The View

I had a doctor's appointment last Thursday that prompted me to learn about myself and better articulate what it is that makes me against drugs. I thought I'd share this because I suspect a lot of people have the same view and that it might be helpful for anyone else debating whether to take a pharmaceutical or not.

When the topic comes up, I typically just say "I don't like to take drugs" and that I prefer natural solutions, however, that's an oversimplification of what I really mean, which is that I don't like the things drugs typically stand for. These three things in particular:

1.) They don't solve the root problem, often "slapping a band-aid" on the situation by masking symptoms

2.) They have side effects and it's often a chemical completely foreign to the body

3.) The patient often becomes dependent on the drug (i.e. needing to take it for the rest of their life)
 

If a doctor is recommending that you take a pharmaceutical for a non-immediately-life-threatening condition, paus...

Ugh. It was all going so smoothly, but here I am facing some hefty bumps in the road. My bone density has barely moved, and I've given myself another stress reaction. What happened?!? Here's the scoop:

My health was returning, so I jumped, ran and lifted heavy weights. No problems! It had been 4 months since I stopped training when I had the initial stress reaction, my hormone levels are back to normal and my hips were feeling fine. No evidence of any bone injury. I had come to believe that my bone density must be coming back nicely, but I wanted to check it out and make sure before ramping up my training more, so I scheduled a DEXA bone scan.

The result: low bone density!

My reaction: "What?!?!? I only gained 9.7% in my spine?!? And I lost 4.0% in my femur!?!? I thought I was on the right track!"

The problem: There are lots of them. First, my expectations weren't set properly. I was under the assumption that I could gain tens of percents in my bone density within a year. My fault. I shoul...

I learned some helpful tidbits the other day from my doc, Todd Schragen at All-Pro Health, because I asked for a warmup routine that I could do before workouts and races. I had two reasons to ask for it: 1.) Some of my injuries have come from not warming up properly and 2.) Sometimes I feel that my glutes aren't firing properly. Here's more:

1.) Injury Prevention - Most people don't warm up properly. This is especially true for any of us post-collegiate athletes who no longer have a coach and team enforcing warmup everyday. Ever hop out of bed, throw the sneakers on, and run out the door for a 5 mile jaunt around the neighborhood? I have. When we do that, our joints and connective tissue are stiff and haven't had a chance to loosen up, and it makes us prone to injury. A bunch of those little nagging injuries (that sometimes turn into full-blown catastrophes) can be avoided by doing a simple warmup before SBR'ing.

2.) Fire Up Those Glutes - Another thing a warmup can do is fix a stubborn...

BOOM! My testosterone levels are way up and I'm feeling great. I'm making major progress down my road to recovery - the crazy fatigue I was feeling is all but gone, my libido is way back, and my body recovers from workouts and injury faster than last year. In even bigger news, we're having a baby!!! Those of you who listen to Endurance Planet will already know that from our latest episode. This pic is how we announced publicly (because once it's on Facebook, it's official?).

Her name will be Summer Elizabeth Bach and we're very excited to be bringing her into our lives after trying for a year (and having two early miscarriages). As you might expect, her arrival will affect my athletic plans, but I'll get to that in a bit.

I've been meaning to write this one for a couple of weeks now but things kept getting in the way, things that dudes with a lot of testosterone do...like lift heavy things, scarf down steaks, build things, start bar brawls, and women (well...woman in my case. Hi Lauren!)...

This blog is a quick one about how more is not always more. The "hellth hole" I'm climbing out of is proof of that, but there are many other instances in training and in life where balance is key! Read on...

When many of us first start this crazy sport, we're doing a few workouts per week and decide "hey, why not? It could be fun" and sign up for a sprint triathlon. Our first race sets the bar, and then a strangely large percentage of us "catch the bug" and want to see how much better we could do if we actually knew what we were doing, and trained...like, fo' rizzle. I know this because I had the same thoughts after my first triathlon. Here's a profile of what it looked like:

• Running shorts under my wetsuit

• Toe straps on my dad's 1980 steel-framed Peugeot that must have weighed 30+ pounds

• Rode in one gear the whole time because it was too hard to switch gears using the two levers by the headtube

• Floundering in the pool once per week, spinning twice per week, one devast...

I'm back from Santa Cruz 70.3 and here's a recap.

