The Pain Cave

The last thing I want to do on this blog is to complain about personal health issues. However, my recent painful episode, its origins and my experience with the medical system may be of some use to some (especially older) readers who want to keep pursuing an active lifestyle until the hearse pulls up.
Here is a quick synopsis of what I think was the underlying cause:
- January fall on an ice sheet, flat on my back, while getting ready for a snowshoe trip at Paradise, WA
- No pain or other symptoms for couple of weeks
- Two following months, stiffness in the neck, unable to look over my shoulder while bike commuting
- Skiing, dropping 5-10 feet through gates into chutes and bowls, jumping moguls, landing in deep powder, fast descending on a snow bike - all causing dull pain in the neck
- Ignoring all these warning signs
- April - flying on business, sitting on a plane with a strong pain in the right arm
- From that point, the pain in neck, shoulder, arm does not go away, gets stronger, to point 11 on scale of 10

There are two kinds of pain, the first "normal" pain is when we cut, bruise, burn ourselves. The second, nerve pain is the pain we experience during a root canal or tooth drilling without enough anesthesia. It is also a pain caused by pinched nerves in the vertebrae. It is dull, radiating, sends electric-like jolts through the paths of the nerve, tingles occasionally, but most importantly, never, ever goes away. After a few days, it drives you crazy, keeps you awake at night, does not let you concentrate on anything.

OK, so what does one do in such a painful situation? Here is again a quick summary of my actions and encounters with the standards of medical care as well as the non-traditional approaches. First, I tried to make appointments with a GP and an orthopedist, being new to the area, this was going to take several days (a week or so). Second, I ran to a physiotherapy place across the street from my work. These guys gladly took care of me, after three sessions I gained a lot of mobility in my neck, but the pain did not go away a bit. Some of the exercises seemed to help temporarily, but still no sleep.
Then - the real MDs: Dr. 1 prescribes pain medication which makes the pain go away for 30 minutes and a neck X-ray which shows no problem with the bones (besides a slight age related wear of the vertebrae). Dr. 2 says the pain medication was wrong, prescribes a super strong NSAID (the one which can kill you by stomach bleeding), a painkiller that is used to treat epilepsy and an MRI. The painkiller causes me to lose coordination, so I move like a drunk, but it knocks me out for 2 hours at night, so I sleep a little. After 2 of these pills, no chance of driving a car for at least a day. A week goes by.
Dr. 3, a chiropractic with a doctoral degree: immediately identifies a C7-T1 dislocated vertebra, agrees with Drs 1 and 2 on a possibly herniated C5 disc and gets to work. Gentle adjustments, no work around the T1 until she sees the MRI, massage, hot / cold, ultrasound. For the rest of the day and most of the following night I am pain free and the hope of running and biking again returns.

I am sure all this will resolve soon and I will be able to function again. But this experience results in two realizations: first, who knew that the fifties will be so miserable after the best physical condition of my life during my 40-ies? Who the hell wrote this program? Second: from now on, I will listen to my body and be gentle(r) to it. Yoga and chiropractic will likely be part of the routine. After all, I still want to ride 100 miles when I'm 75.

Those missed rides

I boarded the plane from Seattle to San Jose in excruciating pain. A pinched neck nerve was shooting jolts of electricity down my shoulder and handing the boarding pass to the attendant was an effort accompanied by seeing stars. I sat next to a pretty young lady with her leg in a plastic cast. She commented on me wearing Hokas and as it turned out, she was a competitive triathlete, who broke her leg (a second time) during an important race. The girl was devastated and I tried to cheer her up, despite the fact that turning in my seat just slightly to talk to her caused me pain of previously unknown intensity. When we landed in San Jose, she said "I guess today was my lucky day that I met you" and waited for her crotches and her husband to help her off the plane.

The third seat in our row was empty. We paid for it but Marketa had to stay in California that week. Which brings me to the subject of missed bike rides and runs. During the summer of 2013, Marketa collected data for her thesis, while I tried to use every sunny or at least dry weekend day to bike the Northwestern mountains. Then came the fall, she moved to the Bay Area for school and the weather went downhill from there. Almost every weekend from September to the end of November, each of us sat at our respective computers, headphones on, Skype running, working on the diploma thesis. Coding and decoding surveys, running data through SPSS, searching for references, endless discussions and proof-readings of all parts of the manuscript, going crazy about the APA editorial style and so on and so on. Working on such complex document remotely took at least thrice as long as if it was done face to face. Many weekends it rained and I did not regret getting out, but often I longed for an hour run even in the rain. And many times I sent her edits and rushed outside for a quick jog, sometimes even a longer run, just to burn midnight oil later. Second reader approvals, thesis advisor edits, more changes, last minute screw ups with formatting, then the final draft and binding. The result is here: last week, my wife received an award for her thesis.

