Kameron Hurley

Fit Test

Well, it’s that time of year again – time for our quarterly fit test at work.

My blood pressure is about the same – still in the good range.

Pushups and situps remained the same – about 50 each.

My only real accomplishment was shaving off those 4 lbs that I’d gained just before the last fit test. I’m not manic about losing weight, but I’m committed to *maintaining* my weight, so I was happy to see that I’d shaved off those plus one, which keeps me at my base line.

I’m telling you – too much WoW and too many flourless peanut butter cookies was enough to tip me over the edge. I like maintaining my weight, if for no other reason than that clothes are expensive.

My measurements may be slightly better as well, but they sounded about the same to me as she read them off. Again: maintenance is good. I’ll be able to compare them when they hand out our assessments next week.

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Well, shit

The pool at the gym is out “until further notice.”

When I inquired at the front desk if the pool was having repairs done or something, he said, “Oh, I have no idea what’s going on with the pool.”

Way to go Urban Active customer service!

You know the one thing gyms could TOTALLY improve on? Their fucking customer service. It never occurred to me before because I’ve never really had to inquire after anything, but today it really hit home.

These people don’t care if you show up. Most of the time they appear to be sneering down at you instead of, you know, being happy and encouraging. Going to the gym should be a fun, invigorating experience. You should feel better afterward. And, generally, I do, provided I don’t interact with the front house staff behind having them barcode me in.

That’s really the trouble. Gyms are always hard sell to get you in the door, but they figure that once they’ve got you locked into a contract, they don’t really have to offer anything anymore. After all, you signed the contract!

Thing is, they don’t realize that people who are locked into contracts at gyms they hate will go rant to all their friends (and all across the internet) about how crappy their gym is, which means you may have one person for a year, but you just lost 5-50 possible memberships (depending on just how much and how irate their rant was).

Come on, people, is it so hard to let your front house staff know why the pool is closed?

Seriously.

And now I’ll be getting really behind on training scheduled – and on my weakest event! Which kind of irritates me a lot, actually.

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Tonight’s Training

Tonight it’s 20 minutes swimming and 25 minutes running.

These are the times at which I start to get a little nervous. I’ll do fine and all, but you start giving me 30 min of an exercise (my first 30 min swim is next week) and 20-30 of something else, and… whew. It’s the anticipation that will cripple you.

So, um, I’m just not thinking about it?

Or thinking about the last 8 weeks?

I may have some hiccups with insulin adjustments next week when the times get longer. I’m just forgiving myself for those now, cause I know that leveling is going to be really frustrating.

Onward and tra la and all that.

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Training Daze

I hurt today from yesterday’s weight training workout with the work trainers… and what did I do today?

25 min run (5 min warmup) followed by a 15 min swim. Came home and ate some baked sweet potato fries (rosemary paremesan!), chicken sausage, and cucumber slices.

I’m tuckered out.

I’m not sure how I’m still doing this. I think it just lends a nice structure and sense of purpose to my days. I feel a lot better, I’m stronger, less fuzzy headed. It gives me some direction.

I like that the swimming time is staying constant for a bit here, too. I don’t think it kicks up to 20 min until next week. It gives me a chance to concentrate on my form, which still sucks. Have I mentioned I sort of have this latent claustrophobia? It’s terrifying when you’re putting the breathing together with the strokes, and you’re going along just fine and then it’s like – BAM – I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe! I’m going to die!

I was fine when I was keeping my head above water, but now that I’m doing proper strokes again – stroke, stroke, breathe – there at the beginning and the middle I lost it a couple of times and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

Oh, yeah, I thought – that claustrophobia thing. Yeah.

See, I went down into the catacombs in Rome? Paris? when I was 17, and I flipped the fuck out. During the same trip, they packed six of us into one of those night train sleeper cars, and I was hysterical sobbing all night long.

I realized then that if I wanted to travel, if I wanted a big adventurous life, I would have to get over the claustrophobia thing.

