Letting the Animal Out of the Ark - or - 40 Days, Part II

 Post-transplant day 40.  Letting the animal out of the ark.

People forget that once it stopped raining and the Ark ran aground, Noah didn't just pop the hatch and release the hounds.  He waited 40 MORE days and nights to open the arc sending out doves each day to test the waters.  Only when he had a sign of terra firma did he open the Ark.

In a way, I am an Ark, too, that had to contain just one animal - the essential me, the athletic and powerful me.  Now, it took a long time to get to transplant.  71 days after moving, 33 days from being listed at Duke, 365 days from being listed in NY.  This ark had to weather quite a storm - and did!

But now recovery has proven to be a waiting game.  I am not allowed to lift above a certain weight until a certain amount of time has passed.  Not allowed to drive until certain time has passed.  Not allowed to jog or bicycle until certain time has passed.  But those timelines haven't been explicitly spelled out to me.  I did return to driving four weeks post, but only because I pushed.  Purportedly, I should be able to return to light jogging at six weeks, though that's in dispute by some of the respiratory therapists.  They seem to think 3 months.

Honestly, I couldn't wait that long.  So today, 40 days from being stitched up and sent to ICU, I went outside and interspersed stretches of walking with jogging for about a mile.

This was horrible.  My legs felt like wooden pegs with raw nerves shot throughout.  I haven't felt this awkward while jogging since...ever.  Even when I was a newcomer to the sport, it didn't feel like this.  But the first short section was the worst, the second better, the third not as good, the fourth segment better than the previous ones still, the fifth hurt a lot more... so a rollercoaster of experiences in one short mile.  But it felt good.  Even the pain in the legs felt GOOD.


But I was well-pleased with my lungs, which expanded and expanded to the limits of my chest cavity.  I didn't have coughing fits.  I didn't have to hunch over and catch my breath or blow off CO2.  I just breathed heavily and deeply.  (I will need to learn to breathe more quickly, I think, and that will come in time.)  It felt GOOD. 

It was generally 30 seconds jogging, a couple minutes walking.  And so on, for a 17:54 mile, my best pace in over a year.

So what should I say at rehab tomorrow?  Put me on the treadmill and let me at it, because I handled it on the sidewalks today?  Yes?

I didn't get around to putting my bicycle together this weekend, but could probably accomplish that mid-week.  I'm itching to put in a few sidewalk miles.

Today, I was reminded that though it will be an uphill physical battle, I still have the willpower to engage in that struggle.

Good gym workout; more photos

Having done a long run - "long" run - on Friday of 5 miles, my legs were pretty blasted on Saturday, which would have been a great day to run. I am definitely training up, though, as I now have the jimmy legs at night again. Sunday, I got super busy with taking race photos in the morning and meeting playwright David Hansen of Cleveland, OH, for lunch. We found a nifty joint in Chelsea that didn't cost too much for brunch. Of course I had a mimosa; why?

So today's workout needed to be a good one, since it had been three days since my last. I also wanted to get some good lung clearance going. The humidity has been high the last couple days and as a result, I'm coughing up a lot of junk. Not fun.

Considering the benefits many runners have experienced on Jeff Galloway's run-walk training plans, I may finally take it to heart. If I time the run and walk segments I'm doing anyway, it will lend structure and perhaps even help me get faster, as the walk segments end a little before I'd naturally start running again, and the run segments somewhat longer than I can sometimes sustain. I'm guessing that doesn't make much sense. What I'm hoping is this: if I time the run and walk portions, I can s-l-o-w-l-y increase the amount of time I'm running and decrease the amount of time I'm walking.

Now, if I do this on a treadmill, I can easily keep an eye on the timer, as well as have the treadmill set a consistent pace. So today's workout was a two-fer: half an hour on the stationary bike and half an hour on the treadmill.

The 30 minutes on the bike went quickly, though I didn't get into it as hard as I would have if the workout were bike alone. Going from the bike to running on the treadmill took about four minutes. The transition is quite rough on the legs, and I was really tight in the calves. At least they didn't cramp up immediately this time. But I took my first walk break after just three minutes. After that, I extended the run periods by 30 seconds each time, until the final segment was six minutes long. Much to my surprise, the pain in my calves faded after the third walk break and the running became easier. Much easier. I had set the treadmill at 5 mph and found I could increase that bit by bit without needing to walk, until I was doing 5.5 mph. I ended the run strong and confident and feeling good, in a way I haven't in a long time. Maybe I should warm up on the bike more often!

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I took pics Sunday at the Bronx Half Marathon. This time, I was challenged twice as to my credentials. The first was from NYRR staffer Theresa, who was doing the last-minute registration table. (I know her, she doesn't really know me.) She just didn't want me taking pics of the money handling. OK, I understand that. Later, at the finish line area, an angry black man who had been told to get behind the ropes challenged me. He had a point - namely that if I don't have press credentials, I should be behind the ropes, too. However, a regular volunteer (possibly staff, I can't remember) told me I could stay where I was if I wanted. There are advantage to having good equipment and knowing what you're doing. However, there weren't any good angles to be had by anybody, so I didn't push it.

