Back in the Saddle

Blimey. It’s been over a year since I last updated this. So what’s happened in the World of Fay Health & Fitness since then?

1. Injured myself at home on the actual day of that event. Foolishly. Luckily, it’s a neck injury I’d had before, so this time I didn’t piss around, got hold of a physiotherapist (my old one having semi-retired), and got into a bunch of new, neck-related exercises.
    
2. After recovering from foolishness, continued to do lots of cycling, but just back on a daily, get-everywhere-I-don’t-need-to-transport-gig-gear/people kind of way.
    
3. Got back into mat exercises - press-ups, crunches, planks - plus the fun addition of chin-ups, courtesy of a bar you can slot above the doorframe (and a stack of books to stand on, because I’m not that tall (despite being tall for a poet), and our house is old, so the ceilings - and therefore doorframes - are high).
    
4. Went to the Edinburgh Fringe in August to take part in the usual shenanigans, which, from a health perspective, involved:
   
   Positives: a bunch of weight-lifting (hauling my crap up six flights of stairs virtually single-handedly as my flatmate had a hernia); walking 2-3 miles/ day up and down a very steep hill (luckily, I lived at the bottom of the hill), sometimes more if I had to go home and change between shows; continuing with the daily physio exercises and the twice-a-week, more hench mat exercises.
   
   Negatives: bad/ little sleep; the usual dehydration and when-the-fuck-do-I-eat issues leading to a little weight loss; abundant and often unnecessary stress (necessary stress I can deal with).
    
5. On the final couple of days had a troubling cough and sore throat, which I powered through on sheer adrenalin and stubbornness, which transmuted into a cold as soon as I started the long drive home through the night.
    
6. Cold turned into a chest infection and laryngitis, and then… and then I couldn’t speak, sing, or anything vocal, couldn’t bend over to pick things up, couldn’t lie down flat, couldn’t eat much, was constantly coughing and had chest pains and stomach pains, and then the bit where my throat kept closing off, stopping my breathing, all of which made sleep difficult.
    
7. I lost a LOT of weight. And no-one seemed to know what was wrong. Everything hurt, everything made me cough, and the only thing I’d ever relied on my whole life - my voice - was gone. And no-one seemed to know beyond a shrug whether it would ever come back.
   
   I pushed on through work, though had a lot of sickness leave, including after a trip to A&E (waking up in the middle of the night entirely unable to breathe and retching mucus) when I was signed off for a couple more weeks after I’d only just got back to work.
   
   As you can imagine, my mental health took a steep and long fucking dive. And even the physio exercises were out for a long time because of the aforementioned not being able to lie down flat, so my joints started to suffer in a major way. I slept (hell: I lived) on the sofa for about three months for fear of waking everyone constantly with the coughing and the terrifying choking noise that happened every time I dropped into proper sleep, even when propped up perpendicularly. It was bad enough that I wasn’t sleeping…
   
   It was horrible. And then there was the (thankfully apparently a clerical error?!) cancer scare.
    
8. Slowly my voice returned to something that was at least audible (though it’s currently fucked again - yay) as I learned what I can eat and not eat (I’m even more limited now than I was before), and which drugs and supplements help and which are, at best, useless.
    
9. They still don’t know what’s wrong, but the latest notion is to put me on a very low dose of something that, at much higher doses (like: fifteen times higher), is used as an anti-depressant.
    
10. I’ve recently got back on the bike. I am still horribly unfit. But I was haemorrhaging money trying to get around town and this is worth it long-term.
     
11. I’m even more recently back on the mat exercises, after I managed to injure myself doing ill-advised free weight-lifting (yes, again) a couple of months ago, and put a crimp in the cycling and some of the physio for a while.
     
12. I’m not living my best life right now, and I think the definition of that is going to have to change, but hey - who needed creative career plans anyway…?
     

I thought I’d go back to the blog because I actually wanted to ask some dietary advice, but I’ll leave that until the next entry, because it’s a bit much to cram into a catch-up post as well…

Thanks for reading (and, to some of you, waiting so patiently).

Steps Forward and Back

So, I'm back on the bike again. What do you mean, you didn't know I was off it...?!

{Checks back catalogue; curses}

Okay, so, it looks like a) I've been somewhat quiet on this front, and b) history repeated itself a bit.  Here's what happened over the intervening months since my last post:

1. Cycling every day (pretty much; certainly work days when I didn't have gig gear to carry, and Wednesdays when I had real life people meetings in places).

2. Physio every day (EVERY day; like a BOSS).

3. Mat exercises twice a week (come on!).

4. Eating a balanced diet.

And then August happened.  And August has Edinburgh Fringe in it. So no cycling from 19th August onwards, but lots of walking, and a handy new wearable gadget that maps how much and where I walked (because my passive movement tracking app stopped working).

So I scaled Arthur's Seat (yay!) and even coached someone else up it (come on!). Didn't even injure myself, unless you count sunburn.  I even kept up my physio and the strength-building mat exercises (despite some logistical difficulties - you try doing crunches on a mat on a polished wooden floor... without sliding across it and into a table).

And then I fell over on my face on a simple walk back down an urban hill, a couple of days later, and lots of health things cascaded, including my one filling jarring free and me getting a lot of pain and then a rubbish temporary filling which didn't let me chew so my nutrition was difficult to maintain and yeah - living off liquid food makes you lose more weight than you're comfortable with, if you're me.

Arse.

And then the trip back from Edinburgh with Too Much Luggage and bad lifting form and behold - buggered wrist.

So I was sensible - cycling hurt my wrist, so I paused on cycling and did some stretching and strengthening exercises for the wrist, and stayed off the press-ups, etc.  Then I got back on the bike. Yay! Then I got back into the mat exercises. Now, bear in mind that I hadn't done any since August, because I didn't - I just charged on ahead regardless like someone who was intent on injuring myself. Which I did.

