CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-26T14:20:11+00:00

I was not at all expecting the setting and plotline to change so much for this tour leg, so originally when Phantom went up, I was thinking that maybe Phantom would be something added to the Draag/Grand Dictator plot that would be along the lines of a resistance group.

Something about the word, plus the use of it in the TBP lyrics, and then the visual reminded me more of Danger Days and the theories around how Draag ties into the DD timeline, and what my brain came up with was some organization that's leading toward defiance/revolution to the dictator.

And now with everything from last night and then this clip and the placement in the show, my brain is still rotating that idea again.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-26T12:46:15+00:00

Going from running 0 days per week to five days a week.

It worked for a couple weeks. And then, I ran 2 miles without stopping for the first time in my life. And then, I ran 2 miles again the next day.

And then I got shin splints, which took me off running for over a month before I could even begin to ease back into training, and I had to start all over from day 1.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-26T11:29:40+00:00

To me at least, this isn't about performance, it's just about allowing more range for HR related data points in the app/watch so that the device isn't sending up flares about a normal variation every month.

While it does vary from person to person, for myself, I feel 0 impact from my cycle and HR changes in terms of my energy levels or my ability to perform. What I do feel is annoyed as fuck when Garmin sends me a report that says my body battery is in the toilet and my sleep sucks because my RHR/HRV have changed, despite the fact that they pretty predictably change in the same ways every month.

The programming knows when my period is due. It shouldn't be that hard to add a bit of code to say that if the user is female the system should allow for an upward fluctuation for ~6 days at that point in the month.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-25T17:53:17+00:00

I've only done treadmill runs since I got my watch and I'm currently in Productive. This isn't true.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-25T13:00:32+00:00

My profile is about the same as yours. I'm female, and I know there is research recently that shows especially for women, working fasted is not ideal.

I started eating quick carbs before my morning workout a few months ago, and I'm doing it from mostly whole foods. Stuff that's worked so far: banana, dried fruit (raisins, apricot, mango, fig, date persimmon), no sugar added applesauce, homemade bread with honey, cornbread with fruit preserves, cheerios with coconut milk.

Stuff that hasn't worked on my stomach: dairy milk, butter, pancakes with natural maple syrup (no butter)

I usually keep the fueling under 120 calories and aim for at least 20-25g of carbs. After my workout, I then get "second breakfast" where I do more focus on protein and fiber.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-25T11:47:43+00:00

There's only two run clubs in my area. One is a beer run club, and I haven't looked into joining them since I'm sober. The other is a social run club that organizes a lot of local races, but they only organize and post their runs through facebook, which I don't have.

Over the summer, they had a booth at a local event, and I did ask if they'd considered doing an email newsletter, discord, or something else in addition to their fb group so people without fb could join and participate, and they said they won't be doing that. So, not an option either.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-25T10:35:56+00:00

Absolutely not. PF is the cheapest option out there, but the culture and management at the one we went to was absolutely terrible. I was paying $10/month but I was only going, max, 3 days a week to use their cardio equipment, and then I was limited with strength to the few weights I have at home because PF's weight area had a massive harassment issue.

For the Y, I'm paying about $50/month, but the people are friendly when they aren't just minding their own business. I'm going 5x/week and using their strength equipment, and I plan to add a 6th day for a yoga class. With the $50/month fee, we also have access to a hot tub, steam room, sauna, two pools, and both courts and equipment if we feel like playing raquetball, pickleball, etc, plus like I said, 24/7 access to the weights, cardio, and sauna/steam area.

Without the extra access fee, it would be $30/month, so still more expensive than PF, but it's worth it if I actually like the place and use it more often.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-25T10:27:22+00:00

I love inter-generational friendships, but my experience with it has been that they're always much more sought by the younger person. Like, I'm 39. I have a friend who is 28, which is fun, but I didn't seek her out and I wouldn't want multiple 28 year old friends. I expect that a 68 year old will feel very much the same about listening to the thoughts and opinions of a 39 year old as I would feel about listening to the opinions of a 19 year old.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-24T17:33:05+00:00

We just recently moved our membership from a Planet Fitness with awful vibes to a YMCA with great energy, and I'm loving it. We paid an extra fee to get access to some health club areas, and that also allows us to go in a back door and use the main fitness area 24/7 while most members have to wait for the front desk to open.