The best of the photos can be found here.

I brought along a reflector this time in an attempt to broaden and soften my flash. In many photos, it worked nicely - but timing is critical, as the area affected when outdoors is very small - it will work better at night or on very cloudy days.

Direct flash is more obvious (and can be seen in a couple of the Picasa posted photos), but is almost too much. On the other hand, using the flash from about 30 degrees off the centerline (to the subject) results in good overall modeling and pulling the subject off the background by virtue of a contrast in color temperature. The runner looks slightly warmer than the runners in the background, without being obnoxious about it. (I do color my flash.) He's also a a few degrees brighter. This provides focus. In other situations, I had it at about 135 degrees off centerline - kind of an angled backlight. This is truly epic and you can see the effects of this on a runner and a bicyclist in the album.

One of the things I can do in Lightroom that is difficult even in Photoshop is widely manipulate greyscale. I can command the greyscale conversion to affect ranges of color to a lesser or greater degree. I can set where the highlights and shadows are divided and how contrasty those are.

In these two photos, I have manipulated how the primaries and secondaries of the first image get mapped to greyscale ranges. Yellows and greens were set to be as light in greyscale as possible, along with purples/magentas. Reds/oranges were left alone, but blues and aquas were pulled way, way down, to almost black. This gave me great contrast in the bib number and brought out some texture in the sky that can't be seen in the original greyscale conversion. On top of that, in Preview of all programs, I added a light sepia tone and some text. I could have done the sepia in Lightroom, but it's actually easier in Preview.

And in these two photos, with similar manipulation of greyscale first, I brought magentas, reds, and oranges (the building tones) to full, completely supressed yellow tones, left green alone and suppressed aquas, blues, and purples. Contrast was bumped a bit, as were blacks, resulting in a nicely dramatic sky and depth of building detail that, again, isn't present to the eye in the original image. In Photoshop, I did a little bit of distort and warp to bring verticals back to vertical (countering perspective) and used a Warming filter to add the warm tone. I don't think I like it as much as the sepia I used in Preview on the runner. But... still, I ended up with a very dramatic view of a couple of frankly boring and ugly buildings - pretty much encapsulating my view of the Bronx as a whole.

Cut and pasted rants

Running lately has not been often, but each one is going moderately well. yesterday's 2-miler went better than expected and I'm determined to do 4 tomorrow. It's time to start pre-training for the Staten Island Half; that is: get my body to being able to do 3 miles 3-4 x week easily. Also, time to get back to weights and stationary bike as cross-training. As much as I like the elliptical, Runner's magazine recommends non weight-bearing aerobic exercise as cross-training, to give the joints a break. The weights will be targeted for core strength, not mass.

So. I realized I often write some pretty good things in emails to other people or in forums. I've decided that now and then, I'll cut and paste those here; mostly for posterity, but also because I think the discussions they're culled from are quite thought-provoking. Over the next couple days, I'm going to write up my experiences touring Israel and Italy, using cut-and-pasted forum posts as a basis, but expanding them for this blog.

As a teaser to those, I here present a response I wrote to some complaining about the TSA. Enjoy.
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On Jul 10, 2010, xxxx wrote:

They randomly choose people, so that the next 4 or 6 people quietly suffer the rest of the indignities, since they can see that you got it worse than them. It's job justification... "Look how hard we're working!" Next time this sort of thing happens, calmly ask them how many terrorists they have captured.
If you're really bold and can afford the time, hold up an ordinary Q-Tip and ask, in your best fake-stage-villain voice, "Did you know I could put your eye out with this? Mom said so." Your life should get more interesting, right after that.

Bullshit. Stop this. I expect better from professionals.

I'm no fan of the TSA - their workers are, as a group, lazy, undereducated, and don't care much about their job - only that they HAVE a job.

HOWEVER, without exception (in my personal observation across the country), these people do a mind-numbingly boring job with consistency, expediency, and are unfailingly polite. They do make mistakes now and then, such as missing the Leatherman I boarded my flight to SC with two weeks ago, but those are few and far between.

I can't explain the variability of "random" searches. At times, they're sticking to the script (supposed to be every 20 persons or so) and at other times (red-eye flights) are either hyper-vigilant, searching every other person, or are content to just screen for liquids and sharp objects. I've been told by the mean ones (in the holding area of the airport) that there are written procedures for everything and that's what they follow, even if it doesn't make sense to the worker on the line or the passenger. Those procedures include detailing the proportion of passengers selected for extra screening.

yyyyyy wrote:
Please do NOT crack jokes or "hold up a Q-tip" as XXX suggested. While airport screening in the United States is an ineffective joke intended to pacify worried passengers, the TSA screeners DO have authority to confiscate and detain, and mixing a wisecrack with a scolded inspector will delay your trip far worse than heavy weather at ORD or ATL.