She was among about fifteen award recipients out of 577 graduates. Two days later, she walked up the stage to receive her Master of Science degree in Clinical psychology.

A four year long test of endurance was suddenly over, they played Alma Mater in the finish chute, and instead of a medal, she received her diploma (or rather an empty tube pretending to be a diploma).

We were both very happy and glad this event was over, she is now well trained in yet another scientific discipline (on top of a doctorate in biochemistry) and both of us have learned a ton. Yes, we have missed miles and miles of trails and roads, but we would never trade the gains of psycho-education for all these miles and potential calories burned.

Now is the time to put the herniated disks in their proper places and hopefully look forward to new trips, trails and destinations.

K. H.

Since our first encounter with Mt. Rainier in the fall of 2012, my wife has nicknamed the big mountain Kuneticka Hora. I really don't know why, a hill of that name is located in Bohemia, it is about 1000 feet high and has a medieval castle on its top. But the name stuck.

On my recent trip to Seattle, which was probably going to be the last one for a while, I had a chance to enjoy nice, yet distant, views of the majestic mountain. 

Beautiful pictures of KH are likely to be found in all tourist brochures and calendars, but in reality, it is actually quite rare to see it, due to mostly cloudy weather of the region. Even when it is not raining in Seattle, KH may be difficult to see if there is haze or clouds surround the volcano that tends to create its own weather. I had only one afternoon free in Seattle and any serious physical activity was out of question due to my severe spinal blockage with resulting skeleto-muscular pain. I set out to "run" our old standard loop around Magnolia, which is about 9 miles and uses some beautiful trails of the Discovery Park.

It was a sunny, bright, clear 75 degree day and spring was in overdrive. Fresh green leaves and grass, lilacs, tulips and tons of other plans and trees blooming. This place can really be quite gorgeous under the right circumstances. I guess it is not meant for me to enjoy Seattle, even now, when I do not have to worry about my future here, my jog turned out to be a very painful experience. I ran for couple of hundreds meters until my neck, shoulder and arm hurt so much I could not stand it, then walked until I could not stand walking, repeated. 

Inside the Discovery Park, I found spots with nice views of KH I did not notice on any of my many runs here in the past. Small discoveries in familiar places. 

On Magnolia Beach, I finally turned my back to the mountain and hoped to complete the second half of the loop without peeing myself from the pain. I did, eventually (finish, not pee myself), about two and half hours after starting. 

This loop has become a symbol of slow and painful for both Marketa and me. Till next time, KH. 

Reconnecting

Moving back to the Bay Area also means visiting favorite places and trails, which I haven't seen in almost two years. When I ran trails in Connecticut a few weeks ago, I was very surprised how exact my memory was about specific places on trails. Perhaps my muscle memory is better than my grey matter memory. So I looked forward to bike and run as many old and new places here as soon as possible. But in between the new job, business travel, two and half hours spent each day commuting to and from work, and essentially living out of a suitcase, I did not find enough time for whole day outings. I also lack the endurance now to go long, although I feel like I can output some decent power on shorter rides. Those Cascade hills are stored somewhere.

The first place I visited for a run was Huddart Park in Woodside. I was pretty shocked by the number of people, mainly roadies, in the center of Woodside, there were lot fewer people on Huddart trails and once I hit Mt. Redondo and Lonely trails, I had the woods for myself.

After a long grueling climb to the Skyline Ridge, this bench advises to take it easy. I continued further up without sitting down, enjoying the grace of the forest around.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/483105867

A day later, my friend invited me for a mellow mountain bike ride at Skeggs. I remember rides at Skeggs being about twice as hard as anywhere else and I used to ride there on my full suspension bike. Now equipped only with the 29er hardtail, I was a little apprehensive about the ride. We rode a classic shorter 10 mile loop and I enjoyed the ride a lot. The bike big wheels rolled over chunky stuff and I wondered why I ever thought of Skeggs as a technical place to ride. This is a prime hardtail terrain, I will save the full sus bike for Tahoe and Downieville. 

Mid week, after work, I went to explore the basic lay of land at the Pleasanton Ridge, which will likely become my new backyard ride. The hills around Sunol and Pleasanton are emerald green now and knowing that the color will change in matter of weeks, I was curious about the views. Trails he are mostly steep fire roads, I would even call them fire freeways, at least until you reach the ridge. Steep, very steep. 

