Speed Still Kills

Santana Row changed a lot. It opened the door when I was still in Santa Clara in 2003 and I used to frequent the bookstore at the end of the Row. It is gone now and I can't remember if it was a Borders or a Barns and Noble. The yellow granite sand parking lot behind it is gone too and it is now paved with asphalt. All around it, condos sprouted up. The Row itself is still lined with the same upscale shops and restaurants.

On the way back home from my nephew's wedding, I stopped there to plug the car in. While waiting, I figure I'd walk around the Row and soak up the nostalgia. It's been 15 years since I've been there, after all. But I was wearing a pair of dress shoes and pacing at 90 steps/min in them was rather clumsy uncomfortable. It wasn't going to be a long walk anyway, so I walked at a natural speed.

 How nice it was to walk at a regular pace. I keep remembering the paraplegic that I saw on TV once, all teared up when he was able to stand up, with the aid of a robotic chair for the first time in years. Walking at a normal speed is like that: it's as if you are liberated from the prison that you are locked up in for decades. It feels that good to walk free like a normal person.

That was on 11/21. For 5 days  afterwards I struggled. It was similar to the struggle after the flu shot in October. The speed limit is still in effect apparently and the price for infraction is as severe as ever.

Car Wash

I bought a water hose from Amazon last December when I was feeling recovered. My car was all dirtied up from the winter driving in the mountains and I figured I'd wash it myself rather than taking to the carwash every time. Then I suffered the longest PEM ever after skiing too much, and washing the car became a distant dream. The car remained unwashed for over a year and it was all filthy.

Now I needed to have it cleaned before driving to San Jose for my nephew's wedding. On que, it rained last Tuesday, so I left the car out for a free carwash overnight.  In the morning it was all wet and I realized it would get covered with watermarks and dust spots all over if I didn't wipe it dry. I took a rag and wiped it down the best I could. It took a good 30 minutes and completely wiped me out. I spent the rest of the day in horizontal position, tired but happy and satisfied. The PEM sickness I was expecting the next day didn't materialize however. I'll have to chalk it up to the Novelty Effect.

How I used to enjoy washing cars. There is nothing quite like the sense of accomplishment you get from the shiny car after all the hard work. The last time I washed car was in the underground garage of the condo in Santa Clara, probably around 2006, I think. That was about a year after I brought home the BMW from Germany. I got ambitious and gave it a full monty treatment of shampoo, clay bar, polish and wax. It was an all day process and a hard work even back then, and I was in my best shape then. This time, the 30 minute work of just wiping down the car required about the same amount of time for the recovery.

I'll have to do this more often. Carwash is so fun, the novelty effect may persist. 

Blacking Out After Walk

After simmering October, the weather decisively turned wintry last week. The temperature, in the 50s daytime, plunges to low 30s at night. We didn't have heat so we we've been bundling up in coats. I couldn't let the utility service to come out and light up the furnace for us because we are self quarantining for my nephews wedding in 2 weeks. I managed to light it up myself today, so we'll have heat this evening. I hope it doesn't blow up. It's an old furnace that I'm not familiar with.

I was busy doing errands for a few days last week to gear up for the quarantine.  I wasn't able to take walk for 5 days as result. I finally managed 2 km yesterday afternoon. In the evening, I was dizzy and sluggish. It was as if I was blacking out just like after the 12 mile bike ride.

I already wrote about shrinking exercise tolerance after staying indoor for a month in August. Now it seems the walk tolerance shrink faster than I thought: it only took 5 days of hiatus this time. So, I can say more definitely now that my walk tolerance shrinks if you don't walk.

To be precise, it is the walk tolerance, not necessarily the general exercise tolerance, that shrinks after not walking for a while. I don't know if the tolerance to all exercise shrinks. I don't have problem doing household chores, so it may well be just the tolerance to walk that shrinks. 

Notice that I'm now careful to speak of "tolerance" and not "ability". CFS patients, at least the ones at the moderate/mild end of the spectrum, are capable of exercise; it's just that they get sick afterward. In other words, their bodies don't tolerate exercise too well even if they are able to exercise.  It's like you can eat, but you'd puke if you do when your stomach does not tolerate food.

