MCM Week 8: Anxiety, Keep on Tryin’ Me

In the second week of Anxious August, my life reminded me of a Doechii song. The weekly mileage was still building, but anxiety was building at a faster pace. The week didn’t go as planned, but it was still productive.

Some of my favorite summer blooms along the sidewalks

Here's the plan breakout for Week 8:

·       Sunday – 10 miles Long

·       Monday – 6 miles Easy

·       Tuesday – 8 miles Speed: 1.5 miles WU, 4 x 1 mile @ MP-10 seconds w/ 400m jog, 1.5 miles CD

·       Wednesday – Cross-train

·       Thursday – 10 miles Tempo: 1.5 miles WU, 2x3 miles @ MP w/ 1 mile jog, 1.5 mile CD

·       Friday – 4 miles Easy

·       Saturday – 8 miles Easy

What actually happened:

·       Sunday – 10 miles Long

·       Monday – 4.31 miles with client

·       Tuesday – 3.38 miles Easy, 1 mile walk (potential injury), 4 miles Tempo

·       Wednesday – Rest

·       Thursday – 10 miles Easy (Hartshorne Battery Loop hills)

·       Friday – 8 miles Easy (HHT)

·       Saturday – 4 miles Easy, Beach Yoga

When I woke up Sunday morning, I had no desire to run 10 miles. The previous week was mentally exhausting, and although 10 miles isn’t outside of my abilities, it was hard to get myself excited about running double digit mileage that day. We had guests coming to visit us for a beach day, so I didn’t have time to overachieve anyway. The temps were in the low 60s, which was perfect long run weather for a summer day. I took my time on the flat Henry Hudson Trail to clear my head of all the catastrophic subconscious thoughts that were floating around the past few days. When our friends with two young kids under 3 hung out with us at the Sandbox, I was able to relax in an Adirondack chair and enjoy a frozen margarita for our Sunday Funday.

I was nervous for Monday morning since I was going to start training a new running client. She had an entry for the New York City Marathon the previous year, but deferred to this year because she was wishy-washy about whether she’d be ready for the race (even though she regularly ran about 6 miles per day, she only needed to add a long run on the weekend). She finally committed to 5 sessions with a game plan to train every other week (which I compromised this way; I recommend weekly or 2x per week for more facetime) leading up to the race. I wanted her to commit to my specialized small group running clinic in the spring before our marathon training cycles so that I wouldn’t be stressed out about adding more running to my plate, but here we landed. In my mind, I had to make these sessions perfect so she would find value, so it felt like added pressure. We ran a little over 4 miles together and she was going faster than I could comfortably talk for the day. I was asking questions and providing form feedback, meanwhile I’m uncharacteristically out of breath for this pace, probably because I didn’t have a proper warmup. I felt beyond exhausted for the remainder of the work day, and was glad that we planned on working on strength for our next session together.

On Tuesday I wanted to do a sunrise run at home, but my normal client said he’d definitely be joining me on the trail. My gut told me he’d probably not make it out there and instead get hyper-focused on work before the actual workday would even start. I needed to fit in a speedy 8-miler, and a little over 3 miles in, I felt what I thought was a bug on my calf. Ticks are everywhere in NJ, so I did a weird hop thing to smack whatever was on my leg and suddenly felt a sharp pain in my right hamstring. I slowed down for a moment, then I stopped my Garmin tracking for the run and turned it on for a walk because I was concerned I really messed up my leg. I walked for a mile back across the highway bridge and then wanted to give it another shot. I ran a few laps around the soccer field then ran back to the office much faster than the first half of this workout, and I found that my leg didn’t hurt when I was speedy, but it was not great when I did my cooldown walk. Cue some uneasy feelings. Did I get bit by a tick or mosquito? Did I pull my hamstring and have to go to PT? Will I make it to the marathon?

The rest of Tuesday was absolutely awful. I worked on some very simple tasks on the computer, ate a pasta lunch, and then felt an overwhelming tightness in my chest. The air quality was terrible again, and I wondered if the air wasn’t circulating properly in the building. I tried drinking more fluids, went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, walked out of my office and put my legs on the wall of the group exercise room to focus on breathing, and when none of those worked, I stepped outside. My chest felt tight, it was tough to breathe, I felt dizzy, my legs felt loose and unstable, and I couldn’t focus my eyes on anything ahead of me. An employee that frequents our gym and always seemed like a jolly guy happened to be walking outside at that moment, and I was struggling to tell him what was happening to me. He was telling me to breathe, it’s probably anxiety. He sat with me in the main lobby for a few minutes, then fetched another employee I trusted since my manager was working from home that day. The corporate real estate landlord said she’d come sit with me in the mother’s suite so I could have some privacy during this minor emergency, so I had my feet up on a recliner and she gently asked about my wellbeing. I said I wasn’t sure at what point we’d call for medical assistance, but this seemed to calm me down a little bit. What was confusing is that my life was going well, even when the national news put doom in my brain. She sat with me and made me laugh a bit and I let my tears calm my body down. It took about an hour and a half to get myself in a place where I was calm enough to get my things from my office and drive home safely. The anxiety/panic attack took so much out of me, and when I got home early I just lay down on the couch.

After the previous day’s episode, I forced myself to take a rest day from working out at all. I worked from home, because I felt too nervous to drive the hour and a half to the office on such low energy and lingering anxiety. I had to miss helping out at our CPR Lifesaver Day, and the irony of the event was not lost on me. During that anxiety attack, my mind worried that if I fainted or went unconscious for some reason that no other employees would know CPR to help me. I took walking breaks to step away from my computer, but I still felt burnt out. I felt a migraine coming on, and it eventually poured outside so this was the perfect day to feel under the weather. I fell asleep quite early that night.

I didn’t want to overdo it on the caffeine on Thursday, so I only had one cup of coffee in the morning and had trouble finishing half a bagel. My appetite had been off since Tuesday, so I had to take it easy. I didn’t have any speed in me, but I did run 10 miles on the hilly Hartshorne Woods Park Battery Loop at a very slow pace. My hamstring was still bothering me a bit at the beginning of the run, then seemed to right itself in the later miles. I ate the other half of my bagel after the run and made a Thai curry soup to help calm my gut with nutrients.

According to the training plan, I was supposed to do 4 miles easy on Friday and 8 miles easy on Saturday, but I swapped them. I had more time on Friday, and I wanted to run, attend Beach Yoga, and enjoy having another set of friends over on Saturday. It was excessively hot both days, so it took much longer to recover from my 8-miler than I would have liked. The anxiety hit me late afternoon on Friday, and a little bit during lunch with my friends on Saturday. There seemed to be no real pattern to when it would strike, and that was what was so unnerving. I think the crazy heat and extra running was messing with my hormones; these physical reactions were a result of something chemical rather than mental. There’s only so much meditation I could do, and I hoped it was temporary.

I really hated this week in training solely because of this new anxiety I had never felt before in previous training cycles. My total mileage for the week was only 3 miles less than planned. I would have rather run way too much and be exhausted from excessive physical movement than to feel all those anxiety attacks. I had a feeling it would only get worse before it got better.