Typically, the roller coaster I write about here is in terms of blood sugar spikes and drops. I certainly did have a solid drop on Wednesday's run, but I've settled things down throughout the rest of the week, though that means I've had some higher numbers than I would have liked. Overall, though, the blood sugar has been fairly consistent this week.

No, this week's roller coaster has to do with the calf injury I've been dealing with. I did another run on the treadmill on Tuesday with five minutes on and two minutes walking (four reps), and my left calf was feeling better. That's continued throughout the week, as I had physical therapy on Wednesday and Friday, and I've steadily increased the running. I did four miles on Thursday, three of them easy, then the final mile doing one minute hard and one minute easy, just to see how things felt. The calf was good and even felt better as the pace increased. Today, I went up to a bit over six miles, and my coach had me do three reps of six minutes at race pace and three minutes easy, sandwiched between a few easy miles. My left calf didn't give me much trouble throughout, which is great.

However, by the end of the run, my right calf was giving me trouble, and it has continued to since finishing the run. This problem often comes up, as it's easy to aggravate something else when trying to fix a particular problem. Thus, when I go back to physical therapy on Monday, we'll talk about the right calf and see if we can help it feel better.

I'm sure it didn't help that this run was the first one of this distance/time in the heat and humidity that has set in for the summer. It was also on a hillier course. In other words, there were lots of challenges with the run, so I'm not surprised I felt it. I was wiped out afterwards, so it's probably a good thing I've decided not to run the half marathon that would have happened eight days from now. Instead, I'll try to run a couple of 5Ks this summer, then aim for a half sometime in October or November.

It's amazing to me how quickly I can get frustrated with this process, as I've only had a few PT appointments, and I've been back able to run this week, so I'm trying to remain optimistic. Still, when every step reminds me that something's not working quite as it should be, I begin to worry that it's going to be months or years, not weeks, before I'm running regularly again. I have too much of a track record with injuries to trust that I'll be able to bounce back quickly, though I have moments where I believe I can. In other words, it feels like a roller coaster ride. Unfortunately, it feels like I'm stuck on one, which also happened to some teenagers this week. At least I have people around me who are trying to get me off of it and get me back to enjoying my day at the park (to beat this metaphor to metaphorical death).

The seniors at the school where I teach voted for me to address them at their lunch before graduation. Our graduation ceremony only has seniors speak (not faculty or administration), so this lunch is the one chance for them to hear from a faculty member one last time before they graduate. Here's what I said to them:

When some students found out that you all had voted for me to speak today, they asked if I was going to try to be funny. I can understand why they would ask that, given the number of jokes I tell, or at least attempt, in class. But nobody wants to see me do a stand-up routine for the next ten or twelve minutes, least of all me. We don’t get many chances in life to speak to this many people at once. So, I’m going to try to say something worthwhile, which is about as challenging as trying to be funny. I’m definitely going to try not to give you advice, as you didn’t ask for it, nor do most people listen to advice even when they do ask. Rather than try to tell you how to live your life, as if I know the answer to that anyway, I’m going to suggest a way for you to think about how to live your life, which is different.

You might remember Henry David Thoreau from your 10th grade English class, depending on if you were here for that year or which assignments your teachers selected for you. He’s the guy who went and lived at Walden Pond for two years, if that helps. Early in his reflection on that time, he writes, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” He’s not talking about lives that feel like they have no meaning, but lives that supposedly have meaning, but actually don’t because we don’t live them with any type of intention. Instead, we skim the surface of life, going through the motions of what we’re supposed to be doing rather than examining our lives to see if they’re actually the lives we should be living.

I’m not talking about the large decisions—career, marriage, retirement, and such—as I’m actually more interested in the smaller decisions, the ones we make every day, the ones that actually make up the bulk of our lives. The problem is that our society is designed to keep us from thinking about those decisions. I’ll pause here to see if anybody noticed the grammatical problem in that previous sentence. I can repeat it if you like. The problem is that our society is designed to keep you from thinking about those decisions. Yep, it’s passive voice. I’ve taken out whoever designs society to keep you from thinking about the decisions you make, as if I and you don’t have some ideas about who or what is doing that designing.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to talk about social media. Sure, social media companies try to keep you from making a decision about whether you should spend more time on your phone or go do something more productive or even more enjoyable. But there are so many other people who want you to live your life the way they want you to, especially as you head off to college. You’ve spent the past eighteen or so years of your life having peers and parents tell you how you should live, as well as politicians and preachers (or priests or rabbis or imams, depending on your faith, should you practice one). Teachers have done so, and, well, it’s kind of obvious that administrators have. If you’re heading off to college next year, I can assure you that professors will continue that trend.