Clean Stove Top, Finally

 

Isn't that sparkly? I finally got around cleaning the grimy stove top. I gathered the supplies long time ago, but I haven't been able to gather the courage to tackle the task itself. Switching from 2 day cycle of activities to 3day cycle finally left me with enough energy to get it done. I had to split the work into two parts though, and I'm yet to clean the back splash panel and the front of the stove. Still, it was hard enough a work and I slept like a baby last night. And I was fatigued all over when I woke up. The scrubbing motion not only works your arms, but your legs also have to do quite a bit of work to counter-balance the upper body motion. And it's the use of large leg muscles that is more likely to cause problem for CFS patients.

Here is how I did it:

1. Prep the surface: spray the vinegar and Dawn solution, and then wipe away
2. Clean the greasy film with Soft Scrub
3. Make paste with baking soda and hydrogen peroxide. Plaster it on the burnt and baked-in surface
4. Wait 15 minutes and scrub the surface with the paste

Rejected for COVID-19 Vaccine Trial

I was too cavalier  in retrospect. NYC real estate market is in a COVID-induced coma and I wanted to fly out to check out properties. But the coronavirus is still in the air and it would be irresponsible to fly even if I'm not too worried about it. Getting vaccinated would make it a little easier for me to travel without guilt or worry, so I signed up for the Pfizer vaccine trial. 

Getting knocked out for 5 days by flu vaccine was a fresh reminder of the danger of vaccination for CFS patients. The vaccine doesn't get cleared out of your body in a day or two like some toxin; it stays in your bloodstream for days or weeks irritating your immune system to coax antibodies out of it. And people sensitive to inflammation may suffer while that is going on. There is no guarantee that the vaccine wouldn't permanently worsen your CFS either. Many COVID patients, after all, are living with CFS-like problems long after they become virus-free.

Luckily, I was rejected for the trial. The trial has to follow the patients for side effects and people with certain existing conditions obviously are not good candidates. CFS with its flu-like symptoms after an exertion poses particular problem because, if you get knocked out, they wouldn't know if it was because of the vaccine or CFS. And that's beside the fact that CFS patients may be more sensitive to the vaccine and therefore suffer side effects that normal people wouldn't.

 

Downed by Flu Shot, Again

What a bummer. I got knocked out again after 3 weeks of normalcy. This time by the flu shot.

I stopped taking the flu shot after I was knocked out by it for 2 weeks in 2015. Then I got sick with flu twice in 2017-2018 season, so I resumed getting the shot. And I didn't get knocked out by the shot for the last two years. I have no idea why I got knocked out again this year. Maybe the shot is different from year to year in its potency to foment low grade inflammation. Maybe I was weakened this year from no traveling and less activity. It could be a million things. 

The thing is that I didn't really need the shot this year. People are social-distancing for coronavirus, that the flu will be suppressed as well and the "twindemic" that the medical community is worried about is not  likely to materialize. But I figure I'd be a good citizen and get the shot anyway. It just didn't occur to me that I'd get knocked out again.

The upshot was that I was reduced to not being unable to take care of the cat in the morning. And I found myself swearing obscenities in the grocery parking lot for having to go back to the car  because I forgot the mask. Bad ol' days were here again. Naproxen has brought some relief a few hours at a time though, and I've been able to sit up. I didn't try NSAID when I was knocked out in 2015, so I can't tell whether or not NSAID now works because my CFS has improved.

Thankfully, it was over after 5 days. I was afraid it would stretch out for 2 weeks like in 2015. I went to 2 km walk yesterday and I'm recuperating comfortably with the aid of Naproxen and a half caplet of Bronkaid.  Back to the regularly scheduled programing of walking, working and doing house chores in 3-day cycle, I guess.

Inactivity Shrinks Exercise Tolerance

I've been saying that you can't exercise your way out of CFS. Now I can add to that: you can't unexercise your way out of CFS, either.