Exactly. If you were a TSA screener, especially during busy, stressful periods and when your bosses have raised the alert level, how'd you like some smartass cracking jokes? Well, guess what? There's written procedures for these cases and you will end up in holding and you will miss your flight.

I write this to make two points:

A) If you want to change the system, do so from the top-end - get to the people who make the policies. Nothing you say or do at the airport will affect TSA policy or procedures and can only lead to further trouble for you. So keep your yap shut, put your laptop in the grey bin, and direct your hate at the idiot tourist types who show up in their pajamas and have a gallon of shampoo in their bags. But if enough citizens voiced their opinion, wrote to their congressmen, the president, the FAA, and Dep of Homeland Security; assuring them that we would accept increased risk in exchange for less invasive and more expedient measures, then those agencies would eventually listen. They do, after all, work for us, for our communal safety. ( I'd urge a boycott of airlines as a "stick" measure, but have learned that modern jetliners get better gas mileage than almost any vehicle on the road. The 767s I was on get 50+ miles per gallon!)

B) Next time you chafe at America's current form of air travel security, remember three things:
One, that security screenings existed well before 9/11, seeking to catch any explosives or other materials unsafe for air travel or obviously a weapon.
Two, hijacked aircraft were MORE prevalent before 9/11 - I remember a time when it seems like there was a hijacked aircraft every couple of months or so. Hijackings are DOWN.
And three, airport security in other countries is often far more stringent than America's. In my limited experience, it looks like most countries have followed the FAA and the TSA in establishing the basics, but often take restrictions and body/baggage searches to a much higher degree. I've already posted about my experiences with Israeli security, and Italian TSA pulled me right out of screening and all the way back to check-in because of my insulin pen needles. They wanted the gate agents written authorization to allow those on the flight -- and SHE wanted proof that I do, in fact, have a medical need for these items. She wanted a letter from my physician confirming diagnoses of diabetes and prescription of the needles. After a 10-minute Mexican standoff, she grudgingly satisfied herself that my multiple prescription labels (which I carried just in case something like this happened) were proof enough.

Blood, sweat, and beers

So I'm sitting here in the 14th street Apple Store, waiting for them to see me and fix my phone. Mic failure. *sigh* Shit happens.

Life is sure a long, strange, mystifying journey sometimes. Yesterday highlighted that for me. I woke up very late w/ zero energy. By the time I could force myself into running clothes, the temperature had climbed to 82. This should have been fine, since humidity was 33% and there was a light breeze, but I just couldn't do it. I decided, instead, to slip on running pants over my clothes, eat a late lunch (have I mentioned before how awesome my chili is? especially over rice?) and then go running later in the evening, once I got to Cunningham Studio.

Problem is, I got distracted by a phone call and forgot to dose for the carbs in my lunch. I checked my blood sugar two hours after lunch and it was over 300. *BIG FROWNY FACE* So, for the first time, I decided to "fix" it by dosing my insulin late. I took two units, knowing I'd be ingesting more carbs in the near future. I tracked my BG hourly and watched it fall. And fall. By the time I was at Cunningham and the lights were set up and we were just waiting for audience, it was reading 70 and I was beginning to feel hypo. *ANNOYED FROWNY FACE* (When I get home tonight, I'll post a scan of my tracking sheet, and you'll be able to see how things went.)

I'd made sure to bring some Sustained Energy, about 28g worth of carbs, with me for the "long" run, and I headed out for a run along the Hudson River ribbon, where I haven't run in many moons. The first two miles were surreal - I wasn't feeling 100%, but my lungs were doing well and I found that by running with my eyes gazing on the sky and keeping an eye on the road in my peripheral vision, I could really get some long segments in. Walking was often, but very short. By the time I was two miles down and crossing the pedestrian bridge to take a peak at the construction at Ground Zero, I was feeling much better.

My run back was also good with much less walking and some strides, trying to keep up with some slow-moving bicyclists. By the time I returned to Cunningham, I was feeling 100% better than before I'd started, blood sugar as back in normal range, I was sweaty and stinky, and noticed I'd actually managed to bleed on my running shirt from one of my arm sticks. The run might not have been as long as I planned for the day, but it was of good quality, I think.

It was also faster than I supposed it should be. I entered the studio mid-way through the performance of the first piece and was shocked. I'd though the concert would be halfway done before I got back. After the show, the stage manager and I hurriedly struck the rental equipment and went out for a refresher. We went to a little sushi place that was about to close and had some light Japanese beers and some sushi. And yes, I remember to take the proper amount of insulin at the proper time!