This was 30th September. 1st October I got on the bike, unaware of how much I'd buggered myself. By the time I was heading home, it was clear that what I needed to do was immobilise that joint as much as possible.

It's nice to find that I've learned something.  I didn't prevent the injury this time, but I prevented it getting worse.  I immobilised as much as possible, asking for help, reducing movement, adjusting everything I could to ensure that as little strain was put upon the joint as possible. (Except on Thursday 8th when I joined in a yoga conversation in work and decided to demonstrate that I shouldn't do a certain move by doing it. 24 hours of migraine-like pain later and I'd learned another lesson about hypermobile injuries.)

So apart from yoga foolishness, I am pretty much recovered (read: it still hurts a bit but I can use it and I was more stressed by not being active) and back on the bike,  I cycled to Milton Country Park on Sunday with a friend to do some walking and wittering, then to and from work yesterday and today.

It was somewhat sobering to look back at the previous two blog entries and think: oh, so exactly like 3-4 months ago, huh? I left behind some good advice for myself, though, so that's a blessing.

In preparation for 20th March - Sport Relief again, baby - I'm going to be setting up a plan for increasing activity, strength, endurance, and general fitness. I'll keep you all posted as to what's next...

So, what's the current state of play (physical health-wise), all told? I am still a little hurty in the shoulder-neck joint and in my right wrist, and I'm finding it hard to put the weight back on. (And yes, I've tried eating all the biscuits - all that happened was I felt like crap. Presumably I need to eat a bunch of steaks and cheese.  Who knows?  All I know is that there are very, very few people out there who want to talk about the problems of losing too much weight and discussing how to put it back on.) So there it is.

Changing Relationships

So, I’ve blogged before about pain. About what “stop comes before ow” really means and how you can be guided by, but also ignore pain if needs be.

As I get more into the old exercise regime, the more pain I’m experiencing.  Some of it is “good” pain - e.g. the stiffening and burning of artfully-shredded muscle fibres that are on their first steps to growing back thicker.  Some of it is “bad” pain - e.g. the twanging of a shoulder joint that’s experienced injury due to superfluous effort in a less-advisable position.

Now, I’m prone - like probably every enthusiastic bendy - to overdoing things, breaking myself, and having to take a break from exercise as a result.  This has been well-documented in me, even as recently as last year’s big fitness push, and I find myself there again, having gone too hard on the old press-ups last week and now having unilateral neck pain, and pins-and-needles in my left arm due to a twanged shoulder. (Yes, it’s The Particularly Borked Shoulder.)

But something occurred to me last week, as I was going up the stairs and thinking: “yep, this is an injury, not just a post-exercise burn” - it’s not a disaster.

Let’s say that again: It’s Not A Disaster.

In the past, the pattern has been: start exercise regime, forget sensible approach after a couple of goes (at most) and overdo things so that an established weak point is compromised, curse a lot, rest for ages, start again only after I’m really fed-up of being unfit.

And I’ve managed to manage that somewhat - I’ve been building more slowly (last week notwithstanding), being more alert to potential injury, stopping sooner, and giving myself space to recover before getting back into things without leaving it so long that I’m actually more prone to injury if I try coming back in at the same level.

But in the past it’s been all: oh! ow! and then beating myself up for a muppet. Catastrophising the pain and popping myself in the victim box all over again. The pain is punishment! The pain is validation! The pain is a full-stop!

Waaaiit... rewind - the pain is validation?  Hmm, sounds like some kind of brain weasel talk to me. And it’s a problem that, the more I think about it, the further it goes back for me.

There’s an awkward balance to be struck when your body is limited in a particular way.  You have to own it in order to manage it.  But sometimes that very self-definition can take you deeper into NOT managing it.  Speaking for my own situation, it’s useful for me to say: “Because of underlying weakness and historical issues, I stand a much greater chance of injury if I lift things above shoulder height, so I’ll avoid doing that.” It’s less useful to say: “I’m limited, so I can’t lift things, so I won’t.”  It’s useful to acknowledge where pain stops being a good guide and is just distressing/ distracting/ a sleep-killer.  It’s less useful to shy away from all pain and hold myself in a kind of twitching huddle in a corner, hemmed in by painkillers and fear, outraged because I’m not pain-free.

Because I’m never going to be pain-free.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I know I’m always experiencing pain somewhere at any given time. There are some Usual Suspects, but sometimes they all kick off, and sometimes it’s a new place, and  most times it’s only one or two of them.

But if I define myself purely by my pain, and use that as an excuse not to do things: I Am A Limited Person, Here Is My Badge Of Pain, that’s, well, frankly a bit rubbish.  Pain as validation as a lesser being is a weird circular argument that does no-one any good. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to be able to get away with that, so why me?

And pain is clearly not a full-stop. That was the conclusion on the stairs - if I see the muscle burn of good exercise as a landmark on the way to becoming more awesome, I need to start treating the Usual Suspect Injury Pains as landmarks as well, somehow. Whether as a learning point of how far not to push things, or some kind of psychological step on the route to better self-acceptance, or better ability to ignore unfixable pain, there must be some use in it, and seeing it as a full-stop disaster where I swoon in a bower and wait for some bugger to come rescue me is helping no-one.

Not entirely sure where I’m going with this yet, but this feels like a positive realisation, and a potentially very useful mental tool.

Grindstone, meet Shoulder

So, as I’ve just posted, it looks rather like I’m back in the old exercise saddle.

I have bust through the notorious two week point (don’t know about anyone else, but if I can make it through two weeks of good exercise habit, the pattern is generally set until injury) and so far appear to be injury-free (you know, above my usual baseline of "various bits of me are a bit wrong").

So, what have I been up to?

1. Cycling
2. Large Muscle Physio Exercises
3. Small Muscle Physio Exercises
4. Butch Core Mat Exercises
5. Dancing

1. Cycling

I’ve been doing my best to cycle everywhere I can.  This is by no means every day (sometimes I’ve got massive stuff to carry; sometimes I’m not even leaving the house; today I couldn’t find my cycling helmet until after I’d given up and ordered a taxi), but most days, and I’m generally clocking (when the app bloody works) between 3-7 miles every day that I do cycle.

