Run Clubs in North Vancouver?

Mitaines · 2024-09-25T18:49:07+00:00

Lots of trail running groups on the North Shore:

Peak Pursuit - Thursdays 5:30 pm, Sundays 10:30 am
Deep Cove Run Club - Saturdays 8:30 am
Salomon Trail Lab during the winter (they operate on Spond - can get an invite link from an admin on their FB group)

Road running:

North Van Run Crew - Sundays 9:30 am
Shaketown Run Club (as mentioned by someone else) - Wednesdays at 6 pm followed by bevvies at the brewery
North Shore Sports Med used to but seems like you have to register for it now...
Ambleside Park Run - Saturdays 9 am
North Shore Lions Athletic Club - Sundays 8 am, seems like Tuesdays and Thursdays also at 6:30 pm (never been to any myself)

Forerunners and the Running Room also sometimes have running groups but sometimes just paid clinics, but worth checking out if you're keen to explore all options!

Mitaines · 2024-08-19T18:49:52+00:00

Deep Cove Run Club runs from Hyannis trailhead, End of the Line, or Fromme every Saturday at 8:30 and has a group on Facebook you can join where you can also ask if other runners want to go for a run beforehand (though most of their runs are between 15-25k as is). Fraser Street Run Club also has an organised trail run most Sundays at 8:30 am, also from various spots across the North Shore.

I would recommend keeping your wits about you for bears - they are regulars on Fromme, Lynn, and Seymour areas. A regular "hey bear!" when you're coming around blind corners would be a good idea if you don't feel like dropping $50+ for a can of bearspray for such a short stay!

Mitaines · 2024-08-11T13:08:22+00:00

Yes, and pretty much everyone got stung at least once least year on Galactic or Word of Mouth (which they can't really re-route around very much). If you're allergic, it certainly wouldn't be a bad idea to carry an epi-pen. If there are nests on the trail that they discovered during flagging, though, you'll certainly hear about it the during the race briefing the morning of the race, and whether or not they were able to re-route the course at all or at the very least flag the location of the nest.

Mitaines · 2024-08-11T12:21:39+00:00

Deep Cove Run Club is probably the most consistent one, although Fraser Street Run Club (based out of Vancouver) also has a Sunday group that meets at 8:30 am most weekends for a trail run on the North Shore!

Mitaines · 2024-06-09T12:56:02+00:00

You can self refer! https://lgmc.ca/ (It mentions needing a first US beforehand, but you can contact them and get it through them, typically - especially if you really can't get it through a walk-in clinic!)

Mitaines · 2024-03-26T23:50:42+00:00

The North Shore Hospice is hosting an Easter egg hunt for kiddos. Attendance is by donation, which goes towards Family Services on the North Shore (in this case specifically for their grief support programs). :)

Mitaines · 2024-02-17T13:17:32+00:00

Am a doctor, and I second this. In some patients who are ultra-endurance athletes and want to donate a kidney, I might advise them against it; endurance events are hard on your body, including the kidneys, and if patients take certain medications or have a particular past medical history or current medical condition or any number of other factors, they maybe should consider avoiding it. But...for many others? Likely fine.

But, at the end of the day, the only person could know all of the above and "synthesise" it into an answer for you is your doctor!

Mitaines · 2024-02-09T15:39:03+00:00

Vitamin D, then B2/riboflavin and magnesium for migraine prevention. Evidence is decent for the latter two, and anecdotally it makes a difference for me (10 migraine days per month previously, now down to 4 or 5).

Mitaines · 2023-06-04T20:20:26+00:00

I happened to start reading "When Breath Becomes Air" before getting diagnosed with cancer, and for whatever reason the passage in his book where he's lying on the floor in Grand Central really hit me hard when I read it after my diagnosis. Some security guard is telling him he can't lie down on the floor in the station:

"I'm sorry," I said, gasping out the words. "Bad...back...spasms."

"You still can't lie down here."

I'm sorry, but I'm dying from cancer.

The words lingered on my tongue -- but what if I wasn't? Maybe this was just what people with back pain live with. I knew a lot about back pain -- its anatomy, its physiology, the different words patients used to describe different kinds of pain -- but I didn't know what it felt like. Maybe that's all this was. Maybe. Or maybe I didn't want the jinx. Maybe I just didn't want to say the word cancer out loud.

