Back online

I know my countless readers have been dying for an update.

We enjoyed a quiet Christmas up in Newcastle with Em as the focus of course. I didn't over-indulge too much but I also didn't work-out given that I kept fighting the cold.

Now we prepare for New Year's Eve tomorrow and then I get back into it. The cold is gone, so hence have all the excuses.

Happy New Year!

Sick

Not much happening right now, I've had a cold for a few days. I survived the Christmas party without drinking too much, but apart from that it's been a lot of lazing around. I feel terrible - lots of mixed symptoms so it's hard to figure out if this is just the cold/flu or if it's what the Doctor suggested as in "you'll feel lousy" on the new medication.

I feel lousy.

We've been doing a bit of Christmas shopping but other than that I've been sleeping, playing Starcraft and watching movies. Nothing fitness-wise.

I did a "Resident Evil" marathon (3 movies) yesterday and today I'm doing a "Harold & Kumar" marathon (2 movies). Not the most amazing marathons or movies, but pretty good for entertainment.

Oh and I sold the WRX today. Sad. I loved that car. It blew the radiator on the way to the car yard, shaving at least $1000 off the price, can you believe it? I think it was mourning, but given that I believe more in science and engineering, I'm certain that this is validation that it was time to get rid of that money-sink.

I've skipped my two last SAN workouts because I figure the last thing they want amongst post-surgery cardiac patients is a guy coughing and sneezing all over the place. I'll see if I feel better tomorrow.

Happy Holidays!

Performance enhancing drugs...

On monday I showed up for my workout at the SAN, put the heart-rate monitor on (taping the tabs on again, *sigh*) and hit the treadmill.

Part-way into my workout, the nurse came over and asked what was wrong with the monitor or my stats. Previously, I had a resting heart-rate around 105-115 and after a short walk on the tread mill would bump up to 130-140 pretty easy, reaching 160+ before the end of a 20 minute run.

She noted that the personal trainer had recorded my resting heart rate at 75 and after 5 minutes on the treadmill my heart rate was about 115.

I reminded her I was on my 3rd day of the beta-blockers and she was very impressed. "Well, they work!", she said.

I completed the whole workout with most levels or weights pumped up and really felt great. Reviewing my heart rate on the monitor, I peaked at around 135 but mostly kept well under 130. Indeed, the medication is working.

All in all I feel great. I've had a few dizzy spells and discomfort in the stomach, but when I get those feelings seems to be around 10-12 hours after first medication, so my theory is it's when the benefits are wearing off. I need to check that with the doctor.

Anyway, no specific runs for the 7km at this point, but I'm keeping up the SAN trainings and feeling good. In general I feel relaxed on the new medication, so I think things are good right now.

All that on top of a very stressful week at work - long hours, lots of meetings, lots of new things to deal with. Two days until Christmas holidays, woohoo!

I just took a few steps back from the front of the heart attack line.

New medication

Ok, last post was Wednesday, let's think of what's happened since then?

Hmmm, I'm starting to think blogs are more successful when short, so maybe I better try to be more 'daily'. That said, here's a long one...

Thursday I met with the Cardiologist to review past tests. My BP is high but that's not his major concern. My HR is very high and that worries him. Focussing on the HR, I have an average HR over 24 hours of about 105. That's crazy! I don't even understand it - I remember by heart rate as always being 'clock-work', as in 60 bpm.

Regardless, the Doc doesn't like the rate. He said it's like "running around everywhere, even when you sleep", can't be good.

So, he ran through theories:
a) Possible thyroid problem. Blood tests organised.
b) Sleep apnoea? Since this is the reason I had nose surgery, he agreed to continue pursuing this.
c) Something genetic that makes my heart run fast.

Well, since a) and c) are resolved the same way, the next action is clear. New medication. Beta-blockers that slow down heart rate, with the added benefit of lower BP as well.

He stressed to me that these pills will 'make you feel kind of unwell' and pointed out that the hardest part of his job was convincing people to keep taking medication that makes them feel unwell. We all think medication should make us feel well. Struggle through 1-2 weeks and I'll feel better, he assured me.