It's been a terrible year. I suffered the longest PEM after skiing too much back in January. I got out of it in May, but I continued to struggle. Throughout the summer I was unable to walk 2 km or bike 5 km without getting sick the next day. I could've gotten out of the slump by traveling, but the coronavirus arrived and travelling was out of the question. So the struggle went on. 

As if coronavirus wasn't enough, a Pacific storm, or what's left of it, set the West ablaze. The rain dried up before reaching the ground and only the lightnings touched down to ignite the tinder. The air became thick with smoke and ashes darkened the sky. The Spare the Air alert went on and on and we were house-arrested for several weeks. Occasional walk around the block was all I could muster without risking my pulmonary health. It has been worse than the year of fire.

This was a natural experiment, if there ever was one. I always wondered whether my penchant to get out of the house and walk has made my condition better or worse. I do know that it make me more prone to PEM crashes and there is nothing good about PEM crashes. You not only get sick, your exercise tolerance also stays shrunken for a while even after you recover from PEM sickness, so that you continue struggle. But I don't know if the frequent PEM has interfered with my long term recovery or not. Conversely, I don't know either if avoiding PEM by cutting back on exercise would've sped up the recovery. And this was an opportunity to experiment with a prolonged inactivity.

Less walking did reduce the frequency of PEM. Prior to 8/16, I was crashing on weekly basis. After 9/14, again frequent crashes for a few weeks. For a month between the two however, there was only one crash caused by back-to-back 2x5 pushups/dips. I figured, since I wasn't walking, I'd make it up with strength exercises and that appeared backfired. Otherwise I would've registered no crash during that time.

Not walking or biking also let me sit up more and lie down less. When I'm walking regularly, I spend inordinate amount of time lying down even when I'm not sick with PEM. Now that I suffered less from the ambient fatigue, I was scrubbing the bathroom and mopping the floor more often.  The house works brought the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to go with it as well. 

Fewer PEMS and less fatigue. What's not to like? The immediate downside was that I didn't get to sleep well and my mood and motivation suffered. That I stopped writing during this period is a proof. My body becomes useless while I'm is recovering the day after from the walk, but my brain usually works better because I'm flush with happy chemicals from exercise. That ability was now gone. So, though the inactivity did help to reduce the fatigue and sickness, I paid for it with worse sleep and mood. In other words, the inactivity flattened both the (dopamine) highs and (PEM) lows. It was rather a dull, zombie-like existence.

But more worrisome than that was the shrunken exercise ability. When I resumed walking, I couldn't walk 1km without getting sick. Short bouts of scrubbing the bathroom or mopping the kitchen floor apparently didn't do much to maintain my walking ability. 

Which naturally brings us to the question: if inactivity shrinks the PEM threshold, shouldn't regular exercise raise it? Well, I already know that regular walking does not improve the exercise tolerance in any discernable way. My walking distance/speed when not travelling has stayed pretty much constant at 2 km and 90 steps/min. So, answer probably is that inactivity will shrink your exercise tolerance, but regular exercise will only bring it up to a certain plateau rather than continue to improve to restore your health.  Therefore, my old policy still stands: walk to improve the sleep and mood rather than to recover from CFS. 

Social Distancing in Dolores Park

The air finally cleared up late in September. I woke up and struggled on 9/30, but we jumped in the car and went to SF as planned. I already rolled Gimbap the night before and wasn't about to let that effort go to waste.  And it was a familiar story: by the time we got to the Tesla station in Fairfield, the struggle ended and I was as good as I could be. We bought a month supply of coffee in Castro, checked out an apartment (SF rent cratered 30%, thanks to coronavirus, and I'm thinking moving back to SF), and walked all over the city all day long. I ended up logged 4 miles. I spent the next day and a half happily recovering from the trip, but I didn't get sick.  

So, I'm back to the normality of walking 2km or biking 5, with occasional trips to SF for 4 mile walk. Except now I'm in 3 day cycle instead of bi-daily one: 1) 15mg Walfed + Naproxyn + walk or bike, 2) do mental work while recovering, and then 3) do housework. The 3 day cycle seems to reduce fatigue and I get the housework done on regular basis. It's a sort of compromise between inactivity and activity, hopefully for the best of the both world: less fatigue, good sleep/mood and keep the house clean as bonus. I'll be on that cycle throughout the rest of the year and see how it goes.

