.

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August is when I started on anti-depressants*. In September I started a salary negotiation with my now-ex Boss, which really stressed me out. October brought a few interviews and November had me starting a new job. January had me ‘resting’ a running injury, and February has me returning to almost daily running. It’s incredible to see what a difference regular exercise, or lack thereof, makes to my physically measurable stress levels.

*The graph probably exaggerates the practical reality a bit, because an initial side effect of the anti-depressants was a slowed heart rate (which has since gone back up to normal), which probably confused the readings a bit.

SUNDAY

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Storm Ciara turned out to be surprisingly bad. My weather app described it as ‘dangerously high winds, so it was a weird day of staying inside all day until late afternoon when I went out for a short walk just to say I had. It occurred to me that the last time I didn’t go outside for a whole day was probably last January when I had flu. I really would have liked a run but I had visions of being hit by a flying tree.

I did some of what I wanted to with my plants. I didn’t do anything with them this time last year because I wasn’t really (mentally) healthy enough to think about ‘investing’ in them. Somehow I managed to keep them alive, but plants are a long term thing. You repot them now and in six months they look better. You sow seeds or take cuttings now and maybe in 3 months you see the faintest hint of growth. I wasn’t really doing long term back then. So some of them are long overdue a bit of care and attention. I don’t like doing much with them over the summer because it can shock them and interrupt their growth, so the best time is right now, just as they’re starting to wake up.

Usually they wouldn’t wake up until a bit later in the year but apparently this year must be mild, because a few of them are throwing up flower stalks. A couple of years ago they didn’t really wake up until June(!).

I still have a lot more to do, but I’ve split a few and potted them up, and de-weeded a few other pots.

This one has been so neglected that it’s deformed the pot. I think that it’s been trying to grow downwards because of lack of space…

A few trays I brought inside so they wouldn’t blow away. As you can see, I have the gift/curse that I can grow plants very easily, which (un?)fortunately means have millions of them. I was intending to start selling them but it’s too much hassle. Baby flytraps are so cute.

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I forgot to take a ‘before’ pic of this one but here’s one from last summer, then after splitting it into two today. The smaller of the splits is in the original pot. This was a therapy plant my dad bought for me (in a very unusual display of generosity!) shortly after I had a serious trauma about 18 months ago.

 

Progress?

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I did Parkrun today at max effort and my hip feels… fine?

So in total today I’ve done about 9k (warmup + parkrun + run home) at a fast pace, which is both further and faster than I’ve run for a long time, and everything feels fine.

I’m hesitant to say everything really is fine, because I’ve had some pain from it this week, but I think it was actually a different pain which might be a red herring (I did a lot of planks one evening, and had some sharper pain the next day; I may have just overdone the planks).

Usually I’d run about 15k on Saturday and then again on Sunday, and I won’t really feel I’m recovered until I’m doing that again. Unfortunately, Storm Ciara looks set to disrupt any Sunday running, but maybe the weather forecasters are being hyperbolic and I won’t really be cowering in my house all day. I can hear the wind now though…

But in some ways it will be good if I do just stay home all day tomorrow because I have about a million plants that need repotting before the growing season starts (which it seems to be doing thanks to some mild weather).

The Witcher

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I’ve been watching The Witcher on Netflix. I had to post something because I just watched episode 3, and…

…there are a lot of boobs in this program.

More than are strictly necessary for the story, I think.

life

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The cold I contracted last Monday has been hard to shake off. It’s a week later and I’m still feeling it in some ways. I forgot how much I hate sore throats. My sister thinks she’s starting with it today, so I’m going to be popular…

I don’t think it’s the coronavirus, but you can never be sure with these things.

So, the running. Last week I ran about 40km (up from 25km the previous week), which still isn’t really very close to the volume I want to be hitting, and my hip/ab/whatever is starting to bother me a bit. I am learning more about it. Yesterday I discovered that foam rolling my hip flexors makes it feel a lot better. It fits together with the stretch I found before, i.e. the stomach vacuums, in that it probably woke my abs up and started taking some of the load off my hip flexors. So I’m currently working from the assumption that it’s my hip flexors being tight and overactive and trying to do too much.

I spent a bit of time staring at myself in the mirror this evening, and I found that my pelvic tilt is horrible. My hip flexors are in desperate need of stretching even ignoring the injury. It explains why my lower back has been a bit achy too.

I’ve decided to give it a week of a strict regime of daily hip flexor rolling and stretching and if it’s still bothering me next week I’ll phone up one of the physios around the office.

Sick

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Errrgggh colds. I woke up yesterday morning with a horrible sore throat. OH NO, YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS. It today it progressed into the runny nose and sneezing. The kind of runny nose where you notice you’ve stopped peeing even though you’re drinking a lot, and you’re pretty sure it’s because of all the liquid that your body is expelling nasally. This evening it’s non-stop sneezing. I haven’t really been ill since about a year ago. I had a minor cold in May but not like this. I hate sneezing.

The train was fun this evening. Running late, had to stand, and it stopped for 15 minutes between stations. I’m sure my fellow passengers appreciated being trapped in a small space with me.

So today hasn’t been a great day. But it’s OK, because I’ve decided I’m going to win a million pounds on the premium bonds in the February draw. That will make me feel better, and I am looking forward to it.

I ran today at lunch time (because who stops running just because they have a cold), and it was a noticeable improvement in the abs department. It’s the first time I’ve run and not had any discomfort immediately afterwards. Usually, I get some aches which go away as soon as I stretch, but today it was OK without stretching.