Advantages include cheapness and smugness alongside muscle strength; non-weight-bearing cardiovascular challenge; and the sensation of my lungs "opening up" again; forces me not to carry too much stuff with me.

Disadvantages include smelling bad (or feeling like I smell bad); dangerously ignorant cars; annoying cyclists; headwind; forces me not to carry too much stuff with me ({pout}).

Improvements to be made include being more systematic about where I put my gear, and getting better into a regime for the mornings in order to get to work more on time.

2. Large Muscle Physio Exercises

I’ve only missed one morning physio session in about 8 months, and that was when I was too ill from The Cough to go into work, so I sat on my arse and watched Netflix.  Other than that, I’ve been doing my usual:

leg-lifts (supine, sideways, on my belly)

crunches (normal, side, and slightly twisted)

kicks and crosses

All of these from the floor, and apparently - according to various friends - quite similar to a lot of Pilates moves. Most of them are designed for either 20/ 10 reps. As advised by physio.

Advantages include simplicity; portability; being part of a good morning habit; excellent for core strength; great for a range of leg muscle strength and stability; really good, demonstrably effective way of ameliorating and preventing pain, damage, injury etc. from long-term standing.

Disadvantages include finding enough room to lay flat, arms and legs full stretch in all directions, on a surface that won’t hurt to exercise on; needing to do it before breakfast otherwise indigestion; them doing pretty much nothing for upper body strength/ stability, which I badly need, considering the frequency with which my shoulders/ neck get injured/ go out of alignment/ both; they’re really only any good for maintenance rather than development.

Improvements to be made include getting them done earlier in the morning; finding something maintenancey to add to them for arms, shoulders, etc.

3. Small Muscle Physio Exercises

Instead of waving whole limbs around, these focus on tiny, tight-to-the-bone muscle groups, ostensibly to improve stability. Instead of lifting against gravity, you’re squeezing or pulling against yourself - these are for arms (and therefore shoulders and wrists), and can be done either sitting down or standing up:

pushing palms/ fists against each other

hooking fingers and pulling hands/ arms against each other

palm-against-back, one hand pushes towards the body, the other pushes away (then swap)

All of these forms are done in front of the torso, above the head, and behind the torso, holding the push/ pull for at least ten seconds before moving onto the next form. As advised by physio.

Advantages include them being for shoulder stability, which I badly need; massively portable (I can - and usually do - do them at my desk at work); hard to see how you can injure yourself only pushing against your own strength.

Disadvantages include that they’re super-boring, so it’s difficult to remember to do them unless I’m already injured and thinking about that kind of thing; it’s difficult to discern any difference even after doing them for a while.

Improvements to be made include setting up a thrice-daily reminder to do them, like I have the once-daily to do physio, twice daily for nasty medication, etc.; do some research into how they function and how to spot the difference between doing and not doing them; add more neck ones (which I’m currently not doing because they’re more fiddly and look "weirder" than the arm ones in work!).

4. Butch Core Mat Exercises

A long time ago I went out with someone who was a Navy officer and who taught me how to do a press-up. In fact, taught me that I could do press-ups. He taught me a routine of three types of press-up ("normal", wide-arm, and wacky ones with hands close together to challenge the triceps), and three types of sit-up ("normal", twisted, and crunch). I vaguely remember that I was supposed to switch up between these and do lunges or squats or some other damned thing that I can’t do these days because knees. He also showed me free weights.

A more recent partner taught me about planks and tricep dips, rest days, and doing crazy things like press-ups or planks with your feet elevated (I don’t think I’ve yet done these). Another showed me Russian twists, deadlifts, and how to improve my full-leg-lifts (i.e. both at the same time) in order to make them more challenging. The internet (and Wii-fit) showed me flying press-ups and some crazy versions of crunches.

This, I suspect, is why I used to have a six-pack - I used to do a bunch of this EVERY DAMNED DAY, along with punchball exercises and free weights every other time.

Instead of doing the usual thing that I do which is flail wildly into DOING ALL THE EXERCISES ’TIL I BREAK then advanced pouting for six weeks, I’m moving slowly back into Butch Exercises by doing increased reps and increased sets of only four forms to start off with, including lying the hell down between sets:

a) "Normal" press-ups. Generally up to 20-25, except for at the end of the event, when the sets are more like 10.

b) Planks. I’m now up to minimum 1 minute, even at the end of the event (although a lot of swearing is currently involved when I come out of the form on the fourth go-round), and up to 1:40 max. I know this isn’t much, considering that the world record is in hours, but it’s my best, dagnabbit...

c) Double leg-lifts. I’ve injured myself with being over-enthusiastic with these, so - even if I’m feeling full of vim and strength, I tend to only go to 16 max, even at the beginning of the event.

d) Wide-arm press-ups. Only for the latter half of the event once I’ve warmed up, and - again because of former injury - I keep the set reps to ≤ 10

Advantages include fast speed of discernible differences; really feeling core tightening; butch satisfaction of "proper" aches the following day; done right the press-ups lead to good shoulder strength and - I think - stability; measurable progress (more reps before exhaustion, longer holds on planks); some cardiovascular challenge; have to do them from the feet.

Disadvantages include how easy it is to get carried away and bugger my shoulders, especially the Especially Borked One (left), leading to aforementioned six week pouting; not entirely convinced I’m doing the forms properly (could I be preventing injury with better form?); if I forget to stretch properly afterwards, I’m screwed; not very aerobic; have to do them from the feet.

Improvements to be made include setting limits on sets/ reps and - instead - adding new forms at lower reps; getting some advice about forms.

