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Day 91 – Vegan Goodies!

August 2, 2012 · by Julie

August 2, 2012
Thursday

The Training

Look! It’s Vegan Bodybuilder Me! 🙂

Okay, so I have a long way to go to lift that kind of weight, but way back at the beginning I promised you some tips and tricks about training as a vegetarian. To be honest, I’m not vegan – but I’m getting there and I keep a vegan kitchen at home. I still find it challenging when I travel and yes, my Barney Boots are leather, but I do what I can, when I can to live as cruelty-free as possible. I don’t preach, I just hope to set an example that others might want to follow, even if it’s one step at a time. (Like climbing that mountain, you know?)

It helps that I am in LOVE with Vega products. I found Vega about six months ago when I first started my journey to Everest-land. I was searching for a way to get more vegan protein and there it was – fabulous stuff! Since then, Brendan Brazier has taken off like a rocket with his Thrive books and Vega and Vega Sport line of vegan yummies. For two months I had Thrive Direct vegan meals delivered to my house and/or my hotel, but when my expensive transmission failed, I had to take a break. It sure beats the hotel food I’m stuck with now though, let me tell ya! I could starve to death eating vegan on the road. Hello? Room service? MORE VEGAN OPTIONS PLEASE! But I digress…back to the point.

I can find a few Vega products at my local Whole Foods, but come on now – chocolate coconut vegan protein bars?! Who wouldn’t want to give those a nibble? Whole Foods doesn’t carry them, so when I got a tweet about Vegan Proteins, I clicked on over. If you know me, you know that I am also a huge supporter of small businesses whenever possible. I love what these guys (and a girl) are doing! They’re vegan bodybuilders raising funds for a documentary and competitions, to get the word out that you can, in fact, be healthy and (super) fit, AND vegan!

But wait! There’s more! They’re also SUPER friendly, fun, and have incredible customer service. My FedEx guy dropped off a box (with that cute picture of me drawn on it) just a little while ago. I needed that chocolate coconut bar to have enough energy to dig through it all! Of course, what I ordered was inside and it was all perfect. Plus there were samples of a bunch of goodies I’d considered ordering (did they read my mind?) and handwritten, personal thank-you notes! Despite a long, frustrating day, I’ve had a huge smile all evening – this is the kind of small gesture that makes me happy, and makes me want to tell the world about a great business!

So – where do you get your protein? Give Vegan Proteins a shot. You’ll probably even get a great drawing of yourself and a good laugh! How can you beat that?

(And no, they had NO idea that I would be blogging about this. They didn’t know me from any other random California vegan protein fiend. Like I promised at the beginning, I don’t take free stuff and I write honestly about what I actually use and know.)

Now, I’m off to finish that chocolate coconut bar…but not before I take care of The Details. It’s off to the post office to send my final balance for the trek off to ACTIVE New Zealand. (Yes I’m going to the Himalayas, but they run fantastic trips in New Zealand and South America too!)

Whew! All that’s left is to keep training and then get on a plane! Yay! Kathmandu, I’m on my way! 🙂

Day 80 – On the Trail Again!

July 23, 2012 · by Julie

July 22, 2012
Sunday

The Training

Back in the saddle!!!

I still have to see one more specialist, but I am good to go to Everest Base Camp! It looks like I probably do, in fact, have a minor congenital heart defect after all. However, as far as heart problems go it’s pretty much a Best Case Scenario. It’s not going to kill me and it certainly explains a lot of issues I’ve had over the years that I wrongly attributed to various minor ailments: Climbing out of the Batoka Gorge in Zimbabwe? Asthma. (Nope.) Falling behind while trekking the Lares Trail in Peru? Altitude sickness. (Wrong.) Struggling on a climb in Malibu Creek? Allergies. (Definitely not.)

