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Health hiccup and more running and cycling!

By ⋅ September 18, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

So I took myself to the doc­tor in office today since I needed a med­ical certificate.

And then I find out. Every­thing else is fine with me — no aller­gies, no fits, no weak­nesses — except one small problem…

“Your BP is a lit­tle high,” he says. (130/90 for those who can deci­pher the numbers).

“You should exer­cise, and try and lose some weight,” he adds.

My friend V who is with me comes to my res­cue and pipes in, “But doc­tor — she does yoga, and she runs every weekend.”

The doc­tor gives me a “I-don’t-believe-you –can-even-run-a-mile” look and I nod my head vig­or­ously to tell him that it’s the truth and noth­ing but the truth.

“Well,” he says, “we’ll mon­i­tor your BP for about 4 weeks and take a few more read­ings to be sure.” So it seems like I have to check my pres­sure over the next few weeks just to make sure that I’m not veer­ing towards a seri­ous prob­lem. Any­way, I did a google search and appar­ently, in the 130 range, it indi­cates hyper­ten­sion and can still be pre­vented by tak­ing a few measures.

The irony how­ever is that I’ve been try­ing to be health con­scious over the last few months. I exer­cise more than I have in the last few years. I eat rea­son­ably well (no diets for me!) but I ensure good por­tions of veg­gies, fruits and sprouts, nuts and drink lots of water through the day. No sweets, since I don’t have a sweet tooth. And after all that effort, my BP is now threat­en­ing to play spoil sport.

Hmph!

I might as well go back to junk food and my sloth­ful days!

Any­way, despite this minor hic­cup, I am reg­is­ter­ing for the **Kaveri Trail (21K) and the Ban­ga­lore Ultra (25K) runs in Octo­ber and Novem­ber fol­lowed by a cycling expe­di­tion in Decem­ber. While I had ambi­tions to run a full marathon this year, con­sid­er­ing my prepa­ra­tions I did realise that I was aim­ing for too much. So I’m set­tling for 2 half marathons.

Sathish told me about the cycling expe­di­tion in Goa and it sounded really excit­ing espe­cially since I really enjoyed cycling in Pondicherry and Goa will be even more fun, I’m sure!

So I’m all geared up now for the next 3 months — loads of activ­ity to look for­ward to and to pre­pare for. I’ll just have to take extra care of my health and hope it doesn’t let me down! And take that cycle out a lit­tle more often :-)

** The Kaveri Trail is held near Sri­ran­ga­p­atna and is a very scenic trail where you have the option of doing 10, 21 and 42K. The Ban­ga­lore Ultra is held at another scenic loca­tion — Hesaraghatta — near Nritya­gram and Our Native Vil­lage. If you’re inter­ested and want to reg­is­ter, do log into the web­sites men­tioned for more details… And I ran my first long dis­tance event at the Ultra last year in Decem­ber so if I can do it, I’m sure any­one can!

Discussion

20 Responses to “Health hiccup and more running and cycling!”

  1. Wow, the Goa cycling expe­di­tion sounds really good. Are you able to man­age 6 hours of cycling every­day? Curi­ous, because I was won­der­ing if I could do it. Any­way, it all sounds like you are going to be hav­ing a lot of fun.

    Posted by Banno | September 19, 2008, 1:16 pm

  2. Anita,

    Reduce your salt intake. That will help you a lot.Drink plenty of water to flush the sodium out of the system.Sodium is the culprit.

    Posted by Poornima | September 19, 2008, 8:33 pm

  3. Hi Anita,
    “Rich man’s best friend is health”. In your case how­ever it should be “Rich woman’s best friend is health”.

    Good arti­cle.

    Thanks
    SP

    Posted by SP | September 19, 2008, 8:45 pm

  5. Hi,

    I’m H. and I work in a com­pany inter­ested in blog adver­tis­ing. I found your blog engag­ing and I’m con­tact­ing you to ask if you are inter­ested in blog post sponsorship.

    If you are inter­ested, kindly mail back at k5ino@bigstring.com, indi­cat­ing your blog for ref­er­ence, and I’ll send you back pric­ing details, guide­lines and processes. Look­ing for­ward to doing busi­ness with you.

    Sin­cerely,

    H.

    Posted by H. | September 20, 2008, 2:27 am

  6. @ Banno: yes! now that you men­tion it — 6 hours seems like a lot :-) i have no idea how i’m going to do it but that’s why i men­tioned that i need a lot of prepa­ra­tion now!

    @ Poorn­ima: i drink quite a lot of water. the salt — yes — everyone’s told me about it. i actu­ally don’t even have too much salt but i guess i’ll have to keep a strict watch now!

    @ SP: did rich? :-) that wouldn’t be me! but your’e right about the health. thanks for the link!

