I FREAKING LOVE RUNNING
I had a really nice run this morning. It was sunny but there was a nice cool breeze the whole time. And very few people are out on Tuesday mornings, so it was very peaceful and solitary.
And considering the only time I’m not in panic mode about everything is when I’m running, that’s just giving me extra bonus happy time.
Wee.
WELL THAT FORECAST WAS WRONG
Me: Hey forecast, whatcha got for me?
Forecast: Sunny and calm until 11 AM! :D
Me: Cool! Time to go running.
Forecast: lolololo fuk u have rain
Me: Wait hang on I’ve still got five miles until I get h-
Forecast: FUK U HAVE RAIN
Forecast: HAVE ALL THE RAIN
Forecast: DROWN, LOSER
(It rained a lot on my return run home.)
(I got extremely wet.)
(I think this breaks the record of how wet I’ve gotten on a run.)
(Was super cold, had to shower, then go teach.)
(Ugh.)
So about that polymorphous light eruption I have…
It’s…gone?
I got diagnosed with it in 2019 and had even worse symptoms of it in 2020, but I had almost no symptoms last summer and zero symptoms this summer. Does that just…go away like that? Or was it something else that bothered me for two years and then just, for whatever reason, stopped?
Bodies are weird, yo.
MAXIMUM
Ever since I started using a Garmin to record my walks/runs/etc., my VO2 max has maxed out (haha) at the top of the “excellent” range.
Today, however, I finally achieved SUPERIOR!
I know nobody cares. But I do. So HA.
FEEL DA HEAT
UGH, it’s freaking hot here, but I ran my virtual half-marathon for the Calgary Marathon today.
Now I want to go bathe in ice.
Migraine time!!!
Ugh, I had a migraine today.
I really shouldn’t complain about them; as far as migraine sufferers go, my migraines are quite few and far between. And when I do get them, I luckily don’t get the classic hypersensitivity to sound or light.
The migraines have changed since I first started having them, though. At least the non-headache stuff has. When I was younger, the tips of my fingers always used to tingle before the migraine itself started. That doesn’t happen anymore. And I’ve always had some post-migraine “brain fog” that lasted for a little while, but that seems to have gotten worse over the past few years. It lasts longer and is more intense. It used to seem to last a few hours, but now it lasts for a day or so. Which sucks.
Anyway. Could be worse, so I’ll shut up.
Want to pretend COVID is gone? Come to Moscow!
Nobody masks here. NOBODY. It’s actually wild. It almost seems like COVID doesn’t exist here…
…Except it does. The lack of masking is quite distressing, honestly.
Anyway.
Yesterday:
So since yesterday was my blogiversary and thus my blog post had to be dedicated to that, here’s what else went on yesterday that I didn’t mention:
I did my virtual Bloomsday run!
I typically run seven miles out and seven back to get my 14, but I decided to just tack on the extra 0.46 for Bloomsday on the end of the seven miles out. That took me to the end of Bowness Park. It looks like they’re either rebuilding the Stoney Trail bridge or are making a new one so that there is a bridge for each direction of traffic.
Either way, I love this bridge. It’s so tall and almost surreal.
April showers? More like April FLASH BLIZZARDS
So remember that run I did on Tuesday in the cold and snow?
Remember how it started snowing partway through the run and I got a little cold, but it actually wasn’t too horrible?
HA.
Buckle up.
So today it wasn’t supposed to start snowing until a little later, and even then, it was only supposed to be light snow.
A skiff, if you will.
It wasn’t supposed to amount to much.
So I leave to go running and it start snowing lightly. I’m like, okay, cool, whatev. This should stop soon. But the closer I got to the trail, the harder it started snowing. And by the time I was ready to start running, there was at least a quarter of an inch on the ground already.
But I’m stubborn as all hell, so I was like screw this, I’mma run.
And so I did.
And it kept snowing.
So I ran through 2.5-3 inches of wet snow. All 15 miles. And it was snowing these big, wet, obnoxious flakes the whole time; I had to take my glasses off about three miles into the run because I kept having to clear the snow off my lenses every thirty seconds or so.
I’m not exaggerating.
