level3's training log: running, bodybuilding, and yoga

[VikingMD]

Shorter fast stride reduces eccentric tibialis anterior firing and concentric gastrocnemius contraction. This is why I suggested that change. Over striding predispose to shin splints and compartment syndrome

 

[level3]

Awesome I'll pay attention to that on my next run!

 

[level3]

Milestone!!!

It was really cold this morning so I decided to just jog on the treadmill, which I've never actually done before. Took 5g taurine an hour beforehand and just ran at a constant 4.5 mph for 42 minutes (about a 5k) with no incline. Basically as controlled as could be. NO PAIN in my calves or lower back (or anywhere else)!! At least, virtually none, probably the same as it was before the cycle. What a relief. It felt great. The first good run I've had since the half marathon. Really wasn't tiring either. I'm sure I could have done a few more miles but didn't want to be foolish and just immediately injure myself.

My weight has stayed down minus 5-6 pounds from my top since I switched to the test prop, despite a couple heavy carb/salt meals. It's only been 4 days so really can't say that was the reason yet, but I'm at least feeling pretty good about the decision so far. OTOH, I am getting the mild edema in my ankles again once I added back in the growth hormone at 3.5iu. So I guess the edema isn't directly connected to the acute compartment syndrome.

4.5 weeks until the half marathon I'm still signed up for. Running the whole thing still seems out of the question, but I'll consider pushing myself on distance for the next couple weeks and seeing if run/walking is within my grasp. Just don't get too greedy.

 

[riggspersonal]

Following. Also curious to see your cystatin c levels. I am seeing elevated cystatin c since introducing growth hormone one month ago.

You mentioned that you're expecting this. Do you have more information I can reference?

Elevated cystatin c on mild cycle

Got my cystatin c back today and it came back relatively elevated at 1.15mg/L. This was very surprising to me for a few different reasons. Here's some more context: - 35/Male/215lbs/14% BF. Healthy, very little pharmaceutical or otherwise drug use throughout life. Very little alcohol...

www.thinksteroids.com

 

[level3]

Following. Also curious to see your cystatin c levels. I am seeing elevated cystatin c since introducing growth hormone one month ago.

You mentioned that you're expecting this. Do you have more information I can reference?

Elevated cystatin c on mild cycle

Got my cystatin c back today and it came back relatively elevated at 1.15mg/L. This was very surprising to me for a few different reasons. Here's some more context: - 35/Male/215lbs/14% BF. Healthy, very little pharmaceutical or otherwise drug use throughout life. Very little alcohol...

www.thinksteroids.com

My 4 week bloods are here: 4 week bloods test/boldenone/HGH cycle, high hs-CRP and I did have slightly elevated cystatin-C. I am a little concerned with it, even though I think its most likely from HGH. My blood pressure has been pretty much perfect for the entire cycle (while taking telmisartan 40mg, cilnidipine 10mg, and nebivolol 5mg - I haven't come off of the BP meds at any point so idk what it would look like without them). I upped my astragalus root to ~15-20g per day (was only taking 1-2g per day before, lol). And I just ordered some Jardiance from PCT24x7. Planning to get Albumin:Creatinine-Protein:Creatinine ratio urine test at my 8 week bloods along with retesting cystatin-C.

I don't have more information beyond what is already in your thread - ChatGPT also looked over my bloods and told me it was probably because of the HGH, based in part on my good BP, how my weight has moved, and how much other blood markers moved apparently being consistent with that story. Kidney health is probably the aspect of AAS harm reduction I understand the least about, so I don't feel comfortable trying to say whether or not I agree with it. I just know keeping BP under 120/70, and taking astragalus root+cilnidipine+jardiance ought to do me some good, and if number go down I'll be happy, lol.