The good news is that with a couple of minor precautions – heart rate monitor, paying attention to my body’s signals – I can still climb to dizzying heights. I just have to be sure to slow down when my heart rate hits a certain point so I don’t actually get dizzy. I’ll never summit Everest (not that I was going to try,) and I’ll have to set my ego aside and accept that I’ll likely be the slowest person on the trek. But that’s okay. I CAN GO!!!!!!

So today, my friend Marian joined me for my first hike since this whole convoluted mess began. I’ll admit that I was a little scared. I didn’t really know what to expect, and I was glad I had a friend with me. In the end though, I had absolutely nothing to worry about. In fact, in the process of figuring out what was wrong I had a lot of tests – fitness tests included. As I was climbing up Water Tower Hill, I was thinking about my fabulous VO2 max and the fact that I am actually much healthier than most people my age. Between the positive focus and the rest step that another friend taught me as a way to increase my oxygen efficiency on climbs, I was literally jumping up and down doing the Happy Dance at the top of the hill – not even out of breath at all!

I have had this all my life. I have accomplished challenging climbs before, without even knowing I had any limitations. Why let the mere knowledge of something that’s always existed limit me now? Never!

See you on the trail! 😀

Day 70 – Wired Up!

July 12, 2012 · by Julie

July 12, 2012
Thursday

The Training

“Where’s your med list?”

I must have been asked this question five separate times within a couple of hours. Apparently, I’m one of the rare few who shows up in the cardiology department of a hospital with NO daily medications. That’s okay – I get my “medicine” the old-fashioned way and I intend to keep it that way, if at all possible. They don’t see vegetarians much here either, so I’ve learned to politely tolerate the mini-lectures on not eating cheeseburgers every day. Best to just smile and nod.

I spent a good chunk of today wired up, running on a treadmill (bras not allowed – a man designed this test, for sure!), checking out my heart on monitors, and laughing and joking with an amazing (and dare I say fun?) cardiology team at St. Mary Medical Center. I still need to wait for my cardiologist to read the results, but somehow I’m not too worried. My heart rate and blood pressure were exactly where they were supposed to be during the entire test, and they did exactly what they were supposed to do in different stages. My EKG was perfectly normal. My V02 Max surprised even me – it’s fabulous!

Of course, the cardiologist wasn’t actually there and without his interpretation of the results, I have no idea if the echocardiogram showed any abnormalities. I do know that it was really cool to see my own heart! It’s all there, and it’s beating. That’s good, right?

In any case, I’ll have a definitive answer next week. My money is still on allergies or asthma. Or maybe a cold I didn’t realize I had. Or a random carrot allergy, as one of my friends has put out into the universe.

But my heart? I bet it’s perfectly fine and ready to take me to Everest Base Camp!

Day 68 – Just Keep Moving

July 10, 2012 · by Julie

July 10, 2012
Tuesday

The Training

After a couple of really good runs on Friday and Sunday, I had almost forgotten that I have more tests at the cardiologist’s office coming up on Thursday. Today, however, my run on the treadmill at the gym wasn’t that great. In fact, it was awful. My heart rate spiked to 90% of my maximum just three minutes into a slow jog. I slowed down to a walk and brought my heart rate down again, then was able to run for ten minutes at an even slower pace before hitting a wall and watching my heart rate spike again. After that, I slowed to a walk, cranked the incline up to 10% and walked out the rest of the hour. Clearly, something is still very wrong.

Right now, I’m facing my appointment on Thursday with mixed emotions. I’m both terrified and hopeful. I want an answer, but I’m hoping for a simple problem with an easy fix.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep moving. One foot in front of the other, even if it has to be super slow. Just keep moving. After all, that’s how everyone gets to Everest Base Camp, right? And I’m still determined to get there.

Day 60 – The Heart of the Matter

July 3, 2012 · by Julie

July 2, 2012
Monday

“You’re way too healthy to be in my office.”

Well, yes. I think so too. But here I am. I’m consulting with a cardiologist, while the trip to Everest Base Camp weighs heavily on my mind. How did I get here?