But what is worse, I would argue, is when corporations try to turn you into nothing more than consumers, as if you are only what you buy. They don’t want you to make a decision when you’re driving by their establishment, and you turn in to purchase something; they don’t want you to think about what happens on the other side of your screen when you click buy. I was thinking about this idea recently when I was reading a book by Marion Nestle called What to Eat Now. She walks through the grocery store and talks about the nutritional quality of the food and food products there, but, more importantly, she talks about the politics and economics of what ends up where in a store and why. Near the end, she writes, “The idea that supermarkets, grocery stores, restaurants, fast-food places, and food product manufacturers are in business to make money ought to be self-evident—if we give it a moment’s thought. But we are not supposed to think such things, and food businesses do all they can to distract us from such thoughts.” She continues, “Corporations could not care less about your health, the economic and social health of your community, or the health of the environment in which we all live—unless they can profit from it.” The part that drew my attention was when she says, “we are not supposed to think such things.” Instead, such companies want us not to think, but to buy. Here are two other quick examples: First, the CEO of Starbucks recently put out a video trying to justify a $9 cup of coffee. Rather than trying to provide any real defense, he simply described it as an “experience” and said that at least it wasn’t a $10 cup of coffee. He didn’t mention his nearly $96 million salary, which is 6,666 times the amount an average barista makes, which is just under $15 thousand. Second, when you’re scrolling through Amazon about to make a purchase, Jeff Bezos doesn’t want you think about the 48% of Amazon workers who struggle with housing insecurity or the 23% of them who receive SNAP benefits because they don’t make enough to feed themselves or their families. We make decisions like these every day, and those with power don’t want us to think about them.

One of the most significant situations along these lines right now is with AI, which feels inevitable at this point. There’s a fairly recent episode of the show Hacks that deals with this inevitability quite well. An AI company wants to use Deborah’s stand-up routine to train an app that will make people funnier and cooler. Ava, Deborah’s head writer, responds to the techbro who’s trying to convince Deborah to sell them her material to train the app by saying, “See, that is a big part of why I hate it. This forced inevitability. People like you are always saying that it's happening whether you like it or not, but you're the ones making it happen, okay? And you could easily stop it if people could say they didn't want it, but you don't want to give people a choice. So you just say, ‘Oh, the train's already on the tracks,’ and you don't let people decide for themselves.” She continues to push toward the end: “Obviously, you want us to believe that because you stand to profit from it, so of course you're going to tell us it's happening no matter what and it's inevitable, okay?” From my experience, that’s how much of life works, as one person or company after another tells us that all progress is good progress and that it’s inevitable, anyway. If you disagree, then people label you a Luddite, someone who hates technology, or a Marxist or communist if you question the economic and human rights effects of companies.

One of my co-workers in my previous job often referred to me as a contrarian. He’s not the first person to do so, and he won’t be the last. I disagree, of course. It’s what you would expect somebody who’s contrary to do. And I know the reputation I have for holding forth on subjects like AI and capitalism and the like. If there are bingo cards floating around for this talk, as there were in my classes at times, people have already marked off several squares thanks to the past few examples. It can seem that I like to make outrageous comments or complain about decisions people in power make just for the sake of doing so, but let me tell you about an email my wife reminded me about this week, an email I received a couple of months ago to get to the core of why I believe in living an intentional life.

I don’t have the email anymore, as I deleted it after I responded, and some other corporation decides when my email permanently deletes itself, it seems. A woman reached out to me supposedly because of book reviews I write for various sites online, which has nothing to do with my teaching here at Ensworth. She was contacting me in my role here, though, quite clearly. She works for a company that’s developing a program for teachers, one that’s powered by AI. The way it works, she said, is that I would upload my students’ papers, and the AI would provide feedback on those essays. I would then have a chance to approve those comments, editing any of them before the students saw them. It may sound like a win-win situation. It would take me far less time to grade essays than it does now, giving students thorough feedback, possibly even more than I could give with more time, so they could then improve their writing thanks to that quick turnaround time.

I wrote her and told her I wasn’t interested, and I told her a number of reasons why. I mentioned my concerns about AI’s effects on the environment, certainly, and I even questioned whether she was a real person. She wrote back to tell me that she understood my position and that she was, in fact, real. I still don’t know if I believe that because, well, why should I? And that’s what gets to my real problem with this program and the direction the world seems to be moving right now and why I wanted to talk to you about intentional living. It’s not just that somebody out there wants to make my job easier, even if it doesn’t quicken our demise into the climate crisis; it’s that they’re trying to take away my humanity, and they’re trying to do the same to yours.