 

[riggspersonal]

My 4 week bloods are here: 4 week bloods test/boldenone/HGH cycle, high hs-CRP and I did have slightly elevated cystatin-C. I am a little concerned with it, even though I think its most likely from HGH. My blood pressure has been pretty much perfect for the entire cycle (while taking telmisartan 40mg, cilnidipine 10mg, and nebivolol 5mg - I haven't come off of the BP meds at any point so idk what it would look like without them). I upped my astragalus root to ~15-20g per day (was only taking 1-2g per day before, lol). And I just ordered some Jardiance from PCT24x7. Planning to get Albumin:Creatinine-Protein:Creatinine ratio urine test at my 8 week bloods along with retesting cystatin-C.

I don't have more information beyond what is already in your thread - ChatGPT also looked over my bloods and told me it was probably because of the HGH, based in part on my good BP, how my weight has moved, and how much other blood markers moved apparently being consistent with that story. Kidney health is probably the aspect of AAS harm reduction I understand the least about, so I don't feel comfortable trying to say whether or not I agree with it. I just know keeping BP under 120/70, and taking astragalus root+cilnidipine+jardiance ought to do me some good, and if number go down I'll be happy, lol.

Thanks for sharing. Sounds relatively consistent with what I've been experiencing and @BabaJagga as well. BP consistently low too. Notably I do take 5mg of tadalafil daily, so I am certain that helps.

FWIW OP, although I don't have a baseline cystatin c prior to starting HGH, I do have all other relevant kidney markers and they were well within range with egfr >115. The only variables that changed from that point to where my cystatin came back at 1.15 was the addition of 2-3iu of HGH and an increase in testosterone to 240mg/week, mild by most standards.

I'm just very, very surprised with how prevalent HGH use is in the PED community that HGH increasing cystatin c hasn't been discussed much, which makes me question that premise altogether.

 

[level3]

Yeah that is a good point, I do not recall ever reading that HGH increased Cystatin-C either. Seems like that would be common knowledge. I have yet to look into any academic literature on it though. I have a copy of Bolus, I will go take a peek in that later today.

 

[BabaJagga]

hey guys, so im not alone. from everything ive read it seems like gh increase jumber of cystatinin c cells or idk how to say it, their number. thats why its elevated. but not everyone has this response, same with igf1 rise (i has very small bump, like 20 units? 270-290+-)

looks like its genetic. i also plan to do urine analysis and retest again. if it will be stable at previous value (cys c) and urine will come clean that its probably okay

one easy way to test it is to remove gh gor few weeks and retest. if there will be decrease in cys c, that its for sure gh

it looks like not many of us respond this way but its possibility. ive read that in patients woth acromegaly syndrome doctors found higher cys c cells but filtration rate or function of kidneys wasnt affected.

 

[level3]

Man I thought I would like pinning every day for Test P at least until the end of the cycle but its already feeling old. I thought it would be like, yeah, doing the thing every day, keeping my mind focused and on the prize. That's one reason I like walking every day.

I think it may have made my estrogen dip a little bit too - libido has taken a small hit since starting on it like a week ago. There could be other factors involved there though.

Main plus, I do think it made a noticeable difference in water retention. My face has been looking pretty angular. Pretty sure I'm the only person who would notice or care though.

Gotta finish up the blend I made at least, though. Got another week and a half or so. I don't have to decide if I want to proceed with my plan to switch entirely to Test P for the rest of the cycle until then.

I've tried just about every injection frequency out there now and I'm pretty sure EOD is what makes me happiest. The high frequency keeps my mind focused, and I look forward to every pin. I suppose I could try my current Test C/Test P/Bold C blend EOD. Its currently 50/50 C/P but I could try like 60/40 or 75/25.

 

[BabaJagga]

Man I thought I would like pinning every day for Test P at least until the end of the cycle but its already feeling old. I thought it would be like, yeah, doing the thing every day, keeping my mind focused and on the prize. That's one reason I like walking every day.

I think it may have made my estrogen dip a little bit too - libido has taken a small hit since starting on it like a week ago. There could be other factors involved there though.

Main plus, I do think it made a noticeable difference in water retention. My face has been looking pretty angular. Pretty sure I'm the only person who would notice or care though.