It all started about a month ago, on a group hike, when I became dizzy and extremely short of breath on an uphill segment and just couldn’t keep up. Or maybe before that, even, when my ankles started swelling up like balloons after relatively short flights. The pollen count was really high the day of the hike, and since 2004 I’ve been diagnosed/undiagnosed with asthma a couple of times. Whether it’s actually asthma or just allergies seems to remain an open question. In any case, despite running and hiking and all that, I’ve been having trouble increasing my cardio fitness significantly. In fact, I sort of appear to be going backwards, able to increase my endurance but only at slower jogging speeds.

So I thought it might be a good idea to see my doctor. I figured I’d walk out with a new inhaler and maybe another prescription for Singulair. Instead, she took about 10 seconds to tell me that she was sending me to a cardiologist. Granted, I showed her these photos taken of my feet after a four hour flight. Plus there are other risk factors as well – I had rheumatic fever as a child – so I understand her concern. And I wasn’t exactly thrilled with elephant cankles either. (Compare this to the photo of my feet on Day 7.) Still, I didn’t expect the next words that came out of her mouth, “symptoms of congestive heart failure.”

WHAAAT?????

I’m sure she saw the look on my face, and she quickly tried to reassure me by telling me that yes, it’s usually an old person’s problem, but she had a seemingly healthy 30 year old die in front of her from it once so young people can get it too. Um. Okay. That doesn’t exactly make me feel better. Now, I do medical sociology and conversation analysis for a living. Doctor/patient interaction is something I’m extremely familiar with from a research perspective. And let me tell you, that was just about the worst bad news delivery I’ve ever heard.

But there it was.

Later that day, I went to the lab, became a human pin cushion, dialed back the intensity of my training for now and…waited.

Today, the news is good. It is NOT congestive heart failure or any other obvious horrible heart condition rearing its ugly head. Still, there is a murmur and more tests next week should give us a much better idea of where things stand. In the meantime, I have not been exercising outdoors. I’ve been sticking to the treadmill at the gym, and to a nice, slow jog. My ankles are fine. Most days my breathing is fine. I still wonder if it’s just allergies or asthma, and if that ends up being the verdict I will be really upset that our medical system put me through this stress. The first day, I was in shock. The second, I cried. Now after hearing that all my labs are perfectly normal, I’m getting angry – at myself. I wonder if I should have even bothered to go to the doctor at all. I wonder why when I was a bit younger, similar symptoms were diagnosed as asthma and a low resting heart rate was considered a sign of fitness, not illness. I marvel at the lack of communication between my doctors and the lab and the insurance company. It seems like this process is taking so loooong and for the first time ever I feel like a collection of disconnected symptoms rather than a person. I wonder if a more holistic approach would feel any different, or have a different result. I wonder if something one doctor or another didn’t bother to ask could be important. I spent maybe 10 minutes with each of them, max.

All I can do now is wait, and hope that this was all for nothing. Hope that they freaked me out and caused a couple of weeks of stress for absolutely no reason at all. Because really, once the wheels of Western medicine are in motion, that’s the best case scenario. That I stressed out, took tons of time away from work, got pricked by phlebotomists who left week-long bruises, spent a lot of money, and in the end I come out the other side with all the tests negative and nothing objectively wrong, even though my ankles still swell and I can’t run faster than 4mph anymore. That’s the BEST thing that could happen. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

For now? Everest Base Camp is still ON! My cardiologist didn’t bat an eye, tell me to stop training, or give me any lectures on high altitude trekking. We’ll see what happens next week, but for now it’s a go and I intend to keep moving forward – even if it’s just at a slow jog!

Day 21 – Catching Up

May 28, 2012 · by Julie

May 25, 2012
Friday

The Training

I fully intended to get to the gym today, my first day back at home. I really, really, REALLY did. Alas, it was not to be.