You see, they don’t see your essays as the product of a living, breathing human, somebody who has put time and energy into their thoughts and questions about literature and about life, somebody who deserves for another living, breathing human to read their essay and engage with it, a human who can marvel over the progress and growth that student has shown or even the places where they haven’t. They see those essays as nothing more than impediments to my free time, something to dispense with so I can get on to something more important, which means that they see you as something that just gets in the way of my living. Which also means that they think what I’ve devoted my life to—a belief that learning to read and write and think more clearly and deeply is one of the most important aspects of our humanity—is worthless, as well. I can’t imagine what they think of the time we spend around the Harkness table, talking about novels and history and art and culture and oppression and trauma and freedom and liberty and all of the places where we agree and don’t agree about those ideas and so many more. You know, the very core of what makes us human.

Living an intentional life is one that repeatedly insists on our humanity, in all of its messiness. People in power, corporations, anybody or anything at the top of a hierarchy don’t want you to think of yourself as human because, if you do, then you might start trying to live a life that doesn’t profit them in any way.
 
That’s not the life I wish for you.
 
What I’d like to propose is that you live your life with intention, fully engaging with the world in all of its messiness. I’m not going to advise you not to buy a drink from Starbucks or not to order something from Amazon, and certainly not to buy groceries, but I want to encourage you to think about why people want you to live your life a certain way.
Oliver Burkeman who writes what I’ll call anti-self-help books gives one way to think about living with intention: “James Hollis recommends asking of every significant decision in life: ‘Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?’ . . . you usually know, intuitively, whether remaining in a relationship or job would present the kind of challenges that will help you grow as a person (enlargement) or the kind that will cause your soul to shrivel with every passing week (diminishment). [He concludes,] Choose uncomfortable enlargement over comfortable diminishment whenever you can.” If you want to avoid a life of quiet desperation, take on the challenge of living a life with intention, so your decisions will truly be yours, and not those that the world around you is foisting onto you, or, even worse, the ones you willfully avoid.

So whatever it is that life finds you doing in the coming months or years, I wish more than anything for you that your life is not one of quiet desperation, that you don’t find, as Thoreau was worried would happen, that when you come to the end of your life, you realize you haven’t really lived at all. Instead, I hope that you live as Burkeman suggests, a life of enlargement, a life that grows and grows into more than you could ever imagine. I hope you live a life that embraces the humanity of it, the wins and the losses, the successes and the failures, the wonderful, awful messiness of all we get wrong and who it helps to make us. It will be challenging, and people will try to dismiss you and your humanity, but it will be so, so worth it.

So, last week, I thought I had a muscle strain. That post should help explain the dangers of self-diagnosis, as I don't, in fact, have a muscle strain. At all. Instead, I've simply aggravated my calf because my running form puts too much stress on it. As my PT reminds me, I have a tendency to overstride, and it causes all kinds of problems. Thus, after meeting with her, I'm already feeling better, and she has encouraged me not to rule out the half marathon in two weeks, though I still think that's optimistic.

After meeting with her on Wednesday, she not only gave me some strengthening exercises, but she also gave me an activity to do some running and work on my form. On Thursday, before getting on the treadmill (where the exercise is easier, unfortunately, as I hate running on the treadmill), I did some marching and some skipping to practice getting my knees up. Then, I walked for three minutes, again, focusing on raising my knees, then ran for two minutes still focusing on raising my knees higher than I typically would. I did four reps of it, and it went well. Most importantly, I've had less discomfort.

Thus, this morning, I switched the ratio of walking to running, so I ran for three minutes and walked for two, and I did six reps of that. My calf felt better the longer I went, which is encouraging, as I really didn't have any significant discomfort by the end, nor have I since I finished (which was only a couple of hours ago, but that's still improvement). I'm going to try to increase the amount of running again on Tuesday, then try an easy three mile run on Wednesday to see how that goes. If that all goes well, I'll try some regular workouts at the end of next week if both my PT and coach sign off on those, and then I'll make a decision about the race. I still think that would be wildly optimistic, especially if I'm aiming for a PR, but we'll see.

In blood sugar news, my numbers have been much more even-keeled this week, but I'm still dealing with the problem of weight gain due to the insulin. I read conflicting information online, as some people argue that being on insulin doesn't cause weight gain, but a lot of other people have had different experiences. Given that I've largely kept my diet the same and trained for two half marathons, but I've gained nearly twenty pounds in eight months, I tend to fall on the side of insulin's causing weight gain. Thus, I'm going to try switching to a slower acting insulin to see if that effects any kind of change. Instead of taking the shot right before I eat, I'll need to do so at least 15 minutes in advance, so that'll definitely be an adjustment, but it's one I'm willing to try to see if I can offset some of that increase in weight.

Let me start by acknowledging that any struggles I have in running are insignificant in the larger scheme of the world. Whether that's struggles with my blood sugar or injuries or even successes, they really don't matter, relatively speaking. That said, running provides me a good deal of joy, both in the act of running and in pushing my body to see what it's able to do. Thus, even though my running ups and downs aren't important compared to everything else going on in the world and the true suffering people face there, my ups and downs feel important to me. If you can't tell by now, it's been a rough week.

