gwennefarrell

I had really hoped to shave 5 minutes off my 10 km run time today. However, it wasn’t long into the run that I realized this wasn’t going to happen for 2 reasons. Firstly even at 6am it was already humid so by time I was just a few minutes into the run I was already sticky. Secondly, the air quality. With all the forest fires in BC our skies, even near the ocean, are very smoke filled and hazy. I’m pretty sure that breathing in this air is the reason my legs were tired before I had even reached the halfway point.

As I have previously mentioned this COVID pandemic has been very hard on my husband and I. Tom works in the US but before March 2020 he was always home on weekends. When the borders closed he was still technically allowed to return home (as a Canadian citizen) but always would have to do 2 weeks of self isolation. We decided it simply didn’t make sense for him to come home before the Xmas holidays when he spent 2 weeks in a local hotel then came home for 10 days. When he left to go back to work at the beginning of January we had no idea when we would see each other again. But this week the borders opened and those fully vaccinated could cross and not be required to self isolate. So after 8 months and 10 days Tom and I had a date night last night at our favourite restaurant and it was fabulous.

Tom walked into the house yesterday and the first thing he said was oh my god you are skinny. He then handed me a bunch of clothes he had bought for me. The problem is some of the clothes he had bought were from the beginning of the year and were in a medium or size 10 which no longer fits me. After trying pretty much everything on and creating yet another donation pile, Tom asked if 2 of the dresses could be taken in because they looked good on me, they were just too big. I agreed I would take them to my tailor and see what could be done while secretly thinking hmm, I’ll get to brag about shrinking 4 sizes since the beginning of the year.

Today I tried to train Tom on the strengthening exercises I do regularly. We started with upper arm weights and I offered to let him use my 5 lb weights and I’d go down to the 3 lb ones. We did the first 4 exercises and after 2 sets his arms were tired. I laughed and said that I do 3 sets 5 times a week with those 5 lb weights. Yeah, he said, but have you seen how buff your arms are? I decided to skip several of the other exercises I normally do and move the the bridge lifts. I do these in the order of increasing difficulty so started off with a basic bridge. We then moved on to a marching bridge and I could see Tom was starting to struggle. We got to the final one, the dreaded one legged bridge lift and he barely survived. Apparently when Tom said he wanted me to train him I don’t think he fully comprehended exactly how hard I have worked to get this fit. Not his fault as he hasn’t been here to witness it.

The bottom line is not only has it been awesome having my husband home for a few days but it has been great for my ego. Tom constantly tells me how skinny I am, how great I look, how much younger I look and how proud he is of me. So, I have decided to succumb to a bit of vanity this weekend and soak up the ego boost.

I wanted to start this blog by giving a huge shout out to our support network. When word got around that my sister had been hospitalized so many people reached out and offered to give me some help. I can’t believe the number of offers I got for things from doing my shopping to just coming over to keep me company. Reminds me that there are some really nice people out there and I know a lot of them.

I’ve come to realize that my weight tends to fluctuate throughout the week. Normally it is the highest at the beginning of the week and lowest on Saturday. I weight myself at the same time each day, I don’t change my eating habits during the week and my exercise on Tuesdays is actually more than on Saturday. As an example, Tuesday I weighed in at 120.6 lbs and today it was 118.6 lbs. 2 lbs in only 2 days? Why does this happen?

I did some research on this a few weeks ago after I got on the scale and it appeared I had gained 4 lbs in 2 days. During that time I had done all my normal exercise and had eaten the same as always. Turns out, this is actually really normal. Apparently, throughout a single day your weight can fluctuate up to 5 lbs. I was a bit shocked as that seems like a lot of weight to me but I read that as long as you are in the 5 lb swing then there is nothing to worry about.

So what causes this? There is a variety of things that impact these minor weight fluctuations. It could be caused by a change in hormones (i.e. women having their menstrual cycle), what you ate (salty foods cause you to retain water as do high carb foods), bowel regularity, heat and humidity level just to name a few. When you start to think about it, it kind of makes sense that since your body has various levels of fluids and waste in it at any given time that your weight can’t always be consistent.

I also found a couple of good suggestions about monitoring your true weight. The first was to only use the scale 1 day a week and always on the same day. Now I have written about this before and there are several schools of thought on the best number of times to weigh yourself each week so if this one works for you go for it. The second is to weight yourself at the same time each and every day and then do an average to calculate your weight and see if that average stays consistent. Not for me, I weigh in 3 times a week but the averaging still seems to work, I am a consistent 120 lbs which is right where I want to be.

The bottom line, fluctuating weight within that 5 lb mark is perfectly normal. Don’t obsess about those lbs that are jumping up and down. Be consistent in what you eat and remember to keep moving.