Here’s what I had to do today:

Pick up my car from the dealership, which is an hour away from my home. Yay, new transmission! Boo, half a day gone.
Sort through my 18 inch stack of mail (not counting the Yeti Bobblehead I put on top and the beautiful scarf my mom sent me from Italy, which I opened right away) and pick out important stuff that MUST be handled before the long weekend. Handle it.
Go to the bank and deposit the checks that have been sitting in my mailbox for two weeks. I really wish my clients would use electronic transfer, but they don’t.
Pay bills. Make sure nothing is going to bounce since my checks have been sitting in my mailbox rather than in my bank account because there was nobody here to deposit them.
Get groceries, since the wine and strawberries my house-sitting friend kindly left for me are pretty much my only current food options. And a few onions. Since onion and strawberry soup sounds disgusting – even with wine – I need to hit the store. Soon.
Go to Target. Buy a new microwave and basics like toilet paper and shampoo, which are both running dangerously low.
Go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. Again, this is one of those things that’s tricky due to my travel schedule. My insurance will only allow a refill to be processed a few days before I’m out of meds, and my pharmacy will only hold the prescription for 10 days after it’s filled. Which means that if I’m traveling for more than a week, I have a very tight window to pick it up before running out. This time, I have two days. Luckily, it’s not a critical prescription and I will not die if I don’t get it in time (or ever, really.) But still. It’s a pain.

So. No gym. At the end of the day, I do have food, toilet paper, a running vehicle, and money in the bank. Plus a beautiful Italian scarf from my mom. So that’s a good day. But no gym.

The Motivation

I also had a conversation with my house-sitting friend today about why I do these crazy trekking adventures. It’s a valid question, especially since one thing that I haven’t shared yet is that I have a weird sleep disorder. It’s a circadian rhythm disorder called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. What that means is that I’m constantly jet-lagged, even when I’m not traveling. My body’s circadian rhythms – sleep, digestion, peak performance (both physical and cognitive) – are delayed by 3-4 hours each day, compared to what is considered socially normal. My normal sleep time is 1-2am to 9-10am, which is medically considered a moderate delay, and is significant given that most work days begin just as I am waking up.

I also have a very hard time adjusting to different time zones – especially moving east, and especially if it’s just a few hours. I find it easier to adjust to the other side of the world, as I can just stay up longer which is much easier than trying to get my body to fall asleep and wake up earlier. Still, it’s a challenge. I use various combinations of melatonin, light therapy, and behavioral coping strategies to maintain a relatively normal life. Many people with this condition have a greater delay than I do and are not able to maintain anything close to a normal social rhythm. There’s also a related condition known as N-24, which involves a longer circadian rhythm and sleep that rotates around the clock. These conditions can be disabling. The nausea upon waking that we call a “sleep hangover” is only one of many daily challenges. I am one of the lucky ones, as I can fight the delay for short periods of time as long as I have rest time to catch up afterward. Still, it’s hard. Living with a circadian rhythm disorder can be compared to someone with a normal rhythm having to wake up at 1 or 2am every single day for the rest of their life. I know this would suck because I hear all of you complain when the time changes by a single hour! Imagine that feeling multiplied by three or four, always. Every day. Forever. I have no sympathy when Daylight Saving Time rolls around. None.

So why do I travel and make it even harder? Why do I want to haul myself out of a sleeping bag at Oh Dark Thirty for weeks on end, for fun?

To be honest, the answer is that it’s not just for fun. I trek up mountains in challenging conditions because it helps me deal with my DSPS on an everyday basis. It has taught me to keep moving when I’m sure I’m going to collapse. I’ve learned that even when my body screams “NO MORE!,” I can still find a little bit more. I’ve learned that when a porter is at the tent door with hot water and tea at 4:30am, I might be so exhausted that I greet him in tears, but I can, in fact, will myself to unzip the tent door and still find the energy to thank him. The goals that I set for myself on the trail – “I’m not stopping to rest until I get to that rock,” – have given me the courage to set goals in my everyday life. “I can get through that 8am conference call, then I can go back to sleep.” My brain doesn’t work very well before noon. I’ve learned to accept my limitations and structure my days in a way that the heavy lifting of my job can often be done during the hours where I’m sharpest and my mind is clear. Trekking has helped me get through the times when that can’t be done. I’ve pushed through physical pain and discomfort before, and I know I can do it again.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually I will be standing at the top.