5. Dancing

Only just got back into this on Saturday just gone. I have no discipline beyond the beat, and making sure I wear vaguely suitable shoes (canvas trainers with ankle support) rather than The Boots. I stamp, pogo, flail, mosh, gurn, wiggle, grin, pirouette, and do fancy-ish footwork with lots of crossing-over of feet, kicking, and double-kicking.

I’m a bloody maniac.

Advantages include the weird fact that I can keep up sustained fast movement to music far longer (HOURS) than, e.g. running on a treadmill, which makes me want to die in a tiny ball of fail; excellent aerobic and cardiovascular exercise; needs no special equipment (except aforementioned change of footwear); by far the most social of my exercise activities; cheap (for me - I go to an indie club 3 miles from my house that costs £4 to get in, with free parking, and £1/ bottle of water); the way I dance means that it’s a full-body workout (sustained rhythmical flailing is surprisingly hard on the arms).

Disadvantages include the fact that the clubbing-dancing I’m doing leads to very-late-to-bed, and further sleep disturbance; not very portable (needs friends, and I’ve only found one club in Cambridge so far that plays my kind of music); it’s all too easy to forget to stretch out afterwards and e.g. have very tight calves hobbled by All The Pogoing (rather like I’m feeling today...); all the attendant issues of clubbing in dodgy little places (unsprung floor which stands fair to bugger joints with impact; no mop-up for perilously-spilled drinks on the dancefloor) and any vaguely mainstream venue (no, mate - just coz I smiled at you while jumping up-and-down to Song Two does not mean I want special cuddles with you); moshing is seriously bad for your neck, dear heavens; badly-coordinated people with interpersonal space issues leading to bruising, and/ or, in this instance, a blistered toe from a poorly-managed stiletto.

Improvements to be made include getting a regular night to go out on, co-ordinating friends; some research into other clubs that might play my kind of dancing music (indie, indie-rock, trance, techno (or whatever the youth call it these days), almost anything from 90s except hard or cock-rock); look at finding ceilidhs/ folk-dancing groups locally, because nothing gets you properly out of breath like a good twmpath.


And that’s your lot for the moment. :D I plan to be updating on the progress on these (including any injuries - my left shoulder’s been feeling a wee bit gimpy as I’ve been typing this...) over the next few weeks/ months

Catching Up…

Well, I appear to be back. Which is an interesting place to be.  Let's review where I went:

In December I'd already been cycling to and from work, and in January had started sessions with an exercise trainer who'd done lots of reading up on HMS/ EDS (and seemed to know more than me) and was feeling quite chipper about my physical health.  My lungs had started to "open up" again, and I was feeling a lot of the benefits of being more physically active.

Then in mid-late-February I injured my neck badly. (Please don't ask how: from experience, we'll both regret it.) Now, I'm used to injuring my neck - it's a bit par for the course with the way my hypermobility works. So I left it alone, doing all the usual right things (reduce burden, immobilise, sleep a certain way) that usually sorts it out within 48 hours.

Then I got back on the bike.  And it became clear really quickly that this wasn't going away, even though it waxed and waned, and I'd have to stop doing an exercise that relied on me being able to look over my shoulder as I no longer could.  I went to my usual physio, who assessed me (yes, I was right: I'd injured something in a different part of my neck from usual, and it was a generally unusual place to boot), gave me some exercises, and asked me to come back.  In the meantime, I was back in taxis and buses, spending a bunch of money on that and physio.  Which, it turned out, didn't work - my neck was busted badly.  She suggested I get X-rayed, and a desperately frustrating cycle of annoyance and admin kicked off.

Short version:

5 second X-ray from one angle - nothing to see, reported by SMS. Wow.
10 minute examination by rheumatoid specialist - you don't have EDS. Er, okay, but why...? Go to a physio. Yeah, er, thanks...
30 minute back-and-neck massage from 19-year-old at a spa in Cardiff - regained at least 50% range of mobility. WOW! {tears of joy}

By this point, it was mid-May. Once the range was back enough for me to at least vaguely look over my right shoulder, I got back on the bike, and back into the mat exercises.

One small problem - a persistent cough that started with a bad cold on 1st May. This is buggering my sleep, which means that I spent a while sleeping on the sofa to avoid disturbing everyone in the house, which means the kind of discomfort you'd imagine. Also: a ridiculous amount of nosebleeds. Joyous.

This, however, has not noticeably stopped me from becoming more active again.  For a start, it's not in my lungs, as far as I can tell, so my breathing itself is okay. And once I get past a certain point in any exercise event, all the nice neurochemicals kick in and open up my respiratory tract, reducing inflammation and phlegm, and I have this wonderful phase for a brief period afterwards where I just don't cough. :)

The next post will deal with what I've been doing, exercise-wise. :)

Back in the Habit (Slowly)

It's quite remarkable how many good habits I've dropped lately. From the aforementioned gym-slacking and taxi-taking to sleep patterns, fluid intake, and sugar consumption, it's all gone a bit to pot.

Annoying.

However, not insurmountable.  So this week I will be:

1. Resurrecting the Spreadsheet. Harder to say "Oh, I'm fine..." if the graphs say "Er, not really..."

2. Setting myself some short-, medium-, and long-term goals again.

3. Starting blogging about all this again (I suspect this lost out to the "writing a new poem a day for every day of April" thing I've been doing (with running-mates this year)...)

4. Starting thinking about teaming up with others who have similar goals.  (i.e. people who aren't super-fit but who like walking/ are happy to job gently beside my fast walking pace; want to cycle at all/ more/ further/ faster; want to use my gym at the same time as I do, etc.)

5. Celebrating the small victories again.

6. Starting to look out for a physio who likes talking about weights, press-ups, etc.

7. Having a look through this book what I bought, to see if that's any cop (got to sort this bloody neck/ shoulder thing out).


So yeah - see above; you'll be hearing more from me on this.

Right. As you were...

