A Glimpse into my Messy Training Plan

Wow, once again I am blown away by the encouragement and "me, too!"s I've received. Thank you. I never knew my words mattered.

I thought after last post that I'd leave it alone. I brought up mental illness and got people talking. Now it's time to go back to my Triathlon Blog. Yay, triathlons! Yay, running! But then a friend made me realize something. This blog is to track my journey to 70.3 Texas- and it's already included a few posts about physical illness and injuries. So I'd be a hypocrite to leave out the bipolar and it's affect on my training plan, because it's altered my training just as much as an injury would. I want to be able to go back next year and read this blog and look at what it took to get to the finish line. I can't just leave out this part of my life. So this is more for me to document the struggles of training than anything else.

And... my training log is a mess.

Aside from the missing week in my training plan from vacation and taking it easy because of my leg injury, I have other missing weeks in my training plan, too And not because I didn't train, but because I never bothered logging in and recording my data. Again, with the apathy. And then even when I've done training sessions, they haven't always matched my plan. Or I just never was able to do them, like Tuesday when I was too manic to sit still long enough to ever get on my bike (more on that in a minute).

Yesterday I wrote the following to a friend of mine, "Now I want my blog to say:' ____ this ____ ultra rapid cycling ____.'  But I don't think that would be as well received."
She told me I could say that if I took out certain words, so there you go. You can fill in the blanks. Everyone loves Mad Libs, right?

When I last left the story I was doing a little bit better. That was Monday.

Tuesday I woke up feeling okay. Not great, but okay. And then I was determined to have a good bike ride whether or not I felt like it. I pumped my tires, filled my water bottle, got all ready to go and realized my Garmin watch was dead. So I decided while I let that charge to at least 25% I'd start rearranging some furniture I've been wanting to move for a while. So I started doing that, and once I started I figured I should finish. And then since I had to make a mess of the first room to do that, I had to go back and reorganize that room. And then I'd see another project and do that, and then I'd see something and think "oh, that will only take 5 minutes, I'll do that real fast, too".

Go go go go go. Can't stop. Go go go. I kept thinking "after I finish vacuuming I'll ride my bike" and then it became "after I finish the dishes, I'll ride my bike". And so on.

And before I knew it the entire house was clean, I never sat down, I never rode my bike and Jess and Glen were about to be at my house so we could head out to the lake for a swim. (at least my watch was 100% charged?). I didn't sit until Jess got to my house. And then I realized I never sat still long enough to eat lunch so I ate something while we waited for Glen so I could get through the swim.  The swim was good- about 40 minutes of a mystery distance (we took a different route than usual and our watches disagreed). By the time I got home I felt myself coming down. But not all the way down. Just partly down. A mixed state.

So let me give you a brief lesson about cycling. And not the bike kind of cycling.

Rapid cycling is four significant mood shifts within a year. Ultra rapid cycling is mood shifts within weeks or days. Within the same day. That's what I do. (Apparently the faster shifts are termed 'ultradian'. I hadn't heard of that before).

There is also a mixed state where [hypo]mania and depressive symptoms occur at the same time. Imagine a depressed person drinking 10 energy drinks. They're still depressed but now they can't sit still. Their speech is pressured and rushed. They want to do everything and nothing. That's what I do, too.

Yay.

This makes me laugh. It shouldn't. But it does.
But look at what my brain does. Brain, what are you thinking?

So then Wednesday. I woke up feeling mildly okay. When Nathan asked, that's what I told him. I wasn't great, but I wasn't horrible. Not even 10 minutes later an anxiety attack hit and so did a massive urge to self-harm. I grabbed my anxiety medication and luckily Nathan was walking by just at that moment. I hugged him while I waited to stop shaking. Then I held his hands so that my hands were occupied. Shout out to Nathan- he's amazingly supportive. We decided to play Guitar Hero for a while, again to keep my hands occupied.

The rest of the afternoon wasn't great. Embarrassingly, I stayed in bed for most of it and didn't manage to eat lunch until 4. I had plans to run with a local running group at 6, but by 4:30 I was getting anxious again and couldn't imagine running 5 miles or even putting forth the effort to get there. I decided to at least get my running clothes on so that I'd be ready if I changed my mind at the last minute. Which I did. I didn't want to, but ultimately I knew I shouldn't be alone that long (Nathan was at work). And Jess was going to be there and being with a friend helps.

We ran/walked our 5 miles and talked the whole time. It was good and it helped.

So to go back to my training plan since this is a triathlon blog (sometimes?): I wasn't scheduled for a 5 mile run/walk yesterday. And guess what? I never rode my bike, either.

I don't know how I am today yet. I guess I'm mildly okay again. It's unsettling because I never know what the next minute will be.
I'm going to attempt a swim today. And depending on how that goes, and if I'm feeling ambitious possibly a run and/or bike ride, too. Because this is what my week looked like:

Monday: Nothing
Tuesday: 40 minute lake swim - no bike
Wednesday: 5 mile run/walk - no bike
Thursday: ?
Friday: work 12 hours- attempt a bike ride before work?
Saturday: work 12 hours -attempt a run before work?
Sunday: work 12 hours- off (Mass before work)

I won't bore you with what my training is SUPPOSED to look like, but I'll just say that it looks nothing like that. No where close. Out of 7.5 hours, I've done less than 2.

Hey, my training looks just like it would if I were injured or had a cold. Oh hey, there is no difference. The only difference is that no one can see my brain (wouldn't that be cool, though?).
Because mental illness is real. So keep talking about it.

When Freak Outs become Major.

And now for something completely different.

I actually wrote most of this a few days ago, but decided not to post it. It seemed too much.