Today was my interval training day so I headed off to the beach at 5:30am. It was a beautiful day to do my training along the beach with the sun coming up and the tide in all the way. Then I saw them, the dreaded geese. There was a huge group of them swimming in the ocean and as I ran by I started counting though I stopped when I got to 100 geese. I fervently hoped that the tide would stay out until I finished my training along the promenade because I knew if not I’d be back to having to get past them as they would come up from the water and onto the promenade. Fortunately by time I was heading back only about 6 of them were on the promenade and much to my relief they ignored me.

Last Saturday when I was doing part of my 10 km along the promenade I realized there wasn’t very many walkers out which was likely to do with the pouring rain. However, I noticed there were even more runners than usual. I also realized there are several of us that see each other pretty much every day. We seem to have become more friendly with each other always saying hello or commenting on how the run was going. One young man always gives me a huge grin and tells me I’m doing great (note he probably runs 10 times my pace but he also at least 25 years younger than me).

But Saturday something a bit unexpected happened. I ran past a man who I hadn’t seen before while I was heading back along the pier. As I always do, I greeted him and he smiled and responded. He then passed me as I was doing the final leg of the promenade which is where I encountered the hissing goose and so ran at my top speed for the next kilometer or so. When I got to the promenade the same gentleman was there stretching and shouted out good job, I saw you really push it that last leg (I don’t think he knew it was because of the goose incident). I told him this was my 2nd ever 10 km so he asked how much further I had to do. I shouted out 2 km! His response, you’ve got this!

I’m starting to recognize that even if like me you run on your own, other runners become part of your community. The smiles, greetings and encouragement always seem spontaneous but sincere. I know for me as a new runner this means a lot to me and helps me keep going. It also always makes me feel like I am in my happy place.

So here’s to meeting more people in my new community.

I decided to write a special post today talking about diabetes. Those who follow me on Facebook know that yesterday I had to call 911 to have my sister taken to hospital by ambulance. She told me Friday that she hadn’t been feeling well for a couple days and that her stomach was quite upset. By Friday night she was vomiting and yesterday she couldn’t keep anything down. I had her start taking her blood glucose and BP every 2 hours and grew even more concerned when they kept going higher especially the glucose levels which should have been low with no food in her system. I contacted the Healthlink hotline to speak with a nurse who went through all her symptoms with me then told me to hang up and call an ambulance. The paramedics were awesome and since my sister vomited several times while they were checking her out they said she needed to go to the hospital. Yes, I am once again at a point were both my siblings are hospitalized and the cause is diabetes.

With my sister I knew what was likely happening as she has been through this twice before with the last one keeping her in the ICU for over 6 weeks. The signs can be hard to see because it often seems like just a stomach bug but it is not, it is diabetic ketoacidosis. This occurs when blood sugars are high over a length of time and they start basically attacking your organs. The symptoms can be frequent urination, extreme thirst, nausea or vomiting, weakness or fatigue, shortness of breath, and confusion. In my sister’s case the likely cause is an allergic reaction to a new diabetic medication that she started taking a few weeks ago.

But diabetes has so many other complications that can be life threatening. These include blindness (due to retinopathy), circulatory issues (like my brother), kidney disease, heart disease, nerve pain (neuropathy) to name a few. If you are someone like my brother (and our Dad) you get the whole gamut.

Diabetes is a major cause of death in North America but people need to be educated. People who are overweight can be at high risk for developing Type 2 diabetes but that is not always the cause. My brother, for example, was not overweight and had a very physical job hence his specialist believes that the disease was inherited from our Dad. A friend recently reached out saying he too had his leg amputated this past year. He had undiagnosed diabetes which I would suspect that if it got to the point of amputation he had diabetes for a long time.

So here’s my suggestion, every year get a physical and insist your doctor checks your glucose levels. I can tell you when I was diagnosed as diabetic I felt absolutely fine. I can also tell you that I have worked extremely hard at keeping my glucose levels within the normal range as much as possible (my most recent A1C was again in the normal range despite no longer taking any medication). If you are diagnosed, do everything you can to keep your glucose levels stable, lose weight (if needed) and get active.

In my perfect world, a cure will be found for both Type 1 and 2 diabetes so that we rid the world of this terrible disease. because diabetes sucks.

Yesterday I went for my early morning 8 km walk. All was going well until I got near the pier where there were literally dozens of Canada Geese on the promenade. While I don’t really like most birds I am terrified of geese. It all stems from growing up on a hobby farm where we always had geese and they were nasty creatures. There favourite thing seemed to be to chase you and if you fell they would jump on you and beat you with their wings. The worst one was my Dad’s ‘pet’ who if you got between him and my Dad would attack you. Today it was a much smaller group but when one of them started hissing at me I ramped up my pace and kept it up until I was more than a kilometer away from them.