The last two miles were the worst, though, because I was back on the busier part of the trail, meaning – even in this garbage weather – there were tracks in the slushy snow which made it EXTRA HARD to get any sort of traction. It was a very slow, annoying two miles.
I got home and was 100% soaking wet.
At least my hat got cleaned, haha.
The Bridge to TeraTEETHia
(That’s a fucking horrible blog post title, sorry)
So when I had all that dental work done back in 2020 and they sawed off the outer part of that tooth and told me I needed to get the rest of it removed and a bridge put in its place, I asked them about the timeline of when that all should be done.
They said to do it within a year.
That was June (July?) 2020.
So clearly that didn’t happen, and that’s mainly because of all the COVID nonsense. Every time a wave died down, I wanted to wait a few weeks to make sure cases were SUPER LOW before going back into a place where I knew I couldn’t (for obvious reasons) wear a mask.
But each time I’d wait a little bit too long and another wave would start back up.
Now there’s omicron, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to the dentist during the omicron wave party that’s happening up here.
I don’t know what the point of mentioning that on here is, apart from maybe using it as a reminder to myself once I get these posted in, oh, late 2022 (optimistic date).
TEETH!
Well, hell.
(Have I posted this article before? I don’t think I have, but if I have, apologies for posting it again.)
So there’s still a lot of debate and research going on about this, but it looks like there may be evidence to suggest that repeated cold exposure may do more harm than good – that is, it does not promote acclimation to the cold but rather damage to the extremities.
In this article, a study is discussed in which individuals who tend to have more cold exposure in their histories tend to also have colder extremities (toes, specifically) than people with less cold exposure in their histories. There are a lot of confounding variables to this, as you may suspect, but the author of the article cites several other studies that suggest repeated cold exposure may worsen blood circulation in the fingers and toes in the long run.
Such a thing would certainly explain why I seem so much more sensitive to cold now than I ever used to be. It doesn’t take long for my fingers to feel like absolute death if I’m out even in, say, 40 degree weather.
It’s an issue.
It’s a painful issue.
Anyway.
Edit from mid-2023: HAHAHA it’s so much worse now!
Hey CNN?
Why on earth would I want to live an additional 13 years? Why would anyone want to, given how quickly we’re destroying everything around us?
The buuuuuuurn
I totally have “COVID arm” from the booster shot, haha. Check it:
It looks a lot worse in person than in the picture. It’s also super hot to the touch.
But hey…beats a higher odds of getting COVID later.
Boosted!
In preparation for the upcoming semester, I got my COVID booster shot today!
After cancelling and re-booking my appointment like twenty times (just like I said I’d do), I got a good appointment time this morning at the pharmacy just across the street. Which is great, because it’s still too freaking cold to walk anywhere else.
I wonder what side effects I’ll have this time, haha. I guess we’ll see!
Suck It, 2015-2020
Remember that “running total” graph I made for my yearly walking mileages? I did one last year and the year before, both showing running total for each year from 2015 up to the current year.
I love repeating my content, so here it is again – now including the running total for 2021.
[Edit: okay, so apparently old versions of this graphic just automatically update with the most recent data I’ve fed it, which is why 2022’s mileage is in there. Just…ignore that for now.]
My cumulative mileage in 2020 was higher than that in 2021 on January 7, but then 2021 dominated until 2017 took over a little while in July (because of my 30-mile days and that one 50-mile day). Then it was 2021 again.
Can I beat 2021’s running total this year? I GUESS WE’LL SEE LOL THERE’S GOT TO BE AN UPPER LIMIT TO THIS NONSENSE BUT I HAVEN’T HIT IT YET
Walk da Walk 2021
Are you ready for walking stats that NO ONE CARES ABOUT??????
Me too!
Here are my walking stats for January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021.
Total number of walks: 363 (I didn’t walk/run on the day Jazzy died and I didn’t walk/run on the day I thought I had COVID.)
Total mileage: 5,315
Total number of steps: 11,604,343
Total calories burned: 382,492
Total walking time (minutes): 78,890.32 [that’s about 54.78 days]
Average speed (mph) per walk: 3.71
5,315 miles is approximately the great circle distance between Portland, Oregon to Moscow, Russia or between Lisbon, Portugal and Cape Town, South Africa.
Let’s do better next year!
