Learning! F4LBR #4

Going camping with my teammates this weekend—bike, camp, bike!

Meanwhile, earlier this week I did a Flat Fix clinic with a rally veteran, Steve. He did a Hill Climbing clinic last month, which was excellent, so I knew this would be a good one. 

One of the great things about this adventure is all the people I’m meeting along the way—it’s a real community! I feel like I really am going to end up with Friends For Life at the end of it.

Here are some great photos Steve took on Tuesday—love the one where I’m framed in the wheel!

Really learned a lot from this! I thought I knew how to change a flat, having done it soooo many times, but a few tips and tricks really make it all smoother. Having tire irons and a decent pump help a lot too—I love my floor pump, but it was great to give the portable a test run. Thanks Steve!

Too busy indeed!! F4LBR #2

It’s been a while!

Once again too busy to blog. There has been training. Indoor spins. One long-ish outdoor ride so far. Weather is getting in the way, but there you are. 

I’m struggling/panicking re fundraising (donate here!) as much as anything. I’ve done a bake sale, organizing a lunch to happen in June, asked office building management to sponsor (they said no), and bothered all of my friends. Need to start getting pushier, I hate it!

My birthday is this week, hoping that inspires some people!

But my teammates are awesome and it really does seem like this could be friends for life!

Fitness + craft: worlds collide!

So, with a 300km 3-day ride on the horizon, obviously I need more than one pair of shorts—I’m thinking I need 3, so I have a fresh clean chamois each day!

But shorts/bibs are not only crazy expensive, they also tend to not fit right. They don’t accommodate my hip-to-waist ratio, or my long torso. 

But then Discovery Fabrics was having a sale! And they have a sewing pattern for bike shorts! The only question remaining: where to get a chamois?

I emailed Discovery, and they said that while they don’t sell chamois, I should check their Facebook group, because someone there would have the answer. And they were right! I have a chamois order in at Aerotech, and meanwhile my fabric and pattern arrived from Discovery:

Because obviously if I’m making my own bibs, they’re not going to be basic black

So excited to get to work on these!

Monday check-in

It’s a holiday Monday, and I’m grateful that I got to sleep in today after a weekend of hiking, archery, attempting a high ropes course, and sleeping on a camp mattress that was profoundly uncomfortable. Very grateful to remember I had some Aleve in the cupboard. And that I pre-booked a visit to my physiotherapist.

Also, I had spotting yesterday, and seem to have my period today, 17 days from the last one (16 if you count yesterday as the beginning). Previous was 84 days. Just a slight fluctuation. Sigh.

This has also come with an upset stomach. Or maybe that’s from all the processed food I ate over the weekend. Either way, I’m still taking the PPI, and it still doesn’t seem to be helping my cough or my digestion (TMI processed food gives me terrible gas... I wonder if it’s related to my sensitivity to propylene glycol, an ingredient found in everything from shampoo to salad dressing).

An epiphany?

Posted this elsewhere but those I’d park it here for future reference.

My shoulder has been a mess. Two visits to physio so far and another this Friday… normally it should have gotten better after the first go, but nope.

Anyway a friend of mine was dealing with shoulder issues last year which she initially thought was a rotator cuff injury, but turned out to be “frozen shoulder” related to perimenopause. I wondered if my current shoulder issue is perimenopause-related as well, and that’s why it’s not improving.

And then it occurred to me… what if it was perimenopause the first time and people just didn’t know about the connection yet?

I’ve also been getting wicked headaches, another symptom I experienced before going on BCP.

Maybe later I will dig through my old posts  and see if there are any correlations between me going on BCP/HRT and the shoulder getting better. I do not like this, whatever the cause. 

Ch-ch-changes

It’s been almost a year since the death of Fitday, which means almost a year of Cronometer. Not that I’m terribly consistent with tracking (especially when I don’t like the numbers) but it’s a fair idea:

My weight over 2023 

Steady, then a jump up, then steady, then a jump down, then steady, then a jump up... then I stopped tracking for a bit and now we’re back to the jump down. 

Time for some reflection. 