The Aftermath

This needs to be made clear - I am very happy right now. Okay, it's my birthday and the sun has been shining its arse off in crisp, blowy weather - exactly how I like it. Okay, I now have an actual window seat in work that overlooks anything other than a grimy roof. Okay, I've helped Sport Relief to raise nearly £1000...

But I'm knackered, and constantly hungry - like persistently starving hungry today. And there is no musculoskeletal part of my lower body that does not ache, that doesn't stiffen into vicious immobility if I sit a bit wrong for longer than a few breaths.

And yet.

And yet I can't stop smiling. And yet I'm not being a total sap either - if people come to me with unnecessarily annoying bullshit, I politely, smilingly, do not take it. And yet everything feels like something either small, or fun, or a challenge I am looking forward to spanking. And, despite feeling pretty fuzzy in the head, at the same time it's like I'm seeing people very clearly.

If I stop, I'll fall over. I'm quite sure of that and am looking forward to it immensely. The six hours' sleep I had this morning were some of the best I've had in a long time.

How did I do? Well, I got all the way around (and around) Milton Country Park just fine, ta. The track turned out to be 1.45 miles long, which made calculating difficult. (It also adds a new perspective to the "struggled 1 mile two years ago" thing, now I come to think of it; it was nearly 50% longer!) I had some company along the way after all (possibly because I'd said before that I probably wouldn't), which was particularly heroic on their part as both of them had done the 5km swim the day before. Ellie ducked out after 3 goes round (fair enough with an undisclosed chipped ankle!) and Emma trudged on with me for another revolution, a swift sit-down, and a sneaky wriggle up the middle of the circuit, so that we ended up doing 6.25 miles (according to Google Tracks) in total. It took just under 2 hours, what with the pausing to take photos, the pausing to let actual runners past (and cheer them on), the toilet break, and the aforementioned swift sit-down (long enough to do me good, not long enough to get stuck).

(And then I had to drive home, via Emma's house, wrestle the car seats back up (buggering my neck/ shoulder again - a shame), tidy and clean the house, pack the car, drive to the venue, take part in a poetry workshop, watch other people insist on setting up the space (:D), run a show, pack up, take crew and features home, chat a lot of interesting stuff about poetry and accents and poets and language and training and poets and accents and women and poets and PhDs and poets and accents and dear God 1am, hi there...

Long day.)

How'm I doing physically? 

Well, my knees are surprisingly buoyant - certainly no worse than they've been in the past due to prolonged standing (which, if you remember, I did a fair amount of on Saturday), and do not appear to be swollen, which is nice. :)  Similarly, the soles of my feet are uncomplaining.  However, my ankles are surprisingly achey (this may well have been to do with the constantly-changing, bumpy, humpy, muddy, potholed terrain) and my lower back is disappointingly sore.  The most surprising set of aches is in my abdominal muscles - kind of interesting... And I want to eat everything. All of it.

What went well? 

The time spent on the walk was good - could have been shorter, but maybe it wouldn't have been if I'd pushed faster earlier...  I didn't start to feel the walk badly in my legs until about 4-5 miles in, and then pushed through the remaining distance. I did rest when I really, really needed to. I didn't run out of puff. The distraction of friends helped even more than I would have thought possible. I hydrated well (knowing that I would have somewhere to go if I'd hydrated too well!), and fuelled myself with morning porridge. I did my physio beforehand, but had rested generally, doing no weight-bearing exercise, the whole week before. And I was assertive about not standing throughout the concert the evening before, and tried my best to eat and drink well (lots of (particularly raw) vegetables, high fibre, as little refined sugar as possible, loads of water) during the week.

Oh, and I raised a bundle of cash. If you've not sponsored, you can do so at http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/fayroberts :)

What could have been better? 

Well, controversially, I think I could have done with some non-weight-bearing but vigorous exercise in the preceding week. If when I do this kind of thing again, I think I'll benefit from the rush of achievement of vigorous exercise in the run-up to something scary like this, as well as keeping up momentum on happy muscles and good bloodflow.  While I stood up less than I could have done the night before, I still did a lot of standing, and my sleep levels were rubbish that week (another case for more aerobic exercise?!). Also: while I rallied towards the end of the week, my diet wasn't exactly stellar during the preceding few days.

What next? Well, firstly I need to see how the recovery actually goes (update 25-Mar-14 - my knees are actually starting to hurt quite badly now; bugger), and I want to know more about this next-day euphoria and confidence. Have you run a (half-)marathon or 10k? Climbed a massive hill? Cycled to France or something? Is it like this? Or should I be looking at some other factors? Like the sleep deprivation, for example. Because yesterday was brilliant, and I feel like I could do with more of that, if my knees can survive it.  And I need another challenge - another milestone on this path of Being Fitter.  Any suggestions gratefully received, and I'm going to get some instruction from the gym in a few weeks' time, once I'm back in the mode, asking for some extra goals...

So thanks for the props, everyone, and yes: this blog will go on (though perhaps less frequently until I have a new Big Goal) as I continue to chart my relationship with my body, fitness, pain, and recovery...

Less than 12 hours to go

Until my #SR14 challenge.

We'll find out if I've trained, rested, eaten, drunk, and psyched myself up properly and enough.

I'm trying to ignore the whinging of the gimpy Particularly Borked Knee (left), and the daft post-performance part of my brain that wants to stay up late and jump around.

All will be well, and all manner of things will be well. We may even hit £900 raised, which would make me very happy. There's still time if you want to donate: 

http://my.sportrelief.com/sponsor/fayroberts

I plan to be blogging and Tweeting as I go (partly because people who would have walked with me are ill or in different parts of the world, partly because why not?!), so you'll be able to follow my progress, if you like! :D

Right. Sleep. And cold remedy...

Wish me (and all the other runner, walkers, swimmers, climbers, and cyclists) luck.

Painful Progress

I suppose you'll want to know how my neck/ shoulder is getting on.

Ow.

