*Brian Regan voice* “ARE THESE MY GLASSES??!?!?!?!”
I got my new fancy-shmancy “your eyes are wonky so here are some prisms” glasses!
I guess it’s kind of dumb to blog about these today because I’ll probably take a while to get used to them, but I’ve got them on and am ready for the magic.
Update 1: my depth perception is whacked out. At least for far away things.
Update 2: after using my computer and doing stuff like my French lessons on my phone, I am noticing that the text isn’t jittering around like it used to. Which is nice.
Update 3: I haven’t had a headache (except for a weather headache due to major pressure changes) since I’ve started wearing these.
Update 4: I read in the car for FIVE MINUTES and only got slightly nauseous. I can usually only stand a few seconds before I want to puke.
Update 5: depth perception is still a little wonky, but I think it’s getting better.
D-D-D-DISTANCE
Here’s my Sunday-through-Sunday distance (in miles) this week:
- Sunday: 31.35 running, 4.59 walking
- Monday: 20.14 walking
- Tuesday: 20.05 running, 4.93 walking
- Wednesday: 20.17 walking
- Thursday: 26.24 running, 4.17 walking
- Friday: 20.07 walking
- Saturday: 10.1 walking (off day)
- Today: 26.34 running, 4.28 walking
Total: 192.43
Somebody has to do it.*
*Absolutely nobody has to do it; I’m just insane.
Claudia versus…Eyesight? I Guess?
So it turns out my EYES ARE WONKY.
Story time:
Nate and I went to the eye doctor today because it’s been like three years since we last went and he needs new frames. I figured I had no change in my prescription because last time the change was miniscule (my eyesight actually improved (??) but there was not enough of a change to warrant a new prescription) but I went anyway just because.
They do the eye exam and, as expected, no change at all. Then the eye doctor asks me two questions:
“Do you frequently get headaches?”
“Do you experience motion sickness?”
My answer to both of those questions was yes. I get frequent low-level headaches (which I’ve always assumed was just due to the wacky weather here) and I have very bad motion sickness, especially when trying to read in the car.
So he goes “interesting” and I think what do you mean ‘interesting????’ and he takes me into a different room to conduct further tests.
The “further tests” involve wearing a VR headset and having to focus on a little yellow dot while a bunch of other stuff was going on in the VR world. After the test was done they show me through the VR headset that my eyes don’t freaking point in the same direction and it messes with my focus (apparently I was very close to the upper threshold of misalignment that the test could measure, so that’s great). I’m focusing beyond what I need to focus on, especially when I’m looking at something up close. This causes double vision and consequently makes my brain continuously compensate for said double vision. This causes the headaches and the motion sickness, among other things.
So the eye doctor said that they have this thing called Neurolens, which is some sort of progressive prism lens that’s really supposed to help with this. They’re expensive, but he said that he’s had quite a few patients who tried them out and not one has asked for a refund after the 30-day trial.
I did some reading about them and it sounds like a lot of people really do benefit from them.
So I’m going to give them a try. It’d be nice not to have near-daily headaches and to be able to read in the car for more than 30 seconds before feeling nauseous.
We’ll see! I’ll let y’all know, even though I’m sure no one cares.
Halfway Mileage Update
It’s the end of the sixth month of the year, meaning it’s time for MORE MILEAGE STUFF!
Excited????
June mileage: 671.07
Monthly average mileage: 629.03
Current end mileage with this pace: 7548.3
AAAAAAAA IT’S ABOVE 7,500! Now I have to do it. I’m going to have to really push these next few summer months so that I can have some leeway when school starts and when the bad winter weather hits.
LET’S DO IT
More Anosmia Stuff Sorry Not Sorry
Here’s another congenital anosmic giving his perspective on smell (or lack thereof).
I know nobody else cares, BUT I DO
May Mileage Wrap-Up
(This year is going fast as hell, isn’t it?)
The fifth month of the year is done, so let’s check out that mileage:
May mileage: 673.99
Monthly average mileage: 620.62
Current end mileage with this pace: 7447.44
THAT IS SO DANGEROUSLY CLOSE TO 7,500 HNNNNNNNNGH
(Also…could I do 700 miles in a single month? Do I dare try?????)
Age of ULTRAmarathon
May’s ultramarathon COMPLETE!
I haven’t done this route in a long time (not since late last spring, I think); it’s nice if you’re not doing it too often. It gets old pretty fast, though, which is weird ‘cause it’s a nice flat route with not too many people once you get past the Bird Sanctuary.
I think the path grading past there is a little weird in a certain spot, though. It always throws me off a bit.
Also, I’m slow as hell.
Today I Had a Really Bad Run
I haven’t had a bad run in a long time.
I haven’t had a run this bad in a long, long time.
