Tag: exercise

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fitness for fat nerds

Losing another exercise

I think I might have to give up running pretty soon, for probably at least 7 or 8 months. I’m going to try to hold on until the Zombies, Run! virtual race because goddammit, that’s what I’ve been training for since November (10K or bust), but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep going much after. And for once it’s not because some new part of my body is attempting to fall off or explode. It’s because it’s too fucking hot. Or not even too fucking hot, just too fucking humid.

I used to say that I don’t deal well with heat, but no, I’m pretty sure I do okay with heat, it’s the humidity I can’t handle. I’ve had less miserable runs when it was 95F in Denver than when it’s 75F in Houston. Dizziness and vomiting when I’m barely doing 11 minute miles is some ridiculous bullshit, right there.

I feel like little by little, Houston is eating all of my options. I’ve basically given up on biking at this point, after a member of my peloton got hit by a car and killed on his way to a ride, and after having two extremely terrifying close calls of my own with Houston drivers. I can’t long distance on my own safely, and I haven’t been able to get up early enough for a group ride in forever, because at this point I’ve basically cut my candle in half so I can burn four ends at once. I’ve had to put my weightlifting on hold because I started having that awful, grinding sensation in my left shoulder, the one that makes me think I should really go ask the doctor to do a CAT scan of it, but I don’t really want to know what the answer will be and I don’t want to face another endless series of random doctor bills that my insurance doesn’t happen to cover.

What I learned when I started my grand project of losing weight and getting fit years ago was that the only way for me to make this work was to find ways to change my life I could live with on the very long term. That’s why I don’t believe in giving up specific foods or shit like that. And with exercise, it has to be something I can keep happily doing until some body part fails and I have to move on to the next thing. I don’t hate myself enough to effectively punish myself for hours at a time, multiple evenings a week. Life’s too short for that.

So no, running on a treadmill is not an option. I get so goddamn bored that five minutes stretches to a subjective hour, and all I can think is how much I hate exercising and would rather do anything else. Mountain biking isn’t an option, I don’t enjoy it.

I have to figure out what to do next. Going to have to find something indoors because I can barely handle the temperatures already and it’s only March–what the fuck is July even going to be like? Maybe dance lessons again. I had to give up on tap for a while because of my fucked up toe, but surgery has supposedly corrected that and I’ve been running okay on it for months. Maybe there’s a facility with a climbing wall around and I can finally learn how to do that. I hear if you do it right, you mostly use your legs anyway, so my pathetic level of upper body strength won’t kill me. Haven’t found any non-McDojos in my area, though, I’m very sorry to say.

What I’m most worried about is that I won’t find anything I like doing at all. Maybe I can float by on spinning and walking on a treadmill because at least that way I can pass the time by reading, but neither of those are as good as the real thing. But the other reason this is beyond important to me, running 3-4 times a week and walking 3+ miles every day, is since I started doing this, I haven’t had any more major problems with my lower back. So if I suddenly can’t do much walking any more because it’s Too Fucking Hot And I Want To Vomit Then Die, are my back problems going to return?

It’s kind of stupid, because I never thought of myself as an outdoorsy person. I grew up in Colorado, but I never much cared for camping and I have an aversion to dirt that’s downright hilarious in a geologist. But I get somewhere where suddenly I can’t just hop on my bicycle and ride downtown from my front door in about an hour, on paved, safe bike trails the whole way, or somewhere I can’t just go take a walk whenever I want without wanting to die from the sticky heat or worry about getting hit by a car, and I realize that yeah. I spent a lot of time outdoors. Way more than I ever realized, and I fucking miss it. You’d never think this much ridiculous urban sprawl could make someone feel suffocated and claustrophobic.

Categories
the human body is made of bullshit things that are hard to write

The hardest part of discipline

So last week, I let a doctor jam a needle into the proximal joint of my big toe. Then pump cortisone into it. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt pain like that. The only reason I didn’t haul off and punch him in the arm was because he was holding a needle. Stuck into my fucking toe.

Today, it actually feels pretty good. I can wiggle the big toe on my left foot. Which is more than I could say this time last week. I’m doing physical therapy exercises now, which means picking up marbles with my toes, after first retrieving those marbles from the far-flung corners where Tengu has put them when I wasn’t looking. That cat loves marbles.

So I guess this another installment in my ongoing series on how the human body is made of flimsy bullshit.