Okay, it's less ow than it was, but it doesn't like:

• Carrying things
• Putting the handbrake on
• Changing into 2nd gear
• Stretching out and lifting/ pulling things with it
• Sharp neck movements (try not to surprise me from the side, eh?)
• Me lying on it
• Me lying on the opposite side to it (huh?!)
• The inexorable passage of linear time (presumably)

So it's not going all that well, but thanks for asking.

I can feel myself slipping back into bad habits of "I'll do that later" and "Oh, it doesn't count if I skip a day, right? I'm so tiiiired..." etc.

So I'll go to the gym tomorrow, even if it's only to pound on the stationary bike and avoid looking anything else in the eye.

I'll make a plan about walking in/ home on either Wednesday or Friday.

Hey, thanks for listening, this has really helped.  You're difficult to make excuses to, but you don't judge.  Go you. :)

The Shape of Desire

Part of yesterday's conversation with the physio was her questioning why I'm doing the (upper-body) exercises that I'm doing.  Why am I lifting weights, doing press-ups, etc.?

In particular, she was concerned that these exercises were a bit, well, male.  She covered, elucidating, saying there was nothing wrong with that per se, but that she was wondering: was I wanting to be a body-builder [cue hunched shoulders and loosely-raised fists]?

Well, there it is.  Why am I doing this?  Why am I pushing muscles in my upper body that were not designed by nature to be massive (due to HMS and, well, a lower testosterone level than the average bloke) to build?

Several answers, not all of which may be either wise, feasible, or even the whole story:

1. In October 2005 I had a six-pack and could lift sofas without much effort.  I also had the kind of lightly but defined muscular physique that made both women and men go "hmmm..." and "ooooh...!" with a little reaching-out gesture. (Yeah, baby...)

a) Being strong felt good physically - my wobbly joints were much more secure.

b) Being strong felt good mentally - being able to rely on myself and feel comfortable (even superior) in my body was rather nice.

c) My personal vanity is, perhaps, a little odd.  The resources needed to conform to many elements of acceptable Western femininity feel like way more trouble than they're worth, to me.  However, I revel in decking myself in a certain way as I move through the world.  I want people to see me, at a glance, as very much my own person, as attractive in an unconventional sense, and blending elements across genders.  I also like to look healthy.  So a little ripped (again)? Yes please! :)

(I felt right at home in Cambridge really quickly.  Wonder why...)


2. I gave up on that level and type of healthy after several things happened:

- motorbike (okay, fine: scooter) accident that made Borked Shoulder the way it is today (February 2006).

- massive (they took photos for a medical journal!) benign tumour;

- recovering from the surgery that removed it (vertical 5" abdominal incision - wasn't allowed to pick up anything heavier than 5kg for, well, a while - September 2007);

- the knee-based accident (and all the other, less easily pointed-at elements) that propelled me into the Year of The Stick (September 2011); and

- subsequent slow recovery from that.

I started feeling old.  I let myself become dispirited by the constant setbacks (I tried building in strength in 2006; scuppered myself lifting furniture; tried getting fit again 2010-11, not as hard as now, but cycling everywhere... then Stick Year... and then again in the summer of 2013...); I rationalised it as "I'm not meant to be fit", I think. And yet clearly this other model of me persisted underneath the whole time, because now I'm thinking: screw old, there are people who take up marathon running in their 70s.  I want to take this body as far as it can in terms of healthy, fit, and strong.


3. I don't want a male physique, I want a strong female physique, and I don't think I'll get that purely from physio exercises - I'll need to challenge myself, not just maintain myself.  I'm also pretty sure it would take more effort, time, and calories than I would consider worth spending getting perturbingly "bulky".


4. Up until now, not one single person (male or female) has told me that I shouldn't do press-ups, etc.

My dad (the very one who's struggled with my gender queerity in recent years) showed me how to do them; and a recent boyfriend showed me the variations on the theme.  We did them in school, and we were expected to do them in the few martial arts lessons I attended.  They're part of my model for "becoming fit and strong".


5. I enjoy doing weights, press-ups, planks, etc. Not only do I think they're fun (look, I'm a bit weird, just give up and go with this), but I enjoy being able to do them well (possibly in a tomboyish, showing-off-physically kind of way).


So here's the thing I'm going to try to find a way to say succinctly to the physio: this is the kind of body I want to aim for.  It's not unfeasible, and it's not toxic, so please help me get to a point where I can make that happen.  Ta!

So, unless anyone's got any better perspectives, that's The Plan.

Body Blow

I walked out of the physio's this afternoon, clutching my hat against the wind and squinting against the sunlight, muttering certain anatomical terms.

The news had been mixed.

The good news first:

1. I'm doing a lot of things right.

2. The general prognosis isn't as bad as I'd assumed from what she said last week.  I may, after all, be fine as I get older.  Nothing is certain.

3. That dumb move is a) unlikely to have done much damage, b) not beyond the realms of possibility for me to do in future.

4. The Walk is still on.


Bad news:

1. Something's clearly gone wrong and The Dumb Move only exacerbated it.  The thing that's gone wrong is cerebro-spinal.  Hence the pins-and-needles, numb patches, and other weird symptoms that have been plaguing me with increasing intensity since December.

2. I've been doing some things wrong - who knew I should change up weights for different muscles?  Oh, you did?  Nice...  I'll ask you next time...

3. No upper-body work for, well, a while.  A really vague while but the phrases "you're not going to be pleased about this" and "longer than you'd like" have been bandied about.

So no free weights, press-ups, rowing-machine, weights machine. I didn't ask about planks.  I suspect that since the repsonse to "does it put stress on your shoulder and neck" is "yes", I've got my answer.


And we talked more about HMS and agreed that, while yes - constant pain is dispiriting and draining, and damn-near-inevitable injury in the course of working to make yourself less prone to injury is demoralising - it could be a lot worse, and - bar Dumb Moves - I'm doing pretty well.