Given the warnings, I decided to start the first pill on saturday rather than friday.

On Friday, I did another SAN workout. Pushed the limits again, it was all good. What was funny on this case was that that the Cardiac nurse really wanted me to be fully monitored through the workout even though the tabs always fall off my hairy sweaty body. So, I borrowed some surgical tape and went into the men's room.

I taped myself up like crazy. I showed her when I came out and she was impressed but pointed out it would hurt to remove the tabs. The only goal here was 'stay connected', so I didn't care.

Short story...I worked out hard for an hour and didn't lose a tab. The nurse was very happy. I'll spare you the few moments of pain in the men's room later.

However, this all just confirmed that my heart rate is way too high. She's very keen to see me after the beta-blockers, because she's confident my HR will be way down.

Trying to cut this post short, let's jump to Saturday. I started my new medication with a lot of concern. Blood pressure is such a 'side effect', I can't really measure it, so who cares what medicine does to it, I guess. But heart rate is more key to me - lower my heart rate too much and it....stops. That sounds bad. Worse, I can check it anytime. I can measure any effect with a simple finger on the wrist.

Anyway, I took the medicine and tried to relax for a while. I couldn't relax. I had a host of symptoms I ran off to Suz including that I felt like my head was pounding, but in afterthought I think I was making it all up - I think this was just anxiety about the medication and whole process. Hours later, having gone about a busy Christmas-prep day, I decided I felt great.

And I do - I feel very relaxed. My HR is now down in the 70's again, whereas it was > 110 before. I never realised that I was feeling 'anxious' before, but I assume i was given that now I feel really chilled. It's good.

I think I'll sleep well tonight (soon - it's 1am!). Tomorrow I'll do a run and see how things go.

Something clever this way comes...

I wish I could think of something clever to post ;). Blackpetero always seems to.

Well, fitness-wise, I'm still doing "just okay" in my books. It's amazing to me how much 'life around you' is preventing 'the fire within'. How's that for cliche' world? I want to do more, but there's only so many hours in the day. I aim to change that. Not by increasing the hours in the day, but by prioritising better.

Anyhoo, I had appointment #3 at the SAN today and it all went well. I decided to take a bit of control and up everything they're putting me through. They're being too precious. For example, I've always had massive strong legs, so leg-pressing 10kg is just ridiculous, so I cranked it up more than a few notches.

Basically, I upped all of the settings on anything they put me on today and did fine. That said, my BP was still too high. It was a different cardiac nurse to the last two visits and this one said "Heart rate a bit high, really good workout, hmmm, you're breathing fine, talking fine, but what is wrong with this blood pressure??".

I must say, I still feel great. It's the silent killer, they say.

Oh well, appointment with cardiologist tomorrow, let's see what he says.

I want to do some non-fitness/health thing per post now, to compete with bpo, so I'll start below. I want to say I'm happy with my friends reading all this. Use the comment feature or not, the emails from you all are just as encouraging!

In my constant atheist/skeptic/science reading, I'm now reading a great book by Houdini called "On Deception" (with a foreword by the fantastic Derren Brown). This is a book written at best in the early 1900's (I don't have it with me to reference it and I'm too lazy to google, but Houdini died in the 1920's!) and it's amazing how he's attacking and debunking the same charlatans that we still face today!

One hundred years ago and not much has changed! Psychics, alternative medicine, mail scammers, it's all there! Yes, mail scammers, I kid you not. It seems to me that the schemes are all the same, just that technology (i.e. the internet) helps make the same lame schemes more profitable than ever. And fools never differ...

Oh and here comes Oprah to visit Sydney :(. One of the richest people in the world, a veritable juggernaut of promotion and a sad purveyor of the old 'woo woo'.

The day may come...

It's late, I'm tired...I might have enjoyed too many 'carbs' tonight...

But, I felt it's a good time to post my favourite inspirational speech!

Who better than Aragorn? (That has so much significant value in my personal history, you will never understand...)

They've disabled links, so google for 'lord of the rings aragorn speech'.