I ended up at the doctor’s office last week because my back has been bothering me off and on since August. The big toe on my left foot has been almost immobile far longer, and I thought I’d have the doctor look at it while I was there. The x-rays on my back came out fine, thanks for asking. My toe, not so much. The joint is badly narrowed and I have extra bone growth, which is a bad thing. This lead to the cortisone shot and the exercises, and hopefully that will work because otherwise I get to look forward to foot surgery in the near future.

Though I guess, having made it through shoulder surgery, foot surgery can’t possibly suck that much.

But it’s also incredibly upsetting. Because I feel like I did this to myself. Over a year ago, I hyperextended my toe pretty badly while I was practicing kung fu. (Which means, by the way, I screwed up when I was practicing, since that isn’t something that should normally happen.) It hurt like a bitch, so I went to the doctor after a week and got told it was a sprain. I just needed to wear one of those immobilizing shoes for three weeks and give it time to heal. But it didn’t heal.

I should have gone back to the doctor when it didn’t stop hurting. But I figured I’d just work through it. The pain steadily got worse, but just a little at a time so I didn’t really notice. Until I started tap lessons.

I should have figured out already that working through the pain when it’s that kind of pain is a stupid move. Look how it turned out with my shoulder, after all. Maybe some day I’ll figure out that these aren’t the kind of problems that can be cured with tenacity.

I’m big into discipline, into making things a habit so you feel weird if you don’t do them. For me, it’s worked for writing, and it’s worked even better with exercise. But with writing, there’s yet to be a time when doing daily wordcount could hurt me. Maybe that day will come. With exercise, though, there are times when exercising can and will hurt you. Exercising injured may sound like a badass thing to do (keep going on your broken leg! win the game!), but it’s not. It’ll likely just get you more hurt. And while I don’t think you get any prizes if you get buried with all of your original parts, you also don’t get any prizes for breaking yourself into non-functioning pieces because you were too damn obstinate to just pause.

One of the hardest emails I’ve sent in recent memory was the one to my tap instructor, when I told her I wouldn’t be able to continue with lessons until my foot was better. Just like when my shoulder blew out, one of the most upsetting conversations I’ve ever had was telling Shifu that I had to drop out of class for a while. Good teachers, good coaches, are always understanding about these things. Good teachers don’t want you to hurt yourself. They understand.

It’s a lot harder to give yourself that kind of understanding. First off, there’s the disappointment of it, but I’ve had my fajitas (and a margarita) now, and I’m over it. It’s more that I’ve never been any kind of fucking athlete. After fighting so hard to be able to run or do kung fu or dance when once upon a time I could barely climb a couple flights of stairs, I’m just so afraid I’m going to lose it. After going so many places and doing so many things powered by sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness, maybe I don’t know how to deal with a problem that I can’t just wear down. I’m lucky I have friends who are willing to tell me over and over again to stop being stupid and rest.

I have to believe in myself, that when I get injured it isn’t the end of the world if I have to stop and rest. That I will recover whatever ground I might lose, or that I’ll be able to find new ground to cover. But that’s the hard part. The scary part. It’s easier to do something than not do something. It’s easier to stay in motion when you’ve been in motion.

And that’s why this is another part of discipline that I have to learn.

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Uncategorized

Forward Momentum

Over my three day weekend, I rode 111 miles on my bike, spread over three days. The second day was 47 miles of pure hell and head winds; by the time I got to day three, I just wanted to sleep late and say fuck it. But I got up and did another 39 miles anyway.

I was told, “I admire your dedication.”

I don’t know. Maybe it’s dedication to a certain extent. I am trying to train up to ride a full century (100 miles) this year – more on that at a later date. But I don’t feel like it was dedication then, or when I drag my tired ass out of my house and to the gym.

It’s fear. I’m afraid of losing my forward momentum.

I do like what I do, most of the time. Otherwise I wouldn’t do it at all. But there are days when I just desperately wish to sit on the couch and watch Hulu. But then fear drives me out of the house. I keep thinking about how easy it is, to skip a day, and then another day, and then suddenly I can’t go up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath again. That’s what I’m afraid of. I’ve struggled so much to get myself rolling at this speed, and I know precisely how easy it is to lose that.

I guess it comes down to Newton’s first law, like will is a physical instead of mental thing. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body at motion tends to stay at motion. I’m terrified of becoming a body at rest again.

Maybe I should start just planning out recovery days.