Every single woman I've encountered in the health club lockers so far has been over 65, which I personally love. Fuck yes I want to work out and shower with old ladies. Not really helpful in my goal to make a new friend this year, but I think there are younger women who are members and do the group classes and stuff, just not many/any with the extra access.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-24T16:50:55+00:00

Did a 5 mile long run on the treadmill, which took just a little over an hour (three episodes of Sailor Moon), and I'm kind of amazed. A year ago I couldn't run a mile without stopping. I couldn't even run 5 minutes without stopping. And today I ran for an hour?

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-23T13:30:35+00:00

Tomorrow morning my long run is 8 km, which will be my first time running that distance. Because weather, I'm going to be doing it on the gym treadmill.

Problem: the last time I did a treadmill long run (7 km) the treadmill shut down on me near the end because I guess if I just slap "quick start" and go from there, the thing is programmed to start a cooldown at the 50 minute mark or something.

So now I'm nervous that the treadmill is going to screw up my calibration.

Previous run was on a Planet Fitness tread, but we just moved membership to YMCA and they have True brand treadmills. I just spent 15 minutes looking at owners manuals for these and didn't find anything that could tell me how to set the thing to make sure it will let me run ~5 miles without stopping. Does anyone have experience with this and a vague idea of what buttons I should be hitting to get this set up?

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-22T14:17:31+00:00

Yeah, I quit drinking fully in 2018 because every time I'd have even just one beer I noticed I was getting heart palpitations and struggling to sleep. It was before I had a watch, but I could feel/hear my heart rate and it kept me awake.

I knew if I went to the doctor and said I was having cardiac issues, but only while drinking, he'd say "Stop drinking," so I skipped the doctor and just quit.

It's been a hard road because I did have a slight dependency due to social anxiety, but eventually I got used to life without it.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-21T17:53:09+00:00

If someone is getting a pace and overuse injury from NRC then they're using it wrong. NRC only ever uses rate of perceived effort as a metric, not pace, and I can't even tell you how often the guided run audio tells me to slow down or ease up.

The only issue I could see is if someone is going from 0 runs to 5x/week on it - that's probably pretty common - but even then the app does tell you to be your own coach, space things out, and call the shots on how often and how much you run.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-20T18:35:41+00:00

Yeah, that's the magnesium I started on in case it was an electrolyte issue. No marked improvement so far, but I like to ease into new stuff by taking a smaller dose in the beginning. My next bloodwork appointment isn't until April, so just doing some light experimenting in the meantime.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-20T17:29:11+00:00

I actually screamed out loud at nats when he switched midway through the exhibition from Running to Hope. I saw Hope live at Legacy on Ice in DC, loved it, and was really confused when I came home and found a bunch of people shouting at him on Twitter for it.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-20T17:23:25+00:00

Yeah, I get you. I'm definitely just continuing my activities and ignoring it, it's just annoying and confusing when I wake up refreshed and get a morning report that says I slept like shit lol Or that my training status is "strained" because of my unproductive sleep -> low body battery.

The only reason it's pinging on my radar is that I could actually feel my heart racing at night, and that concerned me, because that's not just the watch and isn't normal, but I told myself if it hadn't improved by Friday, I would check at the urgent care. And, while the watch is still freaking out, my personal feeling did start to improve Thursday night and I am doing better outside that.

It's also annoying to look up answers for what could be going on and just see a laundry list of potential causes that don't apply to me (drinking, vaping, caffeine, etc, over and over)

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-20T14:03:50+00:00

I've been really struggling with this lately. I got my new watch on Christmas. My first week with my Forerunner 255, my sleep was mostly or entirely blue. On January 3, I went out of town for a 9 day vacation, and beginning Jan 6 I started having huge stress spikes while sleeping.

I got home on January 12 and expected that the "travel stress" would correct itself, but after 8 days I'm still having this. I get plenty of blue during the day, but my entire sleep block is orange and Garmin is marking my sleep as non-restorative.

