Ironically, I don't even have a bad pun for this one

I saw my doctor for the first time in close to a year last week. The last time I had my iron levels and associated parameters checked, I was floating around somewhere in "recovering anemic" territory per most measures, having reached a recent-years low of 11-12 in the boozy summer of 2016.

Living on vodka and bleak thoughts will lead to such things, but one trouble spot I can run into even though I abandoned that poison for good at roughly the same time the current U.S. President was elected is being seduced into the idea that exercise and the avoidance of obvious no-nos is enough by itself to create a healthy physical specimen. This may be true in the low-common-denominator sense, but I can do better than living mainly on water, starch and skim milk in various lazy forms.

That ferritin level could be better, but all in all it appears that my reasonably diligent iron supplementation is doing enough to mostly compensate for whatever bad nutritional habits I have retained, at least in terms of this one element.

When the doc checked my iron in 2018, I asked her to run a testosterone test as well, because I'd never had one and I'm getting old. My basic rationale in both cases was the same: I was half-hoping that some correctable physical problem could account for my less-than-gratifying running results. My T level was 27.7 (normal 14 to 29), so as it happens, not trying as hard as I should in both training and racing can, by itself, lead to subpar performances even when the physiological excuse bag has come up empty.

(Also of minor note, I had a fasting glucose of 62, which is a little low but not unusual for me, and probably reflects my excessive lifelong intake of Splenda and Equal.)