Welcome to the world of adrenal fatigue

If you’ve read my last few posts (the ones that are not workouts), then you’ll notice a theme: I’ve got a lot going on.  If I think back to the beginning of the year, I had an amazing string of 6 weeks of MEBB work, not much stress, good times in life, and general happiness.  My diet was dialed in.  Everything was good.

And then I went to Vegas.  And San Diego.  And Colorado.  And Canada.  Then there was SXSW somewhere in there.

And the list goes on…

My Type 1 personality leads me to believe that I can handle all of it.  I can burn the candle at both ends.  Work, train, party, race.  Hell, I won my age group in a duathlon with 1 week of prep time.  I’m invincible, right?

Wrong.

(aside: HUGE thanks to those who checked in with me after reading my last post.  Now that I have an explanation for what’s going on, I feel MUCH better now… I’ve got some personal life repair work to do, but that’ll come in time)

In thinking about the last week or so, culminating in the last post I wrote, I spent some time thinking about what I’ve been up to, and why I would have such high highs and low lows.  And then, listening to Robb Wolf, something hit me… adrenal fatigue (funny thing when you run into this listening to the Paleolithic Solution podcast

Robb ran into this situation,  best described from his blog post:

For those of you unfamiliar with this condition, your adrenals begin to give out [due] to too many life demands. Sleep, stress, training can all take their toll. I think I’ve had a mild to moderate dose of this condition for a LONG time. I have always burned things pretty hard … This combo of shitty food and bad sleep really takes me down at the knee caps.

…

What my adrenal fatigue boiled down to was this: Crushing fatigue most of the day, only perking up a bit in the evening. This is a reversed  cortisol profile in which I have higher levels in the evening than morning. this is about a stage or two away from the full systemic melt-down that leaves on in bed, immune compromised and generally feeling like death. Cortisol competes with testosterone for the substrate pregnenalone. High cortisol means insulin resistance, low strength and slow recovery. Excessive metabolic conditiong makes things worse. What’s excessive? You never make progress, you feel like absolute death doing anything over a few minutes duration. I’ve also had 4-5 sinus infections in the past about 8 months. No bueno.

This. Sounds. Familiar.

I’ve had similar issues with energy levels.  I didn’t want to get up in the morning.  I couldn’t get to bed when I needed to.  My mind was constantly racing at night, and I got really bad sleep.  My diet went to shit — for every good meal, I would have 2 bad ones.  I was drinking way too much, way too often.  And I was still trying to train hard and race.  Do a google search for adrenal fatigue and alcohol, and you’ll find countless results that contain the words “emotional outbursts.”  Awesome.  Do another one for adrenal fatigue and emotions, and you’ll find more results that link the two.  Bingo.

No wonder my CrossFit WODs have been crap, my races have been a bit slower, I’ve been constantly sore and irritable.  No wonder people have asked me if I’m ok several times a week for the last several weeks.  No wonder I’ve felt like I was walking on a wire for the last month or so.  And no wonder the situation culminated with two emotional outbursts that I can’t explain, because the kind of thing I reacted to is not something I normally care about.

I’m overdoing it, big time, and it’s all got to stop.  Yesterday.

I started my plan to recover on Sunday.  Here it is:

• CrossFit WODs will be short.  I’m going to lift and do some CrossFit Endurance track/pool/bike work.  All of it will be short.
• I need to get back into my routines that I know work for me.
• I need to cook meals more often than not, and they need to be solid.  Which also means I’m going to be food logging for a month.
• I’m going to stop drinking until Memorial Day weekend, where I’m going camping with lots of old friends.  And then I’m going to stop drinking again until after my Half Marathon on June 6.  After that, we’ll evaluate it along with everything else.

How will I know I’m good?  When I can:

• Sleep well.
• Even out my energy levels throughout the day.
• Feel happy, constantly.
• Train well, with purpose, and with great results.

If your world is going haywire, and you’re one of the Gen X Weekend Warrior Rockstars, take a step back and read what Robb Wolf and Melissa Urban have to say on this topic.  Maybe your candle is burnt out.  I know mine was.