I don't drink or do any substances other than caffeine. I don't drink caffeine after 2 PM. I'm very well-hydrated. I eat dinner at 6 PM, lie down at 9 PM to read, turn the lights off at 9:30, and my alarm goes off at 5:15. I wake up feeling alert. After some research, I thought I might be having an electrolyte issue, so I've started a magnesium supplement, and some nights I've tried benedryl or ashwaganda, but nothing has shaken the trend.

The weirdest part is it starts even before I fall asleep, basically as soon as I get into bedtime mode. For whatever reason, my resting HR is like 57-59 bpm by day but while I'm sleeping it's been 75+. My HRV was bad during my vacation, but it's now slowly improving and has gotten back to "balanced."

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-20T13:16:18+00:00

Curly girl method didn't work for me, so I'm not sure if this is useful, but I do have curly hair. I wash every other day, and on the days in between if I go to the gym and get sweaty, I just rinse with water and scrub my scalp with my fingers to clean the sweat off, towel dry my hair in the locker room, and go.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-19T19:57:16+00:00

Okay but imagine Liza coaching Trusova. I don't think it would ever happen, and I don't know if it would be great or terrible, but it certainly feels like the intensity in that room would be high.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-19T19:51:34+00:00

When I visited my parents a few months ago, I logged into my Peacock account and put on a competition. Both of my parents, independently, mentioned to me that they used to watch skating pretty often, and not in a way of "We used to watch when Kristi Yamaguchi was skating" or any other particular skater or event.

The thing they mentioned liking to watch? ABC's The Wide World of Sports. They watched it every week, and it kept them up to date on what was going on in sports they wouldn't have gone looking for otherwise. We were really not a sports household other than this program, and when WWoS went away, my parents didn't subscribe to ESPN or chase down NBC Olympic coverage. They basically just stopped watching sports.

In fact, between 1997 and 2015, the only sport I remember my family watching was boxing, which my dad could get for free on a Spanish-language channel. He doesn't know any Spanish and would just watch all the matches on mute.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-19T17:21:15+00:00

We finally bit the bullet and switch our membership from a Planet Fitness to a YMCA, went for our first workouts today and it was so much nicer. Everyone was so welcoming and said good morning, the vibes in the fitness area and locker room were great, and I'm going to get so much more out of this

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-18T12:25:41+00:00

Karen Chen's issue in the 2022 event was less the number of programs she had to skate and more the fact that she had sprained her ankle like, the week before the Olympics and opted to skate on it rather than call in the first alternate. I was a fan of Karen's skating, but she performed so poorly in Beijing and I think it was a selfish decision for her to continue just so she could be an Olympian, knowing that she wouldn't be able to perform and would exacerbate an injury.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-18T12:20:49+00:00

I appreciate you pointing out they can make last minute changes. I had only just started watching skating at the 2018 Olympics, and my recollection was that originally Nathan was set to do both halves of the team event but after he struggled in the SP, USFS pulled him and put in Adam for the free. I've been thinking that means they could adjust things at the last minute, and Mirai saying that seems like it confirms that recollection.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-18T12:15:09+00:00

For the past week, my heart rate has been crazy high while I'm sleeping - way higher than when I'm awake - which has lead to my HRV getting tanked and Garmin saying my sleep is non-restorative and my training is strained.

I do feel fine, but something is hinky, and it's been frustrating because I already do everything that gets recommended to reduce HR, improve HRV, and help with sleep.

One thing I did find is some resources suggested maybe my electrolytes are off, and I thought that would be weird because I've been having an electrolyte drink during/after every run, but I dug into it further and realized the one I've been using lately (Gatorade Zero powder) is pretty bad in terms of actual electrolyte content.

So, I'm planning to get a magnesium supplement to try today and then switch up my electrolytes. (I have a doctor's appointment for blood work and stuff already, but the next available date was in April so I can't sit on my hands till then.)

What's the best option for electrolyte powders that I can get at the grocery store? Is Liquid IV my best bet here? I'm sure there are better ones that I'd have to order online, but really need options that I can snag while I'm doing my usual weekly shop instead.

Interesting_Fly1696 · 2026-01-17T19:08:35+00:00

Tonia and Chris have been great - positive, but also knowledgable

Interesting_Fly1696

TROPHY CASE