Ugh this week, the past weekend and anytime from oh, last Thursday- onward is a total writeoff. I have never been this sick (or at least not in recent memory??) and I am struggling to make it through 1 full day at work. So far no luck.
UGHHHHHHHHHHHH
Dude, this week…For a short week, it sure hasn’t felt short. Work was an absolute shitshow. Everyone working flat-out all hands on deck style. While not physically tiring, I was SO.TIRED. by yesterday…brain tired I guess? Just fried. I know I’m not the only one, pretty much everyone feels like this.
Some days you ride better without hands. This remains true…To this day!
I also had a dentist appointment, huge event, and riding lesson yesterday. I am mentally tired.
Dear god, this week!
Thankfully, Oats had his lessor resume lessons for November, so I was able to ride Monday, she rode Tuesday, and he had Wednesday off. That left me with time to stay later at work and not have to worry about trying to get to the barn. I had my lesson last night, and while my day/tacking up was clumsy (literally everything I touched fell into the dirt. EVERYTHING. Helmet, saddle pad, bridle, horse boots, my gloves…everything I touched fell on the ground)…The lesson itself was really good!!! 🙂
We worked on a series of x-poles in a bounce gymnastic and when that was going well, we moved it to NO HANDS people! I was terrified- even though Oats is a saint, I have a lot of trouble relinquishing control, particularly in front of the jump. I just want to grab! I ended up trying a few times and failing, until I finally managed to let go of the reins a good stride or two before the first x-pole and it went perfectly!
We then worked on a small course and all was well. What a little lovebug.
Dressage lesson tonight, and I hope it goes better than last week. He just felt really stiff and resistant on the left rein last week. UGH. It sucked, given our general rides/jump lessons have been so smooooth.
So, I had a long weekend AND Hopoxia planned AND lots of running and riding and friend time, a dressage lesson and everything is great right? Well…Not so much. But not terrible either, I just got sick after my dressage lesson and drinks out with friends on Friday and just …Didn’t recover and felt shitty all weekend.
Westcoast Tea for 1- it is a healthy amount of food, and delicious too!
I was basically dragging myself around all weekend. I went out for drinks Friday (and had a good dressage lesson!) and then when I came home, I was incredibly thirsty and my throat was so sore and swollen to the touch. 😦 It hurt all night.
Waking up sucked, I felt miserable. Achy, body stiffness, chills, sore throat… Everything felt like it took soooo much energy. I was exhausted all the time. Nevertheless, I rallied and went riding Saturday, before coming home to get ready for Hopoxia. And it was so warm out! YEAH! Finally!
We walked there and enjoyed ourselves. My one quibble- less cider options this year, sighhh…I missed Tod Creek’s options. Anyways, it was fun! Busy as heck though.
We hoofed it home, and I felt awful. Crazy waves of nausea, dry-heaving, etc etc…Ugh… So exhausted I was sleeping on the couch the entire evening. I think I need to re-watch an episode of iZombie because I was trying to watch it, and felt so sick and tired I couldn’t. Bummer!!
Anyways, I felt nauseous, chills, sore throat and body aches all day Sunday too. And I rallied enough to go riding (short rides this weekend, I was feeling just miserable), and I also rallied to take my mom to the Grand Pacific Hotel’s Westcoast Tea that she requested for Mother’s Day (well ok she requested the Empress and I said no to that- it’s $82/per person and I almost had a stroke after I saw how much it cost!!) This was a nice alternative.
It was lovely, she had the tea ($47 per person) and I had a steak sandwich with fries ($22) which was good. I ended up eating some of her desserts because she said she doesn’t like sweet things anymore. They were tasty!!! I was also wearing like 3 sweaters because I was feeling so shitty. UGH. I was freezing, and kind of counting down the minutes before I could go lie on the couch again.
I took Monday off, thank god because I was still feeling lousy. Greeeeeeat. Taking a long weekend and feeling craptacular the entire weekend. Nothing like it eh? I did more riding, and then more sitting around on the couch. Still had crazy waves of nausea, bloating and cramps combined with a runny nose that wouldn’t stop dripping. I did get productive and make a pie though, in between my laying on the couch watching TV.
