Shopping for health insurance is a confusing experience. There’s a new vocabulary to learn, and it’s not obvious what the most important decisions are. A typical “summary of benefits” for a plan runs nine pages, and comparing it to other plans is difficult. I saw a lot of complexity regarding the types of health care services that are within the scope of a particular health insurance plan, which ones might apply to me and my family, and how much those services cost.
Utah 50k ultra-marathon
Leading up to my first 50k, I read a bunch of books, articles, magazines, and blog posts. Suffering was one common theme. Nausea, lost toenails, emotional rollercoasters, running through pain… I was a little nervous toeing the line to an ultra-marathon, having never run a marathon before.
The first few miles went by smoothly. The altitude was a bit of an issue. I’d been training at sea level in Boston all summer. Park City is at 7,000 feet of elevation, and the race summited at 10,000′. Two and a half hours into the morning, after nine miles of uphill hiking, I got up to ~9,000′. That’s about when my headache started. For the next four hours or so, until I got back down below 8,000′, I had a tradeoff between hiking/running at my target heart rate, or slowing down and decreasing the headache.