I know people who have been made pretty much housebound by this or similar conditions.  I know people who sublux and dislocate at the drop of a hat. I've met people who're in their 20s and far more debilitated and in pain than I am on a daily basis.  I'm not sure whether that makes the pain I have to cope with any better, but it does put it in perspective.  It's worth managing it, and keeping on doing the right things, and learning from (and not punishing myself for) setbacks.

In other words: everything I said in that poem last night.  So well done me.

Dumb

Oh hey kids, here's some advice:

When you're getting bored with your exercise routine and decide to "spice it up" by looking for a new move on your gym app (which you've barely ever used, at least partly because it's full of animated pictures of terrifyingly ripped people doing incomprehensible things with unlikely equipment), don't pick the one you think "Hmm, I bet my physio wouldn't approve of this..." and then "try a few out" and forget that you're full of endorphins so won't feel yourself bugger your Borked Shoulder.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the "Dumbbell Scarecrow":

Yeah, the irony is not lost on me...

Note to self: if an exercise is described as "Medium" difficult... you're not ready for it.

P.S. OW.

Blood, sweat, and tears

So. My knees still hurt. If I sit or stand still too long it’s like the last two years never happened and the poor, puffy things make squeaky noises. (Metaphorical - I can’t get my ears that close these days...)

It’s not all tragedy and the painful consequences of pushing myself too hard too early. I forgot to mention some other bits of progress:

Sooner than I would have anticipated, my heart-rate at top exertion, if the gym bikes are to be believed, is 10 bpm slower. Since this matches symptoms (chest feels less crushed, doesn’t hurt, none of that unilateral jaw ache I associate with a scary level of blood pressure), I’m choosing to trust this assertion.

(It’s now in the 170s rather than 180s. Yes, I know that’s still problematically high.)

My muscles feel... well, actually, they feel quite achey, truth  be told, but also... Look, I don’t want to say that they’re bigger, because I’m not convinced that four weeks will see that much difference, but they do feel more present, somehow. And, of course, I appear to be trusting them more, which is nice.

My waistline appears to be no different whatsoever. This is disappointing but, again, being nigh-on 39, only having done this for four weeks, and, having made little change to my diet in terms of fat and carbs, I don’t think I can expect anything too spectacular in visual terms yet.  Mind you, when I tense them, the wall of abs feels more dense.  Under the spare Fay, that is.

Sensible suggestions for reducing abdominal fat and statistically improving my lifespan odds (apparently) would be gratefully received!  If I see no change in the next month, I’ll talk to a nutritionist.  You know - a proper sciencey one, not a Gillian McKeith-style opinionated random.

Another bit of family history for you: pretty much all my antecedents are Celtic/ Nordic.  My blood family hail from South Wales, Central and Northern Scotland, Ireland (that bit’s all a bit vague), the West Midlands/ North Wales, and Denmark.  Why’s this important?  Well, I’ve already been exploring what it means to be me, in this body, and understanding my genetic inheritances (limits and advantages) could prove useful. Anyway, while my brother looks like a strong mix of the dark Scot and Black Welsh (brown hair, brown eyes, tans at the snap of a finger), I take most strongly after the Northern Scottish/ Danish side, with enough of the Midlands/ North Welsh sprinkled in to keep it interesting (after all, recessive hair and eye colouring has to come from both parents...).  I have blonde hair (though not the white-blonde of my early youth... mind there’s enough silver springing up these days...!), blue-green-grey eyes, and couldn’t tan at gunpoint.

My mother’s cousin was invalided out of the army while serving in India - I’ve seen a small, black-and-white headshot of a blonde man with my chin and cheekbones; have imagined him, hair bleached white, gasping and scarlet, unable to sweat off the heat, stretchered to the sea.

Sharing this interesting genetic weakness (I also picked up the asthma - dad’s side (skipped a generation), eczema - mum’s side, extra-bendy joints - both; mind you, I skipped the short-sightedness and got the curly hair, mimicry, persistently looking-younger-than-your-age, and stubbornness, so it’s not all bad news) makes for funtimes in the gym.  Now I’m getting to a point where I can exert myself more on the cardio apparatus, I’m overheating.  In fact, I seem to feel generally warmer (a blessing while the heating was broken!) the rest of the time.  This feels like a nice return to “who I used to be” - i.e. someone who was always feeling too warm, as opposed to the person who has spent the last few years shivering and trying to find comfort in the fact that she overheats less in summer.  I am starting to become slightly damp (my equivalent of dripping sweat) at the gym after cardio especially, which is something I’ve had to train myself in the past not to automatically treat with alarm (the only experience I’d had of perspiration was during fever).

I carry a towel in the gym because we’re told to, but I use mine - when I do - to soak surreptitiously with cold water in order to provide myself with fake sweat on my face and to rub away the strange, stinging stickiness.

So, short version: experiencing body changes (and returns) in some ways and not in others, and have successfully muntered my knees with overdoing stuff (also my shoulders, but we haven’t discussed that yet).

Meet my friend: Pain

Someone I know has the following advice for exercising, especially when you're getting started and don't know your limits: Stop comes before ow.

It's good advice, as it goes, but imprecise.  Ow comes at different points for different people and, in this case, "Ow" is not the beginning of pain, but a tenuously-defined point after the pain starts and before you're ripping yourself to shreds.

I have a high pain threshold, in general.  This is partly because I'm used to it as a constant (q.v. crappy joints), and partly because, when things are bad and I'm whingeing, I have some historical doozies to call back on to say: it's not as painful as [insert horrific incident], just put it away in the pain cupboard.

This management technique is good for pain when you know it'll end at some point, e.g. simple injury, recovering from surgery, headache when the source is known, migraine (although that's only minimally good when your headspace for putting pain is filled with orgulous, rolling, foggy banks of sickening pain).  However, it's a bit less useful for when the pain is scary because its source (and duration) is unknown. Then it becomes as tiring as someone constantly jumping out at random and shouting "Boo!" - you become hyper-vigilant to the point of paranoia, cringing before it even hits...

