Swimming annoyances

While I probably don't qualify as an expert on pool etiquette, I'm still going to spout off on things that irritate me to no end at the pool.

If I were the god of public pool swimming, I'd make the following mandatory on threat of being punched in the face:

1. Don't come with your friend during a busy time and stand at the end of the lane talking.  As important and Prince William's wedding is, you're wasting an entire lane that could accomodate 3-5 people who come to the gym to actually, you know, work out. At least have the courtesy to grab a kickboard and pretend you're using the lane while you talk.
2. Know your speed and pick an appropriate lane. Seriously.  If you're slow and jump into the fast lane, prepare to get swum over (although that could be good triathlon training). Similarly, if you're fast, get the fuck out of the slow lane. At one point this crazy woman decided to join my slow lane with swim fins, then continuously lap everyone in the lane, forcing us to stop at every end to let her by. Far from making her look awesome, as I'm sure she intended, she just looked like a moron. 
3. If you're joining a lane that's being split by two people, let them know you'd like to join before barreling down the lane. Because if you don't these people are not going to know you want to switch to circle swimming.  You don't have to be a genius to figure out what happens next. 
4. Don't douse yourself with a gallon of your favorite perfume before swimming.  This morning I was splitting the lane when suddenly I realized I was swimming in a pool of chlorinated Clinique Happy.  Everytime I took a breath, the overpowering smell of perfume invaded my nostrils.  Why would you do that???
5. Don't steal shit that isn't yours. Once I got out of the lane to find my 50 cent flip-flops had been taken, leaving me to walk through the locker room barefoot.  I filed a police report, suggesting they mace the perpetrater when they find him/her. I am expecting to hear back any day now.

Rock climbing and thyroid medication

Most endurance athletes have probably experienced an increase in their sweat response as they become more conditioned. 

A few years ago when I was training for a marathon, I found I would start sweating at the drop of a hat. A doctor holds up a needle?  Sweat would start dripping down my arm.  I see a dog go running into the road?  It looked like someone threw a bucket of water over my head.  Anything that remotely brought my heart rate up would result in copious amounts of sweating.  I spent 70% of my time looking like a drowned rat and probably smelling like a gym's locker room. I guess it's good I was already married.  This could be (one of!) the reasons men prefer women who do yoga to marathon runners...

But when I started becoming hypothyroid, my sweat response decreased dramatically.  It was actually a pretty convenient side effect, since soon thereafter I took up rock climbing.  Sweaty hands are the bane of rock climbers, to the point that they smear disgusting chalk all over their hands repeatedly. (I rarely chalk, not because I'm a purist, but because it just makes your nails and hands disgusting).  I could just waltz up the 5.10's with clean(ish) dry hands, and look pretty hard core at the same time.

But since getting on levothyroxine, my sweat production seems to have gone back to normal.  My friend points out that when I climb overhangs, there is now usually a trail of sweat below me.  I'll start a bouldering route only to fly off at the end when my sweating equals that of 5 mini-hoses attached to my fingertips.  And I've had to start wearing tank tops, requiring an unfortunate amount of attention to whether or not my armpit hair has started growing back...sigh.

I guess I can take comfort in the fact that when the zombie apocalypse comes, I probably won't be able to find levothyroxine, thus increasing my ability to climb random objects to escape the zombies.  Of course, that won't be any help if I can't outrun them to these objects because I'm so freaking fatigued.  Or I could just start using chalk.  Blech....

Swimming and misconceptions

Let's start off by saying I'm the slowest swimmer ever.  Well, maybe I'm faster than that crazy lady at the rec center who wears full makeup and two swim caps, but not by much.

My excuse is that I think I'm just dense (as in physically, although it could be mentally as well).  Once, while in Florida, I watched as my husband and our friends just sat in the ocean past the breakers, relaxing and floating on the water.  It looked so easy so I tried it, and promptly ended up spitting out mouthfuls of salty whale pee (if you think about it, the ocean is just a stew of fish waste products...) while flailing around to get my head back out of the water.  They tried explaining it (Just lean back and relax!), but whatever I tried, I sank like a rock.  As a consolation prize, they speculated that maybe I was just super muscular and lean (total lie). 

So it's pretty hypocritical of me to judge people by their swimwear when they're hunting down an empty swim lane.  But I do it anway.  And yes, I compete even though I know I'm going to lose.

If you show up in a ruffled tankini, I automatically assume that I can swim faster than you.  I might even station myself in a swim lane next to you so I can feel good as I lap you.

If you walk in wearing competition swimwear, swimming cap, and goggles, I know you're going to beat me and thus I try to stay way the hell away from your lane so I don't become demoralized.  Also, if you ask me to circle swim, I'll probably try and duck into the lane with the makeup wearing old lady.

If you come in with goggles and swim fins, I assume I'm faster than you too, although you'll most likely lap me.  But I know that if you didn't have the fins, I'd be winning.  So I feel better about my water floundering anyway.

But the ones that always get me are the people who show up in floral print swimwear that looks like something the Barbies of the 1980's would wear.  I always assume they're going to be slow, but about 40% of the time they're making sonic booms underwater.  Puzzling.