I'm not even going to talk about the workouts this week, as they aren't really relevant to how I'm feeling this morning. On Thursday's run, I began having some pain in my calf. It felt pretty severe for a few moments, enough that I thought about stopping the run, but it settled down and became discomfort for the rest of the run. That discomfort lingered into today, but I was still able to go out and run, as it was that same low level. I was supposed to run 13 miles, but I didn't make it 5 before the real pain hit pretty hard. I shut it down at that point and walked about four miles back to the car. My considerate wife had offered to come and pick me up, should I need it, but I wanted to let her sleep in (even though my phone accidentally called her right as I was considering stopping the run; perhaps the phone knew more than I did), and I also really wanted to walk in and sit with my thoughts for a while.

I heard a podcast sometime last year that talked about running and injuries and grief. For those who don't run, grief might sound like an extreme emotion for an injury, but it's exactly how I feel. It's not just that I was hoping to try to run a PR in three weeks, though I certainly feel disappointed about not having that chance. More importantly, and I'm stealing this idea from the podcast, I'm grieving the person I was becoming. In the same way that we look back on our past selves and grieve the loss of who we once were (especially when we feel we missed an opportunity at that point in our lives), we also grieve the person we planned to become. I had imagined the coming weeks so many times, it feels like a true loss now that they won't play out in that way.

What's most frustrating for me isn't that I'll miss the race I had planned on running, but that I'll miss out on the joy I've been feeling over the past couple of months. I've really been enjoying the training, as well as the results, but mainly just the joy of being out on those runs. I know that non-runners don't get the appeal of running, but it is really what drives most of us. The goals are all well and good, but if we don't enjoy the process, then it's not really worth it. And I had been having more moments of joy than I had felt running in quite some time. I hope to get back to that feeling soon. 

Odds are, I only have a mild calf strain, and I should be back to running in a few weeks, but, then again, I'm never good at diagnosing myself, which is why I have an appointment with my PT on Wednesday. I'm not at that point in life any longer where I believe an injury will knock me out for the rest of my life or years, as I have good people around me who want to help me get back to running. Still, there's always the fear that an injury is more severe than I believe it is. I hope my diagnosis is somewhere near correct, but I won't know more until the middle of this week.

On top of the struggles with the calf this morning, my blood sugar was also plummeting. I had gels with me, and I had already taken one, so I knew I would be fine, but it was also just one more frustration to deal with. I thought I had the long run fueling pretty well figured out, but I'll clearly need to keep working on that whenever I get back to these long runs.

Not surprisingly, while I was walking back in and thinking about grief and running, I thought of one of the most famous parts of Rocky Balboa. Anybody who knows me knows I'm a fan, and I referenced it just a few weeks ago, as well. In this one, Rocky's son has come to him to try to talk him out of fighting, as he believes that his father is a laughing stock and that he will be one, too. He cares a good deal about what other people think of him, and Rocky's essentially setting him straight. The part of the scene I always focus on is where Rocky says that it's not about how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. That's always been his philosophy of fighting, certainly, but also his philosophy of life. Let's be honest, this injury isn't that hard of a hit, certainly not in a year where I received a diabetes diagnosis, but it's still one that hurts. My job is to take that hit and find a way to keep moving forward. So that's what I'll do this week.

Last week, I talked about running with diabetes as an experiment. This week, that experiment continued with some serious ups and downs, so that it felt like I was on a roller coaster yet again. Overall, the running went really well this week, but my blood sugar numbers were all over the place. Just when I thought I had a handle on those numbers, they would either spike or plummet for no reason that I could tell.

The running week started well with speed work on Tuesday, as I did 2 x 800, 2 x 400, and 2 x 200 with two minute rests between each repetition. I ran solid times, as I went 3:13 and 3:10 for the 800s, then 1:27 for both 400s, then dropped a 40 and 39 seconds for the 200s, which is the fastest I've run them in a couple of months. The 400s were about the norm, and I ran the 800s faster, as well. Thus, it was a strong day.

On Wednesday, then, I just had a three-mile easy run, with some strides at the end. That didn't go as well, as the blood sugar started dropping before I began running, and it just kept going. I felt sluggish throughout the run, and my heart rate was much higher than normal for an easy run. I was paying so much attention to the numbers and how I felt that I forgot to do the strides, as they're not programmed into my run. I have a couple of theories about the run. First, I usually run first, then do some lifting (upper-body) afterwards, but I was trying to avoid the rain, so I lifted first. That means that I ate earlier than I normally do when I run, and I had already done a bit of a workout. Second, and related, my blood sugar began dropping because of the different timing around eating and the longer workout before running. I also might have pushed myself too much on Tuesday afternoon when I did strength training. As always, I just don't know what it was or how to avoid it again, but I'll keep trying.