One of the things that's wrong with my poor knees is, apparently, some kind of hyperalgaesia.  Something went wrong with my ability to work out what's an ignorable amount of pain in that area and it all feels frightening and alien.  When I haven't done my exercises for a while (or eat the wrong food, or do too much standing without preparation), I go back to the place where I can't sleep for the discomfort, which sucks for two reasons, one of which being that sleep deprivation makes you more sensitive to pain.

One of the two useful things the NHS physio gave me (the other being insoles to correct pronation) was advice to touch my knees (and the areas around them) as much as possible with different kinds of pressures and textures, to basically bring up their sensation threshold.  Resting them and avoiding using them was only making them flabby and over-sensitive, basically.  Imagine that puffy rawness of paler skin out from under a plaster and breathing air for the first time in ages.  Like that.

Which brings us on to the key bit - the NHS physios told me to "do [these gentle exercises] and stop when it hurts."  The private physio told me to "do these more difficult exercises and push through the pain - your body has expectations and you need to shift them."  [This last is a contraction and paraphrase.]

Now, that's not to say that she was keen on me running around and breaking myself.  This is the woman who laughed heartily at me coming in with a busted neck, the pain of which had seemed to come on with a sneeze, but had actually been caused, she worked out, by me trying standing on my head the previous evening.  I am too heavy to stand on my head with the current parlous state of my muscles.  In this case, stop should have come way before ow.

Until very recently, I've been neglecting to stretch out properly after exercising.  I'm not entirely sure why this is.  Sometimes I'm rushing for a bus to get home, but... well... maybe I'm not taking it all seriously enough.  (Also, when the endorphins are rushing around, you think you're fine and don't need to stretch, just change, go home, and eat ALL THE PASTA.)  So I've been hurting like a bastard the following day, and that's been my measure of "congratulations: you did exercise". I used to call this "the smug fire of self-induced pain".

Yeah, not so clever.

Last night I achieved a mini-goal: front (as opposed to side-; I'm building up to that) plank held for 60 seconds.  I squeaked in victory and collapsed on the mat, all glowy.  Last night, after upping my sets to 4 instead of 3, I stretched properly, and today: yes, I feel achey, but to the degree that feels like "good workout last night" not the "holy crap, my left shoulder's so tight I've got pins and needles running down my arm" sensation I've been getting that makes me think I should see my physio.

Turns out Pain's one of those friends - you don't seek him out because he can be very draining company but, if he happens to come with the territory, you should neither avoid nor ignore him - he always speaks the truth, even though he sometimes exaggerates. Pain's part of healing, after all, and I need to break my muscles just enough to build them through healing, and pain's part of that.

Conversely, Injury's a wazzock and should be avoided if at all possible.

I guess what I'm saying is: test your limits constantly by artfully nudging beyond the ones you want to change. And have a map for what the steps are between the landmarks.  Pain is part of this - listen to him and he'll be a good friend in unfamiliar territory. And, for goodness' sake, save painkillers for emergencies!

First Past The Post

I think it's fair to say that I'm not exactly the most sporty person ever. Maybe it's my sickly childhood and my parents' emphasis on creative and academic achievement. Maybe it's my under-developed competitive streak ("Oh, you did really well in a thing I can't do as well as you? Nice one! :)") or the part where I was bullied by massive sporty girls as a late-developing weirdo.

Don't get me wrong - when I could avoid wheezing, I liked running around and throwing things and climbing up stuff as much as the next person who has those abilities. It just didn't... define me, I suppose.

Especially after computers happened.

But I've been through periods of being properly fit - the Year of the Sixpack (2005), various phases of cycling everywhere (2001-2003; 2010-2011 - the middle of that was Milton Keynes. Not exactly a cycling paradise that place). They took some effort, but I'm annoyingly prone to building muscle quickly when I actually put effort into it.

So why aren't I currently buff as hell?

Asthma. Increasingly screwed-up joints. A tendency to have long periods of being very ill in the lungs or injured, because these things happen easily to me. Oh, and there was 2007-2009 when I was either carrying around an increasingly massive tumour or recovering from having my abdominal muscles slashed vertically to get it gone. And the Year of The Stick (2011-2012).

So why start now, somewhat physically screwed-up and approaching 40 at an alarming speed?

See above. Plus all my family (save one) die of heart/ blood pressure-related issues. Putting that off as long as possible feels wise. My job is sedentary, and none of my hobbies wildly aerobic. Action needs to be taken, and besides - I enjoy feeling in control of this conglomeration of fleshy electrons.

So I've taken several steps to get around my natural inhibitions towards the physical:

1. Spreadsheets. I love 'em. I'm fooling the nerdy part of my psyche that tracking nutrition and exercise stats is fun.

2. A goal. Sport Relief's mile is 23rd March this year, and I've pledged to walk 6 miles, in one go, for charity.

3. Gadgets. I'll get my smartphone in on the act and satisfy that part of me too.

4. Spending money to save money. Cautious Fay wants to know the benefits of running, jumping, and lifting? Joining the gym will save her money on taxis for when she's too out of puff to run to the bus. Or just, you know, walk to where she needs to go.

So why write a blog?

Because that's probably partly going to be 5. Appeal to my creative/ academic side. Because I'm recording the actions but not the effects (physical or mental) in my spreadsheet, so maybe the more tenuous/ difficult to measure (feeling better, better posture, more confident, endorphin response, general stamina, etc.). It will also be a good place to talk these things out without boring the arse off anyone who's not actually interested.

I should probably start making some physical measurements - weight, waist size, etc. - to feed the spreadsheet, but this blog will be a good place to talk about how it makes me feeeel, among other things.

So, will this help or be a distraction from the actual work needed? Will I complete my goals? Will I keep this blog up? Will I injure myself along the way? Will I get anyone to crack a smile back at me at the gym?

Watch this space, I guess! :)