Repeat of "Ordeal"

I've been meaning to do this. The 15 mile bike ride in 2018 was the hardest exercise to date since I got sick in 2008. I not only survived, I was pretty high for the next 2 days. I struggled subsequently, but that's because I climbed up Telegraph Hill on the 3rd day -- I obviously was well enough on the 3rd day too. I wanted to redo it and see if I could repeat the feat.

I woke up feeling shitty and achy again last Thursday June 18th and was thinking where I could travel locally to improve my mood. I had to do something since we can't travel long distance till Covid19 is over. We could go explore Stockton or Davis. We haven't been there yet. Then it occurred to me that I haven't done any long bike ride this year. I was out commission till May of course, thanks to the long crash after the skiing season. Now that I'm out of it, it's about time that I returned to long bike ride. It was a good day for that too -- it's going to be near 100F just like that day in August 2018.

The ride started from REI at 3PM and I got back at 6:30PM. No taking a spill, no blacking out, and no getting lost in the thickets this time. I didn't stop at Paradise Beach either. But I did manage to get lost a few times again and stretch ride to about the same distance.  Still, it definitely was an easier ride than the original one. That I didn't run out of water is the proof.

Resting on Northern Bike Path Bridge

 I was fine the next day (it must've been a post-exercise high). Then the struggle began and it lasted a week.

Obviously, there was no novelty effect from resuming the long bike ride despite the hiatus. It has to be something really new for the novelty effect to kick in, it seems. That means I won't benefit from the novelty effect when I return to skiing next season either. I'll have to stick to monthly skiing, not weekly one, on bunny slopes, as I already planned.

Traveling is different. I do know the novelty effect kicks in whenever I go the NYC despite that I've been there multiple times. It doesn't have to be a completely new place.

I really need this Covid19 thing to be over. I need to travel...

Getting High on Shopping

No travelling this summer, thanks to Covid19. Ennui has been building up and I haven't been able to motivate me to do anything productive. No blog entry past month is a proof. I have to do my tax returns too, but haven't been able to do that either.

When I was sicker, walking used to vastly improve my mood. Walking still helps, but I don't get the same highs anymore. Fortunately, I still get kick out of shopping. Not buying itself, but just doing the research and comparing prices is enough. And that's been about the only thing I've been able to do.

It must be the dopamine. Back in 2016, I shopped into wee hours during the Amazon Prime Day and was amazed that I could still function the next day. It was 2 weeks into my first false recovery, so I wouldn't know for sure if it was the effect of shopping or the false recovery itself. But I've repeated it many times since then, so I know shopping definitely can get me the high.

I've been looking into getting a new camera for a while. Panasonic GX85 has worked well for my purpose. but I've been fumbling with its range finder style and it doesn't feel like an extension of my limb; it takes effort to translate what I want to do into what do do. It's poor autofocus on dark subjects leaves something to be desired as well. Then there is 2x cropping issue when filming in 4K. MFT already has 2x cropping, the additional 2x makes 25mm lens unusable for filming.

So, the candidates are: Sony A7III, Fuji X-T3 and Panasonic G9. They are the top of the line in their respective category of full frame, APS-C and micro four third. They are 2 years old and therefore heavily discounted as well. In my usual perfectionist fashion, I have difficulty deciding. So, in my usual fashion, I resorted to spreadsheet. I threw in the smartphone in the comparison for the purpose of value reference.

	price	portability	low light	AF	IS	bokeh	video	handling + other features	total
G9	20	10	6	7	10	6	4	10	73
A7III	14	6	10	10	8	10	3	8	69
X-T3	18	7	8	9	5	8	5	9	69
smartphone	30	20	3	3	5	1	1	2	65

I had my eyes on A7III for a while for its legendary dynamic range and low light performance. But the issue with full frame cameras is the lens size/weight. And I rarely shoot in low light, so it just doesn't make sense to carry the mass for something you need only in 1% of the time. It makes more sense to optimize for the 99% and MFT is that optimization. And you can take care of the low light with faster lens or larger lens with speed booster, if necessary.