That poor run made me nervous about Thursday's run, as it was going to be a challenge, no matter what. I did 8 miles, with 2 easy, then 3 at race pace, a 3 minute rest, then 2 more at race pace, than one mile easy to finish up. It went great, as my goal was to run the race miles at 7:30, and I beat that on all of them, save for one, and it was a 7:31. I went 7:30, 7:23, 7:24, 7:31, ending with a 7:24 for a solid 7:27 pace. Considering my race pace goal is about 10 seconds faster than that, I feel good about that run.

Today's run was easier, in one sense, as it was a 12 mile long run, which means I take in fuel on the run. That always helps keep my blood sugar at a decent level, and that was the case today. I ran 5 easy miles, then 2 at race pace, then 5 more easy. The race pace miles went well, as I ran a 7:27, then I dropped a 7:17 for the second, which was much faster than I expected. I thought I was running around a 7:30 pace, at best, but clearly I had more in the tank than I thought. My numbers never went above 200 or below 150, which is great for a run like that. I'll spend the rest of the day hydrating and resting to recover for another hard week next week.

Of course. I'm hoping the roller coaster will settle down a bit, but I know I can manage it, if it doesn't. I'm always prepared with gels, and I keep tweaking what I'm eating and the amount of insulin I'm taking in, and that's all I can do.

People with type 1 diabetes often refer to it as an experiment, as what works for one person doesn't work (or works very differently) for another person. People told me about this issue repeatedly when I first got my diagnosis, so I was prepared for that challenge. What I didn't understand is that what works for me one day won't work for me another day, even though I believe I've done everything the same as I did before. You can probably guess that something happened this week, and you would be right.

The running was easier this week, as my coach had me cut back after a couple of challenging weeks. That's exactly why I hired a coach, as I know I would have kept pushing harder, given that I'm only five weeks out from the half-marathon I'm planning to run. I'm beginning to wonder if the reason I haven't been able to improve as much as my training seemed to show that I should have is because I was training too hard and hitting my peak too early. The race in five weeks should give me more information about that, but that's my hypothesis right now (I'm seeing an extended metaphor start to creep in).

So, the speed work on Tuesday was solid, as I did 4 x 400 repeats with only a 200 rest between. I started strong with a 1:26, then dropped to a 1:29, but slowly improved to 1:28 and 1:27. I was originally frustrated with that drop, but, if anybody would have told me a couple of months ago that I would be able to run all four of those 400s under 1:30, I would have been thrilled. Thus, I'm trying to be thrilled. The threshold run on Thursday went well, as I did 3 mile repeats with a half mile recovery. I got a bit of a boost, as the first two miles started on downhills, so it was easier to set up a faster pace. The last mile, not so much. I went from a 7:17 and 7:16 to a 7:24. Still, all of those are under the 7:30 goal, so I'm also trying to be thrilled with those, too (I struggle to be thrilled, if you can't tell).

Then, on today's easy run, which was a shorter long run, only 8 miles, my blood sugar dropped again. However, it dropped fairly steeply for a couple of miles, then simply stopped and leveled out, despite my not doing anything. I went from around a 140 to 70 in about 20 minutes, and I don't know why. It didn't go below 70, and it even began going back up a bit by the end of the run, and I don't know why. I ate the same meal I eat every Friday night before a long run (pasta with tofu, mushrooms, and zucchini in red sauce, with some pesto), and I had the same breakfast I've had ever day this week (peanut butter and jelly on whole wheat bread, with an electrolyte drink). I ran the same pace I always run long runs. And yet, a different result.

Of course, I'm glad it stopped dropping on its own, and I'm certainly glad that I'm gathering this data five weeks before the race, but data don't help me much if I don't understand them. I'll keep experimenting with different levels of insulin and different levels of jelly to see if I can get a solid long run in without any problems. Taking gels in will help with that, but that depends on the length of the long run, of course. My guess is that those will begin next week, but we'll see what my coach gives me.

I could say that I'm frustrated by what happened, but I'm largely growing used to the uncertainty. I didn't panic and grab a gel as soon as the numbers began plummeting, not did I pick up my pace to try to get back to the car as soon as possible. Instead, I had prepared ahead of time by bringing two gels, in case I needed them, and I simply monitored my numbers as I was running back toward the finish. The one conclusion I have come to over these past eight months of the experiment is that I should be prepared and aware, but not worried or fearful. That's pretty much my approach to life, so perhaps I was more ready for this experiment than I thought.

