Training Log Archive: PG

At Northfield Mountain after a round of rogaine practice at Northfield, which itself was after a morning of trying to get things done at home, where there is a long to-do list. Gail, of course has her own to-do list, one item is apparently to clean/organize her studio. Meanwhile, she has put on my list (is maybe it's our list, I'm not sure) to clean out my office enough that the floor can be vacuumed, something that has not been done to parts of that room for, well, it's certainly more than years, maybe best measured in decades.

So anyway, it occurred to me this morning, a little competition sometimes being good for the soul, that maybe the motivation I needed was to see if I could clean out my office before she cleaned out her studio, keeping in mind the likelihood of a long-term tie if neither of us ever got the cleaning up done. So I launched into cleaning, except I started in the bedroom, my side, and it is looking quite nice now, about three grocery bags of old magazines and papers are now ready to go out for recycling on Wednesday. Which is all great, except that pretty much used up all the enthusiasm I had for cleaning for the day (or maybe the week, or, one hopes not, maybe the month). So the office is in the exact state of chaos as it started the day. But I still have hope. After all, I voted for Obama.

Oh, yes, the run. Slow, dead legs. But necessary under the new program to both improve conditioning and lower the G. All necessitated by my signing up for the Blue course at the Team Trials. Such foolishness....

C • Why does the floor need to ... 2

Stopped in at the office after the run to deal with a late-filing client. Pure vanilla, absolutely simple, except he had figured he could do it himself. And when the bottom line showed he owed $1800, he gave me a ring. So we got that straightened out, modestly on the plus side with both the Feds and the state, who knows what he had done. And meanwhile we're chatting, he's the manager of a gas station / convenience store, and he's filling me in on all the latest, which station I shouldn't use a credit card at because they not to be trusted with such things, and what's happening with the guy who owned several stations and recently sold out and laid off several long-time employees with minimal severance packages, and a little more of this and a little more of that, and then he says,

Oh, and did you know, Swampfox turned 50 last week.

And I said, No, you're shitting me, or something like that. Followed, of course, by, How the hell do you know that, do you know Swampfox?

Well, of course he didn't actually know Swampfox, but the word on the street was that Swampfox had indeed turned 50, and he wasn't taking it very well. I mean, if you did a cross-section and counted the rings, old Mr. Swampfox would have as many rings as Ross and Samantha put together. And I'd guess pretty much anyone would rather be Ross and Samantha than an aging Swampfox.

So, needless to say, I was in a bit of a state of shock, which I worked my way out of only by the realization that Mr. Swampfox, intelligent fellow that he is and also a fan of good comedy, and I'm sure of Dave Barry, well, I'm sure that Mr. Swampfox has already scheduled his first colonoscopy. So fine.

Finished off the day at the gym, also a struggle, but got it done.

West Point, classic (M60 again). Foggy again, rocks still wet and slippery but all the rain passed overnight. Pretty good run, decent effort. One bad route, going over the hill on the way to #6 when along the pond was faster. And just a little bobble at #9, looked in the first set of boulders. But made good time down the hill at the end.

My routes.

C • over the hill or along the lake 4

Nice weekend, good company. Went down with Charlie and Rhonda, seemed like carpooling was both more fun and more sensible. And a nice dinner Saturday evening with them and George and Lyn, and Kissy and Dave.

Got a nap on the way home, so there was still enough energy and daylight for a quick round of rogaine practice before it got dark. I'd have to say my orienteering was better.

Event: West Point A-Meet
 

West Point, Middle distance, M60 (GreenX course). Very foggy and wet, though not actually raining, but the rocks were very slippery. So-so run, small mistake on #1, silly one on #7, saw another control, was unsure if I'd gone far enough or not, went back quite a ways to be sure. Blew off 2 or 3 minutes. Otherwise OK, nothing special. Nice course.

My routes.

C • #12 4

Sprint (course 2, Green/Brown/Orange) in the afternoon. Nice course, lots of fun and hard work too. Good run, only problems were getting snagged on some concertina wire just after leaving #6, and getting off line on the way to #9. Good effort. Also a nice new map too.

Very pleasant to go to West Point and run a sprint instead of organizing it the last three years. And the weather even cooperated.

My routes.

So they give you a combination of Versed and Fentanyl. Strong stuff.

A short run on Greenfield ridge, south via the Tower, back via the white trail. Cool, misty, very pleasant.

So twice in the last couple of days I have found myself getting pissed off enough to actually do something about it. I am not sure if that is a good trend or not.