But now with recent events of another public suicide I felt like I had to. Why do I feel okay talking about a hurt knee or sleep disorder, but not my "hurt" brain? There isn't a difference. There is too much stigma attached to mental illness. So why shouldn't I write about it? Depression in an equal opportunity illness. None of us is immune.

Our secrets keep us sick. And it took me way too many years to realize that.

I briefly mentioned in my last post that I have bipolar II. Bipolar II is different than bipolar I in that bipolar II has hypomanic episodes as opposed to full blown manic episodes. Unfortunately, the depression and anxiety gets just as severe in both. I wish it was the other way around… although I wish I didn't have it at all.

I realized this morning that it's been roughly 14 years since I started experiencing depression. That makes it half of my life. It's a dark and lonely place to be. So dark sometimes that I was suicidal, but thankfully I never followed through. And I've already talked about my eating disorder- part of that was how I coped. Somehow self-destruction helped. 

For the last few years I've been relatively stable. I've had some ups and downs here and there but I've been able to get through them. My medication hasn't changed, I haven’t needed therapy, and I haven’t been self-destructive. It’s been nice. 

Well, that all changed a few weeks ago. I started noticing my mood shifting and I tried to wait it out, thinking it was just another 'blip' on the radar. I thought once I got back into a routine everything would be fine again. I tried to put on a smile and hide it until it went away. Except that wasn't happening and I seemed to be getting worse as the days went on.

I was anxious all the time, for no reason. That’s honestly the most frustrating part of all this. If there was a reason to be anxious or depressed, I could deal with the issue or talk about it and be fine. But there isn't any issue to fix and there isn't anything wrong to talk about. It’s just my brain deciding to be that way and there isn't anything I can do about it. So I start getting angry and start hating everything- including myself.

I think this is such an important thing for people to realize and understand. Nothing externally has to be wrong for depression to hit. There doesn't have to be an anxious situation for an anxiety attack to hit. It’s our bodies' fight-or-flight response going hay-wire. It’s beyond our control.

So lately it’s been a mixture of depression and anxiety. I've had a hard time eating this past week, too. That's not to say I'm falling back into an eating disorder- I just haven’t cared that I was hungry, and getting up and making something to eat was just too much work. It was easier to just stay where I was and not care. That’s made training hard. Keeping up on a 20 mile bike ride followed by a 3 mile run was challenging last Thursday with very little fuel and hydration.

And it’s been hard to leave the house- not in an agoraphobic way- but just in a way I felt too anxious and didn't want to be around people or deal with things, and partly the apathy of not caring whether or not errands got done. It was too much work and included being around too many people. I hate people sometimes. Not the individual people, but people as a whole. Being alone was safer. Easier.

Hyperbole and a Half

I had my 6 month checkup with my psychiatrist last week. Good timing, I suppose. Except he didn't seem to understand the severity of what I was dealing with- probably due to my apathy of not caring what either one of us said. I probably wasn't advocating for myself very well. But I did tell him I had urges to self-harm and he just said running should help replace bad coping methods. Essentially he thought running can provide the release that self-injury otherwise would have provided. Which isn't true, but I didn't want to argue.
And he said since I have a history of feeling worse in the spring and summer (seriously, how weird is that) and that since it was almost fall, I should be okay soon. He wasn't going to change anything and I could come back in 6 months for my next routine checkup. I didn't really like that answer but I didn't bother to tell him that. I just said ‘OK’ and left. But then I was mad and cried and felt hopeless. Was I really supposed to feel like this all the way to fall when hopefully, if I was lucky, I would do better? It’s the beginning of August- that’s not almost fall.

A few days later I was feeling even worse and I was convinced to call my doctor and explain to him that how we left that appointment was not okay. That running cannot be considered a good way of coping since I cannot run every minute of every day. That I can’t wait until the fall to feel better. And that things were getting worse. So he adjusted my medication. For the first time in 4 or 5 years.

That’s the other bad thing about mental illness. Finding the right medication is trial and error. What works for someone doesn't work for someone else. And what works for 5 years might eventually stop working. Again, I think this is really important for friends and family to understand. Nothing externally has to change for moods to shift. It’s probably nothing you did and there probably isn't much you can do about it. It’s that our brains flipped a switch one day and decided to do something different for a while.
We can't force it to get to better, or pray or hope it away. I thought for a long time that I wasn't praying hard enough, or that God wasn't listening to me because I wasn't getting better (although I'm sure God played a role in keeping me alive). Prayer can offer some peace and hope, but it takes more than that. There isn't much we can do to flip the switch back to where it was, except to be honest with a treatment team and try to do something about it before it gets worse.

So I’m trying to keep on being a functioning member of society. I trained with friends last week so that I would actually leave the house and have to be at a certain place at a certain time and do certain things. I plan on doing that again this week, otherwise I’d probably be doing nothing. I usually don’t need accountability with workouts, but right now I need the help.

I’m trying to be patient. I’m trying to hope the medication change will help. Both the immediate action one and the long term one. But the anxiety can be crippling and I wish I had an immediate fix. I think it's starting to help since my urges to self-harm have lessened- that tends to be my gauge of how I'm doing.

So yes. I say all of this to help break the stigma. It needs to be talked about.

This time around my depression didn't get to the point of feeling suicidal, but it could have if I let it go on longer. I would never ever follow through, but the fact that the thoughts creep in is unsettling.
Why do we allow ourselves to think we're the only ones and feel we can't get help? It's the illness. It does that to us. But we're not alone and we can get help. And it's nothing to be ashamed of.

Get help if you need it. I'm not going to lie and say it's easy- it's not always easy, and the trial-and-error method of medication can be frustrating, and working through things can be difficult, but it's worth it.
There is always hope, even if you can't find any hope in your darkness, trust me, it's there. It's worth fighting for.

A little humor never hurts.

Hyperbole and a Half