Corona Complications?

In the time before I finally bit the bullet and went to the Dr. I had a myriad of minor aches, pains and complaints that I put down to a combination of age, weight, conditioning and too long chasing rugby balls. A big part of the problem, I've come to realise, was that I simply didn't have a consistent relationship with any particular doctor, so I didn't have ongoing consultations and checks. I didn't have someone to discuss whether these minor complaints were something I should simply accept or indicative of a deeper issue. 

What I've also come to realise, or at least opine, is that Doctors are looking at you in terms of age, weight, condition and the area that you live in, so if you've a reasonably fit and healthy person attending a doctor in an area where the majority of patients are impoverished, with limited access to adequate nutrition and possibly habits that are detrimental to their health - you're not going be a major cause for concern. In the Dr. flowchart, it really is most likely that you do have a 'wee virus'.

That strays from the point of this post though, for right now it's completely doing my head in that there seems to be a well established connection between Corona virus and blood clots. There also now seems to be a growing number of people complaining about the long term effects of Corona virus, complaining that they've been left breathless, with aches and pains in the legs and feet. 

What I'm worried about is that people may be suffering some kind of PE, but that our medical system is such that they'll get fobbed of with 'post viral syndrome' and no efforts will be made to get those lungs checked, as they'll just have to let the body heal. My advice is to keep on pushing for proper tests - My doctor didn't detect the PE through his stethoscope.

The end is nigh!

It's not as bad as it seems, but suddenly I'm going to be 50 years old. End of the month and that's the end of my 40s. It's been a roller coaster, but the biggest change this decade has been in coming to terms with some home truths, that I'd like to share.

I spent too long in the company of people who hold facts in disdain. The scales, tape measures and stopwatches don't lie, you can kid yourself on if you like, but eventually things stack up and you'll know you were the architect of your own downfall.

1. Just because England's world cup forwards were all technically obese doesn't mean you can discount the notion of BMI. I'm not saying it should be your be all and end all, but if you can't match the beep test scores of those guys, you shouldn't be referencing their weights in relation to yours.

2. The waist size of the jeans that you can squeeze into and hang around your hips isn't actually your waist size. Get a tape measure out and do it properly :

• Start at the top of your hip bone, then bring the tape measure all the way around your body, level with your belly button.
• Make sure it's not too tight and that it's straight, even at the back. Don't hold your breath while measuring.
• Check the number on the tape measure right after you exhale.

If you are a man and it's over 40" in old money or 101cm - best you do something about that starting  today and keep on doing something about it until it's right back under control. It will take time, you weren't born with a 40" waist, but you certainly could end up dying with one if you don't deal with it.

3. Alcohol - I love alcohol, but it's very easy to slip into some seriously bad habits. Make sure you have more Alcohol Free Days (AFD) than drinking days in a week. 

• Try not to drink 2 days consecutively
• Try not to get involved in drinking in rounds
• Try doing frequent periods of abstention to know that you can go without any time you need to
• Do dry months
• Melvin Bragg used to have a great rule not to drink in the first 10 days of any month, I like that. It's simple.

4. Cycling - get a bike! You won't believe what you can see from a bike or how far you can go, but be seen and be safe.

5. Doctors - get to know your doctor and go over stupid things that bother you with them. Unless you're a doctor yourself, you've no idea how daft wee symptoms can build a story that might help them identify potentially bigger issues - like life-threatening blood clots, for example.

6. Vanity - It's not a bad thing to want to look good. There's a pretty natural reason why fit and healthy bodies are attractive. If that's your motivation, don't be afraid to use it. Get buff!

Bronco Test

A pretty tough fitness test used by a lot of senior rugby clubs to check where everyone is fitness wise.
Starting at the baseline it's a sequence of shuttle runs 20m, 40m and 60m. Repeat 5 times and you've run 1.2km. You've got starting from standing position them 29 changes of direction thrown in.

week 1 - 8 mins 30 - Tough one, hadn't run in a while and wasn't quite sure what to expect
week 2 - 6 mins 54 - bloody delighted with that, didn't expect to improve that much, but I knew what to expect, so that was great
week 3 - 6 mins 20 - Woohoo! Did a wee bit training and have been losing weight, but that's dramatic improvement.

So there you go. Just experiencing the test was enough to make dramatic improvements for the 2nd week, but to take 2 mins 10 sec from a baseline is pretty good going. Delighted with that... dare I dream of getting below 6 mins before I turn 50? 2 weeks to go.... tick tock!!!