This weekend is the Rock and Roll Marathon here in Nashville, a race that holds a special place for me, even if I'll never run it again (way too many people for me, and it's a hilly course, on top of that). It was the first marathon I ran, twenty-one years ago now, as you can see by the medal. I didn't know what I was doing back then, and it shows in the results. I went from running my first race, a 5K, in August to a 10K in November to a half-marathon in January to the marathon in April. That's a really quick progression. I would go out and run six days a week, supposedly at different paces, but I effectively ran everything pretty hard. I had hoped to break a four-hour finish for the marathon, but I missed by five minutes and fifty-six seconds. I had to stop and use the bathroom early on (some last minute online advice about hydrating the day before that I shouldn't have listened to). I also didn't take in any fuel whatsoever: no water, no sports drink, no gels, no chews, nothing. As one of my colleagues, a Health Sciences professor, said, "How did you not die?" That's a bit extreme, but, still, it wasn't good planning.

Later that year, I kept up my rather intense (for me) pace, leading to a knee injury in December, just a few weeks before I had hoped to run my second marathon. When I went to the sports doctor, his (ahem) diagnosis was, "You know, you're not twenty-five anymore." I wanted to tell him that, when I was twenty-five, I was seventy pounds heavier than I am right now, and I couldn't have walked a 5K, not to mention run a race. When I first started walking on a treadmill to lose weight, I didn't get past the twenty-minute mark before I had to stop.

For the record, the half-marathon I ran in January 2025 was a 1:48:35 finish, which wasn't terrible. I'm aiming to break 1:40 in June. Thinking about that year led to me recall a scene from Rocky Balboa. Anybody who knows me knows that I grew up on the Rocky movies, and I loved them. I even liked Rocky V when it came out, which even Sylvester Stallone admits was a mistake of a movie. In Rocky Balboa, Rocky admits to Pauly that he's thinking about fighting again, even though he's in his fifties. Pauly asks, "What, you haven't peaked yet?" Rocky is confused by the question, and it ultimately leads to his sharing the deep emotional pain from the death of his wife, Adrian, in the only way he can express it, and Pauly's even uncomfortable with that sharing.

I've been thinking about that question about peaking, as there have been (still are, from time to time) people in my life who don't understand why I keep pushing to get better. I'm not going to win any races. Sometimes, given that I run smaller races, I can win my age group or even be the fastest person over 50, but I don't ever count on those results. I'm always running against myself. I don't worry about beating other people; I just want to see what my body is able to do. Despite what a variety of people, including doctors, have told me, I don't believe I've peaked yet. There are no guarantees in life, and my fastest times might be behind me, but I'm still working hard to be the best runner I can be, not for anybody else, but just to enjoy that feeling of speed and strength that comes from beating last year's Kevin.

And now to the dilemma I'm facing. If you aren't up on the news in the running world, there's a debate between Emma Bates and UCAN gels after UCAN didn't renew their contract with Bates after she announced her pregnancy. UCAN provided a timeline that argued they had made the decision before she announced she was pregnant, but Bates and her team disagree with that assessment. I don't keep up with the running world all that closely, but from everything I know about Bates, she's a great ambassador for the brands who sponsor her, so dropping her at all seems to be an odd decision.

Just a few weeks before this announcement, I bought a few UCAN gels to try, as the sports dietician I met with recommended them, given my diabetes diagnosis. They're designed to keep runners sugar levels from spiking, while still providing fuel for the run. I tried one this morning, and it worked amazingly well. My sugars were steadily dropping, as they did last week, but I took in a gel, and my numbers leveled out almost immediately, and they stayed that way for the next eight miles until I finished. I was hoping they would be awful (I didn't much care for the consistency or taste, but I could get used to both), as I would really like to support another company. Oddly enough, there was a Fuel for the Sole podcast this week that talked about alternatives to UCAN, but they weren't talking about the diabetic part of the equation. Thus, here's my question: does anybody know of another gel that works as well for diabetic runners? If so, I'd love to know about it. If not, I'm going to have to decide what to do.

As for the week as a whole, it was another strong week of running. The speed work on Tuesday was 2 x 1200, and I ran the frist one in 4:52 (6:30 mile pace) and the second in 4:46 (6:24 mile pace), both of which I was quite happy with, as the goal was a 6:45-7:00 mile pace. Thursday's run was the most challenging so far, as I ran 2 2-mile repeats with a three minute rest in between. I went from 7:27 to 7:17 for the first two, then 7:20 to 7:26 for the second two, ending with a 7:23 pace overall. The goal is a 7:31 pace, so, again, I'm feeling really strong right now. Today's run was an easy 11, and everything went well, save for the sugar drop I mentioned above (I went from 160 to the 90s in the first three miles, so I'm going to have to work on that). Enjoy the clip below, and I hope everybody who ran the Rock and Roll races had a great time.