So, I'll probably lug around G9 with 14-140mm and then carry a couple of fast prime lenses in my pocket.  Try doing that with FF camera or even APS-C.

In anticipation, I already got Sigma 56mm f1.4 for $360. A bargain compared to Fuji 56mm f1.2 that goes for $1000. (Fuji will become comparable when Viltrox come out with 56mm). It's not only a bargain, but it's also just about the sharpest lens out there.  But I'm already getting tired of it after playing with it for a few days. 56mm in MFT is  equivalent to 112mm in FF and that is too long for my kind of portraiture, I found. Anything between 25mm to 135mm can be considered portrait lens but I'm more comfortable with 50mm or shorter. The Bokeh is nice though. I'll probably alternate between 56mm f1.4 and 25mm f1.7, and then compliment them with 12-32mm kit lens for portrait.

Here are some samples:

12-32mm kit lens

Struggle Finally Over After 4 Months

Do little something, and then I keel over for days. Get back up and do little something again, I keel over again. It's been almost nonstop struggle for 4 months and the longest, if not the worst, PEM I've had.

The crashes started on 12/20 when I started skiing hard just as the novelty effect expired after 3 weeks of skiing. (The novelty effect from moving to NYC in 2017 expired after 3 weeks and so was the lift from starting to bike in 2018.) I was done with skiing for good after 3/2, but I still kept keeling over. 2 km walk or 3 mile biking would put me in the pound for 3 days.

I would've gone on a trip, to SF or somewhere, to lift me out of the struggle. But the whole country is under a lock-down for Covid19, and overnight trip has been out of the question. So we went on a daytrip to Lodi and Galt on 4/15 instead. I've been meaning to explore the local cities and this was as good an excuse as any.

San Joaquin Valley is not exactly Napa. But it was surprisingly charming. We drove through the vineyards in Galt to Lodi downtown lined with shops. It wasn't unlike Woodland downtown, perhaps a bit larger. We walked half a mile from Elm Street to Lodi Ave and back.

The daytrip did not lift me out of the PEM struggle and I conked out for 4 days after that. I've written before about daytrips, unlike longer overnight ones, not being effective for ending a PEM struggle. This was another data point.

Fast forward a week, and I seem to have gotten out of the struggle finally. I walked almost 2 miles on 4/21 and then walked around the neighborhood in the afternoon the next day. Yesterday, I was able to run errands in the morning and then bike 4 miles in the afternoon. Today, I did the grocery shopping in the morning, walk a few blocks in the afternoon and took care of paper works. No crapping out despite up and running for 4 days in a row. I'm feeling as well as I did last November when I was up and running fine after returning from the trip to NY/NJ where I took 20,000 steps every other day. It sure feels like another recovery.

So, what lesson have I learned? No more season pass, that is what. I'll just buy day passes a few times next year and stick to green slopes. But then, that is what I said last year and yet I did what I did. Will the crash of 4 months teach me a lesson this time around? Stay tuned.

End-of-Season Aftermath

The mountains have 6 feet of fresh snow. I might have had difficulty reining in despite the struggle I've been having. COVID19 stopped me from jumping on my car and going instead. All ski resorts are closed and probably are not going to reopen till the next season.

It's been the same old struggle: Scrub the bathtub, then I get knocked out for 3 days. Walk 2 km, and the same thing. The laundry, dishes and dusts have been piling up sky high. The feeling of recovery back in December is all but a distant memory now. The water hose I bought then is gathering dust in the garage. I was feeling so well, I thought I'd wash the dirt from the mountain off the car whenever I come back from skiing. I haven't got to it yet. And now I'm like, just what was I thinking?

The  whole CA is now under shelter-in-place order. It is a familiar way of life to CFS patients: we stay home, go out only for essential errands and bi-daily walks. We don't have much social contact anymore, we are already socially distanced. All we have to do is just keep 6 feet away from other people when we are out. This is an opportunity for normal people to learn how CFS patients live and feel. Sans fatigue, ache and sickness, of course.