Gotta finish up the blend I made at least, though. Got another week and a half or so. I don't have to decide if I want to proceed with my plan to switch entirely to Test P for the rest of the cycle until then.

I've tried just about every injection frequency out there now and I'm pretty sure EOD is what makes me happiest. The high frequency keeps my mind focused, and I look forward to every pin. I suppose I could try my current Test C/Test P/Bold C blend EOD. Its currently 50/50 C/P but I could try like 60/40 or 75/25.

ehat was goal/intention with test p in the first place? cause i see no point in poking more holes than needed.

with both test and boldenone C ester, you can pin 2, max 3 times per week and have 0 issues. i dont understand this phenomen of daily injections tbh.

 

[level3]

FUCKKK I'm an idiot. I diluted my E2 Cyp by 4x last week to give more wiggle room for accurate measurements. I went to do my EOD E2 injection this morning and grabbed the vial in the baby wipe warmer and started drawing it and realized before I finished that it was the undiluted vial.

I'm like 50% sure my last injection two days ago was with the undiluted vial now. I rearranged my whole gear chest on Sunday so that's why I'm so uncertain. That's when I would have put the vial in the baby wipe warmer. The day before, I took 20mg dbol because I was pretty sure that the 1mg/wk E2 cyp still had me a bit low but I needed to stay the course to get accurate bloods next week, so I wanted a little boost with methylated E2 that won't show up on the blood test. On the bright side, yes, it seems to have been the case. I've felt pretty good the last couple days. My libido had been low for the last couple weeks, and the last couple days its been back to normal, maybe a bit elevated. On the downside, due to my uncertainty, I won't really know what my E2 test week will mean. So yay, 4 more weeks of doing estrogen by feelz.

Could be worse. Could have injected like a month's worth of estrogen all at once instead of a week's worth. I blame this on the fact that injections are the first thing I do in the morning before I've had my coffee.

 

[atruse]

FUCKKK I'm an idiot. I diluted my E2 Cyp by 4x last week to give more wiggle room for accurate measurements. I went to do my EOD E2 injection this morning and grabbed the vial in the baby wipe warmer and started drawing it and realized before I finished that it was the undiluted vial.

I'm like 50% sure my last injection two days ago was with the undiluted vial now. I rearranged my whole gear chest on Sunday so that's why I'm so uncertain. That's when I would have put the vial in the baby wipe warmer. The day before, I took 20mg dbol because I was pretty sure that the 1mg/wk E2 cyp still had me a bit low but I needed to stay the course to get accurate bloods next week, so I wanted a little boost with methylated E2 that won't show up on the blood test. On the bright side, yes, it seems to have been the case. I've felt pretty good the last couple days. My libido had been low for the last couple weeks, and the last couple days its been back to normal, maybe a bit elevated. On the downside, due to my uncertainty, I won't really know what my E2 test week will mean. So yay, 4 more weeks of doing estrogen by feelz.

Could be worse. Could have injected like a month's worth of estrogen all at once instead of a week's worth. I blame this on the fact that injections are the first thing I do in the morning before I've had my coffee.

So how much e2 did you inject?

I’ve been trying to keep up lol
You did an initial 1mg to get it going, then staying at 1mg/wk since then?
But just accidentally injected way more twice now?
Sounds like you’re feeling good though?

I’m asking cus I’m still bringing my e2 back up, and have been blasting HCG all week, while doubling my e2 and test injections as well, but joints are still a mess.
I’m to sketched to overshoot my e2 by hitting a big e2 injection

 

[level3]

So how much e2 did you inject?

I’ve been trying to keep up lol
You did an initial 1mg to get it going, then staying at 1mg/wk since then?
But just accidentally injected way more twice now?
Sounds like you’re feeling good though?

