Yucky, sticky weather

It's supposed to storm all day, but it hasn't started, it is very sticky here...yuck... How do the animals do it? The deer seem to be fine and continue to multiply like crazy, so they must not mind. I left the picture to the right up because I see them every day, except you can multiply that by 2. In the early mornings, there are usually 4 babies hanging around. They are so darn cute, but once they lose their spots, I'm done with them. Just a nuisance they are.

Trying to cut back on eating, it's not easy as I'm hungry all the time. ran 6 miles this morning and sweat off a couple pounds I'm sure; I felt like I was in the tropics. It was too hot for the kids...they got an early morning 3 miles walk before the run though, so they are fine.

Pounding the pavement

I'm on Forrest's tail...thanks for the info on the turn, I made it:) I'm back on some sort of workout plan daily, hip hip hurray! ran 5.5 miles Thursday, 2300 meters swim on Friday, and 20 mile bike this morning. I even walked about 5 miles all days. My dogs are happy campers! Its super hot in NJ today, 95 and sticky, yuk. Hung 2 of my bikes in the garage today (I had the hangers for months, just never put them up). Now I'm working on indoor chores (and there is always chores).
chao for now

All work and no Play

Boy, have I been working my butt off lately (well, it's not as small as I would like it...hehe..). I have been working so hard, I didn't even read Forrest's blog all week until just now. Not like me. I can't keep up with work and meetings. Only one workout in an entire week, one 20 mile bike ride Tuesday. I was supposed to be resting anyway. Until today...I got the release from my cardiologist to workout harder. He up'd the darn Norvasc to 5 mg though....but I have a pretty good bill of health now. I got home and went right out and ran 5.5 miles with the kids. They loved it! Of course, it was a little too hot for them, but I went to the gorge so they could swim at the half way point. Happy dogs I have. The are truely enjoying the morning walks. That is the only exercise I have been able to keep up with and the dogs approve. tomorrow is the last appointment of my root canal....I envy Forrest for having a good appointment with Schoonover. Gold star.
See you in the morning...

Mother Nature strange

What a beautiful day it was in NJ today. Sun shinning, not humid, little breeze, high 80's, just doesn't get much better outside. The bummer is I'm working on a application/database upgrade still that started Wednesday night. Ugh..not many workouts at all.... After I start my new job, I will transition out of a technical role and therefore, this will be the last upgrade I suffer through technically! Since technology is so great now, I spent a few hours outside at least because wireless goes that far. I layed in the sun off and on and moved to the shade when I was hot. I had my laptop, cell phone and blue tooth on my ear. Man is technology great. Strange thing about my dogs is we were outside and they have the entire yard and where do they lay? 6 inches from me. After a few hours, i took a break and gave them baths in the backyard with the hose and that cooled them off too. Levi played chase along the fence with some deer and then I went out front for a minute and that is where the babies were. Left totally unattended. That brings me back to my title....mother nature...so they leave these babies all the time for the entire day. They just hang out in my yard...sometimes they sleep, and sometimes they jump and romp around. Wonder what the moms think they are doing? wonder if they are supposed to sit still and they get in trouble when the moms return and figure out they were playing?.....wonder wonder wonder.....

Up the mileage

Today I ran 6 miles outside! This was a real milestone...of course I had to walk some, and up all hills, but that is such a huge step lately. Still had chest pain, but I got through it. Hip hip hurray. I got light headed a bit, but that is a side affect of the meds. I missed swimming because I'm working on a large database upgrade and had to get up at 4am and worked until about 6, then fell asleep...woke up at 7:30, walked the dogs, went to work, and I have been working on this darn upgrade ever since. I drove home around 6:30 ate and walked the dogs and got back online. This upgrade shouldn't be done until Saturday night, so this will be a long couple days. I don't need to be online constantly, so when I kick off a job that takes a few hours, I sneek out:)
I think Forrest's photo is cheering me up already....I just adore dogs, I think I could have more. People would think I'm a crazy dog person though (one step above a cat lady). I even let my kids sleep in my bed, I know, spoiled just like Jessie Marie.
I hitting the breakfast dinner tomorrow to meet my friends; Go DeWitt baseball, wish I could have made a game (my father went to several though...)
Exercise everyone!

Blog, blog, blog...