End-of-Season Assessment: You Can't Exercise Your Way Out Of CFS

Well, not exactly the end of the season yet. It's still snowing and there probably is another month worth of skiing left. But I'm calling it a season for now, though I might go up once more. But certainly no more weekly skiing. That's been too detrimental to my health and daily living.

The analysis of the skiing #1 through 9 has been done already and it showed the novelty effect fading away after a month. My condition has been getting  only worse since then. Take a look:

All of them were easy skiings on green Nob Hill and blue Christmas Tree, with occasional Gerome only to get to/from Judah lodge. Yet the difference is stark. At the beginning of the season, I was getting 1 bad day at most out of 4 after the skiing. At the end though, I was having 3 bad days at least. I've been getting weaker as the novelty effect faded and my exercise tolerance came down to normal.

Here is another measure. The red rows below denote 2 or more consecutive bad days, my definition of PEM/flare-up/crash, from November to early March:

(Ignore the activity column text from 12/13 to 12/15 that showed multiple days of skiing. They got corrupted and I wasn't able to recover).

As you can see, there was no crash from November to late December. That's despite of the 12 day trip to NJ/NY in November when I took 20,000 steps every other day. Then I started crashing in late December and it became more frequent as time went on. It's another stark evidence that I've been getting weaker as time went on after a month of skiing.

It's the opposite of what you would expect from a healthy person: you should get stronger as you exercise, not weaker. We already  know that PEM -- the sickness the day after an exertion -- is the hallmark feature of CFS. This getting progressively weaker with exercises over 3 months period is yet another incontrovertible proof that you just can't exercise your way out of CFS. That's been obvious for severe/moderate patients and I've already written about it when I was in the deep end of the CFS spectrum. Now if anybody wonders about it for mild/moderate patients, they just need to look at my experience with skiing.

Head Kore 93 Test

Yep, I went up to the mountains last Monday. So much for laying off skiing for a while. That's just me, an impatient self. But I did manage to contain my enthusiasm. There wasn't much to contain, actually. The spark is gone and skiing is now more meditative than exciting. So I did 3 sessions of mostly green slopes and some easy blues and then came back home.  I still struggled afterwards. It's not a total crap out, but a nagging drag with 2 bad days within the mandatory 3 day recovery period.

It's same story over and over again. For a month or so, the novelty of a new activity boosts my exercise tolerance. Then, things go back to normal and I struggle. I'll just have to cut back on skiing for the rest of the season: instead of 3 sessions of greens and blues, make it 2 sessions of mostly greens. That's about half as hard and half as much as skiing #8, the hardest one that took me to crud and moguls. I'll get back to hard skiing at the beginning of the next season after rotating with biking and hiking for the summer.

The Head Kore skis are definitely stiffer and faster than the beginners pair it replaced. It carried enough speed off Christmas Tree slope to the chair, I actually had to break hard to stop. It doesn't have any metal layer, so I expected more flex and less speed than, say, Volkl Mantra M5. No such a thing. The speed may have contributed to the aftermath despite the relatively easy day of skiing.

I'm going back next Monday again. The mountains is supposed to get dusted with snow up to half a foot over the weekend, cross fingers, and I got a new jacket to test. Two, as a matter of fact. I first bought Columbia Cushman which was so comfortable and warm as well as stylish. I tried it at REI and instantly fell in love, even though I was actually looking for a more versatile shell that I can layer and also double as a rain jacket. And one happen to be on sale on Amazon so I bought it. Then I bought Marmot Minimalist jacket, a Gore Tex shell that I was originally looking for. Now I'll have to go back to the mountains to test them out.

HEAD Kore 93 Skis

Well, here they are, bindings mounted and boots clipped in. Aren't they a beauty? In all likelihood, I'll fail to rein in on my enthusiasm and end up skiing hard on them the next time. I hope the shiny new things will bring back the novelty effect, at least for one more time, and spare me from the post-skiing struggle. The mountain is dry for now -- it has been the driest February ever in California's history with zero precipitation -- so I'll have to wait till the next storm to find out.