Week in food: week of May 17

Monday

Breakfast

• Snap kitchen blue corn migas, no cheese
• Catalytic Coffee’s Blast Off Blend, black
• Snack: Larabar

Lunch

• Whole foods sonoma chicken salad
• Mixed berries and pineapple
• Kombucha
• Snack: rest of chicken salad, more fruit

Dinner

• Zucchini noodles tossed with bell peppers and onions, ground bison marinara sauce, 2 teriyaki sweet potato spears
• Water
• Dessert: paleo banana bread

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA

Tuesday

Breakfast

• Snap kitchen blue corn migas, no cheese, no potatoes
• Black coffee
• Snack: Paleo banana bread

Lunch

• Zucchini noodles tossed with bell peppers and onions, ground bison marinara sauce, 2 teriyaki sweet potato spears
• Kombucha
• Snack: paleo banana bread

Dinner

• Cast iron skillet bison NY strip, roasted asparagus

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

Wednesday

Breakfast

• 2 eggs scrambled with spinach and organic chorizo
• Black coffee
• Snack: paleo banana bread.
• Later on, bad snack: 2 Round Rock donuts.

Lunch

• Cast iron skillet bison NY strip, roasted asparagus
• Snack: paleo banana bread

Dinner

• Cacao nib pork chops, spinach, butternut squash with honey and cinnamon
• Water

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth, SRG (after CrossFit)
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

Thursday

Breakfast

• Omelet with double spinach and some bacon
• 2-shot Americano

Supplements

• Nuun Kona Cola
• Progenix recovery, growth
• 25 caps of fish oil (per Whole9 calculator)
• ZMA
• 5000 IU vitamin D3

On a Sunday, redux

A while back (upon further examination just over a  year ago, weird) I wrote a post, On a Saturday, where I attempted to write down how I was trying to deal with the social changes in my life.  Many of those stemmed from CrossFit, triathlon, and other social-athletic activities.  You make fast friends with cool people, then everyone wants you to do their thing.  And if you can’t say no, you quickly run out of time.

So it’s 0830 on Sunday morning.  Normally I would still be sleeping, but instead of nursing a hangover, I pulled the ripcord at Molotov around 1230 and took off.  One of those nights where nothing I drank was getting me drunk, and I felt uncomfortable in my own skin.

I’m in a funk, and I can’t figure out how to get out.

I feel like I’ve allowed the following things to happen:

• I’ve managed to piss off or otherwise irritate some new friends of mine (you know who you are).
• I’ve stopped progressing in CrossFit.  I’ve stopped progressing in triathlon.
• I’ve stopped caring about my job.

Until I took a few minutes to pause, all I had for the above things are excuses, no real reasons.  I can blather on about feeling unwelcome, or not training because I don’t have time, or work being just plain annoying.  But all of those things are my refusal to provide the one thing that I demand from everyone else around me: respect.

Respect, and with that, loyalty, are the two things I demand from any relationship or community I choose to join.  That’s because those are two things that I fiercely provide in return.  For better or worse, I will throw myself in front of a bus for someone I just met 5 minutes ago, if they fit into the respect-loyalty relationship.

I spent the afternoon Thursday listening to Robb Wolf’s podcasts, and one thing he mentioned is the notion of training without ego.  Ego belongs on the field, when you’re competing, but it doesn’t belong in your training.  You’re not too good for drills, you’re not too good to practice a lift at 95lbs before you lift it at 135.

Same goes for life and relationships — it’s not a competition, it’s more training.

I’m not too good to expect that new friends will treat me like they’ve known me for years.  I’m not too good to expect that I can PR on a race without training.

In the words of Jimmy Eat World’s A Sunday, the inspiration for this post (again):

The haze clears from your eyes

On a Sunday

So to those who think I’m a total headcase, I’m not, and I’m sorry for the bullshit.  The bullshit is over.

To my other communities, I’ll find that vigor, fire, that so many of you have seen.  It’s somewhere.

Cycle 111

This workout is inspired by the CrossFit Endurance 4, 2, 1 intervals workout. Maximal distance in each interval.