Runs again please

As a young rugby player, there really can't be anything more important than being able to run. Jog around the park for 80 minutes with intermittent sprints and you're going to need a decent running base to get through the game. Throw in a love of football, a spot of squash and it would be fair to say that I spent most of my young life running in one form or another, so once I finally retired from rugby it was a no brainer to keep on running and I have to say I really enjoyed just getting out and plodding around the streets and parks. I enjoyed many 5km and 10 km events. I even completed the Edinburgh marathon in 2006 and subsequent Glasgow half-marathons for a few years, although to be fair, you really need to put a bit of effort into training for those longer events to enjoy them and the arrival of our wee family made that more difficult. But still up until last year, pulling on the trainers and getting out for a run of anything up to 12km was pretty easy and probably something I did at least once per week until my 'event'.
I haven't run a single step since November 2018, when it started to become apparent something was wrong. I've done a lot of walking, I've been on the cardio X-trainer in the gym for a gentle stretch of the limbs and I've now been on the turbo trainer for a couple of weeks building up some lung capacity, but I haven't run.... until this morning.... Jesus suffering Christ, running is hard work! Managed a 20 minute light jog, stopped on 20 and walked home - which coincidentally also took 20 minutes. What a pleasure to get that cold morning air into the lungs again. But there's a whole load of pain in the post I think. Getting some running back might be quite a challenge, but in lockdown, getting out the house early for a wee plod a couple of times per week might just be the ticket.

Lockdown Turbo

Used to joke about outliving my old man, who screeched into an early grave at 53 having modelled his lifestyle on Ronnie Wood and Ozzy Osbourne, but without the fruit, or whatever it is that keeps those guys alive. It's starting to look like my free scoring run rate of the mid 20s through to mid 40's has slowed right down though as I've seen the half-century looming up though and this virus has me absolutely shitting myself. I've no real idea where my lungs and heart are in relation to the rest of the population. Up until mid 2018, I would have said I was a pretty fit guy, able to comfortably run 10km and train for longer endurance events without too much bother. Now, I haven't had any exercise that's stressed me for over 18 months. I'm still carting around weight that I shouldn't - whilst it never actually bothered me before now, it's become apparent to me that I've lost the underlying muscle tone that allowed that.

Anyway, here I am, stuck in Lockdown and it's not great, but actually last year has prepared me well for this and patience is the key to getting through it having achieved something. We've been having daily walks, the apple health app has been warning me that my VO2 max has been sliding, although my resting Heart rate seems to yoyo between 60-70. I've found that actually as my underlying fitness is so low, I actually get tremendous benefit in very short time from just adding a bit more exercise into the mix, so I've put my bike onto a turbo trainer in the greenhouse and am aiming to build up the number and length of sessions over the next few months. Being a geek for the numbers, I've used the Heart rate calculator on this page target Heart rate Calculator to calculate my training zones. As I'm getting back on the bike after a lay off, my plans are to mainly do steady state sessions for the first couple of weeks and probably make the majority of my time in Zone 2, with just a few forays into zone 3.

I've got a Garmin speed / cadence sensor fitted to the bike and an EDGE 500 speedometer, so everything I need to keep an eye on things.

The free version of Strava even facilitates some Heart rate analysis, so a session looks like this.

The distance things is a bit misleading of course. On the turbo, there is constant friction on the wheel, making it much harder than being on the road and stopping peddling sees the rear wheel stop spinning within 1 revolution. It's only useful to compare the distance travelled between turbo sessions rather than a real distance

Relative effort is a Strava term, the definition which they give is

Relative Effort

Relative Effort is an analysis of your heart rate data. By tracking your heart rate through your workout and its level relative to your maximum heart rate, we attach a value to show exactly how hard you worked. The more time you spend going full gas and the longer your activity, the higher the score. Compare your Relative Effort with friends and pros, see if you can do a truly epic workout and motivate yourself to push that extra bit harder! Relative Effort was inspired by the concept of TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse) coined by Dr. Eric Bannister.

I'll probably track that too...

So far I've done 3 sessions a week for 2 weeks and I'm not feeling too bad.

