Reflections on a sedentary lifestyle

Finishing a triathlon, Kansas City, Missouri, ca. 2003

Odd title for a post, wouldn't you say?  Especially from someone like me who enjoys running marathons, triathlons, and so forth, right?

That was the old me.  Let me tell you about the new me.

This post was catalyzed by a little 23 minute jog I went on this morning, my first run in quite some time.

How long had it been?

This topic has been simmering in my head for some time now, really since about mid-November, my last run (!) prior to my little jog this morning.

I don't really have a god excuse for being so lazy, it just kind of...happened.

I didn't feel good about it, far from it.  I felt constantly tired and irritable.  I ate whatever and drank a lot of coffee.

One day while classes were still in session, bored during a seminar, I decided to write up a draft chronology of how I got to this point (i.e. not exercising).  It was hard for me to figure out, I mean, for such a long time (over 15 years, since before I joined the Marines in 1994) I was all about being physically fit.  I even chose exercise science as a major in college because exercise and fitness was so my thing!

So if this can happen to me (becoming sedentary), it really can happen to anyone!

You really wouldn't be able to tell that I wasn't working out by looking at me, though -  it's not like I am sporting a big beer gut or something.  I'm still "skinny" - probably too much so. (I haven't stepped on a scale lately, so I don't know how much I weigh.)

See, what happens to me when I don't work out is that I get "soft" - muscle atrophy.  I can really tell that I have lost a lot of muscle tone.  There just isn't nearly as much muscle under the skin.  It's sad, really.

Anyhow, here's what I discovered about what led me to where I am at....

It all started in late 2006 - early 2007.  This was the time I was deployed to the Philippines.  I was working some really long hours and was finding it very hard to get much exercise in.  When I got back to Hawaii, I tried to start running again like I had been before the deployment, I discovered that I was having some Achilles tendinitis.  No way to really fix that besides rest, so I rested, even though it was the last thing I wanted to be doing.  I wanted to be running!

In mid-2007, I started another high-demand work position, which allowed only a little time for exercise.  I didn't run much in 2007.  In early 2008, I decided enough was enough - I couldn't handle not running anymore and I gradually started getting back into it.  I ran a couple triathlons in Hawaii that spring, and even entered and completed the Honu Ironman 70.3 Half Ironman race on the Big Island that June.  It felt to me as  though I had bested the Achilles tendinitis and that I was "back in the saddle."  In fact, that was my last triathlon (at least to date - possibly forever).

When I left Hawaii, it was for yet another time-intensive assignment - learning Chinese.  From July 2008 - July 2009, this was my full-time job.  I decided to curtail running triathlons while near the cold waters of California's Central Coast, with an eye on resuming training for races a bit later, like after getting to Taiwan (I learned that I was going to be assigned to Taiwan in spring 2008).  I really wanted to take advantage of my location in Taiwan as a "jumping off point" to run some of the cool-sounding long-course triathlons in the region, especially the Ironman China race.

While spending most of my time studying Chinese, I managed to pack in training for a half marathon in the fall of 2008 and then a full marathon, my fifth, in spring 2009.  The training I did for the spring 2009 marathon was, up until the last month prior to the event, when I sustained a slight knee injury during a long training run, the best of any marathon preparation I have ever conducted.  I felt like I was running well again, for the first time in a long time.  The marathon itself was a hard one and I planned to take a full month off from running afterwards.

The problem was that I was never really able to get back at it again.  In early June, I attended a training course in Virginia at which I sustained a painful (although not serious) soft tissue injury to my left knee.  I was unable to run again in California, and the time demands of the language training did not decrease, all the way until the end of the 13-month course in late July 2009.

This was followed by home leave and making the international move to Taiwan.  Once in Taiwan, I began a very gradual conditioning program to try to get back into running.  How gradual?  I started off in August only by walking.  Pretty sad for a guy that less than 6 months before was conducting 20 mile training runs most weekends.

I got on a decent roll for training in September and started to think that I might be able to train back up for racing.  I wasn't far into the school semester, which started in the middle of the month, before I realized that I was in trouble, though.  I did not anticipate that the demands of graduate school here would be essentially equivalent to the workload I sustained for over a year in California.  Bummer.

My workout frequency fell dramatically in October and November, and was completely absent in December and January.  This was a tough period for me - I don't really feel well when I don't work out.  I am irritable and don't think very clearly.  I tried to counteract this by drinking more and more coffee.  This method is a poor substitute for actual energy and vigor.