I’m asking cus I’m still bringing my e2 back up, and have been blasting HCG all week, while doubling my e2 and test injections as well, but joints are still a mess.
I’m to sketched to overshoot my e2 by hitting a big e2 injection

Yeah, I started off with a 1mg injection about 3.5 weeks ago, and have been injecting 0.3mg EOD since then (1.05mg/week). On Sunday I might have injected 4x that, so 1.2mg. This morning I went to do my injection and noticed it was the wrong vial _before_ I did the injection (so the Sunday injection is the only one I'm unsure about). So basically I might have injected a little over a week's worth of extra. Not enough to really worry about, but because I don't know for sure, it means my E2 test next week won't be very informative (unless its lowish, then I can probably assume that I didn't actually inject extra E2 on Sunday).

 

[level3]

Training:

So I've been doing an UL split and on my lighter lower body day I had front squats on my routine since I started a week or two before the cycle. Never did front squats before, and I tried with barbells a few times (really didn't have the wrist flexibility and the straps I tried just seemed awkward too), ended up switching to dumbbells, but still was pushing pathetic weight. A couple weeks ago I decided I was missing too much squat volume and just swapped it right out for 4 sets of 8-10 back squats.

I had been steadily adding 5 sets per week to my routine with the intention of a deload after 6 weeks, and this is week 5 of that cycle. But throwing in that much extra squat volume out of nowhere seems to have pushed me a bit too far. Yesterday was my heavy lower day, with 4 sets of squats followed by deadlifts and 4 sets of RDL (and like a dozen sets of other shit). Since I'm on cycle everything is a PR. Today I've just felt like I got beat up, and I have mild pain in my knees that I've never had before. Went to the gym today anyways despite feeling wrecked and managed 3 crappy sets of heavy OHP before calling it.

Walking around with painful knees, painful elbows, and feeling beat up is no way to go through life. I hear you body, I'm deloading early. The 6 weeks then deload was just a guess anyways based on no data, no need to stick to it religiously. I would have made it if I hadn't pretended that extremely light front squats could just be replaced 1-for-1 with some real squats.

So for the next week or so I'm just gonna focus on rehab and stretching and cardio. I tried out wrist curls for my golfer's elbow today after reading a reddit post where someone said they fucked with theraflex bars for 6 months before trying wrist curls and it went away within 2 weeks ago that. Rhymed with my story - the theraflex bar has done some good but every week has seemed like 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. Pain relief was pretty much immediate, which has not been the case with the theraflex exercises. Also upped the BPC-157/Tb4 dosage from 800mcg/day to 2-2.5mg/day after reading the giant thread here on TB500 (I ordered some TB500 too - had been under the impression that it was basically just a poor man's Tb4 but it seems I was mistaken).

Hoping taking it easy for a bit will allow me to finish out the latter half of my cycle strong and with less pain! Was a hard choice to make but I'm undertrained being only ~7 months back in the gym, and I'm not in my 20's anymore. Backing off for a bit will get me more gains in the long run.

Main question I had is I'm not sure how to eat while deloading during a bulk. Do I cut back to maintenance? Keep plowing forward to make sure I'm fully rested when I get back? Somewhere in between?

 

[riggspersonal]

Training:

So I've been doing an UL split and on my lighter lower body day I had front squats on my routine since I started a week or two before the cycle. Never did front squats before, and I tried with barbells a few times (really didn't have the wrist flexibility and the straps I tried just seemed awkward too), ended up switching to dumbbells, but still was pushing pathetic weight. A couple weeks ago I decided I was missing too much squat volume and just swapped it right out for 4 sets of 8-10 back squats.

I had been steadily adding 5 sets per week to my routine with the intention of a deload after 6 weeks, and this is week 5 of that cycle. But throwing in that much extra squat volume out of nowhere seems to have pushed me a bit too far. Yesterday was my heavy lower day, with 4 sets of squats followed by deadlifts and 4 sets of RDL (and like a dozen sets of other shit). Since I'm on cycle everything is a PR. Today I've just felt like I got beat up, and I have mild pain in my knees that I've never had before. Went to the gym today anyways despite feeling wrecked and managed 3 crappy sets of heavy OHP before calling it.

