Tag: running

Holiday

~ e.v. ~ 2 Comments

So!

I haven’t posted for the last week because I’ve been on holiday. My parents asked me a month or two ago if I wanted to join them on holiday, and I’d usually say no because who wants to do that?, but this time I said yes because maybe I do?

I didn’t know how it would go and I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I don’t have the best relationship with my dad. I’ve always found him difficult and he’s got more difficult since he retired and doesn’t get as much human interaction as he used to. My relationship with my mum is really good, but we’re both quite sensitive to each other’s moods and we can be a bit volatile because of it.

It went pretty well though. There was one day I got grumpy because I was bored and hungry, but other than that it was good. I strongly suspect that the antidepressants helped out here and kept me a bit more amiable than I would usually have been when we weren’t doing things that I was particularly interested in.

We went to an English seaside town, which I won’t name for anonymity. The town itself was a bit tacky and touristy but we were staying in a village a mile or so outside of it which was nice. We went on some long coastal walks, which I really enjoyed.

I have written here before about my love for running, but I love walking just as much. I’ve always been quite active, but when I had problems last year I ramped it up as I found it theraputic. I still walk A LOT and get kind of grumpy if I don’t. Covering about 80 miles a week on foot (walking + running) is normal for me. I’m slightly addicted to Pokemon Go as well.

We came back Saturday after finishing the holiday with some Parkrun tourism (mum’s a Parkrunner too), which was really enjoyable. I won’t say which Parkrun, but it was smaller than my local one and I got a Parkrun PB on the flatter course with a very low finish number, which I was really pleased with.

It was interesting to see the difference in Parkruns; my local one is almost like a military operation in how it’s run whereas this one was very relaxed and maybe a bit more inviting because of it? But it’s also much smaller, so there’s that. Anyway, it’s inspired me to start branching out to do more Parkrun tourism.

Now I need to get up to date with everyone’s blogs.

Parkrun

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Parkrun today was pretty great. I was 4 seconds off my personal best, which I’m very pleased with as my actual performance seems to have been drifting further and further away from my PB over the past couple of months. The mythical sub-20 was starting to look like a pipe dream, but maybe not anymore.

I was a bit worried that the anti-depressants would negatively impact my running performance, but it doesn’t seem so.

A combination of that and the heat wiped me out for the rest of the day though.

 

Citalopram day 1

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I had trouble getting to sleep last night and then I woke up super early and couldn’t go back to sleep, all because I was stressed and dreading going to work – is she going to be rude to me today? will I be able to handle it? After getting up I very impulsively decided to restart the Citalopram because something’s got to give at some point.

The doctor I saw last week advised me to try half-dosing to 10mg for a week or so, as I was concerned about side effects, so I did that.

lavenderandlevity (whose blog is incredible) convinced me yesterday that unless I actually give the tablets a fair chance, I’ll always be wondering if I should be taking them. Even if I quit my job tomorrow and removed all my immediate stress, I’d still need to get through a job-search at some point and I’m not entirely convinced I would actually do that at the moment, versus just… not bothering.

So, I took it this morning, and I have felt…

Physically, pretty rough: I am tired (hardly surprising given I haven’t slept much), nauseous (this is definitely the tablet) and my tongue feels weird. I think my appetite is a bit suppressed by the nausea. Hopefully this will pass in a few days.

Mentally though I’ve felt quite calm today. But this may just be the effects of the resolution to the meds or no meds argument that’s been going around my head continually.

So.

I need to promise myself something here. If these help and I start feeling calmer, I need to not use them to mask the fact work is a toxic workplace. I need to use them to instead give me the confidence to get into a non-toxic workplace so I can come off them ASAP.

I also need to be very careful about stomach bleeding, which SSRIs can exacerbate. I have always linked my occasional bleeds to running, so for the next week or so, I need to ‘stress test’ myself here, because if they are going to cause more bleeding, I need to know about it before my body starts to build a dependency on them. I did 11k this evening at a hard-ish pace (uanffected by the nausea, apparently), but the real test will be when I do 16-17k over the weekend.

Interview!

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I have been offered an in-person interview following a phone interview I had last week. I’m surprised that of the 3 phone calls I’ve had so far, this is the one that turned into an interview, but whatever, I’ll take it. I would like this job for the simple reason that it’s a 20 minute walk from my house.

I was feeling stressed about work, but suddenly now it seems far less important. I am not really sure what I’m going to be walking in to tomorrow, with having two days off… will be my boss be upset I didn’t inform the customer I was off sick? Will he think I’m having too much time off? Will HR lady start taking an interest now? Anxious thoughts, some catastrophising, but I don’t feel too apprehensive.

In less good news, I’ve been bleeding again. It only looked like a small amount, so I decided to run this morning as I planned to, but I kept the pace low and didn’t go as far as I had intended. I might regret this tomorrow. I suspect I have some kind of gastritis that is occasionally triggered by exercise and causes my stomach lining to bleed, but that’s me guessing – doctors haven’t managed to diagnose me, they just stick cameras in me (weeks or months after the bleeding has stopped) and scratch their heads. I think I need to assume I’m right on the gastritis front and start altering my diet to reduce stomach acid. I really don’t understand how I can go months without it and then it happens twice in a few weeks, though.