    Posted by anita | September 20, 2008, 2:52 pm

  7. Hey Anita,
    Thanks for the com­ment on my blog page :-) I can see you’re prepar­ing for the Kaveri runs…I con­tem­plated being part of it but its too close to Mum­bai January.…which is where I intend run­ning the marathon! :-) Nice blog. All the best for Kaveri and if ever you want to exchange run­ning notes here’s some­one who’s “hit­ting the wall” so often now that run­ning seems more like climb­ing a bloody wall!
    Cheers
    Abs

    Posted by Abs | September 20, 2008, 5:14 pm

  8. All the best, Anita :)

    Posted by Manasa | September 20, 2008, 8:49 pm

  9. Anita, I often end up with a low BP, and a few admon­ish­ing words from the doc­tor to eat bet­ter but a high BP would leave me slightly con­cerned but then take care and keep meet­ing the doctor.

    Posted by Mridula | September 20, 2008, 11:28 pm

  10. Hey anita
    hope your doing good.
    BP huh, im fit as a fid­dle and i sup­pos­edly had high BP too, so did the doc­tor say, guess they have to say some­thing and not let you go with­out a worry! I won­der if that is the case.

    Well, I needed to ask you some­thing.
    In the month of novem­ber, would you know of any exhi­bi­tions on pho­tog­ra­phy in ban­ga­lore?
    If you do, could you kindly let me know.
    My brother is a pho­tog­ra­pher and is vis­it­ing us and was ask­ing.
    my email is at
    arvinddwarak@gmail.com

    Cheers!
    Arv

    Posted by Arvind | September 20, 2008, 11:33 pm

  11. Hi!

    I would worry about the “90” part rather than the “130” part.
    to tell you the truth, con­sid­er­ing the busy lifestyle, some­times 130/90 is con­sid­ered normal.

    It is not good but it is not bad either.

    Take care
    GBU
    Arti

    Posted by Arti Honrao | September 21, 2008, 7:13 pm

  12. @Abs: so true! hit­ting the wall is a very com­mon occurence! i’m also par­tic­i­pat­ing in the mum­bai event — but half marathon again. that’s the most i can think of as of now :-)

    @ Man­asa: thank you!

    @ Mridula: i shall have to make a few reg­u­lar vis­its now! thanks :-) you take care of your health too!

    @ Arvind: as of now, i don’t know of any. but the best way to find out is the check the events list­ing in the papers, they would have any major exhi­bi­tions hap­pen­ing listed in their columns.

    @ Arti: really? i have no idea what it means. let’s hope it was just a one off and i get back to nor­mal this week! but thanks :-)

    Posted by Anita | September 22, 2008, 12:17 am

  13. nice to know that you also have a packed sched­ule for nxt few months…
    btw, my blog id is sathishk not ksathish!! :-)
    Hop­ing that by Oct 10th Shiok would be re-open… the only week­end i might be in ban­ga­lore for next 2 months & with no activity…

    Posted by Sathish | September 22, 2008, 8:34 am

  14. Yes. The “90” part in the long run leads to heart ail­ments.
    “130” part is Sys­tolic, which can change dur­ing anx­i­ety, exer­cise etc. [Too high sys­tolic is not good either]
    “90” part is dias­tolic, which the real concern.

    I guess you are in the safe zone. It might be just a one off, like you say :)

    Avoid too much papad, achaar etc. I’d say,though.

    Take care
    GBU
    Arti

    Posted by Arti Honrao | September 23, 2008, 12:46 am

  15. do you love salty foods? Reduce them.

    Posted by arunima | September 23, 2008, 9:43 am

  16. It’s high time for me to start prepar­ing for long runs… will talk to you offline for details :)

    any­way I’ll be there for Kaveri trial, at leaset as a spec­ta­tor since I’ll be in Mysore in that timeframe…

    Posted by Prashanth M | September 23, 2008, 12:44 pm

  17. hope things turn fine.

    BTW list of activ­i­ties sounds cool :)

    Posted by Paavani | October 10, 2008, 10:57 am

  18. I can see that run­ning seems to be a thing for u — just read a book that you may find inter­est­ing What I Talk About When I Talk About Run­ning: by Haruki Murakami. Check it out.

    Take care of your health.

    Posted by Dev | October 15, 2008, 11:11 am

  19. You could even check out the TFN — Tour of Nil­giri. Try www dot tourofnil­giri dot com. With all due respect to your hero, hope you have upgraded your Cyclone to some­thing better.

    Posted by Vasu | October 25, 2008, 2:43 am

  20. Hiya,
    Don’t know how I arrived at your blog, but just wanted to say that there is such a thing as ‘white coat anx­i­ety’, when you are in a doctor’s office, which shows a higher read­ing than nor­mal. A one-off read­ing is of lit­tle use any­way.
    Bor­row a portable BP meter, and take a dozen mea­sure­ments through­out the day. Sit qui­etly for about ten min­utes, no talk­ing, before you mea­sure each time. Then take the average.

    Happy cycling.

    Posted by joco-serious | November 9, 2008, 12:02 pm

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