When I went out for my run this morning, I had no idea what I was going to write about (I thought about strength training). That's fairly common, as my long runs on Saturday give me plenty of time (91 minutes this morning) to think about what I could say here. I can always recap the running, but, when that's going well, there's little to say. The same is true for running and living with diabetes, which, apart from some high weeks lately due to having a cold, there's also been little to say. This morning put paid to that idea.

This morning's run was an easy ten miles, and I was looking forward to it, as it's been a good week of running. However, right about the third mile, my alarm went off to let me know by blood sugar was dropping. I have a special profile set up for when I run, so I can get an early warning when my numbers either go below a certain point (90) or drop too quickly. Thus, I don't worry too much if that goes off, as I have plenty of time to adjust. However, the numbers were dropping quite rapidly this morning, as I went from around 90 to 48 in about 20 minutes (for reference, I'm supposed to stay between 70 and 180, and I almost never drop below 100 on a run).

Thankfully, I wasn't feeling bad, and I ate a gel well before it got to that low of 48. However, I was more than three miles away from home at this point, and there is little around where I could go to get help. Of course, I can always call Courtney, and she's under ten minutes away by car, but I don't want to wake her up unless I'm really worried. I wasn't worried, but I was paying attention. As any person with diabetes can tell you, those fifteen or twenty minutes where one has eaten something and is waiting for the numbers to rise are some of the most anxious moments of our life. We know our numbers should be improving, but we can't make them do so as quickly as we would like.

Thus, I kept running after I ate my gel, and I watched that number drop all the way to 48, but I had also turned around and begun heading home, just in case. On the way, that number continued to climb, ultimately getting back up into the mid-90s. I continued the run, watching the numbers the entire time, finishing with them in the mid-80s. It was a solid easy run, as I came in at a 9:06 pace, exactly where I was supposed to be. Apart from the numbers, everything went well.

I listened to the Runner's World UK podcast this past week with James Norton, an actor with type 1 diabetes who's training for the London Marathon. Everything he said resonated with me. One of the aspects he talked about was the improvement in technology. He told of seeing people try to do a finger stick and test while running a race before, which sounds amazingly difficult. Today, the system worked exactly as it should. I got an early warning that my numbers were dropping, so I could eat the gel I always carry with me for such emergencies, which enabled me to complete my run. Also, I was no more than two miles from a fire station, which has an ambulance, and I definitely could have made it there, if necessary. Thus, I'm quite thankful for the advances that have helped me be able to run with much more confidence than people could do just a few years ago. Of course, I'll probably begin carrying two gels, just to make sure I'm fine when I'm out there.

Also, I'm going to have to adjust my nutrition a bit. I've begun eating a peanut butter sandwich, along with an electrolyte drink, before my run, then having some chocolate soy milk and Greek yogurt (with granola, peanut butter, strawberries, and honey) after the run. I need some more sugar/carbohydrates before the run, so I'll be adding jelly to the sandwich and cutting down a bit of what I eat after the run.

Despite that issue this morning, the running this week went quite well. I ran 2 x 800s and 2 x 400s with some rest between them on Tuesday, and I ran the fastest times for both of those in months, if not more. I hit a 3:17 and 3:12 for the 800s, then a 1:27 and 1:26 for the 400s. The easy three miles on Wednesday was, as its name implies, easy. I had three threshold miles (with two miles easy before and after them) on Thursday, and I hit 7:25, 7:24, and 7:19, which is great.

Thus, I'm seven weeks out from the half marathon, and the running is going quite well. I know it's going to pick up in the coming weeks, but I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do.

The past five or six years of running have been my best by far. Though I haven't been able to train for a marathon (more on that below), I've run PRs in all the distances I've run otherwise. While I've certainly made some changes in my approach to running that have helped me get there, it's largely been because of the help of others that I've been able to do so. There are the obvious supports of friends and family, those who cheer me on either from a distance or at the finish line (not people I ever want to take for granted, of course), but I'd like to talk about those more on the periphery of life. As with most of life, we're better when we learn to lean on others to help us get through challenging times.

When I started back into running seriously in 2019 or so, I took my normal approach to it. I started out by walking, then steadily built back up to where I was running and training on a regular basis. However, as with every other time, I started having some serious aches and pains. For the first time, though, I went to a physical therapist and took it seriously. I followed the plan they laid out (I worked with two guys, and I can't remember their names for anything, as I only worked with them for about a month or so), and I was able to keep running and training.

Then, as I began to get into even more serious training, I had a pain in my butt that kept me from running for more than about ten seconds. That's when I found Erin, the first PT I worked with for a couple of years. She got me through that and several other issues, enabling me to run my half marathon PR in 2021. However, I hit a serious hamstring injury then, and I went to a couple different PTs, but they just didn't work well, either because of their approach (or lack of a planned approach) or insurance.