Warm-up

• What You Know – Two Door Cinema Club
• This Boy’s In Love – The Presets: flat road, speedups
• Starlight – Muse: easy climb
• The Approaching Curve – Rise Against: false flat, power intervals
• Southern Belles In London Sing – The Faint: false flat, speedups
• The (Shipped) Gold Standard – Fall Out Boy: active recovery, workout explanation

Workout

• 10000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong – Simian Mobile Disco: 4 min on
• Notion – Kings of Leon: 3 min off
• Hell – Foo Fighters: 2 min on
• Introduction – Panic! At The Disco: 30 seconds off
• Paddle Out – Sublime: 1 min on
• Showbiz – Muse: 3 min off, 2 min on, 30 seconds off
• The Royal We – Silversun Pickups: 4 minutes on

Cool down

• Guiding Light – Muse
• Far – Coheed & Cambria

Every Second Counts + Groove = Gen X Weekend Warriors

(and a race report…)

People use the expression “work hard, play harder” all the time. And I think they mean it, but I think most people use the phrase for that one bender of a weekend or that show they saw Wednesday night and had to work early the next day. I think I’ve found a group of friends who epitomize “work hard, play harder.”

Imagine the movie “Every Second Counts” — a movie about some elite CrossFitters experience leading up to and including the Crossfit Games.  Then imagine the movie Groove — a movie about the San Francisco party underground that juxtaposes “real life” with “club life.”  That’s “work hard, play harder.”  And while our lives are quite a bit different in both camps, the intersection of the two is the best way I can characterize 2010 so far.

Somehow we balance jobs, training, racing, and nightlife in a way that seems perfectly ok, but I wonder when it all comes crashing down around me.  This was last week:

Sunday: spend the day with friends at an Alzheimer’s benefit.  Drink copious amounts of champagne mixed with tequila shots (ironic? perhaps.). Go to bed late.

Monday: work all day, CrossFit.

Tuesday: work all day, CrossFit, teach spin class.

Wednesday: coach a morning track workout, work all day, tuneup bike ride, coach evening track workout, host a party, drink all night (it was Cinco De Mayo, after all).

Thursday: coach a morning spin class, work all day, tuneup swim, dinner with friends, drinks in celebration of other friends’ wedding.

Friday: took the day off of work. Easy workout, errands, go to friends’ wedding, go to bars after said wedding, stay up almost all night.

Saturday: coach a morning CrossFit class, try to pick up the drunken pieces (imagine the scene in Groove at the End Up), go to a party barge and try not to drink (I do have a race on Sunday, after all).  Go home, eat dinner, pack race bag, sleep.

Sunday: wake up at 4:50, arrive at race around 6:30, race at 8, home by 12. Brunch at 1, long ass nap, get groceries, cook. Sleep!

That’s a normal week for me… just move around the training days and the drinking days and somehow it works.

I have to say that when I race, I’m jealous of the people who can dedicate their time to training and being “clean.”  There’s a certain guilt associated with this lifestyle (at least for me).  I think that’s because there’s the elephant in the room — if I wasn’t out drinking all week, I’d do so much better at these athletic feats.  But at what cost?

My strict CrossFit friends only hang out with other CrossFitters who eat paleo and drink Makers or NorCal margaritas.  My triathlon friends only hang out with other triathletes who rarely drink, eat tons of carbs, and go out on long rides and runs every weekend.  My non-athletic friends do whatever the hell they want.  I’m tired of having to “pick a side.”  I want it all, and I want it all to work.

Perhaps that’s the downfall of Gen X — we want our (paleo) cakes, and we want to eat the whole damn thing with (paleo) ice cream, on a unicorn.  Why?  Because we can.  At what cost?  Who cares… just as long as I’m happy. (aside: I know that’s a long leap from the previous paragraph to this one. I’m not in the business of writing a thesis, this is just the way I feel at the moment… hell, I don’t even know how I got to this point)

It sounds self-centered, and perhaps it is.

(another aside: I read this back before I clicked “Publish,” and I realize it may come off as a) pretentious, b) whiny, or c) narcissistic. or any combination of the above. Again, realize that I’m attempting to write down how I feel and what’s been going on… not to tell you about my training log, but instead of tell how what the rest of my life looks like. It’s a vent at the moment. Deal.)

So I had a race on Sunday… The Rookie Tri.  And once again, I did… ok. Actually I did worse than I thought.  I was all amped on Sunday because I thought I PR’d, when I actually got 10 seconds slower.  I know exactly where it was.  This is the magic of repeating races, which coincidentally is one of the reasons CrossFit works — comparisons and benchmarks.

So… this is a wake up call for me that perhaps things have gotten a little out of balance, and it’s time to bring things back in line. We’ll see how I do on my next few rides and races, and hopefully I can maintain my existing relationships and get back to those PRs and achievements.