The spring jump up: usual seasonal anxiety due to various anniversaries etc.

The June jump down: gastritis. 

The July jump up: stopping HRT.

The current jump down: not sure? I had a sort of non-period late September, then nothing till a couple of weeks ago (the ramp up to which was all pimples and binge eating), then a normal-person period, then my appetite disappeared and weight dropped off effortlessly. So I am assuming hormones. 

Question is, now that I’m here, now that I have some awareness of how I got here, can I stay here? Can I be mindful of hormonal swings and find other ways to manage them? Because really a 10% up/down swing in weight has to be a pretty significant strain on the system. 

Trying again

Well I haven’t been tracking or doing any (intentional) exercise lately. But I have been keeping busy. 

Now that I’m all-natural with the hormones and just experiencing perimenopause as it happens, I find my appetite and metabolism fluctuate like crazy. Just uncontrollable hunger at times, and my weight climbed to a number where I didn't want to weigh myself (hence the no tracking). Then I had a very light period and my appetite vanished and I could honestly feel my body burning through reserves. Just snapped back to the goal weight I achieved in the spring. Hormones, man. It’s wild. 

Anyway, I need to start tracking again, and find better ways to manage the swings than eating a ton of raw cookie dough. 

And I haven’t done “progress pics” in a year and a half! Here’s the last one for comparison. I don’t see a difference? No idea what I weighed then either, since the demise of Fitday…

(Tried to recreate the pose as exactly as possible)

Whoof.

I have been so insanely hungry lately. We’re talking three times as many calories in as out yesterday. Whoops. Weight is the same though.

I blame hormones, although my last period—if I can even call it that—was just three days of light spotting. Gynecologist tomorrow morning to see about my “friable” cervix.

Meanwhile, I swear the hormones have messed up my muscles. They’re too tense, or they’re not tense enough. After my last run, my calves were absolute murder for about four days! Unheard of, and it was a very average run for me. 

Speaking of, tonight I’m doing another bootcamp run with Midnight Runners. Looking forward to it although a bit nervous since I have been so lazy lately! I’m sure it will be fine, although I might do more stretching than workouts during the pit stops. 

It is happening.

Well we’re on, looks like. 

Spotting Sunday, nothing Monday, definitely a period starting last night (while I was out, natch—so glad I had supplies buried deep in my bag).

Doesn’t seem heinous though. No waterfall or severe cramping. I shouldn’t say that; I’ll jinx myself. 

Is it happening?

So years ago, I went to my doctor with an array of symptoms—headaches, bad acne, night sweats, general misery—you can guess what that was about. They put me on low-dose birth control, as a sort of “HRT-lite” for perimenopause symptoms. 

And it was great! I got my period maybe twice a year, felt fine, symptoms went away, I was my old self again.

Well, the last time I tried to get my prescription renewed, they said I was too old and it was no longer safe.

I can’t remember if I posted about the last time I stopped taking BCP.

It was December 2021. I had just gotten my prescription, but got covid before I could fill it, and I was in isolation for two weeks. As soon as that was up, I picked up my pills, and waited for my period to start taking them (way back when I started, that was the instruction: start the pack on the Sunday after your period starts).

So I waited and waited. Months go by. I thought maybe I was free. But then in April, it comes, and it’s a doozy. “The Waterfall” is what we call it. Utterly brutal and I had no supplies. I spent a week clutching a hot water bottle to my belly, never straying more than a few metres from my bathroom, just in case.

A doctor friend told me, “Sometimes there’s one last big one and then you’re done.” So I didn’t start the pill right away, in hopes (again!) that I might be free. 

Nope.

After Waterfall #2, I got back on the pill and have been on it ever since. Until now.

And I’ve started having symptoms. Food cravings, pimples, some I won’t go into here, but what’s really getting to me are the headaches. Excruciating headaches. I was flabbergasted for a couple of days until I remembered, oh yeah, this was one of my symptoms at the start of this whole process.

Trying to remember if I had headaches back in spring of 2022, but I probably would have assumed it was covid-related back then anyway.

I am just really, really hoping there is no repeat of The Waterfall.