"The day may come when the courage of man fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship...but it is not this day..."

Wow.

That's all for tonight.

Time is a funny thing

It's weird how relative time is. I'm sure I'm not the first one noting this (*cough* Einstein *cough*).

I dial-in to my evening conference call at 11pm. I'm the only one there. A minute later, one of my Macs in the room declares "It is 11 o'clock" and then a bit later I hear others joining the conference - let's assume they think they're joining 'on time'. Then I hear a beep from my BP monitor, warning me that it's at the top of the hour, so it's about to start a BP reading...

That's so many 'time' references in the span of a few minutes, I'm not sure when "11 pm" is, really, except maybe I should be asleep right now...

Slowly, young Padawan

Ok, sorry for the Star Wars reference, I was watching The Big Bang Theory ;). I'm far from a Padawan in this game.

Anyway, a few days have passed. I ran/walked on saturday for 30 mins and measured just under 3km, so about the same pace as I've been doing. The big problem there was my legs. Pain, pain, pain. I don't know what shin splints feel like, but that muscle that runs along the front of my shin is absolutely killing me. I gritted my teeth through it and also I'd like to point out that I ran in the rain. That's a good mental state, right there.

I would say that apart from my legs, I felt great. My breathing and heart rate already have improved, I reckon.

Sunday I walked for 20 mins, that was all I could muster. Somewhere between 1.5 and 2kms, but I was really over the shin pain by then. However, as an added bonus Em and I played the Wii in the afternoon. Yes, it started out on the couch playing the new Donkey Kong, but we soon transitioned into Wii-Fit, running about and hula-hooping and so on. It's surprisingly active, I did get a sweat on and stopped thinking about my sore legs.

I was annoyed to find I still weigh precisely 128kg, so that's a net-zero improvement in 2 weeks. Wii-fit very unpleasantly declares "You're not going to meet your goal at this rate". Thank you, cyber-trainer! Grrr...time to work on nutrition. "Oh well, at least you didn't gain weight" I tell myself with a sneer.

Today I'm not working out. I've got a 24 hour blood pressure monitor on and it's too much of a pain in the ar....m to workout really. I can barely just move about - everytime it kicks off, the first reading fails because I'm digging about under my desk or something, then I have to sit still for the second reading.

I can't say I'm enjoying seeing the numbers popping up. I'll spare you the details, but I see a med-change in my future. I'm not sure how I'll sleep tonight, as it will wake me every hour :(.

Anyhoo, heading into the silly season now, it'll be a real challenge. Not only is time tight, but temptation is around every corner. Hopefully my early morning SAN workouts will keep me in check - I've always been disciplined when I know I have a morning meeting.

Check out this great video of an inspirational runner. From the looks of things, I'm starting out a bit fitter and a lot less heavy, but he's achieved some amazing goals that certainly widen the eyes.

two more "workouts" under the belt

Ok, the first visit the other day to the SAN wasn't too bad.

They gathered lots of information on my fitness and history and all that. Not fun to tick nearly every "risk factor" box, but that's the game I'm playing I guess. They put me through the typical treadmill stress test and I did okay. The worst part is always the shaving and ripping off of those damn tabs.

The result of the assessment was "lots to improve in the risk factors, plenty to do in cardio fitness, otherwise not so bad, let's lose some weight". I was more worried about my BP raising during the workout than they seemed to be.

This morning I went for the first 'official' session. Again, not so bad. They're starting me slow - the workout was far less than I do in a usual MA workout, but much more 'sustained'. The Cardiac nurse pointed out that my HR spikes a lot - it goes up fast when I exercise, then comes down pretty well again when I rest. I guess this is the 'anaerobic' aspect of my MA training -not a lot of sustained cardio, just lots of 'bursts'. 20 minutes on the treadmill at medium pace was far harder than cranking out some leg presses or bench presses.

I proved quite a problem with the heart rate monitoring. Despite the shaving, I seem to sweat some kind of oil and those tabs just pop off every 30 seconds or so, much to the distress of the nurse. Surely there must be better technology than this by now?