The first was with my credit card company, Citibank. I pay my balance every month, if they had looked they would have seen that I very recently charged a ticket on Icelandic Air, but they still rejected my card over a $6 charge at the airport in Iceland because their fraud program decided it might be fraud.

So I called them up, and after a while found out that it seemed like their fraud program was liable to reject me if I used the card other than in my usual spending pattern. Like outside the country. Or, get this, in another state. But of course I could call up in advance and tell them where I was going to be and then they probably wouldn't reject me.

I didn't find that particularly satisfying, so I did the usual and asked to speak to a supervisor. And spent a while letting her know how unsatisfying their policy was. And she eventually took me off their fraud program, or at least says she did. We shall see.

Gail, observing the whole time, seemed concerned I was losing my cool. I would describe it as productively and perhaps even fraudulently appearing to lose my cool, just to make my case. I think.

The second case was today, coming home from the gym. And for some reason the light is malfunctioning, three cycles go by and it never turns green for straight ahead and traffic is backed up a couple hundred yards (that's a lot around here), and from where I'm sitting, there are several signs warning of the presence of police officers and the need to go slow, but no actual police officers in sight. Finally the front car runs the red light, and this does something and the light starts to function again. And I get around the corner on the next cycle, and some construction is going on about 30 yards from the light. Two state police there, road details, getting paid $40+ an hour, state law requires it, well, the law requires at least one police officer. And the two guys are just chatting with one of the construction guys, quite oblivious to the traffic problem.

So I pull over and open the window and tell them the light's not working, and traffic is getting backed up. And why don't they do something. I was quite careful not to say, why didn't they f**king do something. But I probably had a bit of attitude in my tone of voice. And the cop looked at my like he didn't like being talked to that way, or maybe he was just annoyed that he was actually going to have to do something. But I knew I'd said enough and moved on, no point in pressing my luck. And feeling good for having said something. But not too much, because a cop is still a cop, and a cop can make life miserable for you even if you haven't done anything wrong.

I think as I get older I'm more like to speak my mind. Which is good. To a point.

C • Fraud 3

Sometimes you are just glad to be home. Spent the last 24 hours preparing, and then just got back from, well, I'm sure Dave Barry describes it better.

Seems like it went ok. One very small polyp removed and the doc said I should come back in ten years.

It does have a beneficial, though I presume temporary, effect on the G.

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Dave Barry: A journey into my colon -- and yours

OK. You turned 50. You know you're supposed to get a colonoscopy. But you haven't. Here are your reasons:

1. You've been busy.
2. You don't have a history of cancer in your family.
3. You haven't noticed any problems.
4. You don't want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.

Let's examine these reasons one at a time. No, wait, let's not. Because you and I both know that the only real reason is No. 4. This is natural. The idea of having another human, even a medical human, becoming deeply involved in what is technically known as your ''behindular zone'' gives you the creeping willies.

I know this because I am like you, except worse. I yield to nobody in the field of being a pathetic weenie medical coward. I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone. It's much worse when I come into physical contact with the medical profession. More than one doctor's office has a dent in the floor caused by my forehead striking it seconds after I got a shot.

In 1997, when I turned 50, everybody told me I should get a colonoscopy. I agreed that I definitely should, but not right away. By following this policy, I reached age 55 without having had a colonoscopy. Then I did something so pathetic and embarrassing that I am frankly ashamed to tell you about it.

What happened was, a giant 40-foot replica of a human colon came to Miami Beach. Really. It's an educational exhibit called the Colossal Colon, and It was on a nationwide tour to promote awareness of colo-rectal cancer. The idea is, you crawl through the Colossal Colon, and you encounter various educational items in there, such as polyps, cancer and hemorrhoids the
size of regulation volleyballs, and you go, ''Whoa, I better find out if I contain any of these things,'' and you get a colonoscopy.

If you are as a professional humor writer, and there is a giant colon within a 200-mile radius, you are legally obligated to go see it. So I went to Miami Beach and crawled through the Colossal Colon. I wrote a column about it, making tasteless colon jokes. But I also urged everyone to get a colonoscopy. I even, when I emerged from the Colossal Colon, signed a pledge stating that I would get one.

But I didn't get one. I was a fraud, a hypocrite, a liar. I was practically a member of Congress.