I felt unusually hungry when I got home, which isn’t really a good sign that my stomach is functioning properly, so I had a few slices of toast before eating quite a big lunch. I feel a bit sick now, but take your pick from possible causes: 1. Bleeding, 2. Eating a lot, 3. Stress, 4. Heatwave, 5. Running in a heatwave…

Weekend

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The weekend was mixed. I did Parkrun on Saturday but I felt quite sick afterwards, and whereas I’d normally continue running another 8-10k, I just walked home. It was the first time I’d run in almost 2 weeks because of an ankle injury, so that was disappointing. But I ran 16k on Sunday just fine, so I was happy with that. It was probably still a side effect from the Citalopram.

More generally I felt pretty bad on Saturday but much better on Sunday.

I elected to take Monday off sick from work. Uh oh, sick day #7 this year. My manager is back on Tuesday, and I’ve run out of motivation for dealing with the client myself when it’s not my job and things aren’t going well. On its own, it wouldn’t be such a big problem, but I feel so uncomfortable in the environment at work anyway due to the whole Becky thing. I think that taking sick days just because I can’t face going to work is a strong sign that I’m not going to be here much longer.

But I did some ‘work’ over the weekend for myself. I am forever recording (guitar) stuff on my phone and then never listening to it or sorting it out because it’s too much effort to get it onto my PC. So I started writing an app to record and automatically upload to a cloud storage provider. In only about 5-6 hours, I’ve got it working end to end, so now all it needs is some GUI polish and I’ll stick it on the Play Store. I have an existing app out there that makes me a few hundred pounds a year, so hopefully this will add to that.

It’s interesting to compare this with work. At work lately it’s been a struggle to achieve anything at all, but here, I’ve got something complex working in an unfamiliar technology in around 6 hours. It’s amazing how productive I can be when I don’t have to waste energy on office politics.

Summary

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Health

Parkrun today wasn’t great. I’ve been pushing against my Personal Best (PB) for the last few weeks and now that the weather was a bit cooler, I should have been breaking it. Especially considering that I hadn’t run since Tuesday and should therefore be very well rested. But no. I was nowhere near my PB – over a minute off, which over 5k is an eternity. Unfortunately this is probably because of the blood loss earlier this week. Can’t run as fast with less blood. That’s science.

I feel a bit unsettled by the bleeding, which sounds dumb because it seems like it should be obvious, but the last time this happened it seemed unimportant compared to everything else. When you’re suicidal, the idea of your body dumping blood into your digestive tract is something you think of as helpful more than scary.

Life

I’ve had two phone interviews which may or may not go anywhere. If I get offered either of them I’m going to have no idea whether or not to accept. Although I have mixed feelings, one of them is offering up to £60k, and I’m currently earning only slightly more than half of that. But… money isn’t everything, especially after HMRC get involved.

Mike

Mike and I haven’t really spoken to each other since he upset me. He invited me out for a walk one day at lunch but I declined because I wanted to go further (well, it was both true and a convenient excuse). I go for a walk every day because exercise helps, but Mike is morbidly obese, so we have different ideas of what exercise is. I feel mildly disappointed with Mike. I feel annoyed he ruined a relationship that I used to value, but it’s important I don’t find myself trying to repair damage that he caused, because only he can do that. I feel disappointed that he hasn’t tried to do the grown up thing and address the problem. I think it shows he doesn’t really value the relationship.

Becky

The plants thing is weird. Here’s what’s happened: About three months ago Mike commented to me that plans were afoot (between Boss and Becky) to get some plastic plants in the office. I said that I couldn’t see the point of plastic plants, why not real plants? He said Becky didn’t want to look after them, so I said, in a completely unofficial and off-handed way that certainly was not a commitment, that I would probably end up looking after them (because I keep A LOT of plants at home). A week or so later Mike informed me that Becky had told Boss that I had said I wanted to look after real plants and used that to argue for real over plastic. I was surprised by this, but I didn’t react because nobody actually spoke to me about it. I didn’t mind so much that Mike had told her I’d said that, but she needs to actually discuss it with me before making promises on my behalf.

A few weeks after that, Becky spoke to me (which doesn’t happen often now) and we had a very awkward conversation which she didn’t seem to want to be having. She tried to get me to agree to look after plants. She didn’t mention that she’d already discussed this with Boss. I was unimpressed and I was also in the middle of an extremely stressful life event and had barely had any sleep, so I just resisted a little bit and then stopped talking. We looked at each other awkwardly for a while. She wasn’t taking the hint and said “you can think about it”. I said “ok, I’ll think about it”. This was probably two months ago.