Walking around with painful knees, painful elbows, and feeling beat up is no way to go through life. I hear you body, I'm deloading early. The 6 weeks then deload was just a guess anyways based on no data, no need to stick to it religiously. I would have made it if I hadn't pretended that extremely light front squats could just be replaced 1-for-1 with some real squats.

So for the next week or so I'm just gonna focus on rehab and stretching and cardio. I tried out wrist curls for my golfer's elbow today after reading a reddit post where someone said they fucked with theraflex bars for 6 months before trying wrist curls and it went away within 2 weeks ago that. Rhymed with my story - the theraflex bar has done some good but every week has seemed like 2 steps forward, 2 steps back. Pain relief was pretty much immediate, which has not been the case with the theraflex exercises. Also upped the BPC-157/Tb4 dosage from 800mcg/day to 2-2.5mg/day after reading the giant thread here on TB500 (I ordered some TB500 too - had been under the impression that it was basically just a poor man's Tb4 but it seems I was mistaken).

Hoping taking it easy for a bit will allow me to finish out the latter half of my cycle strong and with less pain! Was a hard choice to make but I'm undertrained being only ~7 months back in the gym, and I'm not in my 20's anymore. Backing off for a bit will get me more gains in the long run.

Main question I had is I'm not sure how to eat while deloading during a bulk. Do I cut back to maintenance? Keep plowing forward to make sure I'm fully rested when I get back? Somewhere in between?

Had a day like that Monday. Heavy lower body strength day with snatches, paused back squats, split squats + RDL superset and PRd pretty much everything. The day of i was feeling great but the next day I could tell I wrecked my central nervous system.

 

[level3]

I seem to have finally gotten my water weight + edema under control. Weighed in at 194.2 this morning, about +10 pounds from the start of the cycle. I've been up to 203 or 204 several times in the past several weeks. I took off my socks after this morning's cardio and there was no imprint left behind. The imprint had been improving over the last couple weeks but this is the first time I look totally normal.

Must be from some combination of the following:
- Switching from 3.5iu HGH ED to 7iu HGH EOD
- Making the test 50% cypionate 50% propionate
- Increasing water and electrolyte intake. I try to hit 1 gallon/day now, upped magnesium from 200mg/day to 800mg/day, and add a few pinches of salt to my water a few times per day. My potassium was up on my bloods so I haven't been adding that - expected based off the ancillaries I'm taking. I haven't even given a thought to calcium, I feel like I don't really see people on meso mention it much in the context of electrolytes.
- Changed dandelion root from 1.5g 2x per day to 3g 1x per day.

I was supposed to get aldosterone and renin on my bloods next week to see what was causing all the water weight, but that may no longer be necessary. I'm still annoyed by the ED injection with the test prop, so I'm considering dropping it - hoping the other changes were the bigger movers. Plus my training partner and I are flying to The Arnold Fitness Games in early March and I would rather not worry about injections while I'm there.

 

[level3]

Weight down to 193.4 this morning. Seeing the water weight come off is a little distressing tbh, suddenly wondering if I'm eating enough lol. I am getting a DEXA scan on Monday at the 8 week mark to see how much fat I've gained (at least a couple pounds I think) so far and recalibrate my diet from there.

Took it as a sign to try going for a real run, outdoors. Not on the damn treadmill. It was fucking 30 degrees out but I did it anyways, ran 2.5 miles around the city streets belting out Manowar at 8 AM. Felt fucking AWESOME. Wish I could have gone farther but I had to get ready for work. Didn't go to sleep expecting to run so I hadn't set my alarm to give me enough time.

Decided that as much as I hate the daily injections, I gotta stick with changing one variable at a time if I want to fully determine what my initial issue with the acute compartment syndrome, water weight, and edema was. I dropped my HGH from 5iu to 3.5iu after my 4 week blood test and will find out what that did to my IGF-1 next week and I'll likely need to raise it. So I guess I'll be sticking with the Test C/Test P 50/50 blend for the time being.

