Month: May 2016

Em oi! #417: Poor Bastards

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Ooh name that book. Or film. The film was also excellent.

Anyway, TWO COMICS IN ONE WEEK? I should pace myself better. Oh well. This actually happened–I didn’t hear the woman’s explanation to her offspring. I do wonder what she said. Okay, let’s bad segue into a quick discussion of the 2016 LMR 20k! (Link to last year’s race report.)

Results

Year Time Pace
2009 1:53:39 9:09
2010 1:41:24 8:10
2011 — —
2012 — —
2013 1:56:41 9:23
2014 1:45:53 8:31
2015 1:50:45 8:53
2016 1:48:47 8:46

LMR20K 2016 micro race report: I ran in a circle that started at the Monona Public Library and went around Lake Monona. My 5K splits were pretty even at 27:11, 26:57, 27:31, and 27:08.

Finish line
Finish line. Those women behind me threw up their arms and shouted “woo” at every photog we passed and honestly I think I could have like punched them and been justified in it.

I was faster than last year, which was my goal. I didn’t beat anyone else in my running group, which was my other goal. This coming week, Saturday May 14th, I have a trail half marathon (the Ice Age half marathon) in La Grange, WI. I was hoping to use the LMR20K to predict my pace for the next race. If the two courses were similar, I would expect a 1:55:xx based on this performance. But they’re not–the trail race is a seriously harder course. And the weather may be quite a bit warmer. So we’ll see.

It was nice to race, though. I put off signing up for many races this spring because of stuff going on in my personal life and I have been missing it. In addition to the upcoming half, I’m also in for the Blue Mounds 18k and the half at Dances with Dirt. Depending on how things go health-wise, I would also like to do something crazy in the fall–maybe an ultra of some sort. Earlier in the spring, I was having some ankle pain after running distances farther than about 16 miles, so I’m going to wait and see if that has cleared up. Surprisingly, swimming helps keep my ankle tendons flexible when these things flare up.

We’ll file this under GV1062 L86 2016, for Recreation. Leisure–Sports–Track and field athletics–Foot racing. Running–Distance running–General works.

Em oi! #416: Blunder Pressure

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White coat syndrome is when you get freaked out at the doctor and your blood pressure / pulse go up. I have it, and at least one of my siblings does too. Kind of funny, given that we come from a family of physicians. Although at home my resting pulse is about 60, at the doctor it’s more like 80 beats per minute. Actually, true story: Once when I was in college, I went to student health for a problem that was freaking me out. My bp was so high when they measured it (I don’t know what it was, they didn’t tell me), that the nurse huffed and said she that if I didn’t calm down, she was going to check it again in ten minutes. I told her that threatening me wasn’t going to make it better.

Apparently what happened, as near as I can piece together, is that at some point someone decided that the appropriate number wasn’t 120/80, it was “under 120” and “under 90.” So a ton of people who once had perfectly normal blood pressure are no “pre-hypertensive.” Basically the goal posts got moved. Or else the person who programmed the computer to append the pre-hypertensive warning used “>= 120” rather than “>120” as the firing criteria. Interestingly, I had two appointments last week. At the first, my bp was 120/80. After seeing that warning, I decided not to add salt to my food until the next appointment and see if that changed anything. My second appointment was where I got 120/60. I also hadn’t had any coffee that morning; wonder if that made any difference.

Anyway here is a comic about the dangers of setting up automatic triggers in your EHR. You’re welcome.

File this under RC685.H8 L86 2016, for Internal medicine–Specialties of internal medicine–Diseases of the circulatory (cardiovascular) system–Diseases of the heart–Individual diseases of the heart, A-Z–Hypertension.