The flip side of this is that I've recently started feeling insecure about my swimwear.  It just makes sense for me to buy competition swimwear.  It's practical, comfortable, and modest...(ish).  But now I'm wondering if I'm falsely advertising my swimming abilities.  I'm slow.  On a good day I can fight to keep up in the Medium lane, but then will retire to the locker room to hyperventilate as I catch my breath. 

So shouldn't I be wearing a ruffled tankini and water wings?

Weight gain and hypothyroidism

A lot of people give me funny looks when they find out I have hypothyroidism.  People have suggested that I was incorrectly diagnosed, or that maybe I was just "lucky" to not get all of the symptoms, like weight gain.  Perhaps because I still wear a size small.

But the thing is, I did gain a lot of weight when you take into account how much training I was doing at the time. Exercising 2-3 hours a day on rougly 1500 calories a day should not have resulted in ANY weight gain, but I still gained 7-10 pounds.  It's occurred to me that if I hadn't been in training, I would probably have to buy that seat belt extender on airplanes (and if I hadn't become hypothyroid, I would be smoking hot right now, damn it!)

So it frustrates me when people blast Oprah and other hypothyroid sufferers for getting fat.  I've come across article after article about how "sure, it's a little bit harder, but you can't use it as an excuse!" and how "all you need to do is a few more crunches a day and you'll no longer be letting your thyroid hold you back."

Bull. Shit.  And it pisses me off that Oprah caved to this idea. 

I remember how after the Copper Triangle  I would try to ride my bike to work, and it was all I could do to get up to 15mph.  I would drag myself out on 8 mile runs and feel like I was about to die while going at a pace more than a minute and a half slower than last year.  But I kept faithfully following my training plan (mostly out of fear that if I didn't I would drown in the upcoming half-ironman distance race) thinking I was just being lazy; I needed to train harder; just harden the fuck up!  It was the hardest thing I've ever done.  And I still gained weight.

So suffice it to say I'm a bit irritated that these people who go to their "jazzercise" or spin classes maybe 3 times a week feel they have the right to judge hypothyroid people who "just need to exercise a little bit more."  Are they out there doing half-ironmans and marathons? I doubt it. And they don't even have the excuse of feeling like shit that's been run over by a garbage truck.  Lazy-asses.

Gluten and hypothyroidism

Based on some research I've found, which admittedly seems a bit sensational and dubious, a couple of weeks ago I've decided to try cutting gluten out of my diet.

There have been some studies that show that the autoimmune response to gluten will often trigger an attack against the thyroid, causing one to become hypothyroid.  Since my endocrinologists are insisting that I have Hashimoto's, in theory I have an autoimmune version of hypothyroidism. So I figured what the hell?  How can it hurt?

Since cutting out gluten, my tinnea versicolor that i've been battling for 2 years has almost gone away entirely, and my face has stopped flushing.  I'm hopeful, but I know a variety of factors could be contributing to these changes.  I think the real test will come in a few months when I gorge myself on a delicious loaf of bread to see if symptoms return.

In reality, I should probably ask my doctors to test me for gluten intolerance.  But I'm tired of doctors.  And it seems that often the tests don't catch anything anyway, and the only real way to test is to.....cut gluten out of the diet.  I can do that without a $35 copay, thank you very much.

A Beginning

As a vegetarian triathlete, cyclist, and (one time - never again!) marathoner, I am pretty health conscious.  I exercise, I eat right (most of the time...what's the point of exercising 3 hours a day if you don't get to indulge occasionally?), and I pride myself on being in shape and prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. 

So last fall when I went in for my yearly exam and standard blood panel, I was pretty confident that I was going to get back outstanding results per usual.  I was even excited that I would soon be able to rub how healthy I was in my husband's face (okay, so our relationship is a bit weird).   Imagine my dismay when the results said I was hypothyroid and my doctor immediately put me on thyroid medication.

Being a nerd, I immediately started researching everything I could find about hypothyroidism. 

I learned a lot, like why I wanted to die during my last half-ironman and I still came in with a miserable time of 6 hours and 34 minutes.  Or why it had been increasingly difficult to make myself go on runs that were a breeze a year ago.  Why it was a struggle to talk myself into biking to work (If I drove it would created demand for oil, and then sea turtles would die, and I sure as hell didn't want to be a sea turtle killer.)  I also realized that the building managers at my office weren't out to kill me with hypothermia; the fact that I was freezing all the time was my own body's fault.

But it also left many gaps, like why? I was fine 6 months ago (they had done a blood panel due to something else and my TSH was fine). Was it something I had done wrong to make me this way?  Nobody in my family has it, but they insisted it was genetic.  I asked about overtraining, and they dismissed my fears.  So why, and how do I fix it?

I was struggling.  All of the books seemed geared toward people who were desperately trying to get diagnosed so they'd have an excuse for their sedentary lifestyles and poor diets.  I didn't want this disease!  Having to take a pill for the rest of my life significantly cuts down my survival chances during the zombipocalypse!  I really feel that our bodies should work without having to dump a bunch of drugs in them, damn it!

I cheated on my first endocrinologist because she insisted I take the pills, but my second one came to the same conclusion.  I tried adding iodine to my diet despite my doctors' telling me not to (it did make me warmer).  But finally, I came to accept that I might actually have something wrong with me.

So I guess that's the whole point of this blog.  To come to terms with being sick, and to document my journey to getting better.