{"id":115,"date":"2023-08-07T12:41:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T17:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/?p=115"},"modified":"2023-08-07T14:25:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T19:25:28","slug":"two-miles-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Two Miles a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

That’s all I’ve got, two miles. Two long and difficult miles for now while I continue to try and figure out a way through this hearing loss\/tinnitus\/vertigo issue. Running or any other activities that cause my head to “bounce” give me the swirlies and I have to stop for at least an hour or so until I can regain combobulation. I gave Pickleball a try and I found myself on the ground more often than I desired. For a guy who’s had pretty decent balance and body control up to this point, it’s difficult to come to terms with. Looking up is disorienting, even when not engaged in physical activity. I used to love waking through large cities and looking up at the buildings and architecture, watching planes and birds. I still do, but I’m reminded quickly to keep my head down and yes focused. While I can still HEAR airplanes, I’ve lost the ability to identify where abouts the sound is coming from, so if I want to see what kind it is, it requires me to look up longer. It’s a fun game until I’m reminded how miserable I am.

At least a rower provides a means for me to try and maintain some sort of physical health, something that I wish I would have taken more seriously over the past 20 years or so. Being on a rail, on plane, with my eyes focussed forward seems to be the best bet for now but that doesn’t come without it’s challenges.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past few years, I had been interested in Crossfit. I love it, but like everything else in my life, I’m inconsistent. Work, family obligations or shear not wanting to go made me more of a casual Crossfitter, unfortunately.
I always enjoyed the rowing workouts hough, they’re versatile.

A few weeks ago, I went and picked myself up a rower from a nearby gym that was closing. I put it out in the garage, which faces East, so that I could open the door and feel the cool breeze and sunshine on my face. I’ve been listening to some podcasts lately about the positive affects of having sunlight in the eyes to help reset your circadian clock. I THINK it’s having a positive affect. I dunno, maybe I’m just feeling fortunate to see the sun each morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I start with a nice stretch and a brief warm-up. Some air squats, jumping jacks or whatever I can do to feel loose is usually sufficient. A few clicks up on the radio volume and on the saddle I go. One mile, or 1600M is my goal, followed by a brief rest and then another mile. The first few days were fine. I was hitting my goals and felt pretty good. I started to feel stronger already and required less rest.

Last Thursday wasn’t fine. The second mile, about 2\/3 of the way, something changed. I felt like a waterhead and my skull was a wave pool. The “woosh” sound\/feeling from the rower and radio was horrible. My mechanics felt loose, they weren’t. I was feeling like I was going forwards when I was going backwards and vice versa. It sucked. I was at about 700M to go, no but deal, right? Just knock it out and recover, you’ve got this. 600…500…475…465. I felt like I wasn’t going anywhere despite my efforts, and I lost it. I pushed through the tears and frustration to finish in 8:15. I failed.

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This isn’t going away any time soon and the though of having to deal with this the rest of my life is fuckin’ depressing. I don’t want to do anything and whatever ADD I may have been dealing with before is now a whole another level of mental fuckery. I forget everything. I’m constantly looking for my keys, phone and wallet and forgetting what I walked into rooms for. It’s a massive distraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yes, toxic positivity is a real thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s all I’ve got, two miles. Two long and difficult miles for now while I continue to try and figure out a way through this hearing loss\/tinnitus\/vertigo issue. Running or any other activities that cause my head to “bounce” give me the swirlies and I have to stop for at least an hour or so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dougstrid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}