THE WEEK

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So the end of the week running review is as follows. I ran Mon, Tues, Thurs, Sat, Sun. I haven’t totalled it up, but it’ll be about 25k. This feels like absolutely nothing, but is actually a respectable distance to say I haven’t run at all in four weeks.

Yesterday I did parkrun – it’s a two lap course, and I did the first lap very slowly, then got bored and did the second lap at probably 90% effort. I chickened out of the long run today because it just seemed like a bad idea after that, and did about 6k.

The injury is… I don’t know? It’s not bad. It’s not 100%, but it’s not bad either.

I’m finding that if it starts feeling uncomfortable then stretching a bit makes it subside. I’d rather be in the position that it doesn’t start feeling uncomfortable in the first place, but it’s definitely manageable and not a big deal at the moment. And, I don’t think it’s any worse for running.

So I’m still undecided on physiotherapy.

Today

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I got two responses back from physios today. Both of them are near work. They are both possibilities but I think I need to actually phone them up to figure out if I can actually get an appointment at a time that works around work. Which I don’t want to do just yet. The two near home are yet to respond, which is a bit disappointing. One of them works Saturday mornings though, so that seems like a good fallback.

I am not really sure if I need physio at the moment. I decided to give myself a rest day today and I’m instead aiming to do a normal gentle run tomorrow, then Parkrun on Saturday and a long run Sunday. So by the start of next week I’ll be in a much better position to decide if I really need it.

—

Last night was awful. I woke up at 4 o clock and didn’t go back to sleep. When it became clear I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon I started fiddling with my phone, and for some reason went on LinkedIn. This was a mistake – my previous employer had posted an update saying something like “what makes us different from all the the other software companies?” and had a lot of blurb about how amazing they are and a lot of professionally shot photos which have been done since I left. The photos are… well, I don’t know what the word is. Some of the people in the photos don’t even work there – they work for other companies on the same floor and must have been roped into modelling for photos, and half the photos were shot in a room they hired which they’re pretending is the office, presumably because the office isn’t actually a very attractive place.

In the blurb they mentioned how proud they were of employing lots of developers, but what they didn’t mention is that none of them were in the photos because they’re all in Russia. What makes you different to all the other software companies? Well, the fact that your developers (and your customers’ data) are in Russia would be an obvious point.

It just seemed so absurd and pathetic, and I suppose it upset me because it seemed symbolic of the dishonesty I experienced there. I’m glad I don’t still work there, but I didn’t need to see that in the early hours this morning.

I’ve since unfollowed the company. I don’t know why I go on LinkedIn anyway; it’s not useful unless you’re job-seeking. I should uninstall it from my phone.

I still have problems with that company. I still feel my stress levels rising every morning on the train when I go past the building. With starting to run at lunch times again I’ve been considering routes, and I’d quite like to go the other way along the canal, but I’ll end up going past the building. Part of me thinks I should face it and conquer my irrational fear, and another part of me thinks I should be avoiding triggering myself.

When will I stop having dreams about working there?

Running again!

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So I ran again today. I got a bit more adventurous and did a 5k along the canal. When I stopped the abs were definitely not right and I got kind of depressed about it, but something just clicked in my mind and so this evening I sent out a few enquiries to private physiotherapists and felt a lot happier. Two are near work and two near home. I don’t know why I’d never considered this before.

Strangely, it actually feels better now than it did yesterday. I’m going to keep running for a few days so I can assess how it really is.

In other news, I started making my train commutes home more enjoyable, by reading! I am currently reading Book 3 of The Expanse books. I read the first two last Christmas and was engrossed in them even though I’d seen the TV program and knew the story. The second diverged a little from the TV program in that it had an extra character and minor story arc for that character which wasn’t shown on TV. The third book has already introduced a lot more characters than were on TV, but I think they might have been amalgamated into Drummer, who hasn’t yet turned up.

I’m really trying hard to keep doing things that are better for my mental health than sitting around looking at the internet for 25 minutes. The internet is entertaining but it’s also boring. You keep clicking things hoping to find a dopamine hit, waiting for the next thing to pop up and entertain you. I’m pretty sure that’s bad for my anxiety.

Running again

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So today I got a (very short) lunch time run in. I packed all my running stuff into my bag for work last night, but then I woke up at 3:50 and remembered I hadn’t put my running belt in! Oh no. I didn’t want to get up, but I also thought I might forget, so I sent myself an email from my old phone (which I keep switched on in bed with me, because I use it for Insight Timer meditations), because that’s the kind of thing I do.

I had been having a really vivid dream about my old workplace. I could see the heart rate graph on my watch had been elevated for about an hour before I woke up, so it was obviously stressing me.

At some point I drifted back off to sleep to the soothing voice of Lisa A Romano on Insight Timer.

I seem to spend a lot of my life lying awake in bed at about 4 o clock in the morning. I like it at that time because it’s so quiet and peaceful, but I also like not struggling to stay awake at 3PM at my desk at work.

So, the run.

The abs felt… OK? Not amazing, but OK.

I have found that if they start aching then I need to suck my stomach in as much as I can a few times and that tends to make them feel better. I think the after-effect so far is that there’s an extremely vague sense of discomfort, which, if I wasn’t hyper-aware of the area, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Hopefully it’s the kind of thing that a bit of exercise will loosen up and heal.

I did some general stretching and foam rolling and core bits and bobs this evening and it feels OK. Not 100%, but OK.