And now we’re back to Tuesday, with a running nose, no more sore throat thank god, and waves of nausea. Yay?????
Man, physically I have been having a rough week. I ran a great race on Sunday, felt pretty darned happy with it, and then……..Cue a long downslide into just terrible-ness. Ok, so I already know that Saturday was shit-tacular (I still want a do-over, World!!), Sunday was good but presented challenges (talk to my left foot blister that still itches..), and then Monday was pretty good, had a fun ride with my friends…And then boom!
I needed someone to help me this week. Big time.
Tuesday basically culminated in a few bad things: I haven’t been sleeping, like at all. I have problems with what I call ‘roving insomnia’ that present many challenges for me to get any rest. I get terribly anxious and restless at night, and cannot sit still or sleep. At all. Even after running a half marathon, I WAS TIRED and I couldn’t sleep.
This compounded (I wasn’t recovering) and I was exhausted, just exhausted at the onset of the week. Because I am also an idiot, I kept going…Riding, running, working. And then on Tuesday I was pretty busy after work (cleaning cages, cleaning bathrooms, walking my dog, etc), and I started feeling strange.
Cue another night of no sleep… And mystery cramps that were ripping my uterus apart. It. was. nightmarish. I was sweating, writhing in pain and so bloated that my ribs hurt. I couldn’t sleep, was in a tremendous amount of pain, and I was taking too much ibuprofen (by the handful, basically, in a desperate bid to get on top of the incredible pain. Newsflash- it was too much, and it DIDN’T TOUCH the pain). I was up all night in a real sorry state.
Oh and I checked the bottle of extra-strength ibuprofen that I was downing by the handful the next day and you’re supposed to take… 3 per 24 hours. THREE? Anyways, the road to ruin was started.
I ran to work, felt so fucking out of it I couldn’t type. I was nauseous and still having cramps and pain (I have a Mirena IUD which I am planning on getting removed DUE TO THIS – wtf is going on? I have not had such horrible PMS symptoms in 10 years????)… I took more handfuls of pain medication (yikes, a bad idea. Likely came close to causing an ulcer yesterday, but I couldn’t escape the pain)…
Anyway, went on a run at lunch and immediately felt like I was going to faint, or puke or both. I had terrible nausea, cold sweat, dizzy and cramps. It was just awful. I left, and crawled home and lay on the couch to try and rest off of what was rapidly becoming a terrible day and a bad decision all around.
Honestly? I think my crashing sickness was due to a few factors:
I also bought myself a CBD+THC spray for insomnia, and I was anxious to try it out- and you know what? I think I finally slept for half a night for the first time in months! It’s no miracle drug, but I was so, so desperate to sleep. I think I was on the verge of a psychotic break. And I finally got SOME sleep. Yeah! And for the record, I have tried melatonin (doesn’t work) and over-the-counter sleep aids (and Benadryl) which do not work on me. Some of them make me actively crazy and restless.
The CBD+THC is no miracle drug again, but I think through some trial and error, I could fine- tune how much I need to allow my body to relax enough to sleep. 🙂
Faces of Anguish: The 5k… Photo by Lois D’Ell.
Ah man, as I write this- I’m struggling with weird crushing fatigue and muscle weakness/exhaustion. It’s not a good feeling, and I felt dizzy; had nausea and lightheadedness at the work gym on my lunch break today. Lovely. I had this last week, sort of on-and-off since I got back from Mexico. What is with travelling and me getting sick and/or facing crushing exhaustion?? Anyone have ideas?!
Bazan Bay last year. This is my last year in my age-catgory, sob!
Anyway on to the race- I took Saturday VERY easy (see week of exhaustion/fatigue and a cold), so I was feeling sort of fresh but also with some strange muscle fatigue happening (I am finding it hard to type, my fingers feel tired and I am struggling to make a fist?!?).
