1 step forward, 2 steps back

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

1 step forward, 2 steps back

If you asked me on Friday if I thought I would finish in under 3:15 I would have confidently answered, "No question about it!" Ask me again today and I will say, " I will be lucky to finish."

2 great speed work sessions followed by a miserable long run and another struggle on a tempo run. I am not surprised I didn't have a great long run. I realized going in that I was less than 36 hours removed from a gruelling track workout and wasn't alarmed when I felt sluggish to start our 22 miler Saturday. I eventually found my grove but something still seemed wrong when I felt tired before the halfway point. I struggled on just doing what I do best, surviving but definitely not thriving. And then after the last water jug I did the unthinkable - I had to stop to walk during a training run! This has happened before a few times, but never this far into my training.

I had time to think about what went wrong now that my group had long since passed me by and what I came up with was my poor diet the previous week coupled with my lack of rest so soon after such hard workouts. This just reinforces my belief that I need to eat properly and gets as much rest as I can (at least for a month before the race, for both!)

Robyn is in a lot of pain and after discussing it we came to the conclusion that we are both going to need a lot better communication and patience if we are going to get through this. I was often oblivious to the obvious and then often times would or put off things if I did see (such as I still haven't got around to sealing the crack in the cement in the back of our garage that I noticed last summer) and Robyn has realized that she needs to start voicing things that give her pain instead of fighting through everything full steam ahead. I have seen a lot of great runners but I have never met anyone as much endurance, pain threshold, and sheer strength as her. She has the ability to take more pain with a smile on her face than anyone I have ever met.

Quote of the day: "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." - William Faulkner (must be related to my wife)

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My Story

Most of it contained in the blog somewhere but I will summarize here: I started to notice symptoms during my freshman year of college. They were subtle little hints like I was more difficult to chew and had some twitching in my face. And when I got nervous my voice would become very tight and strained, this was true from middle school but was getting worse. By the end of my sophomore year I knew something was physically wrong, it was nothing mental. I was luckily diagnosed very quickly compared with most dystonia patients around 1990. I quickly sought treatment, and quickly ran throuh the numerous meds I had tried, Botox was used but I became immune, surgery was done in 1995 which helped my pain greatly but didn't do anything for the voice. In 1999 I went to NYC, to a doctor I considered the finest mind in the dystonia field at the time, and he suggested an experimental study they were doing called Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). This was the first I had heard about DBS, I went back to my aunts house in NJ and thought about it for a few days and decided against it at the time. I still think it was the correct decision but I also made a wrong decision out of desperation during that visit. Instead of waiting for them to improve the DBS technology I opted for a palidotomy, which permently alters the brain. The surgery left my speech garbled instead of breathy when I went in. I was now following the progress of DBS and checked it out in Chicago in 2001, decided to hold off a litle longer. In 2004 I went back to Chicago and opted for the surgery at this time, fully aware the affects on the voice were really an X factor, but likely no change. I had the surgery done but the DBS had yet to be turned on, that came a month later. So I laughed when people said I looked better during the first month! After a month passed and my body adjusted to the new hardware I had installed it was turned on and the facial spasms started going away with each fine tuning that came once a month. I love to talk to dystonia patients (the nicest people on the planet, not quite sure why that is - maybe it is the empathy that comes with realizing you have to live with dystonia.) Feel free to email me at Brianst@sbcglobal.net.

DMRF's Accidental Hero - I run because I can!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009