OH GOD IT’S BOOSTER SHOT TIME BITCHES
So we’re behind the US in terms of the booster shot timeline, but I saw on Twitter this morning that they’ve JUST opened up booster appointments for my age group. Got in the queue as soon as I could to try to get the optimal appointment time and location and managed to get something relatively close (a mile or so) in January.
We have a pharmacy right across the street, though, that apparently administers the shot; that location would be a LOT more convenient since it’s supposed to stay obscenely cold well into January.
I’ll probably do like I did for my first two shots and end up changing my time and location about 20 times before settling on something.
WOO!
5,000 Miles – 2021 Edition
Today I hit FIVE THOUSAND WALKING/RUNNING miles for the year!
I guess it’s not that big of an accomplishment since I’ve done it twice before, but there it is.
Actually, I think I hit 5,000 earlier this year than I did last year and in 2017. Let’s check…
2017: my 5,000th mile happened on December 22
2020: my 5,000th mile happened on December 20
So that’s kinda cool.
Anyway.
WTF IS OMICRON, NOW???
Bro, I SWEAR TO GOD if this new omicron variant cause things to regress back to where we were in the previous wave, I’m going to lose my mind. I’m so sick of this nonsense.
Edit from January: well, this escalated.
Flu in a Bog
So remember that day last month when Nate and I were certain we had COVID but both tested negative and “got over it” in like seven hours?
That’s because we didn’t have COVID.
We were idiots who left our humidifier half-full of water over the scorching summer, didn’t clean it, and then started running it that day. Nate actually suspected that the humidifier was the cause because that was the only thing that both of us were exposed to and the only thing that had been “different” over the past several days, but this was confirmed today when, after being stupid and running the humidifier again, I felt the same sort of awfulness I felt that day (Nate was feeling a little crappy as well, but I sit much closer to the humidifier all day than he does, so I get more exposure).
Supah fun.
At least that makes us more confident that we actually didn’t have COVID.
My FREAKING FINGERS HURT SO MUCH
I think I’ve somehow permanently damaged the nerves in my fingers from exposing them to too much cold over the past several years.
Like…it wasn’t that cold today and I had my big gloves, but by the time I got home my fingers hurt so, so badly from being cold.
Like…to the point where I couldn’t even really move them because they hurt so much.
It used to be the case that they didn’t feel like that unless I spent five hours in SUPER cold weather, but I guess it doesn’t take that much anymore.
I’ve actually wondered if I have primary Raynaud’s, but I don’t have the characteristic skin color changes. So who knows.
Super fun.
So hey… (part 2)
THANK GOD
Nate is negative, too.
But I have NO IDEA what that was. It felt EXACTLY like the post-second-COVID-shot night.
Beh.
So hey…
I might have COVID.
Last night while Nate was getting ready for bed, I noticed that I was feeling kind of cold. Cold enough to start shivering a little. That’s not too unusual; I am a lizard, as you know, and sometimes I get cold enough just sitting in our 73 degree house to start to shiver.
But then I noticed that the shivering was getting worse.
And then I took my temperature and found that I had a fever.
And when was the last time I had uncontrollable shivering and a fever? Right after I got my second COVID shot.
And considering that I don’t recall ever feeling that exact way at any other point in my life, I was sure it was COVID.
I told Nate all this and he said that he’d been feeling kind of crappy, too, so we were like ALL RIGHT, FREAKING AWESOME, WE PROBABLY HAVE COVID. He went to bed and I crashed on the couch, feeling just as miserable as I did after my first COVID shot (well, without the muscle soreness, except for the soreness in my rib muscles due to the uncontrollable shivering).
This morning I was feeling a LOT better, but I emailed the Department Head and told him what was going on and said that I would have to teach my calculus class from home tomorrow – which was fine.
Then later, Nate and I drove to a testing site and got COVID tested. Now we have to wait and see what the test results will be.
I’m not optimistic.
[Edit: we did not, in fact, have COVID. We’re just dumb regarding our humidifier and aerosoling mold into our lungs. See future blogs for details.]
Half
Completed my second (virtual) Calgary half marathon today! Not a very fast time, but it’s done.
Edit: look at this beautiful medal!
Eigenblogger 