However, Courtney had to have knee surgery, and she ended up working with Danielle as her PT. I still work with Danielle, and she's seen me through several injuries over the past few years. During that time, I've run a PR in the 5K and half marathon (as well as a 15K, but it's the only one I've ever run, so that one doesn't really count, though I did run it a bit more quickly than I had hoped).

This year, I've begun working with a coach, and I had a meeting with a sports dietician about a month ago. While I can't say if they've had a clear impact on my running times, as I haven't worked with them long enough, I'm certainly enjoying running a good deal these days. If that's the only benefit, it'll still be plenty, but I'm optimistic, given what I've been able to do recently, that it'll also lead to faster finishes.

All of that to say, the more I've worked with other people and trusted their expertise, they've made me better and helped me enjoy running even more. That seems like a good approach to running and to life.

This week was more up than down, which is always good when one is 8 weeks out from a race, as I am. The speed work on Tuesday was a challenge, but I ran really solid times. I did a 4 x 400, and I hit the final one at a 1:29, which is faster than I've run a 400 in quite some time. I ended with 4 x 200, and I didn't get below 40 seconds, which is what I was aiming for, based on what I could do a few months ago, though I did hit 42 seconds throughout. I'll aim to drop that as the training continues. Thursday was great, as I ran seven miles, with three of them had a hard effort. I was supposed to hit those at a 7:30 or so, and I dropped a 7:25, then a 7:22, then finally a 7:15 (with a mile rest between hard miles two and three). I felt really strong, as well, which was encouraging. Today was nothing special, as it was nine easy miles. It was one of those days where nothing was wrong, but it didn't feel quite great, either. Still, it was nine miles that I needed to log, and I did.

My blood glucose numbers are finally beginning to settle down this week after the illness last week. I did take some medication early this week, and it made a huge difference, in that my numbers spiked whenever I was on it. Luckily, that only lasted a couple of days, and the rest of the week has been back to normal. In fact, they got a bit lower than normal during the run this morning, and I had to watch that to make sure I didn't have to pull out the gel to get through the run. It was one more thing to think about, unfortunately, but it ultimately leveled off and was fine.

Thus, it was a good week to get back into some more serious training, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next week. I'm sure I'll get through it with a bit of help.

This week's running has been fairly easy, as I slowly build back up for the next half marathon, which is in nine weeks. We added an easy day of running, so, for the first time in well over a decade, I ran four days of the week, not three. That means I ran three days in a row after not having run back-to-back days in all of that time. We're still early in that change in approach, but, so far, it's gone fairly well.

The challenge of this week came from a head cold, which had lingered pretty thoroughly all week. Today's the first day I haven't taken any medication, as I think I'm on the mend. The real challenge with the cold hasn't been the running (details on that below), but my diabetes. This is the second illness I've had in about five or six weeks, which is highly abnormal for me. I typically get sick once a year, maybe twice in a bad year. I've often gone a year and a half or more without any significant illness. However, it seems my life has changed.

I began to wonder if my diabetes diagnosis had something to do with the uptick in sickness, and it seems that it could. With diabetes, everything is relative to the individual, but there is evidence to suggest that people with diabetes get sick more often. The CDC says it outright, in fact: "Having diabetes increases your chances of getting sick, staying sick longer, or getting severely sick." And note that second part, as well, as diabetes makes it more likely one will stay sick longer if one gets sick. It's a win-win! I emailed my doctor, as I know better than to trust everything I read online (maybe, especially, from the CDC these days--sorry, real scientists). He confirmed my concerns.

Again, everything is relative to the individual when it comes to diabetes. Courtney knows people with family members who have diabetes, and they don't seem to have this problem. I have students with diabetes, and they certainly don't miss class any more than any other students; in fact, they've seemed to be some of the healthiest students in that regard--they're both athletes. Thus, the recent ailments could be a coincidence, and nothing could have changed in terms of my immune system's ability to deal with such problems. That said, I'm beginning to see a pattern, so I'll pay attention and see if that pattern continues.

As for the running, it really did go well this week. Again, I'm only beginning to build back up for the race in a couple of months, but I got to run some serious speed this week. I did 4 x 400s on Tuesday, and I dropped the final one to a 1:31, which is about as fast as I've been able to run that distance on repeats in the past. On Thursday, I ran two mile repeats with a quarter mile jog in-between, and I ran a 7:19 and 7:13, faster than I was expecting. Today was an easy seven miles. I'm working hard to keep my promise to my coach that I won't go faster than nine-minute miles on the easy runs, and I've kept that promise this week. I'll work hard to keep it again next week, as it seems to be paying off when it comes to how I feel and how fast I can run.