I have been taking my iron pills and b12, as well as magnesium, but I’m really wondering what is going on…
So yeah, the race. Last year I had a really fantastic rally, and managed to break 20:00 minutes for the 5k. This year? Ha, nope. My ego was slightly bruised by this, but not by a lot- I still ran a very respectable 20:09. So, close but no cigar. Better than I likely had a right to run, to be honest, with the craptacular way I have been feeling this past week and now week!
Faces of Anguish II: the finish of the 5k. Photo by Lois d’Ell.
I started pretty quick and immediately it felt hard. My second Km was slow- too slow at 4:06…Shit. I bounced off another girl as I got boxed in pretty badly. Hit the turnaround and my previously cocky feeling of ‘this is ok, I can do it!’ evaporated. It was getting hard, really challenging. I was breathing hard, and starting to suffer.
In a weird sense of deja-vu, a girl who was racing this year was shouting and gasping and screaming, just like last year. It was bizarre. I think if each year you sound like you’re dying, maybe the 5k just isn’t…for you.
I saw some other runners who usually smoke me, HARD, and I passed them and they did not catch up. This surprised me- the 5k is a weak distance for me, and it sucks. I was running alone with a few men, and kind of wished for a woman to really spur me on! Like usual, the finish line was so far away and cartoonishly stretched further when I was running to it- I was freaking wiped!
I finished and briefly contemplated puking, like the guy I saw on his hands and knees throwing up after the race. Yes, it’s that fun! I got my breathing under control, found my husband and we trudged back to the gym. Damn, that was difficult. Weather was pretty good though, not too windy and not raining. It’s been pretty lousy these days so I’ll take what I can get!
The ceremony after was great though, I got third in my age category (this surprised me, it’s not a very competitive time for a fairly competitive race), and I was first in my age-group. PLUS I was able to get a chiropractic treatment from my chiropractor, because they were there as the sponsors of the race and were providing treatments. Score! Nice eh? It’s a very well run race, safe with great volunteers, snacks and treatments. I do highly recommend people trying their hand at a fast, brutal 5k to do it here- it’s a personal best-type course.
Sad to see another season go, but each race season teaches me something about myself. Isn’t that always a good thing? I age up next year, so I bid farewell to my age-group buddies 🙂 Felt nice to make a connection this year with some lovely ladies.
Yes that’s right, the day after we flew back from Mexico (got into town at 11 p.m. on Saturday) we were up and ready to head to Sooke to race a 10k! We did plan it this way, because the VIRA races don’t start until 11 a.m., thank god. Even then, we had a pretty tiring journey home, complete with ‘planes, trains and automobiles’ type of mad, harried scramble, so I was pretty exhausted.
Photo courtesy of Joseph Camilleri.
But we got up around 9 a.m. and trekked out to the race! I didn’t have real expectations- Sooke is a rolling, hilly course and I think my best time on the course was last year, with a 44:?? Can’t quite remember what but something like that. I had my watch but it was dead, haha. So, it was freewheeling!
And I have to say, there’s something to that freewheeling. I ran by feel, started pretty quick, slowed a bit on rolling hills, played rabbit with a few other obliging runners (I passed them, then they passed me, and then I passed them again), shouted encouragement to a friend in my age-group who was running well, and just kept going.
My husband ran with me, he hurt his foot in the half-marathon so had to take it easy= running with me.
We hit the turnaround and I was still feeling pretty darn good, considering I was tired and my legs felt like freaking jell-o when I got up that morning! I cruised on, and my breathing started getting a touch more labored. I fought the urge to check my (dead) watch… We hit some more rolling hills, with a steeper incline between 7-8km that really killed my pace, BUT I still had some zip in my legs!
Photo courtesy of Joseph Camilleri.
There was a bit of a headwind, but nothing terrible as we rounded 8km-9km…Homestretch here we go! I was feeling pretty confident! Best of all, my husband was able to cross the finish line with me 🙂 and I didn’t get passed at the finish chute, sometimes that happens and it is a killer, haha.