I had to run a Marine combat fitness test (an annual requirement) in December and it was a lot harder for me than it should have been.  I passed, but my average performance left me extraordinarily drained.  When I ran it, it had been a month since the last time I worked out.

I face another fitness test sometime in the first half of 2010.  Unless I can create some consistency in my workouts starting now, I fear that my performance on this test will be even more sub par.

The problem is this: I have less than a week until my next semester at school starts, so the brief respite (and extra time I have for working out) will soon end.

And there will soon be a new baby in the house.

Time to get tough on my schedule - I just have to get it all done.  I have to have time for a workout most days, I have to make it a priority, otherwise I will spiral back down where I was at before (a place that I, a single workout into my "comeback," am still too close to for comfort).

Being physically fit is a huge part of who I am, and I really feel less than whole when my fitness level is low (like now).

Right now, my goal is just to keep the workouts coming, not going for long stretches without doing something physical, bending but not breaking if I miss a planned workout, etc.  Then perhaps I can look at doing some races - maybe not the Ironman China race I had hoped for (held in March each year), but Kaohsiung hosts a marathon (Feb 28 this year - could run it next spring) and there are various triathlons held in Taiwan throughout the year.  Start small...

GJS

Grades are in

My first semester grades came in the mail today.  I will be allowed to continue my studies (I passed all my classes).  I was pretty sure that in three out of four of my classes, I had nothing to worry about, but in the fourth one - Philosophy of the Social Sciences - I was in the proverbial "hurt locker" all semester long.  Let me tell you why.

First, philosophy seems to be the bane of my existence.  This class was just the second I have ever taken in the topic area (the first was some 10 years ago, when I was in my first semester engaged in full-time studies after leaving the Marine Corps), and I felt even more confused this time around - the class was taught in Chinese.

Then, there were but two opportunities to earn grades in the class - an in-class presentation and a term paper.  For the presentation, you would read a book or article and basically present a summary of the material in class, along with your own thoughts on the topics covered (if any).  The readings were almost all in English, but because of the topic (philosophy), they may as well have been in Chinese, or maybe Dutch - I believe philosophers purposely try to write things in the most convoluted way possible.  When it was my turn to present, I did my best to do so in Chinese, as that it was a Chinese-taught class, and I took up almost an hour of the class in doing so (I still feel sorry for the students and professor that had to sit through that hour - they will never, ever be able to get that hour of their life back, and they are almost certainly now all stupider for having endured my incessant prattling).  All in all, I thought it went OK - certainly plenty of room for improvement, but in all not too bad.  This presentation comprised some portion of the final grade (perhaps 50%?).

Then there was the final paper.  We were to choose a topic from those covered in the semester and write.  I believe my requirement was 3000 words, in English - no sweat, length-wise.  Topic-wise, problem.  There really was little of interest to me covered during the semester, so I went with the very tiny bit that I did find interesting, a two-chapter discussion of the effects of capitalism and the industrial revolution on the social sciences (focused on the university system in Germany) and the Americanization of the social sciences (how the German university model was transplanted to the US by exchange students and then came to be the model for the world).  Really, these chapters were more like history than philosophy, which is probably why I found them a little bit interesting.

But I couldn't resist adding a few anti-philosophy barbs at the beginning of the paper:

Taking this class has been a huge challenge for me. My background related to philosophy is spotty at best: I have taken but a single philosophy course in my life prior to this one, an introductory philosophy course during my first year as an undergraduate, some 10 years ago, and I found that course to be uninteresting and confusing. Bluntly, I found this course to be much the same, even though I tried to approach it with an open mind. At a basic level, the material itself does not have a lot to offer to the concrete-sequential mind. I come away from the semester with my impression reinforced that philosophy and the history of thought is an unproductive field of study, massively disconnected from the real world, utterly focused on endless consideration of topics that mainly have little utility outside the classroom.

Nonetheless, the task at hand is to produce a term paper that covers something related to this semester’s studies. While my shelf groans under the weight of the course’s assigned readings, I found little in them that resonated with me. The sole exception will be the topic of this paper: part II in Manicas (1987: 191-237), covering the modern social sciences.

I guess I can't be too disappointed with my passing grade when this was the introduction to my parting work in the class.


Not sure yet what I will be taking next semester, but I am fairly sure that it will not be a philosophy class (this one was required).


GJS