Who even reads this blog anyway, Forrest is my faithful reader, and on occasion, sherquilter. As for the rest of my family, the intent was to encourange healthy lifestyle and good eating habbits. I think I've only dragged people down with my complaining, chest pain, etc. i'll try to be the normal perky person I used to be...maybe...I had breakfast out today, just cuz I wanted to. Eggs, potatoes, and toast, was yummy. Since I walked the dogs, I felt I deserved a little something good (I have that excuse every day now). Biked on the spinner at lunch, made it 45 min, but went very easy. Situps, pushups, etc. All good. Now after my walk in the morning I am stretching and doing situps too. I'm starting to feel like my Grandma who, bless her heart, lived to 92 and walked and did morning exercises up the day she died. I could be so lucky. She lived like over 30 years with a pace maker, so I've got nothing to worry about! I think she even ate bacon and eggs all the time too. So here's to Grandma, minus the bacon:) I'm going to get back in good health, I just know it.

Nice weather

Boy was it a nice morning today. I didn't get up until 6, but I still got a few miles of walking in with the dogs. Even though I don't like my new workout plan, the dogs are loving it. Every morning we walk around 5am (except for swim days), and they think it is the new way of life, so they expect it. They look forward to breakfast also asap when we get home. They sit by the food bin and wait. They still get walks at night too, so I am close to keeping up with Forrest. We walk about 3 miles in the morning and 2-3 at night. I have also worked myself up to 3 miles so far running. I still get a good amount of chest pain, so I can't really go any farther. Swimming bothers me the least, so I have been getting 3 one hour swims in a week. Not much biking because it is all hills here and they get my heart going in a bad way. I'm still taking Norvasc, but only 2.5 mg, so I don't notice a difference yet. It hasn't been a week yet though, we'll see. If arterial spasms are the true issue, that is just too scary for me to do any cold water swims, so that will put spring triathlons out for the future (guess that might mean I can't swim in Lake Michigan either). I pick up my new canvas for my pop-up camper this weekend and have someone from work coming out to help me put it on. It will be quite a task and it cost $1500, so we have to be careful with it. I better not get mice again.
Take care all.

Health check...

I haven't been posting much because I am not loaded with good news or good workouts. Only good news I have is that I got a job in the re-org here and I'm getting a little raise. I will not be doing technical work anymore (big plus). On the health side, we are still ever changing the diagnosis. Back to my cardiologist and he does not believe it's muscle related because it would only hurt in one spot and not my entire chest. He believe I'm having arterial spasms and that would be consistant with the cold water incident also. Only treatment for that is blood pressure meds, so I am going on Norvasc. I already have a pretty good low blood pressure, but he wasn't worried about it lowering it much more. Last time I went to see him it was 98/62 so he said at least I'm not stressed:) My chest CT scan results came back yesterday and they are normal/clear. Who the heck knows what is wrong with me. All I know is I used to run half marathon distance in the beginning of May and I can barely complete 2 miles now w/o chest pain. I have been swimming slow as I can keep my breathing easy and hear rate lower and still get a workout in, so I'm swimming 2 or 3 times a week. I can bike, but it is so hilly here, it's hard to keep my heart rate down going up. Mostly I'm walking the dogs for exercise now and I started walking a couple mornings a week as well as at night (except mornings I swim). This is killing my distance and racing. At this point, I'm not sure how I will feel for my next race July 27th. That race takes me about 3 hours..Olympic distance..., so I will need to be in good health for it (1500meter swim/25 mile bike/6.2 mile run). I'll keep you posted on the health. For now, I'm trying to cut down on the calories because I'm not running 8 miles at lunch anymore. Take care all...

Monday, Monday, Monday....