I finished with a time of 43:17, which seemed unusually fast for me, I thought the clock said 43:30 or something, maybe even 44:00- my eyesight is not great. Many thanks to the fine volunteers who kept us safe on-course on a very busy day and road. Great turnout too, and I was third in my age group 🙂 And I’m not going to complain but rather comment that the snacks selection was a tad limited and emptied out really quickly, unfortunately! The first race I have been to that had that happen. There were some really good power-balls but again, went fast.
Wow, so like a week of silence… Life got too busy, work kind of blew up in my face and I couldn’t deal with 1 more thing, at all for the past two weeks. I am hopefully coming out the other end of it, but yeahhh… Not fun. At all.
Love my boy
Also my allergies went completely off the rails and friends, I am suffering. Congested, incredible sinus pain, itchy upper palate, allergic coughing, eyes swelling shut and so itchy that I can’t even deal…Oh boy, I love it. Add this to work and I spent most of the week absolutely miserable.
But there is also the good: Weather! We had a crazy turnaround and had highs of 19-20 degrees this week. It felt incredible and sadly we are back to seasonal (still pretty decent) but on Wednesday it was downright HOT! Woah! I loved it. 🙂
I went to the beach- 20 degrees, can you believe it?
Horses! Oats has been a total superstar!! Love my boy. We had a gymnastics jump lesson last Thursday (I hate gymnastics, so it was …Not that inspired, ha.) and then we had a really fun jump course on Saturday, with all sorts of crazy jumps! Not high, but definitely getting more consistent at the 2’6” -ish level heights. We also had a cavaletti jump at ‘A’ that really caught us out a few times, as well as a 1-ft circle jump that I biffed HARD by staring at it, hahaha. It was fun though!!
Got myself a latte at a new coffee shop nearby: Pretty eh?
Sunday I went on a run with a work friend, and then went riding later. Oats has been really good, although I’m noticing his ‘halt’ has turned back into ‘halt and then start flying backwards…’ so we’re working through that this week. Lovely…It’s not a new issue for us, it crops up about once or twice a year, but kind of always bugs me. Oh horses!
This week was totally psycho with work, and by Thursday I was Over.IT. and tired. So tired. I didn’t really want to go have a jump lesson, but I know that when I go, I’m happier. More ‘me’ if that makes sense? So off I went! My allergies were a bit better yesterday, I still can’t wear eye makeup but yeah anyways. My jump lesson was really good! We worked over a small course, with the rocks as a single jump down the centre-line. Hahahha it was hilarious, Oats deked out and went around it the first time, crushing the traffic cone that was designed to guide us. HAHAH silly pony!
We had a blast! He was jumping really well by the end (he did get a bit flat at first, and kind of ‘blahhhhed’ over the first jump) but we had fun and it felt good later! He also kind of tried to half-jump over the rocks and jump off to the side. Oh pony. He’s such a good boy though, and it was a cool and fun lesson. See? I always do feel glad that I went and jumped, even though I spent my week feeling itchy, miserable, tired and stressed out.
My boy is always there for me. 🙂
Ouch this one was also kind of an ego-crusher. Not because I had a really poor performance, or surprised myself with a bad race, but because it was just really hard and I was surprised at how often I got passed, particularly throughout and at the end of the race. I had no rally, apparently. Shoot!
A beer for me after~ the best part of racing is the chance to try far-flung breweries.
I guess each year I forget how much of a killer the ‘rolling hills’ are in this 15k, and just kind of expect things to go…Well? Spoiler- they don’t really, hahah. My legs were feeling kind of trashed- 3 races in 3 weeks is a lot for me, and my legs were not responding well to the schedule. Plus I had a riding lesson the day before, also unusual for me.
I started off pretty well, optimist even! And then kind of started dreading the rolling hills…And then kind of ground it out to the turnaround, and then slowly started getting passed, steadily in fact! Ha. I just could NOT rally my legs. They were hurting, and getting tired.