Today was my attempt at a 2nd 10 km run. I got up and realized for the first time in many weeks that it was raining. Hmmm, I thought, should I just use the treadmill? I didn’t really want to do that as I have measured the route I run and know it is exactly 10 km. I put on my moisture wicking running clothes (along with a ball cap) and headed out the door. It wasn’t bad for the first 1/3 of the run as it was just kind of misting rain but then it went bad. The rain really started to pick up and remained that way for the rest of the run. However, I was determined I was going to finish it and I did.

The bad news is this idea of moisture wicking clothing, by time I got home I was convinced they were moisture absorbing clothing. I was soaked through every layer. As soon as I got home I apologized to the dog and told her there was zero chance on us doing our normal long morning walk because I was dripping wet and cold. Needless to say a hot shower would happen very quickly. I hung my ball cap on the back of a chair to dry and later saw water on the floor (sadly I immediately thought the dog had had an accident) and realized water was dripping off it (yes, that is what I mean by soaked).

The good news is my pace. I tried to keep a decent pace today after having picked things up during the rest of my training this week. Not only did I do the 1 km run from the geese but the last 3 blocks of my run I pushed it into high gear and sprinted. The end result was cutting my time down by 12 minutes compared to next week.

I will say that changing up my training schedule really helped. Because yesterday was a walk day my legs felt pretty strong today. I think I will keep to this schedule for a while.

There is a number of us who are early morning walkers along the promenade and we have gotten quite friendly. One older gentleman who uses a walker always makes me smile as he is quite funny (he told me he feeds the pigeons because that way they won’t poop on his head). Most of us give everyone a smile and a greeting. This morning I realized there a a few of the regulars who choose to scowl at friendly greetings. I thought it must be sad to be that unfriendly.

Today was my 8 km run. I got about 1/3 of the through it and thought I really don’t feel like doing this today. There was no particular reason why it was just my legs felt heavy and my head just wasn’t getting clear. I told myself I would get in at least 5 km and then I could walk. I started really focusing on the book I am listening to (Obama’s The Promised Land) and the next thing I knew I was at 6.5 km and was starting to run up the hill. At that point I realized I was going to run my 8 km because there was no point in quitting that close to the finish line.

During my cool down walk it became clear, I can get myself out of a running funk simply by keeping moving and stop focusing on the run itself. Once I let myself be distracted it was almost as if I forgot I was running. That allowed me to finish and feel good about it. I know I would have felt bad if I had given up today and am proud of myself that I just overcame my funk.

So, just keep moving and you will get there.

I had an awesome experience on Sunday. As things with my brother have been a bit stressful lately my sister and I decided to do something fun. There is a local craft brewery near us and we have talked for a long time about going there but just didn’t get around to it. So, we made the time and went to try some of their craft beer. I started with a flight of 4 different beers and chose one of them to have as a full serving. My sister found one she liked right away but still had to sample all of my flights. It was just a really enjoyable experience and since we had taken a cab to the brewery we decided it would be nice to walk home which just finished off this outing perfectly.

My coach has once again upped my training. This week is a 5km, interval training of 12 intervals of 10 minutes running and 1 minute walking, an 8km and then a 10km. Last week I did something similar though the number of intervals was only 10. Last week I did most of the work at the end of the week, intervals Thursday, 8km Friday and 10km on Saturday (note there is also 2 days of walking and I did the 5km on Tuesday). What I found by the end of the week was my legs were getting cranky. They weren’t overly sore, they just felt they had been worked too hard. As I also follow my coach’s instructions, I listened to my body and decided to regroup a bit.

I realized I just wasn’t giving my muscles enough time to recover which I need to keep this training injury free. When I got the training for this week I thought ok, we need to rework the schedule so that recovery is happening. This week I started Monday with the 5km (normally that would be a walking day), today I did my interval training (I should note I screwed up programming my Fitbit so ended up doing 10 intervals of 12 minutes of running but what the hell, I still did the same amount of time as I was supposed to), tomorrow I will do a long walk, Thursday will be my 8km, Friday will be another 2 hour walk and I will end the week on Saturday with my 10km. I think this is a better schedule for me as I am giving myself a bit of a break in between the harder training days.

The important thing is I took a step back and recognized that I needed to do this change. I’m pretty confident my legs will feel much better when the 10km is done this week but I will still accomplish all the training I need to keep me moving. I will also point out we are working on my speed and today I was averaging just over 6 kph which I am pretty happy with, far fewer people who were walking passed me on the promenade and that alone boosted my confidence.