Novelty Effect, All Gone

I'm not getting the post-exercise high anymore. For the last 2 skiings, I went straight into funk and dizziness without the dopamine high the next day. Skiing #10, half blue and half green, resulted in 3 days of struggle out of 4. Skiing #11, an exact replica of  #1, was mostly green and I still ended up with one bad day. It's as if my exercise tolerance to skiing has been lowered along with the fading novelty effect.

I'll have to lay off skiing for a while and go back to walking and biking. Switching to different exercises for a while may bring back the novelty effect. Like the 2 mile walk on 2/1 that was surprisingly refreshing and pleasant. Maybe rotating to different exercises a month at a time is the answer.

I finally got a new pair of skis just as the novelty effect from skiing faded away.  OutdoorXL in the Netherlands had Head Kore 93, the Ski Mag's top choice, in my size and on sale. Paired with Atomic MNC 13 bindings, it should be a keeper for the rest of my life. UPS trashed it though and half of the bindings went missing during the transportation. They are sending me a new one. I'll test-drive it after a new storm hits the mountain. That'll be at least 2 weeks away as the Norcal is now in a dry pattern.

Analysis of Skiing #1 Through #9

Here is what the after-effect of skiing looks like:

The skiing is categorized into two: easy and hard. Easy ones are colored yellow and hard ones red. Any day that included Disney is labeled hard because all runs off Disney, including Pony Express, is steep and long. Mistle Tow off Christmas Tree is also steep, but it is only about half as long. And all runs I did off Judah/Jerome are long but not as steep. (You can find the trail map here).

The health level is similarly catagorized, with good days in yellow and bad days in red.

We see that easy skiing resulted in 3 or more good days out of 4. On the other hand, hard skiing resulted in 2 or more bad days. More specifically, the days that included 2 Disney runs back to back resulted in 3 or more bad days where as 1 Disney resulted in only 2 bad days. The skiing #8, which was the hardest of all, wasn't a back-to-back Disney, but it did include the moguls. (The black and blue Disney left me, well, black and blue.)

The skiing #9, which meant to be an easy one, included 2 Disney. That explains the failure to replicate skiing #6 and 7 for "soft landing".

So, it's rather obvious that my limit is green and easy blue slopes. I may be able to get away to 3 sessions of 8 runs each on those. Whatever I do, I'll have to avoid Disney runs, which are both long and steep, like a plague from now  on.

No Soft-landing

The temperature reached 70F on Saturday.  I had to take the advantage of the warm weather. I finally gathered my wits in the afternoon after wallowing in fatigue since the skiing #9 and went out for a 2 mile walk. I haven't done long walk for a while and it felt good. The novelty effect must've kicked in.

So, it turned out to be 3.5 day struggle. No soft landing, in other words. Dopamine didn't kick in either. Instead, I got so dizzy the day after, I almost fell over the coffee table. I went straight into PEM without the dopamine kick. The post exercise high has been steadily going down with each skiing and there is none now.

Spending several days out of a week wallowing in fatigue and ache is getting too disruptive. It's like I'm back in the old days of CFS. I have a life to live, I'll have to cut down on skiing. So no more weekly skiing. I'll give it a rest for another week, and then retry skiing #6 and 7 one more time to reproduce soft landing. Then it will be bi-weekly skiing at the most.

Skiing #8 Aftermath and Skiing #9

The weather for skiing #9 wasn't ideal. The forecast called for a partial sun, but it snowed all morning. My face froze up from the driving sleet and my but from icy water on the lift. The visibility was bad too. The cloud and snow made the terrain flat and the snow dripping off my sunglasses didn't help.

I meant to duplicate skiing #7, but the weather made sure that I didn't. I didn't go to the Judah side of the mountain at all. I instead skied mostly green and blue slopes on the Village side. I did go on Pony Express off Disney twice at the end though. Overall, it's about the same as #7 with total skiing time of 90 minutes. But replication requires the exact duplicate, so if this one doesn't result in a soft-landing, I'll have to try again. Skiing #8 wasn't an exact duplicate of #6 either; it was much harder. Another reason to try the replication again if there is no soft-landing in coming days.