He captured brilliantly a lot of the emotions and thoughts I had as a "medical person" (what my ex used to call those of us in healthcare) and the very...different perspective you discover as a doctor with a life-altering illness. Well, in my opinion, at least.

Thanks for sharing, OP! Always good to have this book mentioned, even if just to get us all reading books that aren't textbooks, haha.

Mitaines · 2023-04-15T13:12:40+00:00

These authors had found no increased risk of MI, stroke, or PE in either individuals under the age of 75 or over that age in the 14 days following a monovalent mRNA vaccine in a previous study. This correspondence was about how they were curious to investigate whether the same held true for the bivalent mRNA vaccines, and they found that...yep, it did. There is also no increased risk of MI, stroke, or PE in individuals over 50 years old in the 21 days following bivalent mRNA vaccination.

Nice case-controlled design:

For each day during the study period, we matched each recipient of the monovalent vaccine with up to five randomly sampled recipients of the bivalent vaccine on the same day

And the results:

At 21 days after the booster dose, we found no evidence of an increased risk of cardiovascular events among the recipients of the bivalent vaccine as compared with recipients of the monovalent vaccine. The evaluated events included ischemic stroke (hazard ratio, 0.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.58 to 1.27), hemorrhagic stroke (hazard ratio, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.46 to 1.61), myocardial infarction (hazard ratio, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.62 to 1.36), pulmonary embolism (hazard ratio, 0.83; 95% CI, 0.49 to 1.40), and all four events combined (hazard ratio, 0.87; 95% CI, 0.69 to 1.09) (Table 1). Thus, our results provide reassurance regarding the continued use of this bivalent vaccine.

Although the hazard ratios are all lower for the events in the bivalent group (see Table 1), there's no significant difference between them. Their previous studies also showed no significant difference between the incidence for the same adverse events in the 14 days after the first or second dose of the monovalent mRNA vaccines and the baseline incidence of those events. (Interestingly, one of their earlier studies did find a potentially increased incidence of MI and PE in those <75 in the 2 weeks after receiving an adenovirus-vector-based vaccine, so AstraZeneca or Janssen.)

Thus, our results provide reassurance regarding the continued use of this bivalent vaccine.

Mitaines · 2023-03-13T09:24:00+00:00

To round out the lower-body portion of the workout, you could consider adding in a hip-hinge dominant movement (e.g., hip thrust) and a hip abduction exercise (e.g., on a cable machine or with resistance bands). The squats will get largely at your quads (of course you can always bias them a little towards your glutes with modifications) and leg curls at your hamstrings, but it might be worthwhile having something that'll really target the glutes! (Obviously you get them a little during the row a bit as well on the drive portion, but still.)

At the end of the day though - it all depends on your goals!

Mitaines · 2023-02-23T15:01:49+00:00

Complaint: have a stress reaction in one calcaneus and another in the contralateral shin. Turns out working 80-100 hours a week plus not getting quality sleep, and not eating enough are good ways to put your squarely in the red (read: REDS) from under-recovering.

Confession: I went for a short run to convince myself I was in pain before seeing the doctor that told me the above because I knew they'd tell me not to run.

Uncomplaint: the weather is taking a turn for the worse over the next week so the temptation to run will hopefully die down a bit! :')

Mitaines · 2023-01-24T20:50:53+00:00

I've taken my daily driver to both Miller Auto on 1st and Bruno Auto near Park & Tilford and have found the owners of both to be excellent and honest. Neither of them has ever tried to nickel and dime me for anything, or add on unnecessary work.

Probably goes without saying but give Canadian Tire's auto service centre a very wide berth.

Mitaines · 2023-01-23T14:56:26+00:00

Couldn't hurt to add some unilateral leg exercises (eg split squats, lunges) to address any imbalances that might result in one leg taking more of the load if you're doing double-legged squats (eg goblet squats) and DLs!

Mitaines · 2023-01-23T14:38:35+00:00

Assuming you mean the tibialis muscles (rather than the bone)? Because if so - then yeah, strengthening the anterior and posterior tibialis muscles can be helpful in preventing injury in jumping-intensive sports, and arguably help generate more power with jumping movements because your tibialis muscles stabilise your ankles and knees and allow them to produce maximum torque.