Week 3 plan
4 steady state sessions with 1 harder than the others in mid week.
Warmup : 10 mins, spinning up through the gears
Session : Steadystate - Zone 2/3 for 30 mins (x2 sessions in zone 2 x2 sessions on zone 3.
Warm down - 10 mins dropping through gears

PowerMill fitness tests

Just over 1 year since being hospitalised, I'm back in the gym preparing for a family ski holiday. Having had 6 months completely booze free whilst I was on the Warfarin and recovering I must say I felt pretty good and was looking forward to getting back to normality.

In Sept / Oct, I ended up doing very little exercise and in November I ended up flying 3 weeks out of 4. In December I enjoyed the festivities as usual and in January I'm back up to 90kg and feeling like shit. Fitness levels have plummeted dramatically, apple watch VO2 max score dipped back down below 40 and I'm not sleeping well - had a cold that seemed to go on forever and the drip into the back of my throat when I was lying down nearly drowning me, despite it being almost unnoticeable when I was up & about.

Only one thing to do, get back in the saddle. Build up the legs with squats and lunges and get some cardio done.

Up until now I've had treated Cardio machine fitness test assessments with some skepticism, as I don't think I've ever scored less than well above average - even when I've felt distinctly average. First effort on the Powermill and you enter usual, age, weight etc and then a estimated fitness level between 1-20. I thought less than half is about right so went with 9. Managed to do 2 minutes 37 seconds, before the machine stopped the test - seems like it didn't like when my pulse went above 157...

2nd time, I tought I'd better go conservative, so set the Fitness level to 2. Felt like it was barely moving, completed the test, but score was 0 - Very low...

3rd time, I'm not sure what's going on, but if I increase the fitness level at least this might count as a warm up, so increased to 4. Score 10 - Very Low

4th time, Tried fitness level=5, felt like a nice warm-up actually. Score 10 - Very Low.

OK, so probably need to use FItness level 5, maybe 6 and see how it goes. Very Low - Things can only get better !

EU health care - true story

Bit of a strange one, but here we go. I am now on long term, prophylactic, anti-coagulation medication. I take 2.5mg of Apixaban twice per day to prevent the reoccurrence of potentially fatal blood clots. I've been pretty well disciplined in my medications since being hospitalised with this condition, but as a result of some catastrophic preparation, I found myself arriving in Hamburg yesterday afternoon for a 4 day workshop without my medicine.

Calm head required, My first thought was that I should get to a pharmacy and simply buy the drug, I doubt that's possible in Germany - they tend to be quite strict about these kinds of things, but lets see how that goes.

I started to google the cost of the drug in question using my phone in the taxi, expecting that I might be getting hit for 40-50 Euros.

Shat myself... Immediately started thinking about whether I should just run the risk of going without.
Interesting topic that - can you afford to go without life saving medication, food, water, shelter???? Indeed, why do progressive governments think that medication should be available to all as a matter of priority?

Anyway, there was the worst case scenario, maybe up to 500 Euros as a reminder not to be a twat, or possibly just die and avoid any embarrassment...

At 17:40 I presented myself at an Apotheke to explain in my very unreliable German the situation I was in. Massively in my favour was the fact that the drug comes with a wallet card explaining your status and dosage, however it's still a prescription drug in Germany - in the UK, for some drugs it is possible that a pharmacist can offer a short term fix in emergency situations. Through some limited conversation with the Phamarcist, I learned that it was exactly as the case in the UK, this was a prescription only drug, but no emergency procedures available to me. She kindly directed me to the nearest Medical practice, thankfully on other side of the road, where after some form filling and presentation of my EHIC (thankfully having taken time to put my 'Patient Alert card' in my wallet, I also remembered to pack my European Health Insurance Card) I was invited to sit in the waiting room. A few more laughs with the receptionist and I found myself meeting Dr. Maas who very quickly produced a prescription - No Charge!

Rushed down to the Pharmacy at 18:20, with it closing at 18:30. Presented the script only to be told it wasn't in stock. So I raced down the street to the next pharmacy where I was also informed they would need to order the drug. "Shit!" thinks I, this place closes at 18:30 and I need to be in a workshop a long way from here at 08:30 tomorrow morning. But, lo, I've misunderstood, I just need to come back around 21:00 when the drug will have been delivered and the pharmacy will open for me if I have the correct papers - how do I get these I wonder? - she prints them for me - how much does it cost?  - 5 Euros please -  For the papers?  - Just for the drugs. - How much for the emergency Service? - What? - the emergency Service, how much? - we don't charge if you need medicine... - of course...

If I was English, I'd be asking my MPs what the fuck they think they're playing at?