Just keep moving Post-Its off the to-do list on the wall and eventually I will get to 2pm and the nausea will go away and my brain will kick in.

That said, I want to acknowledge again that my delay is moderate and under the right circumstances, I can shift it by an hour or two for very limited periods of time. Many people with circadian rhythm disruptions are not able to will themselves out of bed or unzip a tent in the early morning hours or conduct an 8am conference call no matter how much they want to, how hard they try, or how many treks they attempt. I am grateful every day that with difficulty and a lot of hard work, I can manage to function in “normal” time on a short-term basis. I am one of the lucky ones.

Waking up is still the hardest thing I do each day. Adventure travel – and trekking in particular – has taught me to deal with adversity and to keep moving forward through the pain and discomfort. That’s why I do it. Well that, the breathtaking views, and the porters who bring me hot tea. It’s complex. And worth every painful step.

Day 14 – Sleepless

May 20, 2012 · by Julie

May 18, 2012
Friday

The Training

This is what my night looked like last night:

9:20pm – Arrive back at hotel after work, do a bit more work before packing and preparing for a 3:30am shuttle pickup
11:50pm – Smoke detector starts chirping every 30 seconds
12:25am – Hotel staff fixes smoke detector
1:40am – Super Shuttle calls to reschedule shuttle pickup for 4:00am
4:25am – Shuttle actually arrives

I get exactly ZERO hours of sleep. None. At all.

I arrive at my next location mid-afternoon and all I want to do is be thankful that I was able to drive the hour from the airport safely and then crash in the comfy hotel bed. Hard. And sleep for days.

However, one problem…it’s a running day. I have a headache from sleep deprivation. I have no energy. The very last thing I want to do on the planet is run. I am flat out exhausted. But the hotel has a nice gym, and I know this may be my last chance to get in a good workout for a few days. My next location is an unknown quantity for the most part, but I’m pretty sure there’s no gym.

So I tell myself that it’s not a sleep deprivation headache, it’s an altitude headache. I use one of the bottles of water in the room and mix it with the one random pack of Vega On e that I found in the bottom of my backpack, since I haven’t had a chance to eat either. (I always pack Vega One and Vega Recovery, but this time they’re still in the kitchen next to the forgotten energy bars. I’m grateful for that forgotten emergency pack.)

Then I go down to the gym and I run through the discomfort and exhaustion and pain. By the time the run is over, I feel SO much better! I don’t even want to sleep. I’m energized and my headache is gone. I am amazed. It strikes me that this is what I’m really training for – I can’t actually train for altitude, nobody who lives at sea level can. What I can do is train myself to keep going through the hard parts. I can teach myself to get up when I’m exhausted and when I hurt and when I haven’t eaten or slept. I know from my trip to Peru that those things will happen on the trek, just as they happen in my real life. If I can’t handle them now, how will I handle them later?

So I ran.

The Gear

I think I’m in love. When I ran today, I tried out one of my new GoLite running shirts. Oh. My. Not only are they environmentally friendly, but the fabric is super, duper soft and comfy – and there’s the perfect little hidden key pocket on the side. That was a surprise to me, as I hadn’t noticed it in the store. And guess what? It’s exactly the right size for a hotel room key. Score!!!

I want one of everything they sell. Seriously. This shirt is that good.