It was a lovely morning for a run, a decent temperature with some cloud cover. The beach was incredibly peaceful with tide out half way and the water extremely calm. Sadly this got interrupted by the arrival of a very long BNSF train. When those trains come through they are quite loud so I have to turn off my book and if you don’t time things right you can’t get off the promenade until they have left. It was the only thing that disturbed the tranquility of my run.

This week my coach had me working on picking up the pace during my other runs, not the entire runs just segments. Today I decided if I was going to do this run I was going to keep it slow and steady. I started out reminding myself it is just 1 step at a time and I could get through but this run was intimidating as I was afraid I couldn’t do it.

By half way through the run I had a good sweat happening as it is a bit humid (made me glad I had worn my running skort). When I hit 8 km my quads were like, what the hell this is where we stop. At 9 km I started counting down the blocks I had left. The last 3 blocks I really picked the pace because I was so excited. Yes today Gwenne Farrell, former short, fat, chick ran 10 km and most importantly it didn’t kill me!

When I turned 55 I decided by summer I wanted to be able to run a 10k. Well, it’s summer and I have met that goal. Huge shout out to Coach Kelly for making sure this middle aged non-runner hit this goal injury free. We still have work to do but I know now we will get there.

I should note, I am pretty proud of myself. All the work, especially over the last few weeks, has paid off and though it was only 1 run I am now confident there will be many more to come.

Realistic goals can be accomplished at any age!

Once again we are going through a heat wave so I was up at 4:30 am and hit the road by 5:30 am to do my interval training. It ended up being perfect timing. As I was running along West Beach the tide was out. There standing on the sand were 4 gorgeous bald eagles! What an amazing sight to see first thing in the morning. Those eagles just put a huge smile on my face that I have been wearing all day.

Yesterday was a walking day and as I was about a 1/3 of the way through my walk I ran into my friend Al and we decided to walk together. Now Al walks faster than I do so he slowed down a bit and I picked my normal pace up a bit so we both were comfortable. I normally walk alone but it was really great to be walking with a friend. While I do enjoy my walks by myself as it gives me time to think but I have to say it was a nice change.

Al told me I had inspired him and that he has lost some weight. We covered a lot of topics during that walk including what it has been like going through a pandemic, our thoughts on vaccine hesitancy and how the past 18 months has either brought out the best in people or the worst. We also soon realized we both greeted absolutely everyone we saw and talked about smiling and saying hello just made you feel good. Yes, walking with a friend was a nice experience.

Because I enjoyed that walk so much I am now stepping up to help others. Through the senior’s society that I volunteer for I have agreed to lead a senior’s walking group starting in the fall. I’ll be assigned 3-4 seniors to go walking with each week and my role will be not just to help keep them moving but to guide the conversations. Of course I have opted to lead a moderate level group (I’m a little too advanced in my fitness level for the beginner group) and I can’t wait to start these new connections.

The past week has been very difficult for my family, especially my brother, but I have decided to learn as much as I can from this experience. Below, in no particular order, is a list of what I have learned.

1. A lower leg amputation takes only about 45 minutes. I was shocked at how quick the surgery was.
2. The day after surgery you will be sitting up in a wheelchair.
3. The first exercise they have you work on is standing up just using your remaining leg. My brother said this was really hard. I decided to give it a try recognizing my legs are pretty buff and my brother’s weight distribution is different due to the missing limb. Wasn’t bad with my good leg but it was a bit of a struggle with my bad leg.
4. The next exercise (day 2 post surgery) is learning to get yourself from the bed into the wheelchair on your own which apparently is also pretty tough.
5. When you first see the ‘stump’ it will appear more of the leg was taken than actually was.
6. If you are a support person for an amputee you need to be mentally strong. It took every ounce of my strength not to breakdown when I first saw that stump.
7. As a support person you need to know when to reach out for help. This isn’t just getting some mental support. For example, my physio was amazing explaining what to expect next for the physical rehab.
8. Physical rehab will take at least 4-6 weeks assuming all goes well. Fortunately they are trying to transfer my brother to a hospital that is only about a mile from our home.
9. Humour is a must. The medical staff completed the forms to get my brother a 3 month handicap parking pass noting his disability was temporary. I asked if they thought his leg was going to grow back in 3 months 😀
10. Running is a great stress reliever (words I never thought I would say).
11. My brother has a huge group of supporters who have reached out to him and offered to help our family with anything we need.
12. My brother is the strongest person that I know. He is patient, kind, calm and ready to do what it takes to eventually allow him to come home.

I know this blog is a bit off topic but writing all of this has made me feel better. These learnings are actually part of my journey now and I am committed to learning more as this rehabilitation process continues.