Oh look! It’s October 3rd and I seem to be writing an entry a day! Perhaps practice for NoJoMo? Maybe. Let’s see how far I can get.
After about a week of sleeping for shit, I went to bed at a decent hour last night and slept for a full 8+ hours. I got an 88 sleep score on my FitBit and am so freaking proud of it. It’s the highest sleep score I’ve gotten since I’ve been watching my sleep health.
I slept horribly with the Big Wild Rancher on Tuesday night…but then again, I think we didn’t go to bed until something like 2:30am and then my alarm went off at 5am, so…of course it was a shit sleep. And we both sleep HOT and the bed was soaked with sweat when we woke up. Gross.
I won’t see him for a while as he’s driving out of state to race one of his cars (leaving at 4am tomorrow), so we’ll see if he likes keeping in touch. My guess is no. His texting style is not so great. Maybe we can talk on the phone. Trying to start a relationship is hard nowadays, I guess.
I’m still so shaken by the fact that I met that guy who’d dissected his carotid artery like me. There are so many similarities, such as the fact that he’d been running very hard on the treadmill at Orangetheory just like I had been. Someone asked WTF about Orangetheory could possibly nearly kill not just one person, but TWO in the same city and my answer to that is this:
Orangetheory is based on your heart rate. When you take a class, you wear a heart rate monitor and the whole “theory” behind is is to get your heart pumping in the “orange zone”, which is 84% + of your maximum heart rate (based on AVERAGES) for at least 12 minutes during the hour-long class. This is supposed to cause your body to kick in some kind of overdrive that will help you burn extra calories for up to 36 hours.
Thing is, no two heart rates are the same. Sure, most people normally fall into a range at certain ages, but for someone like me who has a very low heart rate for my age, I was having to bust my hump much harder than someone who has a naturally higher heart rate.
And of course, I’m competitive, so I was always watching my zones as well as the people on either side of me. It became something of a contest. The harder I worked, the more I was in the Orange Zone and I’d try to get more and more minutes in the zone.
But what was happening was that I’d hop on the treadmill first thing before even really waking up (4:30am, remember?) and I’d immediately try to run as freaking hard as I possibly could, which caused a HUGE spike in my heart rate AND my blood pressure and I guess after doing this for about 6 months, my carotid artery just blew!!
Now. I’m not blaming Orangetheory by any means. But what I’m saying is, I have never worked out so hard in my LIFE. I believe that it makes competitive people like me kind of crazy in that we’ll push ourselves beyond our limits trying to give ourselves a good score. And in the end, we hurt ourselves…be it internally (as in, my carotid artery or someone’s heart or whatever) or other body parts (blowing out a knee, elbow, back…whatnot). Again, not just Orangetheory…in my FB support group a lot of people talk about how their dissection happened at Crossfit in the same way - we are literally beating ourselves up!
But then get this - the guy I was talking with told me that he knew something happened while he was on the treadmill and he had the same symptoms I did (severe headache lasting several days, fatigue, weakness, etc.) and he went to the doctor a few days later (like me), but he was misdiagnosed!! They basically said ‘take two aspirin and call me in the morning’ and he asked if they thought it was okay if he went on a business trip to China the following day. They were like, you should be fine…so he WENT TO CHINA with this issue!!
By the time he got there, he knew something was very, very wrong.
Bottom line, he cut his trip short - but it was only after he’d had a STROKE.
You guys. I’ll say it again and again…I AM SO VERY LUCKY AND BEYOND GRATEFUL!! Thank God (and my wonderful, amazing friends) that everything happened the way it did. I know had it been any longer I’d have had a massive stroke. I know that sounds dramatic, but I’ve just heard too many stories and have felt too many strikingly similar sensations.
Okay. Enough of that.
It’s approaching the end of a long, kind of stressful day at work. Ugh. They are only going to get worse from here until the end of the year and I have vacation I need to use…which only means that I’ll be stressed out during vacation. I can’t have that!
How do you unwind during a short vacay when there’s so much going on?
I’m beyond excited for the Grand [Canyon] Adventure, though. It’s going to be a thrill, that’s for sure!! Plus, we’ll be doing massages and relaxing things, so I’m sure I’ll be able to relax. Eeee! I’ll be off in a little over three WEEKS!!
Well. I need to close up shop for the day and send my final emails. I just realized that I have nothing to eat for dinner tonight so looks like I’ll be taking myself out to dinner. Not a bad way to end the day, eh?
Sending LOVE,
GS
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