Run 100 miles in OCT

Since I came close last month. In again.

I'm in. One of these days it'll happen, and I may as well make it this month because I'll be dialing down the mileage for the winter.

I'm in too.

HM today and then went back out for extra miles. Due to the course, I would leave the finish, go to just past mile 12 marker, back in, back out, back in. Police and aid stations workers kept looking at me funny. One cop looked so confused and I asked him if he was experiencing deja vu; he was glad to find he wasn't seeing double and triple.

Cool!

I'm at 20.53 miles. Had a big training weekend and I'm glad I'm not running today. I need to recover!

16 miles so far.

Woohoo! 37.68 miles! Feeling great and ready for this weekend's long workouts.

26.1 miles as of today. I'm sure I could've run an extra tenth of a mile somewhere.

I'm think you did run that tenth. Your GPS was being mean to you during one of your runs.

LOL. Thought I was the only one that frowned over the tallies that barely missed a nice milestone.

52.9 for me.

Volunteered at a race yesterday and a guy passed out later after the race. Thankfully we had EMTs there and then I called 911. Don't know if it was heat, heart, etc. This comes one month after we lost someone to a fatal heart attack on a training run. Scary.

Up to 35 miles

Thanks Jamie!

We're almost halfway through the month now and I'm sitting on 59.3 miles. I have a long medium run scheduled after work today which will bump me into the 60s, yay!!!

Oh gosh, I hope the guy is okay.

Was it a hot race day?

39.6 miles as of yesterday. My run tonight will put me at about 44.

I'm at 47

72.35 miles.

Might go for another run after work before I go swimming. I ran on the treadmill this morning so my run later will be super easy paced with some drills mixed in.

Thankfully he is fine and was discharged from the hospital the same day. It wasn't as hot as it has been but was still quite warm. He always carries water with him (always, always, always) but I think since this particular 20K was tougher, he was out there longer than expected and maybe didn't have enough water for the final miles. I'm not sure if he got lost as did several of the others.

This week I had a Forrest Gump moment. You know how he ran and ran and suddenly stopped and was done with it? That was me Tuesday morn. Got a massage to work some of the tightness out of me so now I have to mentally toughen up and get thru the last stages of this training cycle. Currently at 77 miles.

Edited by Pink Socks 2015-10-16 2:29 PM

Did my longest run ever today with 8.5 miles (I know you guys do that in your sleep). Considering I almost lost my ability to walk 3 years ago not too bad I guess.

With Friday evenings run this puts me at 61 miles.

Don't negate your longest run ever. Celebrate! We can all think that what we do isn't as good, as fast, as far, as fluid, etc. as the next person but we should all be proud of our accomplishments. That is awesome! So are you willing to share your story from 3 years ago? If not, that is ok. Congratulations tho on the long run.

Long story but here it goes:

In January of 2013 I went on a business trip to Calgary. I just came off a sinus infection and an ear infection a few weeks prior. We checked in to our hotel and went out to grab a bite to lunch. At the restaurant I started to get real weak, nauseated and my balance seemed off. Coming off the ear infection I figured the plane ride might have given me vertigo or something. I tried to see if it would get any better during lunch but it didn't so my boss sent me to the hotel to rest. Once I got to the hotel room the weakness got worse. In addition to the weakness now I had a bunch of other symptoms as well. Dry heaving, diarrhea, cold sweats and muscle pain, along with the dizziness and nausea that didn't get any better. It also felt like someone completely zapped all energy out of my body. I ended up pretty much sleeping of and on all afternoon and night. In the morning we went to the ER (in -8F cold, quite brutal when you live in Houston). The Doctor there thought it might be BPV (Benign Positional Vertigo) and performed a maneuver on me to clear that up. At that time I felt a little bit better but not even close to where I thought I could do anything productive on this trip. I had the Doctor give me a medical clear so I could fly back to Houston. Was able to catch a flight a few hours later, had airport personal push me through the airport in a wheelchair, sat in the last row on the plane so I could just rest the whole trip and finally arrived back in Houston that evening where my wife picked me up.

