Fall Racing?

Any chance to salvage a Fall racing season?  Maybe.  Obviously, my planned races in Maryland (April), Minnesota (April), Maine (June) and South Dakota (July) were all cancelled.  If there was ever a time for this to happen, now is as good as any.  I doubt that I could have finished any of them without a lot of walking.  If the cut off was 3 hours, I’m not sure I would have made it.

  I have a couple of replacement options.  If the race is a go, I could run a very small low-key race in Portland, Maine as part of the New England Challenge at the tail end of August.  I picked up Vermont on the same series back in 2017 or 2018.  IIRC, the race had less than 100 participants and there is no time limit.  Physical distancing should be easy to observe in a race that small.  If need be, runners can even start in waves of 10, a couple minutes apart.  The original plan for Maine was something in Bar Harbor or Acadia NP but I can still go there as part of the trip assuming there is no 14-day quarantine requirement and the park is actually open.  If that is not the case, the race is obviously off as well. 

Late August is within the very small window of time in which swimming in the cold ocean waters of Maine and New Hampshire could be tolerable for at least an hour.   If I can do that, all I need is New York and New Jersey for the ocean challenge.   I could also see Mount Washington in New Hampshire.  Late summer is definitely the best chance of tolerable weather there as well.  Beach, mountains and a National Park?  That sounds like it could be a great trip.  Too far to drive but yes, I would get on a plane.  The only thing that I would have to skip would be Quebec City because the border is closed.  That’s okay.  It’s pretty far out of the way and I’ve already been to Montreal, so Quebec is checked. 

The second replacement option is the Crazy Horse half in South Dakota in early October.  This one is a fairly large event but not a mega race.  I believe it has a time limit, but the course is almost all downhill.  During this trip, I would see the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore and Badlands NP.  All are within easy reach of Rapid City and the race location.  As far as I know, the race is still on but that could change 4-6 weeks out.  Fargo in late August is still on and the fact that South Dakota never did impose serious lockdowns does bode well for this event to go off as planned.  I’m still not signing up until at least early September.  A so-called virtual event even if done within the state borders, does not count towards the challenge.  South Dakota is special to me because I was taken there as a child and was old enough to remember it but have not been back as an adult.  This is the only state of the 49 that I have visited in which this is the case. 

If I can complete these two, that would take me up to 47 with only Maryland, Minnesota and Hawaii remaining.  It’s possible that I could complete this by May of 2021.  If either one fall through, I must wait until November and hope there is no family conflict.  I’m pretty much dead set on finishing the challenge in Hawaii as it is the only state that I have yet to visit.  Time is of the essence.  As it stands now, I may have to downgrade my distance from the half mary to the 5K but one way or another, I will race in all 50 states plus DC.     

Current state of Health:

Not good at all.  I’ve recently developed a STRONG need for Taurine and a complete intolerance for probiotics.  The latter seems to reduce sulfur so that does make some sense.  Believe it or not, I discovered the need for Taurine after feeling significantly better on forbidden energy drinks.  I thought it might be the caffeine but in pill form, caffeine is ineffective.  Too much is harmful.  Also, Taurine must be taken TOGETHER with the TRS.  If taken even an hour apart, too much Taurine will be harmful.  That tells me that the detox spray and the sulfur cleaner are working together to eliminate some awfully nasty stuff that has been lurking in my body for years.   I will not be the least bit surprised if the pendulum swings in the other direction before too long.  Taurine will not be tolerated, and probiotics will be essential.  What if I can’t find the next missing piece even after a hair or urine test? 

On the positive side, sensitivity to all other pills has GREATLY diminished.  Not very long ago, if I even missed one day of B-12 or the TMG/MF combo, I could not function.  Now, I won’t even notice unless I skip the pill for about 5 days straight.  I once was in a position in which I needed an exact 1:1 ratio of Cal/Mag and even a couple extra sprays of Mag oil would leave me weakened significantly.  It appears that those days are behind me forever.   However, even when going through this extreme sensitivity, I was still capable of a strong performance if I could get everything working properly.  Not so now.

There is always one pill in my formula that gives me fits.  Now, it’s the Taurine.  Before that, it was CoQ10.  Before that, it was NADH.  Before that, it was ATP/Lithium.  I just can’t find any sustained stability with my formula.  Why is it happening?  I’ve been told that I am peeling off layers of toxins.  If the body cannot eliminate a toxin, it has a way of storing and sequestering it to an area where it does the least damage.  Now, the theory is that the toxins are coming up to the surface, so it does make sense that I am getting worse at least initially.  I would assume that the most harmful toxins are buried the deepest and thus will be the last to be eliminated.  Therefore, it is to be expected that things will get worse before they get better.  The detox process supposedly lasts 2 years and I’ve been on it for about 15 months.  If I’m not better by next Spring, it’s pretty much hopeless.

My demands are hardly unreasonable.  All I want is a stable cocktail of pills that give me decent-adequate energy every day.  A nice bonus would be a steady group of running friends.  It really would not matter if their pace was 7:00 per mile or 10+.  The latter is simply not possible now because my performances are so unpredictable.  I often feel reasonably well through the first mile or two then collapse and have to walk/jog home.  That’s not going to win me many friends in the running community.  If they didn’t know better, they’d think I was a showboat or a “pansy” or both. 

Suppose that any of the following were to happen:

-Serious injury in a car accident

-Need for major surgery that makes it clear that running is out for life.

-Grim diagnosis of a degenerative disease.

Of course, I would not like it but at least in the first 2 cases, I could learn to accept it IF I was otherwise healthy.  All these false hopes are psychological torture.  How is my faith in God?  Not the same as it once was and it seems unlikely that it will ever be that close again.  For this to happen after I already went through the ringer with adrenal fatigue, wrote devotionals on healing and enjoyed a few months symptom free without pills just plain SUCKS!  Part of me feels guilty knowing that there are people worse off than I am but I know how much talent that I have and to see it stolen for so many years is awful.  Probably the biggest misconception about me is that I cannot be happy unless I am running well and if I could just get over that, I’d be okay.  NOT TRUE!  On my worst days, I’m in bed 15 hours a day forced to take several naps.  The fatigue and malaise is comparable to a low-grade flu minus the fever and congestion and is present every day to varying degrees.  Lately, I’ve had significant joint pain especially in the groin, which spreads to private areas.  Don’t ever suggest to me that this is nothing serious or all in my head.