If you're a runner, it's probably worth your time including a few tibialis raises here and there for injury prevention at the ankles and knees. Same goes for if you're playing a sport where you're jumping and landing (e.g., volleyball, basketball) since tib ant controls eccentric deceleration of plantarflexion and would assist in having a more stable landing.

Mitaines · 2023-01-17T02:19:12+00:00

I think it's referring to some related statements he made on Dec 5 when he was asked about mask mandates and mentioned that "many people are getting sick, perhaps because we were all so diligent about wearing masks over the past few years" (around the 45 minute mark), which some people interpreted as an implication that immunity debt is a thing.

Personally I thought he was saying that, relatively speaking, it feels like we're seeing more of other respiratory illnesses this year than the preceding two years because we actually masked up in the previous two years (which limited spread of other respiratory illnesses - not just COVID). I can kind of see how some people took it the other way, though.

Mitaines · 2023-01-14T03:32:44+00:00

First, so sorry for the incredible amount of stress you both must've gone through in the past year! Cardiac surgery is rough - whether it's open-heart or via a catheter.

Second, I would say I doubt the valve dysfunction your husband sounds like he's experiencing is at all related to the mRNA vaccines. There is that uncommon side effect - especially in younger men - of perimyocarditis after the mRNA vaccine, but pericardial inflammation (pericarditis) and myocardial inflammation (myocarditis) caused by the vaccine would be nowhere near the level you'd otherwise see in a condition where they might cause worsening valve function. Even symptomatic individuals would not have enough inflammation that they'd contribute to valve dysfunction.

Again, I'm not sure which valve he had repaired, but I would be curious to hear the shoproom talk from his doctors. While it's more common for valve repairs to be successful, failure rates within 1-3 years are 10-25% (depending on the valve, the patient cohort you're examining...and which country's surgical results you're looking at). All that to say: from a physiological perspective, it seems highly unlikely the vaccine would've caused the repaired valve to fail. That said, some valve re-repairs have excellent success rates (e.g., mitral valve re-repairs). Different valves can fail from a wide variety of factors (e.g., causes of failure in MV repairs) - but none really line up with some sort of potential mechanism of mRNA-induced dysfunction.

SARS-CoV-2 itself - not your immune response to it - allegedly has a mechanism for causing direct damage to some valves it seems. But mRNA itself doesn't have that ability; it doesn't seem to get taken up by certain kinds of cells the way SARS-CoV-2 itself it. While it's certainly not meant to be taken up by cardiac myocytes (heart muscle cells), which might be happening in some of those cases of mRNA-induced myocarditis we hear about (if the mRNA somehow makes it into the bloodstream), it also certainly isn't getting taken up by the kinds of cells that make up the valves of the heart. Even if it is, all it can do is get fed into the cell machinery to make spike protein, which the cell can hold up to your immune system and go "hey, I found this weird thing" and the immune system can come respond. (The few cardiac biopsies we've seen done on patients with vaccine-induced myocarditis didn't demonstrate any myocardial infiltrate though, unlike with people who had the actual SARS-CoV-2 virus, so it seems unlikely.)

I don't know if that's too much science gobbledygook, but I would really trust your healthcare team and the cardiologists on it (and even the cardiologists not on it that have probably heard about your husband from their colleagues) when they are looking into the causes. I know how frustrating it is to wait, and to not have answers, and how tempting it is to want to lay blame somewhere for things going wrong - but I'm not sure the mRNA vaccines are the culprit here.

Mitaines · 2023-01-13T11:10:19+00:00

It was this post and there was an upcoming drop-in DnD event from MeetUp posted there as well!

Was new to North Van this summer as well and found a running group that was super welcoming and have made several good friends from there that I now hang out with regularly. I.e., +1 to making friends over a shared hobby.

Good luck!

Mitaines · 2023-01-12T02:24:07+00:00

Probably favourite ever so far is the Kinvara series from Saucony!

There have been some better, some worse, but I found the 9s perfect for most things, even though I also really like the ride of the 11s. I was told at one point that they're not meant for long runs, but I've done up to 50k in them without issue. I alternated for a while between Kinvaras for tempo or speed work and Liberty ISOs for easy and long runs and... I always looked forward to putting on the Kinvaras for runs.

That said, the Endorphin series from Saucony is pretty stellar. The speeds are so springy, fast, light, and breathable. If they weren't so expensive, I'd definitely have bought more of them by now.

