Goodbye coffee and so much more.

Before my Africa trip I wanted to get some antimalarial medication - Malarone.  I had used this before and my doctor had prescribed them to me before, but he still wanted me to come in before he wrote a prescription.  I suppose he wanted his insurance money.

So I went in, it had been more than a year, and he did the usual routine.  He took my blood pressure.  It was 160/100!  Holy crap, that was high enough to scare even me.  I didn't show it and I told him I had just finished running 9 miles, which was true.  He gave me my malaria prescription and off I went.

So I started looking online, reading articles about high blood pressure, how to read blood pressure, about artificial spikes in blood pressure readings, and so on.  I ordered a brachial cuff blood pressure reading machine.

I started to look up online factors that might cause my blood pressure to go up.  Stress - true, I had had a very stressful spring semester.  Diet - I've been on a lunch salad, sans meat for quite sometime. The salt content of my diet was pretty high.  Too much kimchi? Too much fish sauce?  Too much cured meat?  I decided to cut down dramatically.  No more kimchi.  No more cured meats, and for the moment no more fish sauce.  I also stayed away from the salt shaker/grinder.

Caffeine can also cause temporary spikes in blood pressure.  I started taking readings after my morning coffee. It was immediately obvious that coffee was causing my blood pressure to spike by at least 20 points, and it wasn't very temporary.  Goodbye coffee, and caffeine.



It took several weeks, but my blood pressure started to come down.

By the time I got back from Africa it was hitting below 120/80 fairly regularly in the morning.  In fact it was at its lowest about 30 minutes after my morning run.  I had started doing a lot of easy "Maffetone" running.  The spring had been a great running season with two massive PRs for me, perhaps I had over-trained to achieve them?

I decided to try to ease a single cup of coffee back into my morning routine.  Normally I put 16+ grams of coffee into a cup.  I cut this back to 12.  This seemed to work at first.  Blood pressure not going much over 129 too often.  But then the heebeejeebees came back.  Its hard to explain, but its basically a type of anxiety attack that hits me in the middle of the night.  It makes it hard to go back to sleep.  Over the past several years they just seemed to come and go with no real logic behind their manifestations.  I figured it was stress.  However, I hadn't had a single attack during the time I took coffee out of the equation.  I haven't had them since taking it back out.  So yeah, really, goodbye caffeine.

Oh, I will truly miss coffee, the flavor, the ritual, the culture, and that dream of having my morning cup while sitting out on an Italian piazza in retirement.

It's been a lot of herbal tea for me since giving up coffee.  Hibiscus in particular is supposed to help high-blood pressure.  I never saw an effect, and it is very acidic.  I think I'll stick with herbal rooibos chai.

I have been able to bring back some salt into my diet without ill effect, which is good, because fish sauce was an important ingredient in my homemade salad dressing.

Fortunately for me, beer and wine cause my blood pressure to go down.  I'm sure too much wouldn't be good, but so far, not a problem.


I started adding some raw nuts to my salad.  I've settled on walnuts and pecans.  Supposedly these oils are "heart healthy."  I also cut down on the butter, and I only buy the salt free kind.  But I haven't given up my pork fat.  Made up some lard today.  Some of which will be used in an apple pie for my son's birthday.

Chariot Battle: Pulse of Battle AAR

I pulled out Pulse of Battle and a few figures.

I even used the nice cards.


Pharaoh meets the Hittite emperor in a nice flat valley, betwixt a river and some hills.


The initiative went to the Egyptians and they moved forward with alacrity.


However, the Hittites draw first blood with some opportunity sling fire!  Or perhaps I should say first skull.


The murderous volleys continue, it is not looking good for the Egyptian archers.


Chariots collide, but Egyptian bow fire does little.

Some light Syrian bow try to get in the way of some Shardana guards.  Perhaps not the best idea.


A Hittite chariot on the West Flank is destroyed.  What are those spearmen doing back there?


The relentless Guadsmen with some help from a unit of Egyptian spearmen push forward, throwing skirmishers flying, and the skulls mount!


Some unengaged Hittite spearmen and some tribal skirmishers.


A Syrian prince.  The Syrians formed a fairly large proportion of the Hittite army (5/13 units).


A little give and take between chariots on the east flank.


Some Hittite spear, battered, but still holding - a very strong unit.


Egyptian chariots against a very hurt Hittite chariot, and with support, still can't lock in the kill.


But then a second melee card was turned...


Egyptian spearmen charging that strong Hittite unit.


The Hittite chariots on the west flank are no more.  Now only this lone Hittite guard unit defends the Emperor, and it is a beast!


However, Egyptian bow fire finds a chink in their armor.


The relentless Shardana guardsmen meanwhile press their attack.


The Egyptian chariots on the East flank mop up the Syrian chariotry.  The Syrian prince is vulnerable.