There was no major dopamine rush after skiing #8 that includes several black runs. Funky fatigue on the next day and then it got progressively worse for 3 days. Then, after 4 days, I was up and running errands.

Being high on dopamine for a day or two and then getting knocked out another day or two days after that would've been fine. But being out of commission for 4 days out of a week is just too much. I can't spend all my life trying to exercise my way out of CFS. I may give the hard/easy skiing combo for soft-landing one more try and then I'll stick to easy skiing from then on.

Moguls, Finally

The old pair of beginner's skis finally met its limit. It flexes so much, I couldn't tackle the moguls well. And controlling them over crusty surface was practically impossible because they are so narrow. I'll have to get a new pair as soon as the price for Vockle Mantra M5 drops.

Skiing #8 was the hardest one so far. I spent most of time on blue and black slopes. I finally went on the face of Disney Express too. It wasn't fun though. I managed the mogully top portion alright, but the lower steep portion was too crusty. I struggled to make turns and my legs turned into jelly by the time I got down. I rated this one at 9 on my 1 to 9 activity rating scale, for the first time in 12 years. In reality though, it still is only about half as what I used to be able to do. It was still 10-to-2 skiing with 2 long rests after all.

Today I have a post-exercise fatigue and am resting comfortably. It is a sleepy kind, not the heavy and sickly kind of CFS. Maybe I'll be high on dopamine for another day and the bottom will fall out on by Saturday. Then I'll go back on the slope next Monday for an easy skiing. If that rescues me from the prolonged crash, I'll have a measure of confidence that an exciting and yet easy trip is a cure for crash.

Speed is Still a Killer

I was doing so well. For 3 days after skiing #7, I was up and running taking care of all ADLs and errands. It seemed that I could walk faster too. So I upped the speed to 93 steps per minute, about as fast as I could walk without straining, rather than throttling to 90, my safe speed. The result? heavy fatigue and ache the next day. And I'm still under the weather 3 days after.

How is it even possible that I can ski intermediate slopes and yet keel over after walking 3% faster for 4 blocks and back? 93 steps per min is still a slow speed, after all. My exercise tolerance must've been reduced from skiing even though I was able to take care of ADLs and errands.

In any event, the "soft landing" seems to have worked. The crash after hard skiing (#6) seems to have been reversed by a soft skiing (#7). I'll try the process again and see if I can repeat the result. The mountains received 2 more feet of snow and the weather will clear up tomorrow. I'll ski the advanced slope, and then go back for a soft one 5 days after.

Skiing #7 Saves the Aftermath of Skiing # 6

A good size of storm was brewing and I wanted to squeeze in one more day of skiing before the week-long bad weather hits. But I woke up with fantastic fatigue and ache. This was only the 5th day after the hard skiing on 1/10 and I obviously was too optimistic. But my car was all charged up over night and my lunch was already packed. Besides, the idea of wallowing in fatigue and ache all day long at home wasn't too inviting and I figured I'd be better off on the road. So I went on. I did perk up, but the nagging fatigue persisted throughout the day. I skied mostly green and blue slopes and came home shortly after lunch.

That may have saved me from the aftermath of skiing #6. I skied half green and half blue on 1/2 (skiing #5) and I survived it without too much drama. So I skied even harder on 1/10 ; I actually went on a black run. Donald Duck off Disney Express is not mogully, but still pretty steep and long. By the time I was half way down, my heart rate was at 3 bits per second. I was on a dopamine high for the next 2 days afterward and then the bottom fell out. The struggle could've lasted for another week. Instead, I'm up and running, 2 days after skiing #7. I hope to ease into the valley of steady state in coming days. 

Is this a case of re-take-off and then soft-landing to cure the crash-landing? Who knows. 

The peaks are now approaching the normal height. All that remains is moguls. And 9-to-3 skiing instead of 10-to-2.  But valleys remain depressed as ever: I still struggle in between the days of skiing. And I still have no idea who to raise the valley floor. I only can hope that the rising peaks will eventually lead to the rising valley floors.