The past week and a bit have been productive but the hand hasn’t shown any huge improvements. As a matter of fact, the past 3 days my hand has hurt more than any 3 consecutive days since I broke it. I like to blame this mostly on the new cast shape that I got that forces my ring and little finger into a straight position (ring finger throbs sometimes and has a bump so I’m starting to think it is actually broken). It might also have to do with 2 runs I did earlier this week. I ran 20 minutes on Monday with a 2 min walk break (I was running fast comfortably – or maybe it was comfortably fast), and then about 30 minutes of light running around the grass at the track on Tuesday. That night I had to take some T3s.
I have been doing lots of spiro. I dominate the 5 L bag now. Eventually I’ll get to 6 L which is apparently pretty incredible for somebody under 6-feet tall. I can finally coordinate a 3 L bag at 45 resps/min. Great - I have almost developed race pace breathing.
Funny story on a breathing note: Last week I did a First Aid course and we were asked to measure each others breathing. We were supposed to put a hand on the person’s rib cage and feel for the rise and fall. This notion is of course spurious because why would anybody be initiating all these inefficient breathing muscles like the intercostals while at rest? One girl’s resp rate was 32/min. Mine was non-existent because I was diaphragm breathing and my partner couldn’t feel rib movement. I counted it myself and it was 12 resps/min, which is fairly normal. Man, some of those people were breathing as hard as I do during a distance race!
I remember when I first started working with Andrew Sellars a few years ago. He’s basically the one who made me realize that when you exercise, you breathe. Pretty obvious, I know, but for the longest time I wasn’t doing it. He told me to count my breaths when I was doing rollerski intervals on the School Draw loop a few years back. I got back to him and said “100”. He called bullshit on the spot. And it turns out he was right. I wasn’t breathing; what I was doing was dying. Huffing and puffing and not doing nuttin’. Basically no gas exchange whatsoever. Think of the math right now. My maximal breathing rate with 3 L is 45, so I can breathe in/out 135 L, plus a bunch more, cause you actually breathe past the valve so you don’t pass out. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say 135 L/minute of fresh, 21% O2 air. And the same amount containing a little less O2 and a whole bunch of newly formed gases is breathed out. Now let’s assume that since my respiratory system is much better trained now than it was 3 years ago, say a 40% improvement. That would mean that my max breath rate back then would be about 96 L/min. Now take into consideration the dead space involved with the breathing process, say 200 mL (I don’t know the actual value, but I do have a long neck…) that would be made up of my trachea, mouth, nasal cavity, whatever. So if I was breathing 100 rpm and I totaled 96 L/min, that means I was moving 960mL/breath, 200 mL of which did nothing, didn’t even touch an alveolus. Not even 80% efficiency in gas exchange in relation to how much air I was moving. Not to mention the wasted energy… Now with a 3 L tidal volume, the percentage of gas that actually enters the lungs is bumped up to over 93%. 14% improvement in this sense doesn’t sound too impressive, but when you pair this improvement of a base level physiological event with the power I have developed in my breathing with a few years of consistent, focused training of the system, all of a sudden I have learned how to breathe and have even made it my strength. As measured with the Spiropet, my vital capacity now exceeds 6 L. And I’m also good at blowing up balloons, so if you’re preparing for someone’s birthday party, you know who to call.
The main focus of the work I do with the big bags is to expand lung volume. The costal cartilage remains very flexible through childhood and sort of stiffens once into the early 20s. I’m 19 so mine is still pretty flexy, and that’s why this is a good time for big spiro work. When I first started with Spiro, my vital capacity was barely above 5 L, at 5.2 L I believe. It now sits at a little over 6 L. About a 20 % increase. And this basically all because a structure (rib cage) has been permanently changed due to a training stimulus.
The other day I pushed 120 W on a trainer for a couple hours. It took me a while to realize the weak power was due to the knobby I had on…nice one. I was starting to wonder if I had lost every quantum of fitness I ever had. It was consolation knowing I was breathing 12 rpm @ 145 bpm... So yeah, I granny-geared it for a few hrs in the sweltering garage (I felt like Simon Whitfield in his heat chamber) with the tunes cranked. I tried to watch Fight Club, but Ed Norton’s voice is just too deep and manly that it was destructively interfered with by the angry bumblebee knobby-on-trainer sound. So I reverted to maxing out the mini-Boses and to shaking the house all day. It was a pretty sweet training session though. Pretty focused with a pretty fast and structured recovery period immediately following. No in-transit time, the shower a few steps away, and a fridge full of food upstairs.
But yeah, since that day I have done squat. My hand wakes me up at night asking to be let out. Haha, just like a dog… So I let it out of the uncomfortable cast from time to time. Running is out of the question for a few weeks. Biking seems good, hopefully the increased blood flow isn’t the sole bane of my hand. I’m starting to think it might even be the gruesome pins that are jutting out of the hand that are disrupting soft tissue healing and are bringing the hurt.
I’m getting some core done too. It is brutally weak at the moment. I need to bring the core up to speed in order to find my double pole mojo once on-snow. I’ve plunged into that building period.
ALSO! You may have noticed that I have a “Diamond PLUS Sponsor”. I recently met up with FSC Architects & Engineers here in YK and they are on board for this year. “Diamond” level was previously my top level for a sponsor, but these guys have gone above and beyond this and seem very keen on being an integral part in the Olympic Journey. I am very pumped to be working with FSC. They have lifted much of the sponsorship-seeking burden I have had on my shoulders lately and wow!, just huge shout out. You guys are awesome! Just like this ski season will be. With your help. So thank you.
I’m hoping to get my pins out any day now. Hopefully the holes seal up and I can keep on my bike. Hold tight. I’ll be back.
Remember:
Don’t count the days. Make the days count.
The set-up.
Blood flow is important.
The first in a series of shots documenting the wasting away of the arm. It was pretty weak and pretty tiny to start with. It looks like its already atrophied a bit compared to the other arm.
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