View of the Spanish Peaks under early October snow from the WSW. Gallatin Peak peaks out from behind the ridge in the center of the photo.
This is not a usual training blog where I discuss how my training is progressing. In large part this is because I am not currently training and won’t be until mid-December. I went through my post-Ridge Run payoff period, where I got in two great runs and backpacked through the Tetons. I was planning for one last payoff run—a 21-mile run/climb of 11,012-foot Gallatin Peak, the tallest peak overlooking the Gallatin Valley. I couldn’t fit it in before a two-week trip to Ireland, so the plan was to maintain some level of training as we toured Ireland, then get after Gallatin shortly after I got back.
I was on a tour of Ireland, with Terry and 19 other folks. I managed to squeeze in 26 miles of running in our first 7 days, but a cough was spreading around the tour. I got knocked down on day 8. I had been planning to write a story about how to make a tour work for aging ragers, discussing how one finds the sweet spots to turn an interesting historical, but fairly sedentary tour, into something that has a significant training component.
That idea got shelved as I spent much of the rest of the tour coughing and sitting in silence, as talking only made me cough more. I had gotten my fifth Covid shot a week before heading to Ireland, but it was likely Covid nonetheless. The viral load in the air on the bus likely overwhelmed my system. By the time I returned home my doctor said that since I had the virus for more than a week, there was no need to get tested, I needed to quarantine and we just needed to treat the symptoms.
It took 2 more weeks to get mostly beyond the affliction. By then, I was in no shape to run Gallatin and first snows had fallen; the backcountry was quickly closing. I had pre-winter yard projects and other house projects to get done, so it was time to stop focusing on training and turn my attention elsewhere. With the exception of a few short runs and some end-of-the-season mountain bike rides, that’s what I did and I am still doing.
In this process of de-training, I have noticed substantial changes in the health stats my Garmin reports—all for the worse. Thinking back to my peak-training period in July, I was pushing out 50-60 miles per week with lots of vertical. During and shortly after each run, my stress levels and heart rate would spike and my body battery would dip, but I would start to see them recover quickly in the hours after I finished running, and after a good night of sleep, my stats would return to where they had been the morning before: body battery of 50-90 out of 100, resting heart rate around 60, and stress levels deep in the resting zone. I wrote "A Moment of Zen" in July describing how I felt some mornings (https://www.ragingwhileaging.com/post/a-moment-of-zen). I’d wake up with very low stress levels and my body feeling this healing Zen-like calm. I’d often stay in bed a bit to milk that feeling for a few minutes, before getting up and getting ready to run. I could go day-after-day feeling fully recovered even while pushing out serious miles and vertical.
This doesn’t happen anymore. My body battery rarely breaches 50, 30 is pretty typical, my resting heart rate is inching up toward 70, and my stress levels never achieve deep rest. My Garmin used to report my Finess Age as 10 years below my chronological age. I’ve lost 4 of those years since I’ve started de-training. All these statistics point to the inescapable fact that without continued dedicated training, I am aging quickly. My fitness age is trending toward 66.
On the one hand this is unfortunate. This is a substantial setback and I have a lot of work ahead to build back when I start training; it will be a long climb to get back to the fitness level I achieved last summer. On the other hand, this presents the opportunity to see if I can in fact get back to where I was, or even gain a higher level of fitness. I have figured out that zone training works for me. Next season, I plan to fine tune my training regimen and put this body to the test.
Before that however, I have one last house project to finish, then I am getting an operation to remove a neuroma from my right foot. I had a first neuroma operation in 2015, it seems that a stump neuroma has formed and running as much as I do with nerve pain in my foot has been a challenge. The surgery is scheduled for November 17, the doctor says that I can expect 4-weeks of recovery time before I begin running. So, the plan is to start slogging through the cold on icy Bozeman roads in mid-December, when the snow isn’t falling and skiing doesn’t beckon.
Fingers are crossed that all goes as planned. I'll let you know.
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