Anyway, that done, I continue from here. The trainers liked my fun-run goal but said the first part of the training plan should just be "daily, consistently". She said she wants me walking/jogging/running for 30 minutes every day, regardless of intensity or distance and we'll work from there. Either way, they said we had plenty of time to get ready.

Feeling pretty good at this point. This week I also cut alcohol consumption by half - next week I'll half again. This is Rob's "detox plan" ;).

I want to test the embedding of a youtube video, so here's a new band I've found recently and a favourite song of theirs to end out this week...surprisingly, not safe for work...

The slackness continues...

Not much progress since last post. I blame the weather. It's raining cats and dogs outside. I think it's impossible to run when the weather is so bad, surely? I'll get over these excuses eventually and harden up.

Tomorrow I face some demons as I have the first visit with the cardiology team at the SAN. I've been taking it easy on drinking recently so I should be okay there, but I've been working both sides of the clock again so I expect to be half asleep while they see how easily I break on a treadmill. Throw a punch at me, I double-dare you.

This morning we attended Em's end-of-year pre-school concert. So cute. All these little kids trying to do their best to sing loudly, dance and clap in time and keep a brave face on in front of so many doting parents. I thought it was funny that Em was leading her male counterpart all through one dance while he looked awkward and then I realised that pretty much all the girls were leading the dances - that's probably consistent up until the late teens, I reckon. Or well into our thirties?

"Away in a manger" didn't feature as prominently as Em had forewarned, which was good, because the whole little lord jesus bit always gets my goat.

Oh, that reminds me: Happy Hannukah, Ostrins. We love you guys ;).

That kind of an uncomfortable segway deserves an external link, here we go:

Hanukkah

An average week, but progress

Well, it's been a few days since my last update.

Wednesday and thursday I didn't get any workout in - slack bastard. I did keep my drinking down from normal levels at the social outings, so that's a win, but without any workout it's a small win.

Friday I finally fired up the limbs and got going. I did a 2km walk/run combination and it didn't feel too bad. I had told myself at the start that if I went over 20 mins I'd be embarrassed, so when I saw my helipad-watch ticking over 19 mins with a little to go I pushed myself above an acceptable heart rate and finished the 2km in 19:41. Goal-achieving but still embarrassing.

Still, I feel a lot better today. A little sore in the quads, but nothing major. 2km didn't seem that hard, I reckon I ran about half or a bit under, so I look forward to improving that on the next run.

Since I've skipped the training plan so far this week, I'll review it tomorrow and plan to recover or just keep working on into the second week. My nose should be okay to get back to kickboxing next week as long as I avoid getting hit, so it'll be pad and bag work for me.

I also researched Cardio checkup programmes and found a good one at the nearby Sydney Adventist Hospital (SAN). I called them and initially they said the programme was only for people who had already had 'incidents' or surgery and was aimed at recovery. They asked about my family history and when I said "My father died of a heart attack at my age", they said "you're in". I start there wednesday. They'll work with me on nutrition and monitoring my workouts under cardiologist supervision, so I reckon it's a good move. The more I can add to the fitness plan, the more likely I'll get something done.

Before the next run I need to read up on heart rate zones and programming alarms into my watch. As I workout, I want to work within limits and I'm sure I'll see my capability in those limits improve.

Oh, I did win at poker on wednesday too, so that was nice ;).

Well, not quite

Ok, didn't make the run today :(. Started very early on management calls, ended late and then had the dinner with the management team. On a positive note, I did avoid the copious amounts of wine drinking, so I call it a small win today.

Tomorrow is tough to fit something in as well, see how I go. From thursday I should be clear.

Gadgets at the ready

Every good project needs a gadget. "Sharp minds need sharp tools", I once heard someone (Rockoff) say.

So, I've fired up the Timex Ironman watch I bought on a whim while on my recent holiday to the US. I can hear Pete groaning as I type this ;). Here we go:



The time is wrong. That's because it seems to use the GPS to establish the time and at 11pm I'm too lazy to go outside and try to establish a GPS connection. This watch is *way* too complicated ;). I messed about with the buttons but I barely figured out anything. I'm going to need to RTFM.