Photo by Lyndon Cassell Photography from Port Alberni. I was starting to walk away at this point, which is why I look awkward…
My goal was to stay under 4:30/km, which I kind of did? If you can count my ratio of a km at 4:22, the next one *up a hill* at 4:36, and then 4:25, and then 4:37,..and on and on. For the entire race…
I had a really bad Km at around 12…Just so uphill. I was tired, wanted to walk. I mentally gave up on that one. Rallied at 13-14, and then kind of just trudged it home and got passed within 500m of the finish line. HA. It was a stark contrast to my pretty good feeling 12km last weekend, even though I tried to catch up with some runners and they blew past me…I still felt pretty good about my efforts/finish. This race? Nah not so much.
But anyways, it was my fastest 15km yet! I ran it squeaking just under at 1:06:57. Yeah!! First in my age group (again like Cedar 12k it is a very small race, I am under no illusions that I’m some sort of super-athlete). My legs are still tired today, ha. Also it’s daylight savings and damn, it is killing me! Sooooooo tired this week.
Had a dressage lesson last Friday and I was feeling sooooooooo tired, low energy, blah, you know the draggy fatigue I’ve been complaining about for oh, 3+ weeks now? It was kind of a hard sell, particularly on a Friday night (hello hang out on my couch time!) PLUS I was dog-sitting my friend’s dog, so he came over just before my lesson.
Mr. Oats learns some fancy moves! I wish I was sitting up more…
But anyways, despite the myriad excuses of why I didn’t want to, I did. And it was great!! Not perfect, ha are they ever? But just genuinely good. I learned some really interesting exercises and have since practiced them on my own with Oats.
I have been wanting to improve his counter-canter and work towards flying lead changes- clean and proper ones, not grab-and-leap ones. So on that note we worked on canter-walk transitions, which have historically been a challenge for us. Walk-canter? Sure! Canter- walk? Nope!
We developed the canter-walk by coming in on a circle, using a touch of shoulder-fore and then spiraling in to the walk. Like, circle, coming in using shoulder-fore and 1-2-3 WALK.
It was cool! On the left he was super! On the right= struggle bus. Ahhh well.
We used the basis of that exercise to then go large and focus on walk- pick up counter canter- go straight along the long side in counter canter and then walk, pick up true canter for the short side, back to walk, counter canter and rinse, repeat.
It was really neat! We were getting it!! 🙂
So pleased with how Oats is really learning his stuff through these exercises. And we’re not like, drilling him to death on it- a few run-throughs, he gets the idea, more importantly ‘I’ get the idea, and we’re good!
I even practiced it a bit yesterday and was quite happy with how our amateur fumbling went. Whee!
Not much of a weekend update for me- sick, coughing a lot and a friends night out where we were ALL coughing a lot! Yes, we were the ‘plague table’ out, that’s for sure. I did go on a pretty fun run where I mercifully wasn’t coughing my lungs out or having my nose running down my face, but then the other part of the weekend involved mostly feeling exhausted, coughing, having my nose run incessantly… Yeah, you get the idea. Blah.
With the Phyllis ‘driving’ rein.
Oats also was good on Saturday but strong on the left and draggy- not wanting to bring himself ‘up’ on the left canter lead. And on Sunday he could tell my energy wasn’t good, so he was a bit of a dingus (my fault- I was exhausted and thought I could fake it. Newsflash- you can’t ever fake it with horses!!!). We still hopped over a pole and a small cavaletti I had set up to practice different release types, and I noticed that with the Phyllis (driving) rein my chicken-wing elbows weren’t so bad, but when I went to trot them without stirrups, the ‘chicken-wings’ came back with a vengeance.
And with the non-driving rein release… I like being able to do these comparisons, actually!
Clearly, my chicken wing release (or non-release, let’s face it) comes from a place of feeling vulnerable. Hm… Food for thought.
This week I am just hoping to not feel like warmed-over death. Spent 10 minutes coughing up stuff this AM, soooo not feeling ready for today. Ugh!!
The adventures of Mr. Oats 