A sunnay Sunday morning meant it was time for me to stop being lazy and skipping the Sunday training runs. Usually its under the premise of being tired from the Saturday runs. So I strapped in the iPod, loaded up some podcast interviews I wanted to listen to, and hit the regular route.

So I plodded along, normal pace, maybe a bit slower, around Chaparral Lake, and north towards MacDonald, but this time at Jackrabbit Rd, I crossed Hayden, and took the nice paved bike.running trail that goes a bit west of Hayden, took it up until it met the Arizona Canal, took the new path underneath Hayden Road to the new bridge over the Canal, contining East until Granite Reef road, and turned South.

Almost in the last mile a funny thing happened to pick up my pace. As I neared a road crossing, a lady in in orange convertible pulled up to intersect me from the right.
She stopped properly at the stop signm turned her head as if she saw me. Thinking I was in vision, I was rather surprise when she lurched out into the road, cutting right in front of me as she made a turn.

Boy, did a little bit of anger pick up my pace! It’s no big deal, and I apply the same rules I do when biking… I assume every car out there is not going to see me, and will almost aim for me… I call it defensive running/biking to be prepared for that.

Did you know... India has the largest number of diabetics in the world; a total of 10 million. (from DoctorNDTV)
See more diabetic facts...

It’s Saturday, so it means an early alarm clock to get to the 6:30 AM meeting spot for the Team D training. Like last week, we met at Granada Park, but this time running west on the canals for a 4 mile rum (to Northern Rd and back). I have biked this canal several times, and this side of town is really good because there are underpasses at major streets so you don’t have to deal with traffic.

Today’s run should ahve been easy as I’d been doing 5s and a few 6s, but I was pretty worn out. I did the whole run without stopping, but it was a rather slow pace, maybe 12 minutes per mile.

For small diversion was the weird sighting of the day– I had notice two people near th pat under Rt 51 that were fishing in the canal. That is not unusual; I’ve seen ti often on my bike route, wondering who would want to eat the algae eating fish that live in the canals. But on the way back I looked closer and these fishermen lacked a fishing rod– they were using a bow and arrow!

Oh well, whatever floats the boat.

Next week we are headed up to our cabin in Strawberry for the weekend, so I will miss the 7 mile team run at South Mountain park. The following weekend, I have registered to run the New Times 10k which should be exciting– my first “real” running event.

For quite some time, a year, maybe more I have had a lingering, nagging, annoying cough. It does not hurt, and it seems to occur more at the end of a bike ride or a run. My boss at work keeps saying, “Get that cough checked out”.

Over the summer I went twice to my doctor’s office. The first time we tried anti-biotics as there were some viruses going around. Just in case. Then we thought it might be allergies, so she suggested I start taking Loratodine, which is generic over the counter Clariton (a lot cheaper at Costco). No change, really. And since I’ve started this running, the cought gets worse.

So I went in today and we did a breath test, spirometry. I was supposed to breathe in this little machine. I thought I always had big lungs, but I felt like I had nothing. And the results said I was blowing at about 75% of what I should. So she had me breath in some Albuterol from a machine. I did the test again, with only 2% improvement.

So they think I have asthma, which seems weird because I am never short of breath, felt great two weeks ago when I ran 6 miles. They are not sure, so for the next two weeks I am supposed to take some Advair as well as some albuterol.

All this inhalant stuff is new too me, and I hate taking extra medicines (in denial about impending age), but I am giving it a go. In two weeks,. they test again, and I gess if there is improvement, then I have some form of asthma.

I just hope to get rid of the barking cough.

What is one more health condition?

Our Wellness program offered a health check today, pretty basic blood test and body mass index measurements… some good numbers and not so good:

• Blood Pressure: 108/64 (”good” range) . This is about the same as it always is
• Cholesterol Total Cholesterol=169; HDL=50 (both “good”); ratio=3.4 (”excellent”). This is really good news since over the summer my total count was a shade below 200.
• Body Mass Index 19.9 (ugh, this is at the high end of “overweight”). The worst news. Gotta shed some pounds!

Wow, I am so overwhelmed at some responses from friends and colleagues who stepped up this week with some incredably generous sponsorships in response to a round of emails I sent earlier this week… some are folks I have not even seen in a long time. Now I am even more motivated to do this! You know who you are! I have to again say “Wow”, especially at this point being over the $1000 minimum needed to run for Team Diabetes.

And somone not here who I know would have been extremely proud is my Dad, Morris Levine, who passed away in August 2001 (see his web tribute) . He might not have said a lot, but would have had a regular encouraging stream of emails, and likely as he did during my travels abroad in 2000, would have been printing out web pages and keeping them in a binder. In fact, after that summer of 2001, I started a little bit of running as a way of dealing with the loss, and it was easy for me to hear his voice of encouragement in my head. So in a away, Dad, this one is also being run in memory and appreciation for all you did for me.

And I am also thankful my Mom is safe and sound after dancing with Hurricane Wilma. Check out Arizona, Mom!- no natural disasters- no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no earthquakes, no active volcanoes… just a “dry” summer heat!

I was not tooooo excited about getting out for a run this morning since we had the team workout just last night, but I ws determined, or I made my coffee the carrot at the end of the track….