I did manage to get one additional fitness data point from it: resting heart rate = 78 bpm. One the one hand, that seems high to me, but on the other hand I recently had an episode of tachycardia after my nose surgery and so I'm happier with 78 for now. It's a starting point.

I've scoured the neighbourhood and mapped out a couple of paths near home. One is conveniently precisely 1km from outside my door and back and it's fairly flat. Well, it's a bit of a downhill for the first 500m, then I turn and come back uphill, but the hill is quite slight.

The other goes from near my door and makes a full circle around the neighbourhood and measures at about 800m. It starts with a much steeper hill (quite steep), then goes down a small hill, up about the same and then all downhill for the rest.

I'm going to figure out how to use these paths in my training. First step is tomorrow: the training plan suggests I run an easy 1km, so I can use the first path for that purpose. I've not really figured out enough of the Timex yet to make good use of it, but I'll do the 1km anyway.

A plan...first day: rest!

Ok, we survived our 'Little Miss Sunshine' event yesterday. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I must say it showed tendencies...the little ones and the older ones were really good, but the whole "uncomfortable stages of pubescence" in the middle, dancing to the likes of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry seem a little out of place to me. I clearly wasn't the only one uncomfortable through some of the dances.

Em was fantastic - I was so proud of her and her group doing 'So Many Animals'. Em was dressed as a monkey which was appropriate given that we've always called her our cheeky little monkey.

Well, on to the 7kms planning. I downloaded the training plan from the official website to see if it might work as a guide and it looks pretty good. It's a 12 week plan and I have pretty much 11 weeks to go, so I figure I'll skip week 5 or 6 - probably week 6 because 6 and 7 are not too different.

I've marked this all up on a paper calendar (what's this "paper" thing, old man? surely computers can do "paper" by now?) and I'll track things from there for the time being.

So, today is day 1 and the plan says: "rest". What the hell kind of an action plan is that? I'm not kidding, go checkout the website yourself...day 1 is "rest".

Oh well, that seems achievable. It will give me some time to get to the next most important topic: gadgets. More on that in the next post.

This week I have 2 major challenges (well, 3 if you consider getting past the "rest" stage). Tuesday night is a management team dinner which historically involves lots and lots of wine. Wednesday night is our monthly work social event which historically involves lots and lots of beer (and poker). Let's see how well my nutrition improvements go this week.

I jumped on the Wii Fit last night to get a gauge of my starting weight (and I also ended up playing for a couple of hours with Em, which included a little bit of a workout).

Starting weight: 128kg. Heavy. Very heavy. But, down a few kilos from recent past and I'm glad to be starting under 130kg so that I can pretend I was never over...

First post, Day Zero

There are so many different cliche ways to start this BLOG. I thought of putting the old "one man, one goal, ..." kind of title in place but that sounded trite, as did the "One man's journey of weight loss" kind of thing, which is not too different.

Better to cut to the point, I reckon. I'm not happy with my health. Overweight, far from an acceptable level of fitness, I'm worried about being the next heart attack victim in my family. More on that later.

But I felt I needed a goal. Something tangible, something more than "get fit" or "eat well" or "lose weight" (even though "lose weight" is pretty tangible ;)).

I found that goal when the Sydney Morning Herald spam-mailed me to tell me about their Sun Run (http://www.sunrun.com.au). It's about 12 weeks away (I'll figure out the full details in due course) which is about the right size goal.

It's a seven kilometre run (hence the clever BLOG title) through the nice Northern Beaches outskirts of Sydney, so I figure it's a pretty nice run. Seven K's sounds like a lot to me today, but then on the other hand it sounds doable in a few weeks.

So, there's the goal. I'm calling today 'Day Zero', because I'll actively start a training plan tomorrow. Today will be a planning day, although I'm not sure how much time I'll have in the end because the whole family are off to Em's end-of-year Jazz Ballet Concert.

I can't wait to see my little one strutting her stuff on stage after weeks of practice, I just wish I didn't have to sit through a day of hundreds of anonymous kids doing the same ;).