Sneaking past exercise intolerance: the final reckoning
I'll start with the good news…
This is the follow-up to my good news back in the spring that I’d finally achieved 5k runs — and my final report on the “sneaking past exercise intolerance” experiment, which has sprawled over the last year.
After getting to 5k, I did not push onwards to 6k! But I did do a whole series of 5k runs, only a few days apart, before finally declaring victory. Cool.
The first big question of the sneaking-past-exercise-intolerance question had been answered: Can I run 5km regularly and sustainably if I work up to it carefully enough, despite exercise intolerance? Yes. Yes I can. I didn’t know that, and now I do.
I suffered for it, though! There was a lot of soreness and malaise along the way. But it did get easier, and — crucially — there was no downward spiral of escalating exercise intolerance.
So it is possible to tactically avoid the worst consequences of exercise tolerance enough to adapt to 5km runs. Hooray.
Fitter, but not healthier, as I soon found out the hard way
Sure, I’d boosted my fitness somewhat despite the exercise intolerance, mostly by avoiding triggers … but did the exercise intolerance itself back off to any meaningful degree? Was it harder to trigger? Had my improved fitness reduced the need for “sneaking”?
That was the next and last big question, and the ultimate goal. And to test that, I had to do a stress test.
I had a good rest first. I didn’t stop exercising entirely, but I quit running along the edge of the cliff of exercise intolerance. I had been flirting with overdoing it regularly for months.
But then — after I’d had a chance to recover — I took that risk deliberately. I ran on the edge until I fell off. This was the reckless but critical final step of my sneaking-past-exercise-intolerance experiment.
So fun.
Why are you hitting yourself?
I got back to work and pushed somewhat too hard, too fast, exceeding my current limits — mostly just by not allowing enough recovery time. I know my enemy.
It seemed to go great at first, probably thanks to being somewhat fitter than I’ve been in years. After the first couple workouts, I felt like you’re supposed to feel after exercising hard: tired in a good way, a bit weary and sore, but smug and satisfied. I even got cocky. I felt so good that I somehow allowed myself to get optimistic.
Silly brain.
And then, practically from one workout to the next, on day four — I slammed into the exercise intolerance wall. I was in trouble right away, but I was committed.
Just do it, I thought, for the fucking science.
So I finished the workout.
The “I’ve made a huge mistake” feeling was as loud as artillery. Over the next couple hours, potent weariness transmogrified into being tired in a bad way, the “coming down with something” feeling. Evil exhaustion. More poisoned than tired.
That is exercise intolerance. Hello Darkness my old friend. You smouldering asshole.
Remembering recovery again
I’ve been through this many times per year for most of the last decade.
But, for the last year, I’ve avoided the darkness more carefully and successfully than in any of the nine years before that, and the reality of its awesome power had become abstract and half-forgotten — that curious feature of human nature that we “forget” pain and suffering.
All my fighting spirit was gone. I had a rough couple days. I remember sitting on a friend’s bed the next day, trying to watch her play a game, enthusiastic but disabled. I couldn’t sit up! Too tiring.
It was a long crawl back to baseline, a good two or three weeks of drifting back to “normal.” The slow recovery is where the high cost of exercise intolerance really happens.
It’s slow and it’s shitty … but it has always passed, and did again this time, one of the worst cases in years. So far I’ve never had it so bad I couldn’t recover.
The end of the experiment
I have learned that I can avoid exercise intolerance enough to improve my fitness.
And I’m not as intimidated by it, because I know I probably can recover if I do screw up, and mostly it won’t be all that bad — probably a few days at worst, because mostly I won’t be triggering it all that hard.
Not a cure. But … progress. It’s something.
“Sneaking past exercise intolerance” has now been well and truly tried.
When I was new to the disease of Isaacs Syndrome and first learned that one of the common symptoms was “exercise intolerance” I laughed out loud. My father’s voice in my head said “nice try but that’s clearly a lazy person’s attempt to get out of being responsible for their own health and fitness.” It wasn’t going to happen to me! I was a gym rat, a cyclist, a hiker, yoga doer, loved martial artsy fitness workouts, and doing more pushups than anyone expected an old lady could do. I didn’t just walk my dogs every day, I ran them, at least two miles.
But suddenly, since onset of symptoms I was flabbergasted when I found I couldn’t push a vacuum cleaner. It got to the point that I would have to go to bed after my morning shower. I had to give up everything except my dogs still demanded I take them out daily for some kind of exercise. So I’d drive to the country and park by my old school that sat on a block that was one mile square. I walked along one road to the corner and then turned to the next corner where we’d turn around and head back to the car. The way back took almost twice as long as the walk out and many times I’d be crying in agony but proud of myself for not giving up. Actually, I couldn’t give up because it wasn’t like I could have anyone come to get me and drive me a half mile to my car, that would be a big no way.
The rest of the day I’d rest. I’d also join my Facebook friends in the Isaacs Syndrome support group for The Over-Did-It-Again Club. It was never considered a mistake to “over do it”. It was never thought of as a “mistake”. We never considered ourselves as making a bad or wrong decision for having pushed ourselves.
We called it “management”. We pushed ourselves and then rested, pushed ourselves and then rested. We accepted the pain and fatigue and non-stop twitching muscles and painful cramps. We weren’t trying to solve the problem. We were just trying to stay fit and plan ahead for the pain and give ourselves time necessary to recover.
“I’m not going to go grocery shopping tomorrow because I’m going to “overdo it today”. Having the support group made it all possible. There was no judgement and no self judgement either. It was just balancing.
Hi Paul, thank you for taking the chance for science, for all of us.
You said you were able to continue as long as you avoided triggers, but isn't exercise itself a trigger? Or did you mean the trigger was overdoing exercise?
It sounds like you have fibromyalgia and not ME/CFS? I wonder if it is different for those of us with the latter. If I am too regular with the amount of movement (certainly not exercise) I do, after a week or two it always catches up with me and I go into the dark place you described so well. We are told if we do enough of this crashing it makes us worse and worse which has been true for me. So avoiding triggers is a confusing concept for me in that avoiding movement also makes me worse, although I get that the movement has to be minimal. You've talked about the Goldilocks zone before and the fact that it is a moving target and maybe you are saying you found your Goldilocks zone. Maybe your path is not too narrow and mine is.
In any case, I'm certainly happy for you. I've been following your path which has kept hope alive for my own path. Congratulations!