Five more years passed. I turned 60, and I still hadn't gotten a colonoscopy. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got an e-mail from my brother Sam, who is 10 years younger than I am, but more mature. The email was addressed to me and my middle brother, Phil. It said:

``Dear Brothers,

``I went in for a routine colonoscopy and got the dreaded diagnosis: cancer. We're told it's early and that there is a good prognosis that they can get it all out, so, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that. And of course they told me to tell my siblings to get screened. I imagine you both have.''

Um. Well.

First I called Sam. He was hopeful, but scared. We talked for a while, and when we hung up, I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis.
Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, quote, ``HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BUTT!''

I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called ''MoviPrep,'' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies.

I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons.) Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes -- and here I am being kind -- like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon.

The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, ''a loose watery bowel movement may result.'' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground.

MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative. I don't want to be too graphic, here, but: Have you ever seen a space shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently. You eliminate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet.

After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, ''What if I spurt on Andy?'' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough.

At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the hell the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked.

Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house.

When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was Dancing Queen by Abba. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, Dancing Queen has to be the least appropriate.

''You want me to turn it up?'' said Andy, from somewhere behind me.

''Ha ha,'' I said.

And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like.

I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, Abba was shrieking ``Dancing Queen! Feel the beat from the tambourine . . .''

. . . and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that it was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ.

But my point is this: In addition to being a pathetic medical weenie, I was a complete moron. For more than a decade I avoided getting a procedure that was, essentially, nothing. There was no pain and, except for the MoviPrep, no discomfort. I was risking my life for nothing.

If my brother Sam had been as stupid as I was -- if, when he turned 50, he had ignored all the medical advice and avoided getting screened ? he still would have had cancer. He just wouldn't have known. And by the time he did know -- by the time he felt symptoms -- his situation would have been much, much more serious. But because he was a grown-up, the doctors caught the cancer early, and they operated and took it out. Sam is now recovering and eating what he describes as ''really, really boring food.'' His prognosis is good, and everybody is optimistic, fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that.

Which brings us to you, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss or Ms. Over-50-And-Hasn't-Had-a-Colonoscopy. Here's the deal: You either have colo-rectal cancer, or you don't. If you do, a colonoscopy will enable
doctors to find it and do something about it. And if you don't have cancer, believe me, it's very reassuring to know you don't. There is no sane reason for you not to have it done.

I am so eager for you to do this that I am going to induce you with an Exclusive Limited Time Offer. If you, after reading this, get a colonoscopy, let me know by sending a self-addressed stamped envelope to Dave Barry Colonoscopy Inducement, The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132. I will send you back a certificate, signed by me and suitable for framing if you don't mind framing a cheesy certificate, stating that you are a grown-up who got a colonoscopy. Accompanying this certificate will be a square of limited-edition custom-printed toilet paper with an image of Miss
Paris Hilton on it. You may frame this also, or use it in whatever other way you deem fit.

But even if you don't want this inducement, please get a colonoscopy. If I can do it, you can do it. Don't put it off. Just do it.

Be sure to stress that you want the non-Abba version.

C • The worst part 7

Against doctor's orders, up to the power line (18:49) and back (1:38).

Well, not exactly. The orders were:

Do not drive, return to work, or operate any machinery for 24 hours. Do not make any important decisions, sign any legal documents, or engage in any activity which depends on your full concentrating power or mental judgment to ensure proper completion. Go directly home from the hospital and rest quietly for the rest of the day. And so on.

I tried.

Gail drove me home, though we did stop on the way to get some FOOD (36 hours on a diet of clear liquids is more than enough). And then I went and lay down and took a nap, except my cell phone company called to see if they could sell me something, so I swore at them a few times, but that got me up, and eventually it just seemed like some exercise was called for.

It was the nurse giving the orders, and a very fine nurse she seemed to be. It seems that whatever drug they gave to put me in la-la land for a while is a short-term amnesiac, and she was particularly concerned that I might venture off from home and forget where I lived and not be able to find my way back. Shades of my mother's trip to Buffalo? :-)

But anyway, I found my way up to the power line, found my way back. Legs actually felt ok other than slow as molasses. And along the way I found myself wondering, hmm, that drug was so good, I remember absolutely nothing from a couple of minutes after she pressed the syringe to about an hour later, and then at some point on the way home I asked Gail something, and she said, oh, dear, I just asked her that 5 minutes earlier, was this what I was going to be like when I get Ahlzeimer's. Maybe. But it certainly took care of any anxiety I might have had.

My route from the Tiomila.

C • If someone showed me this c... 9

Over to South Sugarloaf (15:58), up the road very slow but still running (10:04), down the road (7:16), and home (15:25). A struggle, but got it done.