Day 11 – City Streets

May 17, 2012 · by Julie

May 15, 2012
Tuesday

The Training

Today was a rest day, which is good because I also worked 15 hours today. The good news is that I have two field sites here that are each about a mile from my hotel. I intentionally don’t rent a car, so I spent a decent amount of time today walking in between them. Even on my rest days I try to remain active. “Rest” just means that I’m not doing any intense workouts and I’m giving my body a chance to recover from the last one. My body can still recover while moving normally, so I try to fit in some type of moderate activity whenever I can.

Day 8 – The Gym

May 14, 2012 · by Julie

Saturday
May 12, 2012

The Training

I’ve been trying to hike on weekends, but this weekend it’s just not going to happen. I had a hike planned for today but one of my friends has had the worst week ever, so I put off the hike to have lunch with her instead. I figured I’d meet her and then walk to the gym after lunch. She ended up working late, so that plan fell through without enough daylight left for a hike. The gym it is.

Here’s one problem I have with gyms – they close too early. I am not a morning person. I don’t care if the gym opens at 4am. I like to work out at 8 or 9pm and gyms that close early do me no good. The Belmont Athletic Club is usually open until 10pm, but only until 8pm on Saturdays. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it with enough time left for a good workout, but I did!

Today was Week 5, Run 2 and every single run is kicking it up a notch now. This one was tough, but I made it through without walking which was quite an accomplishment for me. The hard part about running at the gym on a Saturday night though is that I sweat. And I live close enough to the gym that I’d rather just walk home and shower in my very own shower. This means that on my way home from the gym in my friendly little beach neighborhood, I am likely to run into someone I know. If not someone I know, I’ll still run into the whole Saturday night crowd with everyone all dressed up for the restaurants and bars on 2nd Street. This sucks when I’m in gym clothes, no makeup, stringy post-workout hair, and my face completely red from a hard workout.

I’ve planned a course between the gym and my house that minimizes the likelihood that I’ll have to interact with the Night Out Crowd directly. My biggest challenge is getting to the end of the block that the gym is on, since it’s right in the middle of the nightlife. But if I go to the left, cross at the light before the restaurant, then walk on the other side of the street until I get to the residential area, I miss a lot of the activity. There are always fewer people walking near the banks, the dry cleaner, and the mobile phone stores than near the restaurants and bars. This route is still dangerous though, as it takes me past Frosted Cupcakery and SuperMex, which are two of my biggest challenges along the way. Getting past them is like getting past the First and Second Steps on Everest. Okay, well, maybe not quite. But it’s tough, let me tell ya!

Today, I made it through the gantlet relatively unscathed, although I did get a few funny looks from neighbors walking in the other direction, all dressed up for a night on the town. Doesn’t matter though. I made it to the gym. I ran. That’s all that really counts. 🙂

Day 7 – Foot Massage!

May 12, 2012 · by Julie

Friday
May 11, 2012

The Training

Today is a rest day, but it’s also Foot Massage/Pedicure day! This is sort of for work, since I’ll be meeting with clients while wearing open-toed sandals over the next two weeks, but during the process I realized how critical it is for training too.

My feet were a mess.

I felt terrible for my manicurist at Bliss on Broadway, who so tactfully informed me that in just four weeks I’d developed more calluses and blisters than she’d seen on people who hadn’t had their feet taken care of in years. She carefully cut away the dead skin around the healed blisters, scrubbed around the not-yet-healed blisters, and smoothed the calluses until my feet were baby soft again.

The true Bliss though? The foot and calf massage. I imagine this is what nirvana might feel like. Oh. My. My feet and calves were so incredibly tight that every touch hurt at first, but with an expert amount of pressure she worked through the knots one by one, releasing my muscles back to normal. I started to wonder whether I would be having so much trouble with my left heel if I’d had a foot massage before and after my first attempts at breaking in my new boots. Too late now, but going forward I’m definitely going to try to do this more often. Running and hiking are killing my feet.

For now though, my feet are relaxed, knot-free, and pretty. My clients won’t have a clue I’ve been beating them to death while preparing to climb mountains. Excellent.