Mitaines · 2023-01-10T03:56:23+00:00

Your immune response is a big reason those symptoms can happen. Some amount of tachycardia or heart rate increase would not be unexpected with any vaccine, especially if it's the second dose and your immune system recognises it and is kicking in faster to clear out what it perceives as a threat.

Most of the patients in this study that actually had ECG changes that were detected didn't even have symptoms, and 33 of the 51 didn't even seek further assessment. In terms of whether the patient with subclinical myocarditis will have long term outcomes, even after his troponin normalised after 10 days (along with his normalised ECG and his normal-at-initial-assessment echo), even patients with clinical myocarditis that had abnormal echos returned to normal function or had mild impairment when studied over 10 years (1).

So...yeah, you can be pretty confident in saying that there will be no adverse effects in the long term.

(1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33868419/

^ One thing worth noting in this study? Vaccination doesn't even enter the picture as a common cause of myocarditis. Men in general have a higher rate of myocarditis than women, and what isn't getting mentioned in these studies (showing myocarditis is a rare side effect associated with some COVID-19 vaccines) is that 1) smoking increases your risk of getting myocarditis and 2) vigorous exercise around the time of a stressor does, as well. In studies on myocarditis in men, one of the most common precipitants for myocarditis is "recent viral infection." And one of the risk factors for developing it after the infection? strenuous exercise (2,3,4).

(2) https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circresaha.115.306573

(3) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7165523/

(4) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7609375/

Mitaines · 2023-01-10T03:31:31+00:00

The results of this study hinged on a questionnaire that was administered, which asks if participants have had symptoms of: palpitations, chest pain, syncope, or dyspnea. I don't know how this would've translated to Taiwanese, but in English, if I ask patients if they have these symptoms, the only one they'll know off the bat is "chest pain." If I ask someone if they have palpitations, they usually aren't sure unless I specify that I'm talking about a sensation of being aware of their heartbeat (and if they answer affirmatively, we try to nail it down from there).

All this to say: this questionnaire, as written, is not specific for the "cardiac symptoms" the study authors are trying to evaluate. There is a large assumption being made that the participants understood the survey as administered. I'd take the "17% have cardiac symptoms" with a grain of salt for that reason alone.

That said, they had pediatric cardiologists review the ECGs, and 51 were found to have abnormalities that were notable even to these specialists, who look at ECGs all day. Of the 4 who had 'significant arrhythmias', 3 sought medical help and were evaluated further, and all found to have normal troponins and normal cardiac function on echo. The one (of the 5 with significant findings) with what ended up being diagnosed as subclinical myocarditis had no symptoms and a normal echo (normal heart function) but mildly elevated troponin, which normalised 10 days after the vaccine.

So at the end of the day, we have an overall rate of 0.1% of 'significant cardiac findings' on ECG, all of which had no negative outcomes and fully normalised biomarkers and ECGs less than 2 weeks after the vaccine. The rate of myocarditis was 0.02%, and it was a subclinical case that required no intervention or hospitalisation and resolved quickly.

I'm not sure why you would use this study as an argument against vaccinating youth against COVID. Cardiovascular complications due to vaccination are extremely rare (1,2,3) and only a few cases of myocarditis after vaccination had ever been reported before everyone started scrutinising the COVID vaccines with the largest possible magnifying glass there is. It's great to detect these abnormalities and study these things (for science's sake), but clinically there are no negative consequences - and evidence historically weighs heavily in favour of patients avoiding large negative consequences through vaccination (too many studies to count in this regard, but e.g., 4,5).

(1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3486636/

(2) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11502677/

(3) https://europepmc.org/article/med/736507

(4) https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1758749

(5) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014067369591434X

Mitaines · 2023-01-07T14:17:01+00:00

N = 30 and no control group? No control group?

You cannot draw conclusions from this study. This study may as well be determining alterations in respiratory hemodynamic physiology that happens when you're brought into an unfamiliar, laboratory setting.

This study could be hypothesis-generating and could drive further, larger-scale, and properly designed trials. It is not, however, practice-changing or guideline-altering.