Like…I can’t even remember when I had a run this absolutely hard and miserable. I wanted to quit like five separate times, which is a pretty big deal, because I never want to quit.
The worst thing about bad runs is how they psych me out for my next run. As illogical as it is, I always catastrophize it and think that I have lost my ability to run longer distances and now all of my runs will be miserable.
UGH. I hope Thursday’s run will be better.
(Edit: it was great, hahaha)
Mileage n’ Migraine
Ahoy, butt-bombs! I had a migraine late last night, but I’m only including that info for my own reference; the main point of today’s blog is the fact that it’s the end of the month, so we’re tallying the monthly walking/running mileage to see if I’m still on pace for 7,000 miles for the year.
April mileage: 641.63
Monthly average mileage: 607.27
Current end mileage with this pace: 7287.24
That’s good! Gotta keep it up, though, or do better.
Leeeeeeeeet’s ULTRA!
Today was PERFECT running weather so I ended up doing a 50k.
I think the plan this year will be to do at least one ultramarathon (50k+) per month, weather permitting. I missed February because weather did not permit, but I think I got January and I know I got last month.
So yeah.
I Have a Runner’s Body
Features include:
- Janky toenails
- Missing toenails
- Weird seasonal tan lines
- Garmin tan line that will never, ever fade
- Chafing tape residue
- Callouses in places that I never thought could have callouses
- At least one Band-Aid somewhere
- Shaved legs for AERODYNAMICS
- Backwards hat for AERODYNAMICS
- Extremely high heart rate spikes when I realize I can’t outrun an angry goose on the path
- Scars from embarrassing falls
- “Running is my whole personality” personality
- The existential angst I keep thinking I can outrun
- CALVES
Do You Run? Do You WANT to Run?
Check out this little wiki by Jonathan Savage (“Fellrnr”).
There’s a lot of really good info in here about running and everything related to it. He’s also got a pretty good sense of humor about things, too. For example, the third “Possible Cause” in the “Fatigue and sleepiness” ultramarathon problem:
PMLE: It’s Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
Well, I guess it never left.
It’s not something that just goes away, from what I’ve read.
Which is why I had suspected that I never actually had it in the first place, because I had no symptoms of it over the past few summers.
But cue my first run in the early April sun today and guess what happens?
PMLE symptoms! The itching, the redness, the basketball texture on my forearms. The eruptions. Very reminiscent of…whenever the last time was I had symptoms.
I strongly suspect that this thing has been “dormant” the past few years because a) I have been consistently wearing my long sleeve sun shirt thingy on my summer walks, and b) most of my summer runs have been at like 2 AM where – surprise, surprise – there is no sunlight to trigger the eruptions.
So yeah. I’m assuming that will happen now when I’m out in the sun for a while, at least until my arms “harden” or I start wearing my sun shirt. I guess we’ll see.
Fun times.
I Think I’m a Saucony Ride Girl Now
For the foreseeable future, at least. The Kinvara 15s still aren’t available up here yet, and at this point I don’t know if I can trust the Kinvara quality. The 14s were really, really bad. The Rides are working well for me. I ran my first marathon in the 17s and everything felt good! These also seem like they’re more durable in the Kinvaras, meaning they’ll last longer and I’ll have to do less frantic shoe hoarding (or will I???).
I’m still a little sore in my knees and hips after my walks/runs, but I think that’s just because I’m so used to the Kinvaras. I wore them exclusively for about twelve years, after all. The Rides have a slightly different shape to their soles and I can tell they affect my gait differently.
Anyway. I know nobody cares, but that’s where things are standing with the shoe situation for now.
March Mileage Wrap-Up
March is DONE! Let’s mileage.
March mileage: 627.42
Monthly average mileage: 595.82
Current end mileage with this pace: 7149.84
Back above the goal of 7,000 miles! Let’s keep up this pace, huh?
Oh my GOD I love running
It’s one of my top three activities at the moment.
(The other two activities are crying and watercoloring.)
The end.
Masking: 2025 Edition
I am still very COVID cautious. Among other precautions I try to take, I wear an N95 in every indoor situation except for our condo (unless someone unmasked has been in it recently, like a plumber or furnace guy) and my office (where I have an air purifier and don’t let anyone else in there). When outside, I still try to stay as far away from others as possible and often hold my breath if I have to pass people closely or have to walk/run close behind them for a bit.
I am the only person in the Math Department still consistently masking. I am one of a very few professors on campus who is still consistently masking. I see students in masks more frequently than you’d think, which is nice, but the majority don’t mask.
I do it in part because I DON’T FREAKING WANT COVID, but I also do it because I come into contact with hundreds of people a day and don’t want to be responsible for getting someone sick and possibly ruining or ending their life.