There is also lot of single track and although probably not strictly legal, it looks like it is ridden a lot and since the trails are already there, I think it may be better that mountain bikers leave the fire roads to hikers and equestrians. Fun, roller coaster trails, with super steep pitches. The views really did not disappoint.

Although not technical in the traditional mountain biking sense, these trails demand skills and control of the bike, especially on loose ball bearings over hard pack and gravel and sand at very high speeds. To me, this type of riding is actually scarier than hopping and manualing over wet roots and rocks. 

Looking north towards Pleasanton, Dublin and Livermore. Morgan Territory in the back, another please with fond memories of brutal climbing in the middle of nowhere. 

Gps track: 

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/487684219

Finally today, I rode the very universal 29 inch bike on back roads of Santa Cruz mountains in the neighborhood. The ride had two goals: check out the Loma Prieta winery, where we plan to have Marketa's graduation picnic, and see whether I could find a missing link between the Aldercroft Heights road and Wright Station, a connection that would allow me to ride a loop including Old Santa Cruz Hwy, Highland etc, without riding the same roads twice. This area has some interesting places, like the remnants of the Holy City, lots of small wineries that grow in popularity, some local produce ranches and lots of weirdos living in the woods.

The first goal was easily attainable, it just required a long and steep climb on Loma Prieta Avenue, which eventually turned into a dirt road. But there were amazing views of the Monterey Bay so that made the climb less painful. At the winery, I was invited to taste the wines, but opted for a water refill and a Power bar instead, and prepared for a long descend back. 

The search for trail connection through the San Jose water utilities land included a plunge down Wright station, all the way to the Los Gatos creek, about 800 vertical feet. I needed to see the gate from this end - I already know that the gate at Aldercroft is easy to walk around. This gate proved to be the real deal: barbed wire, fences extending to thick poison oak growth, I would not be surprised if it had electricity running through it. After all, the creek is on the water supply cascade of lakes. Oh well, some places are not worth the potential trouble. There are tons of small mountain roads, as well as the Demo forest and trails down to the coast. All I need to do is to make my legs and lungs get used to 7 hour rides. For now, these 2 hour intense exercises will have to do, until our life stabilizes again.

Running at places II - A tribute to 454 Life Sciences and Commodore Leete

Running is also much easier than biking when you travel, especially business travel. That's why I declined John's offer to go for a ride (!) and went exploring the memory lane on foot.

My day started from this uninteresting building in Branford. The labs behind the second floor windows, between the tree on the left and the pole were the birthplace of 454 sequencing technology, proving that not all cool biotech ideas come from the Silicon Valley. 

I drove a short distance to Stony Creek, a small village and a harbor from where you can take a cruise around Thimble Islands. Although discovered by Adrien Block, these granite rocks are also called Leetes islands and I like this name better, since Commodore Leete and I are old friends. His gravestone is just off Moose Hill road and biked and ran past his grave countless times.

Stony Creek is also where the Branford trail and it's numerous connectors hug the shoreline. I found the trail soon, which was helped by the absence of leaves on trees. A month later, this place will be an impenetrable jungle of green, with the corresponding humidity. 

This section of the trail goes through coastal marshes and had some new bridges, offering nice views of the coast, despite the almost uniform beige color of dead vegetation.

After years of riding in California, one would almost forget how a decent rock garden looks like. The trail soon turned north, entering the Hadley Creek preserve. Memories of getting lost here, fixing a flat while covered with an inch thick layer of biting mosquitos, finding my car broken into after a hike flew through my head as I struggled uphill on a very warm day. 

The woods here are criss-crossed by old stone walls and many of the trails were undoubtedly used by the Mattabasec Indians centuries ago. I was afraid of these trails ending at private property, but there were new trail marks and a detour around the formerly inaccessible land. Even the creek crossing was now enabled!

It is funny how I remembered so many exact spots on these trails, even specific rocks and ledges that schooled me as a mountain biking novice sixteen years ago. We rode these trails on hard tails with 3" of fork travel and squeeky rim brakes. 

The trail, often disappearing under layers of dry leaves from last fall, eventually loops back south and comes to the Stony creek Quarry. This is still an active quarry and it would be too wise to trespass into it on a work day, but being Saturday, I took the risk for a photo. The famous pink granite quarried here was used for the Statue of Liberty pedestal as well as many other structures in New York and around. 

After 2.5 hours of getting my toes banged against granite rocks, it was a time for New Haven (Marco's) pizza and a naturally flavored, totally bright orange artificially colored Foxon Park soda.  I guess not much has changed here since 1614, I mean, 1998.