The big takeaway from the weekend was that training works! ha, I think we knew that right? I did minimal training leading into the event (1-3 endurance workouts per week for the 4 months since I learned the extent of my health issues) and it showed up in the numbers, even more so than expected. I overestimated my fitness thinking I'd be around 30-32 in the swim, and swam 33:09. I thought I'd be around 250w on the bike, but only averaged 233w. As mentioned in my blog pre-Santa Cruz, my goal was to run an experiment on the bike...to build throughout the leg and get a nice negative split. Did I accomplish that? Eh...not really. I figured I'd be around 250w overall, so I started with a target of 220w for the first 10 miles, then moved the target up 10w every 10 miles until targeting "Hard" for the last 16 miles. As you can see in my TrainingPeaks file, that plan went pretty well until mile 30 when I was supposed to notch it up to 250w, but c...

In a couple of weeks, I'll be "racing" Ironman Santa Cruz 70.3. I won't be racing, but rather "racing" because I won't even be finishing the race and because I'm going to use it as an opportunity to experiment. My doctor hasn't cleared me to run something as far as 13.1 miles yet, so I'm going to do the swim and bike legs and then drop out. While bummed to not be able to complete the race, the cost of still going out there is minimal, I would only be able to get a small fraction of the already-paid expenses back, and I'm excited about the abundant opportunities I've found in the trip to Cali. Here's my thinking:

• Friends - Before I gained full knowledge of my deep health issues, I had arranged to go out to race Santa Cruz 70.3 and stay with a long-time friend of mine from high school, who now lives near there. Instead of focusing so much on the race, I'll have the opportunity to catch up with him and his wife over a few beers (yes, even before the race!) and to go on a 30 mile ride w...

Nobody likes their time, effort or money to be wasted, and yet we do it all the time! Yes, sometimes it's beyond our control. You go to the DMV and there's no getting around it, you're going to have some time wasted, but I'm talking about those instances where you do have control (hint: that's nearly all the time). Here are some scenarios in my own training/life that many of you will relate to:

Physical Therapy - When I first started going to physical therapy to correct muscle imbalances that were causing knee pain after a bike crash in 2012, I didn't commit to the recovery. I did my prescribed PT exercises for the first couple of weeks but didn't see results, so I gradually stopped doing them as reguarly. I was supposed to do them 3x per week but I found myself doing them maybe 1-2x per week. I continued to not see results. Big surprise. At the time, though, I didn't know I was setting myself up for failure. I knew I was not doing quite all the strength sessions, but figured I should s...

I've been working as hard on my recovery as I did in my training, and it's paying off! Catch up on my health debacle by reading my first blog here, then read this update below.

Bone Stress Injury

I am officially off the crutches after using them for 4 weeks and weening off of them for an additional 2 weeks. I can walk around without any achiness returning in my hip, which I haven't felt in over 4 weeks. I can even ride my bike again! I did two rides, one in Lake Placid where I went for a "training camp," and one with the Mapso Tri Club near where I live, that were pretty hard and both over 50 miles. I'm happy to be off the crutches even though they did give me an opportunity to drop some jaws...I could walk without pain and without a limp, so sometimes I would be crutching down a sidewalk, and suddenly pick up the crutches and walk completely normally. Onlookers were shocked and it made me a little bit happy.

You may ask why I needed the crutches if I didn't have any pain. The simple answ...

"The next station is...Summit."

My eyelids slowly rise, contacts dry and stuck to my eyes. I grab my bag full of sweaty training gear and empty UCAN bottle from that morning's threshold ride at Tailwind Endurance and stand up. Whoa. I feel weak, and now a rush goes through my body as blood begins to circulate more rapidly again. I walk down the steps and off the train feeling terribly sluggish. Of course I do. I got up at 5am this morning, trained my butt off on the bike for an hour and a half, worked a full day and now here I am falling asleep on the train. I have a hill workout tonight that doesn't sound fun right now, but hey, I'll wake up after the first couple of miles of running.

I give Lauren a kiss and run out the door to meet Clyde at the hill, two miles away. My legs feel like jelly but that must just be the sleepiness wearing off. It'll go away like it does every time I do a run in the morning right after waking up. Not this time. I get to the hill and my legs still feel lazy....