 

[level3]

I'm thinking about trying Ripptoe's pin firing protocol for golfer's elbow. Doing 20 sets of 2-3 reps of chinups every 4-5 days. Sounds insane but I've been reading about it for the past hour and have yet to find an anecdote of someone saying it didn't work. Lots of people saying they felt like 95% better after day one! And otherwise 2-4 sessions sounds like enough for a lot of people.

I think my golfer's elbow is still somewhat mild - have only had it for ~2 months and day to day pain is 1/10. It sometimes gets to 2-3/10 with some lifts. Combined with the heavy dose of BPC-157 and Tb4 I'm on, I'm hoping this might clear it up fast.

Unfortunately what I suspect is knee tendonitis following my brutal Monday leg day is still affecting me. The pain there is 0 most of the time, 0.5 when sitting in some positions or right when I wake up. So yeah, may have pushed that a bit far, but I haven't done anything to rehab it yet and the severity is so low that I'm guessing just the fact that my leg volume is going low again will be all I need. At least its not affecting running or walking, really mostly just getting out of bed or my giant fucking beanbag.

I'm actually really glad that the way to heal tendonitis is via eccentric loading. Finding that balance is tough, but having to take time off for it would suck way more.

I will admit that the most likely reason I'm dealing with these issues is because I jumped on gear after just six months of training. I knew I was gonna be using gear again the day I started lifting again, and these exact issues are the ones I assumed would come up. Its just one those edge things - you never know where it is until you go over it. Its definitely still been worth it for me, but I want to emphasize this point for any other people in a similar position to me when I started. I at least have the benefit of ~7 years of prior lifting experience but those kids hopping on gear with all the mistakes that youth makes them prone to probably get wrecked (though they also heal a lot better than me, so...)

 

[level3]

got 8 week bloods and DEXA scan this morning






well it looks pretty good. I've only gained 1.3 pounds of fat. the 12.7 pounds of increased lean mass is not gonna be accurate. impossible to say how much of that is temporary water weight thats gonna drop once i come off, but you can tell that thats what probably most of it is since almost all my lean mass gain was in my trunk. if i just arbitrarily guess that without the extra water im at 190, my fat % is only up to 8.3% which is still a lot better than i was expecting. even if i literally gained no lean mass, that puts me at 8.5%. so diet wise, it seems i should just keep doing what im doing. if i only add 3 pounds of fat by the end of the cycle, that means maybe ~6 weeks to cut it once i come off, and i was gonna be pretty happy if i only had to cut for 10 weeks to lose the fat im gaining.

so, AAS wise, i see no reason to change my androgen load at this point. if i increase strength any faster, im gonna be risking more tendon issues. ill consider throwing in an oral later if linear progression stops, but as long as i keep adding 5-10 pounds every week on my compound lifts i see no reason to do it. if my bloods are looking good, i might consider something like 5mg/day of anavar to help with tendons. i may still increase my HGH depending on what my z-score looks like but im not touching anything until bloods come back. unfortunately since i got the fancy estrone test again, that could be over a week. lately labcorp has not been sending partial blood test results. pretty annoying.

diet is pretty on point too, i suppose, despite the fact that im only tracking protein and otherwise just letting the reta allow me to handle what im eating intuitively.

heading to the gym shortly for a deload leg day, followed by the pin firing protocol. have dropped all my anti-inflammatory medications. bring on the pain, let's get these elbows back in shape. knees have felt totally fine today.

8 weeks left in the cycle! lets finish strong and then get shredded!

i did take physique photos over the weekend. will post them later. pretty damn sure i am not really 8% body fat, still guessing im more in the 10-11% range despite what DEXA is saying, but my back is developing pretty nicely.

 

[level3]

i have been weighing myself every morning, which you'd think would help me determine how much water i gained. but because of all the trouble i'd been having with water retention, this graph really doesn't feel like its telling me a whole lot