Which is why I liked this article. Those of us still masking do not have irrational anxiety or are “stuck in 2020.” A lot of us do it for more than one of the reasons the article’s author listed. If you are someone who is critical of the 2025 maskers, please give this article a read. Maybe it will change your perspective.
Let’s Run
First ultra of the year!
It’s pretty sad that it took me until March to do this, but January = tons of foot pain because of bad shoes and February = too cold to go outside and there’s no way in hell I’m running that far on a treadmill.
Anyway.
Month 2: Mileage Check-In
February (at least in terms of my walking/running) is over! Let’s look at monthly stats.
February mileage: 541.37
Monthly average mileage: 580.02
Current end mileage with this pace: 6960.24
I figured this month would put me behind pace (if we’re going by monthly counts rather than daily counts) because 1) there were only 28 days this month versus the 31 from January and 2) I was stuck inside because of the weather for 20 days straight, which resulted no marathon distances and not many daily distances above 18 miles.
Let’s get back on track with March!
Anosmia Awareness Day!
It’s that time of the year: a time for the non-smellers! Have a vid:
Want to Sleep? Count Biphasic Sheep!
So remember back in the summer when I was running so early in the morning to beat the heat? I would go to sleep around 10 PM, wake up at 1 AM, run, and then get back home and crash for a few hours (usually between 5:30 AM and 7:30 AM, except for when the fall semester started and I had to forego the second sleep).
Well, that sleeping schedule worked perfectly with how my body operates. I’ve never felt as good as I did when I was on that sleeping schedule.
My body liked it so much, in fact, that I’m still having a really hard time adjusting back to the normal “sleep for one solid period of time” schedule.
My husband can attest to this.
Anyway, I came across this Twitter thread yesterday and it got me thinking about that summer sleeping schedule. It also got me thinking about the fact that I have never seemed to need as much sleep as other people.
My mom can attest to this. Even when I was a kid (and even when I was a fetus in the womb), I did not sleep very much.
The tweet referenced above (and other articles on biphasic sleep) suggest that the typical pattern was sleep for 3-4 hours, wake for 1-2 hours, then sleep for another 3-4 hours. My sleep sessions are shorter than that, and my middle “awake” period is longer than that. I can function perfectly fine on three hours of sleep (less than that and I can really tell, but three hours seems A+). I suspect part of that is just how I’m wired, but I suspect another part of it is that I’ve just trained my brain and body to expect that little sleep and so I’ve become incredibly efficient when it comes to falling asleep and going right into REM sleep. No matter what the circumstances are (how I’m feeling, where I’m sleeping, how the day went, the temperature, etc.), I fall asleep within at most like two minutes as soon as I lay down.
Both my mom and my husband can attest to this.
Anyway. Just a few thoughts on sleep, sleep patterns, and sleep duration.
How many hours of sleep do you think you need? Have you ever tried any sort of polyphasic sleep schedule?
Month 1: Mileage Check-In
I’ve got a big mileage goal this year, so I think monthly check-ins are going to happen. Deal with it!
January mileage: 618.67
Monthly average mileage: 618.67
Current end mileage with this pace: 7,424.04
Um…woah. That’s a lot more than I thought it would be. I have to keep in mind, though, that this is a 31-day month.
(Don’t bump up the mileage goal to 7,500…don’t bump up the mileage goal to 7,500…don’t bump up the mileage goal to 7,500…)
MILEAGE CHECK-IN LET’S GOOOO
We are 1/24th of the way through the year, so let’s check that pace, shall we?
Total distance so far (counting today): 293.07
If I were to keep up this pace, I’d hit 7,033.68 miles by the end of the year.
That’s just a little bit more than my goal!
So I basically have to do that 23 more times, huh? BRING IT ON
Screw it: 7,000 miles
I’ve decided I’m going to do it.
I’m going to try for 7,000 walking/running miles this year.
It’s going to be a push, but I think I can do it. Last year I did 6,620, so this would be 380 more miles than that. So basically one more mile per day, plus a bit extra.
That doesn’t sound too bad, but I had a lot of high-mileage days last year. Like, my minimum daily distance was 6.07 miles; my maximum was 41.32.
[Insert five minutes of me dicking around in R making boxplots and such. Here is said boxplot of daily distance.]
My average daily distance for last year was just over 18 miles (18.09 to be a bit more exact). I need to bump that up to about 19.18. Again, not that much, but that’s an extra 1.1 miles every single day, and that’s also assuming I have either the same number of high distance days as last year or an equivalent (distance-wise) number of high-but-not-as-high “mid-distance” days this year.
BUT IT MUST BE DONE. A GOAL HAS BEEN SET.
VROOM.
Look at these shenanigans
Cumulative walking/running miles by year, once again. 2023 didn’t stand a chance.
What the hell is wrong with me?
(I say as I plan on going even further in 2025)
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