I am just waiting for something good to happen here....still waiting....and waiting...waiting
Chest pain? Still there....tooth pain? that one was new...ended up with a root canal this morning, it was not on the calendar at all. Apparently it was infected and I'm now on antibiotics as well as the much appreciated tylenol with codine. Now my face and chest hurt. Guess I shold be thankful nothing else hurts. I had to skip my morning swim today with the darn tooth pain. The weather isn't great here either....I'm sitting at home and my outdoor thermometer says 101 degrees at 2:00. Lovely, my dogs are hot outside and can't even walk them. It got down to about 75 last night and I woke up at 5:00 and it was already going up, was 80 by 6. I also noticed a big cut on Nikki's face this morning and it's oozing...it is either a bite or a strange scratch (only way i think she scratched it is her new thing of crawling under the deck....there is a cat that hangs out there, not friendly, and maybe that got her). Half her snout is swollen now. Great, probably a vet bill coming. I'm going to try to keep it clean and see what happens for the next day or 2. I'm full of good news today, not my normal chipper self. So much for healthy living. At least I made some oatmeal for breakfast and I have lots of fruit to eat for later (watermelon, cherries, plums, yum yum).
Take care all and I hope you are having a better June than I am!

Week is almost over

Boy, I can't wait for this week to be over. It started out bad with my half baked race on Sunday (at least I didn't end up in ER though). So, was too busy yesterday to go to the gym, so I thought I would job at home with the dogs in the evening. Yeah, until I started breathing hard and then all the chest pain came back in full force. So, I am to take it easy. We'll see how long that lasts. I got up at 5am for swim practice and since I wanted to swim easy and not do any sprints, my coach decided to teach me butterfly. That was funny, don't think I looked anything like a butterfly if you ask me. I felt like I was having convulsions just trying to make my arms and legs work together. That was not easy. Maybe I looked better than I felt? okay, maybe not. At one point, he had me just doing the kick down to the other end of the pool, and I yelled out that I didn't feel like I was moving and my coach said "you'rrrrre...not". better luck next time.
Forrest....I am back on the road looking for you, I'm just walking now. I have been up at 5 am all week walking the dogs before work and they are soooo happy. They love it. Today they looked sad when I left them without a walk. Life is rough when you are a dog I guess. So, I biked very slowly at lunch and did a class called 'butts & guts' and yes, my gut hurts, so it was better than nothing. Oh, one more test, CT Chest scan and that is scheduled for next Tuesday. Hopefully they give me the green light and I don't have any lung problems.
Chao for now....

Post Race Blues

Okay, so I'm not healed/better from whatever happened a few weeks ago. Worst race of my life! I wasn't nervous at all, I even had a big buldge in my tire that I only noticed in the morning when I was putting my bike on my car rack. It was for sure going to blow the tire; so as soon as I got to the race, I found the bike tent and they had a tire for me!!! So, I was all fixed up and ready to go, no nerves whatsoever. Got my wetsuit on (which took longer than expected...need to shed few more pounds) then headed to the beach. Orange cap...4th wave. Found some of my friends at the beach, then got in my corral of orange caps. Found a nice cute guy to flirt with, then we all headed into the water. Instantly I thought...this is colder than the reported 68 degrees...hmmmmm....I shouldn't be in water under 65....hmmmmm....I will just tough it out...and the gun went off for my wave. So, I just went slow and did back stroke because I already started to lose my breath and have some good chest pain going. Within 100 yards, it was getting worse and I was not warming up as I'd hoped. I made it to the second buoy when I realized it was still getting worse, so with no breath, I headed toward a kayaker. then, the boat folks came and picked me up. within minutes of getting into the pontoon, I was much better. So, I hung out with the 2 guys the entire rest of the waves (I think there was 13 or more waves). Toward the very end, we had to pull one other guy out, but he was against his will. young kid with too much pride....Oh well, I was among the living, so I was very content to be in the boat. Chest pain is very scary and so are asthma attacks; I wouldn't recommend either. Anyway, I enjoyed the day cheering for my friends and got another sunburn in yet a different tri top. I didn't feel well all day and that extended into Monday and Tuesday.

Here's a funny, believe it or not, this guy actually finished the sprint race...crazy, I know, but you see all types. (see me behind him? I look like a midget compared to this guy)

So, I went back to the doc today and I'm back on asthma meds daily and I'm going to get one more test, a chest CT Scan. If that is clear, he thinks my main problem is that I strained/pulled my 'intercostal' muscles which line your ribs. In cold water, they would easily spasm and cause chest pain and push me into an asthma attack. They don't heal quickly and hurt when you deep breath. Makes sense to me. I have already had these tests: a scan for blood clots, chest ex-ray, pulmonary function tests, ecocardiogram, stress test, and ekg. Most test invlove dis-robing and I've had enough of that, really.

Stay healthy everyone...eat healthy and exercise please!