An army morale check card turned next and the Hittites routed.

The Egyptians only loss two archer units featured in the first few pictures above.  The units I refer to as the "Priest" archers.

This is technically a modified Pulse of Battle.  Few rulesets survive unaltered in my house.

5 Years Running

Today was a long run day.

Even with Guns N' Roses blasting through my earbuds,
"Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty"

...my thoughts wander and I reflected upon the fact that I have been running for 5 years now.

I went back over my blog post of 2014 and had a good laugh at my 5 year plan.  Based on those posts, my running has exceeded my expectations.  I started with a 30+ minute 5k, now I'm sub 23 minutes.  My first Half-Marathon was 2 hour and 7 minutes, now it under 1 hour and 44 minutes.  

Really, I'm content, even if I never beat those records.  I used to think that if I could just average an 8:30 minute mile for a half, then that would be enough.  I've managed a 7:55.

Does this mean that I'm not striving for faster? Of course not. I'm human.

Right now I'm nowhere near in any shape to run those times, and that is fine.  Since Afrika, I've been bulking up on miles.  

I got my hands on this book:

I mentioned this book in one of my earliest blog posts. Now I'm going to give the 5k training plan a try for Monterey this Fall.  I think I will use it for my half-marathon that I plan to run in the Spring.  I've been running twice a day on some days, something I haven't done in quite awhile.  For example:

Tuesday AM	Tuesday PM	Wednesday AM	Wednesday PM	Thursday AM	Thursday PM
5.3	0	5.3	3	8.6	3
Friday AM	Friday PM	Saturday AM	Saturday PM	Sunday	Monday	Total
6.2	3	5.3	2.6	6.2	16.9	65.4	7/9-7/16

Today I ran 16.9 miles at a 10:11 pace.  I haven't had a "gel" in years.  For these long runs I drive out to the end of the canal.  My car contains a cooler with a supply of water and assorted veggies/fruit.  I grab 2-4 pieces at the end of each 3.7 mile loop.  There is a port-a-potty where I park and so other needs are met also.

Next week I reduce my miles to something in the 40s.  I'm going to sprinkle in some "speed work" for this low mileage week.  I've been doing hill sprints on the treadmill twice a week, so I should be ready.

For the first time I've managed to achieve a 10mph pace on the tread mill (at 1% grade) and hold it for about a 100 yards.  All previous attempts resulted in me panicking and hitting the stop button, or pulling out the safety key. I believe "teaching" my legs to run at this faster pace is critical to any future improvement.

Afrika

So around my 50th birthday, my wife and I started to get serious about our "bucket list" which included doing a safari in Africa.

Then the big Ebola outbreak occurred and we put the trip on hold.

With our 25th anniversary coming up, and the Ebola outbreak ended, my wife got more insistent and found a good tour group to go with.  Ebola cropped up again in the Congo, but remained contained, and our trip was booked.

I'm not going to say where in Africa we went because apparently it might help poachers to track down animals of interest.  But I do have a few pictures and videos to share.

A Giraffe:

A female lion

A male lion: we encountered this big fellow on our last day.  He changed my perspective on "marking territory" in a big way.

The ubiquitous Cape Buffalo: okay, maybe not ubiquitous, but there were a lot.

A white rhino.

Elephants

And a leopard

So that covers the "Big Five" plus a Giraffe.

We saw a lot of Baboons.

A few Wildebeest.

Some Hyena, including a dead one, killed by a male lion defending its lunch!  We also saw a den with several baby Hyenas.

Cute little mongooses, or is that mongeese?

Hornbills are now the iconic bird of Africa for me.

Here is a warthog - best picture I could get.

I really like this Elephant picture.

And let's not forget Zebra.

We enjoyed the local beer.

I don't think it would be much of a surprise to say we saw "The Smoke That Thunders."

We visited geological wonders.

Running

I got only two short (30-40 minute), back-to-back treadmill runs in during the middle of the trip.  I am now trying to regain my running fitness.  Running on Safari is generally not recommended.  I wouldn't want to be mistaken for prey.

Malaria

For the second time I took malarial medication on a trip where I was never bitten by a mosquito.  Early on in the trip I had a case of "Shaka's Revenge" that put my gastrointestinal system into the worst tail-spin that I can ever remember.  Our guide suggested it was due to the medication, I'm less sure, but I stopped taking it just to be safe.  I began questioning my guide and various natives about malaria.  Long term malarial medication is just a no-go for all of them.  They rely on mosquito netting, and diethyltoluamide (DEET). 

So Africa is checked on my "Bucket list," well, except for Egyptian pyramids.  Still there is a desire to do some more Safari in the future.  My wife was quite keen on all of the birds she got to identify.  Apparently the best time to go birding is during the rainy season, which is also the mosquito season - ugh!

A final picture from our sunset cruise.