So it was just a nice slow jog this morning, maybe 2.5 miles around the neighborhood. At one junction, I could have turned right for the sorter route home or gone ahead for a longer loop, and since a song was ending, I said, if its a good song, I’ll go longer, so thanks Tom Petty for a song that added a few more clicks this morning.

Tonight was my first midweek team training with “Coach Dave”, who had been gone a few weeks running a marathon among other things.

We met at the track around the football field at Scottsdale Community College. This was more than showing up and running. It seems there is a method and science to this training.

After 2 slow laps as a warmup, the training exercise was a “ladder” designed to help us learn to keep a pace. It went like this; we are supposed to run laps at a rate equivalent to out 5k running time. Since I’ve yet to run at a race I made a guess based on my previous runs at 34 minutes.

The training went like this a series of runs followed by a few minutes rest:

• One lap (400 meters)
• Two laps (800 meters)
• Three laps (800 meters)

then the ladder down

• Three laps (800 meters)
• Two laps (800 meters)
• One lap (400 meters)

As we ran the segments, Dave would call out our times, which we recorded on a log sheet.

Most of us, self included got caught up on that first easy lap and went way too fast. I think I was 2:00 when I should have been about 2:30-2:40. My times then were 5:10 (2 laps), 7:30 (3 laps), 7:30 (3laps), 4:40 (2 laps), and 2:20 (one lap). I picked up a little bit of speed the last rungs.

I found this is pretty much the pace I run in the mornings for 3-5 miles, and the pace I did Saturday for 6 miles. I think I have one speed.

Figuring the total distance was 4.8km for the ladder plus another 1.6km for warm up cool down laps, I pegged 3.8 miles tonight.

I set up to do my 3 mile and change loop today, hoping to do a bit of a faster pace, since it was about half of Saturday’s run. I guess I have only a single speed as a still manage to do about an 11 minute a mile pace… It took longer today (like almost the whole route to get to that smooth humming place where you feel like you could keep going for a while.

So it was even 2 minutes longer than the same loop last week. I was chatting yesterday witha colleague in Norway (that seems so ordinary in the Internet age, a few years ago you might have thought I was speaking gibberish) who suggested keep pegging at those personal goals and aim to improve short run time as well… Sorry, Phil, mayeb next week!

For my first 20 some years as a diabetic, I was fortunately free of complications, fairly active, and had a simple, maybe not optimal regimine of care, not really on a diet. I was on one shot a day, and honestly hardly ever tested my sugar levels. Still, I made it through my undergraduate years of college, moved to Arizona in 1987 for graduate school, spent a lot of time hiking/camping (several backpacks in and out of the Grand Canyon, the Superstition Wilderness area, and into the Utah canyonlands), and did 7 or 8 of the Multiple Sclerosis 160 mike bike-a-thons (a 2 day November event).

It was 1993 when I got my wake up call.

I had been maybe a year into my first “real” job at the Maricopa Communtiy Colleges, and still amazed at the things a medical benefit plan provided. On a routine eye check up (I thought I may need new glasses), the optometrist noticed some spots in my eye that were of concern. He referred me to a retinal specialist, where I learned I was in the early stages of diabetic retinopathy, the condition where higher than normal bloos sugars cause tiny blood vessels in the retina to burst and cause spots in vision, and worse, can lead to signicant or total loss of vision.

Over the next 2-3 years, I went through several rounds of laser trreatment to the eye, where the laser is used to scar of the blood vessels to keep them from bleeding. My left eye responded well to the treatment, but the right eye took several more rounds of the laser, “as much as could be done”. It was a bit odd when the first doctor who did the treatment suddenly retired (well the next time I came back, Dr. M was gone), but have seen his replacement for the last 12 years.

A treatment started with a local injected just under the eye (big needle, big dullness), and sitting in one of those contraption chairs while the laser is aimed in the eye. It doe snot hurt during, but is pretty achy as the local wears off. The side effects were some loss of night vision and periphial vision.

The thing it realy did to me was to wake me up and tel me I needed to be doing more care of my diabetes, so I began finally regular blood testing, and moving to a regime of multiple injections per day. Its one thing to get the scare talk about circulation or your kidneys, but when the prospect is losing your vision, it is a cold bucket of water in your face,

I am fortunate that it is now 12 years after starting the laser treatment, and every year I go for a checkup, and there has been no worsening or change for the last 8 years.

I certainly can do better still on ym control, diet is still my weakness, and someday I may be considering an insulin pump. I hopew that regular physical activity (ahem…. running) will go a long way to keep me going.

Sunday morning came quickly, and I was lazy to get out and do the suggested 40-50 minute training run. I bailed.

But this was not a lay on the couch and watch baseball Sunday. My wife and I spent early morning and all afternoon working on the newest landscaping project in our front yard. When we purchased our home on 1997 (then a 30 year old house), there was virtually nothing growing on the front of our house– it was a flat expanse of dirt. We went rather “hog-wild” planting all kinds of cactus, a palo verde tree.

It was rather surprising how fast desert plants and cactus can grow… almost like weeds. This year we realized how overgrown it had all gotten, so the new plan was “less”– so we were tearing out prickly pear and cholla and all kinds of other stuff, plus building new retaining walls with block, and laying a new front path with concrete pavers.

Okay, it is not an aerobic workout, but it was a total of maybe 8 or 9 hours of lifting, shoveling, sweating (it was almost 90 degrees, someone tell the weather it is October!), etc.

But its back to running Tuesday AM!