Then last week, Boss called me into his office immediately after speaking to her, and said “Becky said that you told her you want to look after some plants”. I immediately just said “I did not say that”, but I still ended up agreeing to “partial responsibility” because I was put on the spot, which I’m not sure I’m happy with. The stupid thing is that I love plants and if someone had just asked me, I would have said yes. But going to my boss and telling him that I’ve promised something I haven’t is definitely not OK and it puts me off having any involvement. If I end up having a meeting with HR lady soon I will be discussing this with her.

HR Lady

HR lady hasn’t been in the office all week and hasn’t contacted me. I asked for a meeting about 5-6 weeks ago and she brushed me off until “late June”. She’s been back from her holiday for two weeks now, and it’s July. I’m underwhelmed. It doesn’t make me feel like a valued employee whose concerns are important. It makes me reluctant to speak to her at all, because part of me thinks I’m being obstructed purposefully. What does she gain though? If I end up leaving because she’s mismanaged the situation then my boss will not be impressed with her.

Weekend

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Parkrun yesterday: Way too hot and I pushed too hard at the end, which I regretted immediately afterwards. Apparently my heart rate went up to 193 at the end, which seems pretty high. I should be more careful in the heat. Trying to set PBs in heatwaves is kind of dumb. I’ve noticed my average heart rate has been increasing over the past few weeks.

I think I’m pushing myself too hard and I should be more careful of this because it’ll affect my mental health if I’m over-training. Apparently I’m running more miles than 99% of Garmin users, and I’m not being strict enough about running some of them slowly.

But overall I feel pretty good. I spent the afternoons wandering around in the sunshine, which is definitely therapeutic.

Great Birmingham 10k

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So I had a pretty awesome day today running the Birmingham 10k.

I went into it with an aim of 44 minutes but I was starting to feel sceptical. My previous 10k PB was 47 minutes but that was ages ago. My recent 5k times are 21:05-21:30 consistently so 44 seemed achievable.

But I’ve been sleeping approximately 5 hours a night all week, I’ve run every day (not well rested, but mental health comes first), and I have a sore throat that started last night and hasn’t improved so I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with something… and a few days ago the weather forecast was 18 degrees and 80% humidity. Yuck.

Anyway, I smashed it. Safely sub-44 and on a flatter course would have gone sub-42 easily. Pacing was OK. I took the inclines quite slowly whereas a lot of people around me didn’t, who I subsequently re-overtook on the flat. It rained so it felt a lot cooler, which was nice. I had horrible flashbacks to the freezing rain of last year’s Birmingham half marathon when we were standing around before we started, but it was fine once we got going. I finished in position 300-ish out of 7000-ish, so I’m pretty chuffed with that.

Strava logged a 5k PB of 20:01. So why am I struggling to go sub-21 on Parkrun?!

Naturally, I have now signed up to the half marathon in October.

Pretty sure I’m going to be full of cold this time tomorrow though. The sore throat has got worse and my nose is running.

Running

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Breaking up the work posts a bit, over the past year I’ve really struggled with what my counsellor refers to as ‘self care’, i.e. doing things that you enjoy and looking after your mental and physical health.

It’s been difficult because a lot of things are more of a long term commitment. I really like plants for example, but my interest in looking after them waned because I didn’t really expect to be around to see them grow. As such, I have a lot of plants that wanted repotting this spring but they’ll have to wait until next spring now. Oh well, at least they’re all still alive. Well, most of them.

One thing I have managed to do though is keep on top of my running. Running’s great because you go outside, you get fresh air, you tire yourself out, and you feel better during and afterwards. It doesn’t matter if it’s cold, dark, raining, snowing, windy; I don’t care. I don’t miss runs unless I’m seriously incapacitated. There is obviously a long term progression with running, which is very rewarding, but there’s an immediate hit as well. The fact I could be dead next week never mattered because I got some benefit there and then.

Before all this kicked off, I was running maybe 2-3 times a week. I always enjoyed it but I was never 100% dedicated. I quickly fell into running 6-7 times a week as a coping mechanism. I’m running 40-50 miles a week right now just for the fun of it. Even when my anaemia got bad and I actually fainted after a 5k run, I still got back on the horse a couple of weeks later.

I ran a half marathon back in October and really enjoyed it. After that I started doing my local Parkrun (timed 5k) every weekend. I did the special one on Christmas day. Even feeling like my life was on the verge of ending all the time, I found myself actually looking forward to Saturday mornings. I felt kind of guilty about it because I always had the idea that I could easily be dead by Saturday in the back of my mind, but somehow I still looked forward to it anyway. I even decided that if things didn’t turn out well, I was going to leave behind a significant donation to Parkrun (which is made possible by a lot of people giving up their free time).

I feel like I’ve grown a lot in this regard. I’ve run for years but the idea of doing organised runs with other people was always intimidating for me. That’s just self confidence and general anxiety issues, I think. But here I am now, doing Parkrun every week (half way to my 50 t-shirt), I’ve got a 10k next weekend, and I’ll be doing at least one half marathon this year. I’ve also entered into the ballot for the London Marathon next year, which could be pretty awesome, and if I’m not successful with that, I’ll be looking at other marathons.

Running is probably the only thing that has consistently brought me pleasure for the past year.