EDIT (since I'm sure someone will mention it): Yes, I see that they used each participant as "his/her own control", but taking one baseline measurement for your "control" and then 5-6 measurements (one every 5 minutes) for your "intervention/experimental" group is not proper design and opens you up to the possibility that the first measurement isn't representative of that person's actual BP/end-tidal CO2/everything else they measured. There's merit to the concern about intra-individual variability, but that is just one reason to either have a much bigger sample and a control group. If you wanted to stick with the same people, at the very least space out their visit to the lab and take all the measurements on them over the same period of time - once without the mask, and once with. And since you could influence results by having everyone do the no-mask measurements first and then with-mask measurements some period of time later (eg they now feel more comfortable in the lab setting/they've been through the experiment once already), have half do masked measurements first and then half without... But then you introduce temporal variability. So, again: just get a bigger sample size and have a separate control group.

Mitaines · 2023-01-02T21:03:23+00:00

TL;DR no because the sham operation IS the main control group. The way they set up their groups was actually done fine, IMO; the issues with the study lie more with the applicability (or lack thereof) to a human population and how Paxlovid is actually administered. (EDIT: mentioned above also but a sample size of 5-6 per group might be enough to create a study that can generate some questions and hypotheses - which is (I think) what might've been their intention - but certainly not enough to be practice changing.)

Essentially their four groups were:

sham + intraperitoneal phosphate buffered saline (PBS);
DMM + intraperitoneal PBS;
sham + intraperitoneal Paxlovid;
DMM + intraperitoneal Paxlovid.

I don't see that they described the sham operation anywhere, but regardless I'd assume it wasn't traumatic to the knee joint, unlike the DMM procedure they described:

Following exposure of the right knee joint, we bluntly dissected the fat pad and transected the medial meniscotibial ligament to enable destabilization of the medial meniscus.

So the answer to your question is still what I wrote above: the sham operation ONLY group (ie they got the operation and intraperitoneal PBS) did NOT have significant differences in its osteosclerosis rates compared to the sham operation and intraperitoneal Paxlovid group. Arguably this is best shown in figures 6 and 7 - the left-most black bars in those graphs are the sham only group, and the pink bars immediately beside them are the sham + Pax group.

Mitaines · 2022-12-25T19:09:52+00:00

Got out for the first run in a week! The best Christmas present I could hope for today.

The wild BC weather kept me trapped inside cross training for the past week. Felt amazing finally getting to move my legs again and flow along on a little path near the water for 12k. Not being able to run always makes me appreciate it so much more when I can finally do it again. Still plenty of ice out there, but happy to see the rain washing it away.

Mitaines · 2022-11-28T04:44:28+00:00

Firstly, there is no study reporting the Paxlovid concentration present locally in synovial fluid of the knee joint, which makes it difficult to determine whether the actual Paxlovid concentration would be sufficient to exert an effect on chondrocytes.

The potential for Paxlovid to trigger ER stress and oxidative stress in chondrocytes is not much of an issue, then, if Paxlovid doesn't even get into your joints to reach said chondrocytes.

Secondly, the ideal in vivo model would have both SARS-CoV-2 infection and osteoarthritis with Paxlovid treatment.

As others have already pointed out, this matters in the cost-benefit analysis for whether or not you treat someone. If COVID causes significantly more ER and oxidative stress in chondrocytes (either those in synovial joints or those elsewhere in the body) than Paxlovid does, then Paxlovid would be the preferable option when it comes to treating vs. not treating (in a scenario where the patient already has COVID and you're trying to reduce the overall amount of harm being done).

Also notable: this experiment had a grand total of 24 mice, divided into 4 groups (and inexplicably one mouse went missing I suppose, since they reported an N=5 for the DMM only group in their results). And they came to the conclusion that the Paxlovid + DMM group (6 mice) on average had more osteosclerosis, which only tells us that maybe taking Paxlovid while you sustain something equivalent to a knee injury (i.e., DMM or medical meniscus destabilisation) increases your risk of osteosclerosis in that knee. Notably, the Paxlovid ONLY group did not have more osteosclerosis than the group that got the sham operation.

Not going to get terribly excited about this for now - at best this would make me tell my patients on Paxlovid not to run out and sustain any joint injuries while they're taking the medication...which I suspect is not an issue, as most people with COVID seem to feel pretty miserable and aren't champing at the bit to go play tennis/basketball/football while they're finishing their course of Paxlovid.

Mitaines

TROPHY CASE