A quick Sunday update: 

Met my friend John L. for a run through Westwoods. Westwoods is a maze of trails, some of them take you through cracks in granite walls. Running here is technical and slow, but this was actually good: we had enough lungs to chat about how an ideal biotech startup could look like, if we had a magic wand. Using your brain on a run for some actual conscious thinking while letting the unconscious pick the best path through rocks was great. 

Oh, and if you did not believe me about Leete, here is the evidence:

Running at places

The main difference between cycling and running for me is that on a bike, when the going gets tough,  I concentrate on shifting, braking, keeping somewhat good form and position, which keeps me occupied. During runs, even the short ones, depending on my momentary physical state, I often suffer. Focusing on breathing and my own body somehow makes running even more harder. The one good thing about running is that there is much more time to look around and decouple the mind from the body. Here are few snapshots of places I ran recently while suffering mightily. I know that running becomes lot easier for me when I cross the magical (for me at least) 10 mile barrier as the regular distance. For now, it is in the 5-8 mile range where the warm-up phase turns into a cool-down phase and no groove in between.

This is on the streets of Magnolia in Seattle in early March. Spring arrives early in lowlands of Pacific Northwest and lasts till June, depending on elevation.

Alpine Road, Portola Valley. Early April. California nature is just waking up fueled by the long awaited rains.

Photo taken from my office in Pleasanton, CA, just before going out on an exploratory jog which ended up being about twice the distance because of a wooden wall at the end of the outdoor rec center.

This is Monona Terrace in Madison, WI, designed by the local Frank Lloyd Wright and built sixty years after his death. 

During four days of corporate events and many restaurant meals, I managed two one-hour jogs along the lake Monona on a totally flat bike path. One day west and back, the other day east and back. Strong head wind was the only challenge on these runs, but I am glad I saw the place closer than from a car. Very few signs of spring at this part of America.

I am off to New England, where I hope to visit some friends and run on rocky, rooty and muddy trails at Westwoods, which used to be in our backyard for nine years we lived in Connecticut.

Taxed by California (trails)

Living in Washington state for all of 2013 gave me a chance to avoid paying state income tax. But my ex-home state has caught up to me: I did have a California income and state tax was taken from it. Despite the best efforts of an H&R block expert (who thought it ridiculous to pay taxes to a state on whose territory you don't live), I had to give them my unfair share. But who could be mad at California if you wake up to views like this every morning?

The heavy rains I had brough with me from the northwest apparently resulted in late season 51" of snow in the Sierras. But the tax day approaching and looming business travel prevented me from showing Pepper how the Cali Sierra cement compares to the Cascades concrete. I grabbed the 29er instead for a half day Sunday ride. I have been thinking about several rides starting in Lexington Hills, but thought I would start with the backyard hills first. Dropped down to the reservoir, followed the shore and climbed up Limekiln. Surrounded by lush and freshly green vegetation, the trail surface was slightly wet and packed, none of the loose scree that sopped the last energy out of me on the same trail few years ago. Poison oak glistened with fresh oil and stretched its trifoliate fingers into my path, asking to be touched (and pay the price). 

I got soon passed by a guy with much more grey hair than I have (if that's even possible) and the gradient of the climb reminded me that there were no switchbacks here, just straight up. I reached the top just after the older dude, had a nice chat with him and shared my plan to continue up Limekiln trail under the power lines.  Good luck he said with a smirk. By now, the sun was nuking my pale skin that hasn't seen sun since last August, I was short of breath and dripping sweat from my head band. But I persevered and got as close to Mt. Umunhum as I have ever been. I could see the windows in the concrete tower.

From here, it would be either continuing into the unknown territory for many more miles, or turn around and take an alternate (Priest) trail back. From my view point on the high ridge, I could see the whole Silicon Valley spread below, smog free. Besides my very personal reasons to be back in California, the mere existence of this place would be enough to be here. 

The return trail looked like a downhill boulevard of packed sand from this point, but turned out to be series of super steep pitches - I mean like chin on the handlebar and the rear wheel slipping  steep - alternating with similarly steep white knuckle downhill sections.

The rest of the ride was view-less but tough nevertheless. Out of water (it's not 45F and raining you idiot!) and with about 800 vertical feet of our "driveway" on the final mile, I just about collapsed on the porch when I finally got home. So here I have it: in my current de trained state, my maximum tariff to California trails is about 20 miles / 2800 vertical ft of these slopes. I am willing to pay more, but I am afraid it will require an extension beyond April 15 to file.