Obviously, I haven't posted in a while. I had a really awesome time at the Tupper Lake Tinman 1/2 ironman in June. I finished the race in 7 hours and 14 minutes. I was happy with that. It was my first 1/2 and even though it was 14 minutes more than I had wanted, it was fine. The run was horribly hot and I still had the remnants of an upper respiratory infection. I finished and I was happy. You can check out the pics here: Tupper Lake Pictures
My plan was to finish tupper, take off 2 weeks, train for Mightyman 1/2 ironman and the NYC marathon. I was feeling very strong as I cruised into Tupper Lake. I had had the best season ever to that point. Within 2 weeks back from Tupper things began to change. I was training, but not enjoying it. My mood began to disintegrate. My health began to fall apart too. I felt sick all the time and my training was getting harder to complete. I could have been over training, but I dialed back a lot. Even to the point of taking 2 and 3 rest days to try to get my strength back. There is a difference between tired and exhausted. I was exhausted.
Perpetually exhausted and unable to train, I finally went to the doctor. Was it a lack of b12? Anemia? a virus? Cancer (yes, I thought that)? My Doc is terrific. He gave me a full physical and ran every blood test available. He even gave me a b12 shot. Three days later he called. "Jen, you are the picture of perfect health."
Now I could laundry list all of the things in my life that have been putting stress on me; work just sucked, Carolynn was facing her 1 year-out-of-chemo PET scan, I needed a breast biopsy, money was getting tighter, but I didn't feel like any of that was in anyway harder than the year before. I couldn't make sense of it. When Carolynn started to use words like "fragile" to describe the state I was in, I knew I was heading down a very scary path. One I've been down before. I was heading into (or already in) a depression.
Three years ago I went on effexor at the suggestion of my doctor because I was experiencing very high anxiety and depression. It helped me tremendously and allowed me to take back my life, get through the rough patch, and eventually come off the medication. This time i wasn't experiencing the anxiety, but even with the depression, I did not want to go on medication again. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't sitting around crying everyday and I did have a quite "typical" affect most of the time. I even had a few really good days, but I knew something was wrong and I also knew I couldn't think my way out of it. It can be very scary. Thank God for Carolynn. So patient with me through all of this. She never got mad or lost her temper. I knew she was worried about me. I still can't say exactly what brought me out of it, but I have to believe she had a lot to do with it.
It seemed like after the doctor called with his good health dx and my breast biopsy came back negative, I started to improve. Carolynn encouraged me to start taking more vitamins which included l-tryptophan at bed time. I made the decision to run the cow harbor 10K despite the fact that I hadn't trained for it, mostly because I needed the camaraderie. That went well, all things considered and by some miracle, I shaved a minute off my best time on that course. Then there was last Friday. It was raining. I wanted to go for a run. I did. I forgot how much I enjoyed running in the rain. I felt like my old self again. Back at my house after 3 wet miles, I sat on my stoop and thought, "Well to go forward from here, I've got to start back at the beginning again."
Here I am. Back at the beginning and ready to move forward again.