Went to the ENT the next day. She thought BPV sounded plausible, repeated the maneuver, put me in a neck brace and also told me to keep head elevated and rest for a couple of days and see how it goes. Well I did end up feeling a little bit better after the two days, but then the weakness came back with the dizziness. The ENT sent me back to the regular Doc who told me I'm dehydrated but also ran a few blood tests. Nothing popped on the blood tests and the weakness and fatigue did not get any better. Now in addition to the fatigue and nausea it felt like my legs would stop working. It's hard to describe, but it literally felt like at any given minute I wouldn't be able to use my legs. I went to a different doc. Again, bunch of blood tests and EKG. The EKG did apparently show some abnormalities so they referred me to a Cardiologist. I also had the GP run Thyroid tests, which came back negative. Went to see Cardiologist who couldn't find anything, but ordered an Echo and a 48 hour holter monitor. While waiting on all that I went back to the GP for more extensive blood test. Finally they found something. Creatine Kinase slightly high so he referred me to a Rheumatologist. Appointment was few weeks out. In the meantime the dizziness had not gotten much better and now I had tingling in my arms and feet along with my neck. I found myself a neurologist and forced myself an appointment. Neurologist thought post viral and put me on steroids. Meanwhile I had my echo done along with a stress test. Everything was ok there other than Athlete's heart which is nothing to worry about. Steroids seemed to help a little bit with the symptoms, but also killed my sleep and made me super hungry. ( I ended up gaining a total of 20+ pounds)

Next on the list was the Rheumatologist who had no clue either and ran a bunch of blood tests to rule out all the bad stuff. He didn't find anything. Meanwhile the steroid prescription was up and symptoms came back and even got worse in some cases. Now my heart rate was all over the place. From high 40's resting to over 100 resting. Blood pressure the same. All over the place. I had sweating episodes that lasted 10 to 15 minutes and then they went away. Same with the heart rate. Out of the blue heart started racing for 15-30 minutes than back to normal. Nausea off and on, balance issues, dizziness, stomach discomfort, low body temperature, neck pain, lower back and glutes pain. Stuff all over the map. Neurologist put me on another set of steroids. I also made an appointment with an Orthopedic Doctor due to the tingling in the neck and hands. Ortho put me on anti-inflammatories, prescribed PT and pain pills.

We are now well into April and I still had no clue on what exactly hit me. Over the next few weeks I went to the PT, took my anti-inflammatories and things were getting a little better until I had another setback early June. More steroids and then later in the month the Ortho did a neck MRI. He then told me I needed neck surgery, but he would like to do an EMG first (which is a nerve conduction study showing how quickly nerves respond and can tell a Dr. if there's nerve damage). I seized the opportunity to go to a different Neurologist for the EMG to get a second opinion on what's been going on and had that appointment mid July. She did the EMG and finds nerve damage in my legs and my arms. She says that she doesn't think I need neck surgery, but that it seems that I have some sort of neuropathy. Over the course of the next month she orders a battery of more blood tests, along with a brain MRI (to check for MS), MRA to check for blood flow restrictions, a skeletal survey to check for bone cancer and a spinal tap to check for protein in my spinal fluids.

Finally at the end of August the spinal tap in conjunction with the EMG gave me a confirmed diagnosis. Guillain-Barre Syndrome (small fiber dominant) which is an auto immune disease that effects the myelin sheath (outer layer) of your peripheral nerves. She confirmed that the disease caused damage to my legs and arms and my autonomous system which explains all the other weird symptoms I had (blood pressure, heart rate, sweating, nausea etc.) and that at this point the only thing to do is let the nerves heal themselves (The acute version of disease is self limiting and the body generally recovers by itself, though not in all cases all the nerve damage can be reversed).

Ever since then I've been working on getting myself back to normal. Along that journey I had to do additional therapy on getting my vestibular ocular reflex (responsible for balance and steadiness) back in shape and I also found out I developed an insensitivity to caffeine, which aggravated my symptoms every time I had a cup of coffee. I had to redevelop muscle function and strength and I'm finally at a point where everything seems to be fully functioning again, just not as fast as it just to. I was also finally able to drop the 20 pounds I gained and a few extras I needed to get rid of.

In the greater theme of things while it was rough during the 7 month not having a diagnosis I got lucky that I got hit with a "mild" version of the disease. In many cases the nerve damage progresses that people are temporarily paralyzed and have to be on a ventilator as some people's lung muscles stop functioning. You can read more here: http://www.gbs-cidp.org/and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_syndrome

Anyhow. I might never be able to place in my age group, but I will always know that I can STILL MOVE. Now that I have a couple of races under my belt I'll try to spread more awareness to this disease via my Triathlon's going forward (I'm currently working on a custom Tri design).

I hope that wasn't too lengthy. Thanks for showing interest

Oh man, John, you went thru it! So sorry about of it - the long process of misdiagnosis, the recovery, and being affected by it. You have a great attitude. Keep of the great work.

Whew, that's good to hear. Maybe he should have put some electrolytes in his water.

I know how you felt about suddenly stopping. That nearly happened to me on Saturday during my long bike ride but then thinking about juicy burgers and extra krispy fries helped alot, hehehe.