updates

Well the Wasatch training is back on, in full force. Tuesday, did hill repeats (5 of them, with sets of 50 Hindu squats at the end of the even-numbered sets). Yesterday, did the Mingo loop. Using the heart rate monitor is the best thing ever, as long as your heart rate is in the desired zone, it takes the guess work out of the "should I be running or walking right now" decisions. I can feel my efficiency running up hills really improving, and at the end of a particularly long or steep hill, I seem to be getting my wind back very quickly. I can really open up the pace on the flat parts or even the slight uphill grades. Despite this, I don't seem to be able to run this loop any faster at all which is kind of frustrating.

In any event, I had a great day in the woods, it was one of those days where the running just seems effortless. Hopefully this kind of effortless running, on tired legs (from hill repeats the day before) indicates that I am improving. Things were cool until I heard what sounded like 15 or 20 "dogs" baying in the woods. There was no indication that there was a person walking a lot of dogs, so my guess was coyotes or wolves. I don't know if we have either of those around here, I would guess we probably do, although I don't know if they would ever attack a person. All the howling just abruptly stopped (after I had been standing frozen for about two minutes, trying to identify the nearest tree to climb in the event I got rushed by the pack), and that was pretty much the end of it, although until I crossed the water a couple miles later, I kept looking back to see if I was getting stalked.

Rode the bike to work today (an "active recovery" day, not sure if I believe in that yet but I need to get the hours in), tomorrow taking the day off to do a long run, then another semi-long one Saturday which will have to be all on roads due to travel this weekend.

All this running, biking, working out, getting ready for a baby, one would expect that I would be exhausted, right? Wrong! Unfortunately right now I am in the midst of a recurring problem that I have had off and on for as long as I can remember (5 years old and younger). Exhausted all day, can't think straight due to tiredness, then when its time to go to sleep, WIDE AWAKE!!! The longer you lay there, the more frustrated you become, and the more awake you are. It is a horrible cycle. I have been through bouts of this that have lasted literally for months. Once during a bout of this when I was probably 19 or 20, I ended up ACCIDENTALLY putting my hand through that glass reinforced with mesh wire (the stuff you aren't supposed to be able to break). I ended up almost cutting my left thumb off, it was pretty much just dangling there. I still don't have 100% mobility with it and probably never will. I don't think my parents believed for a second that it was an accident, but even I am not that crazy/stupid to purposely put my hand through glass. Anyway, I have literally laid there for sometimes 4 or 5 hours before, getting more and more frustrated at not being able to sleep.

By this point I have developed the habit (through no fault of my own) of laying in bed, and NOT falling asleep. I lay on the couch at night and fall asleep in 2 minutes, then when I go up to get in bed, wide awake. I have tried everything: hot "sleepytime" tea, warm shower, read a boring book, count sheep, you name it. At this point, I am going to pull out the big guns: melatonin "supplements" available at GNC. I really, really, REALLY hate for it to come to this. But I am not willing to let this thing run its course, which could take months. I am going to take a melatonin every night for a week and lay on the couch and read, then go upstairs and get in bed, at which point I should fall right asleep. Hopefully this will get me back into the habit of associating my bed with actually sleeping. I talked to a doctor one time who suggested this to me, and was even willing to prescribe sleeping pills to me in order to re-establish my routine.