I think that the secret to facing any fear is knowing that you’re not getting over it, getting past it it, or even overcoming it. You’re just facing it. You sit and acknowledge it and look it over clinically and go, “OK, I recognize what this is. This is a crazy thing. Now that I have acknowledged it and poked at it a bit I am going to move on.”

Then you take some deep, calming breathes and force yourself to think about other things.

This is why I love the fear mantra from Dune, and the “Pain is just a message” mantra from Griffith’s Aud books. You’re not ignoring your fear. I think that’s the misconception that kept me from being able to function before that. I thought that I could just ignore it and it would go away. But that’s not true. It just builds up then. It sneaks up behind you.

You’ve got to face it like a fighter. Hit it head on.

So I acknowledged my crazy swimming claustrophobia and kicked out those last two laps hard and fast. Then I came home and put hydrogen pyroxide in my ears to fend off the tricky infections. My ears don’t like me swimming, tho the new ear plugs sure do help.

And here’s the thing, you know?

This shit is not easy. It’s not pleasant. I’m scared of running. I’m scared of saying I’m doing Triathlon training, because how silly is that? I’m absolutely terrified of failure all the time. But the alternative is not to try. Never to try. And I could use any old excuse to not get to the gym – “Oh, I’m sore from working out yesterday,” “Oh, you know, I have a history of ear infections, I can’t swim,” “Oh, I’ve never been good at running,” “Oh, I’ve never really been an athletic person,” – these are all excuses I’ve used to not do things before. They seem like perfectly valid excuses to me. And they will seem like great excuses again.

But for now… for now…

Sometimes, when your life has calmed down and things are good, you realize you have the strength and courage to do things that paralyzed you before.

Going to Peru? By myself, even with my chosen tour group? Scares the living shit out of me. Publishing books that could totally fail and bomb? Scary shit. My job? The thought of losing my job? Scary shit. But you do it, because the life where you don’t do it is way fucking scarier.

Waaaay fucking scarier.

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Training Tonight

Tonight was 25 minutes jogging followed by 25 minutes biking. I’m starting to up the jogging by .1 miles per session to kick it up a little. I’m only jogging at 4.2 right now, and I think I can get that up to a proper running speed of 6 (::gulp::) in the… um… foreseeable future?

I’ve also realized I can’t follow the original training schedule as written, which is apparently OK so long as I get the time in (hence the biking and jogging in one day). I was supposed to do biking yesterday and jogging today, but doing my Mon/Weds hour and a half training session at work and then *another* session after work is still a little much for me to think about.

As it is, I’m currently working out 6 days a week, one of which is weight training only (my Monday training session at work). I’ve been working really hard to get up to a 5-6 day a week workout schedule, so this makes me pretty happy. I’ll be a little more joyful if I’m still at it in 6 weeks. It’s the consistency that’s key.

So far, my “mix it up with different cardio exercises and a set schedule” thing has worked really well. I’m at nearly three weeks, and I can notice a huge difference in strength, form, and endurance, particularly when it comes to the swimming. That’s definately the event that I’ll show the most improvement on.

And yes, for those curious, I have started training for a Triathlon Sprint. Whether or not I will actually run one (the events they do have are quite a hike from Dayton), has yet to be seen. However, in 12 weeks I should have the *ability* to run one if I can find one.

If nothing else, there should be a duathlon at Kettering Rec. Center near my house sometime in January/February, which is a running/swimming event.

One of the big problems I’ve always had with working out is that it seemed to have no end purpose, no end goal. I need structure and something I’m building toward. Seeing some of the folks at work, who run marathons and half marathons, and, of course, reading this blog made me wonder what I could physically do if I actually applied myself.

I’ve been working my whole life to be a writer, and yeah, it’s fucking tough and it’s still tough every day to keep at it, but it means I do have the drive to accomplish things. I’ve just never applied that drive to anything physical, because I always felt I just didn’t have the body/stamina/inherent whateverness for it. Mainly, I just didn’t have the drive to try it. I’d rather stay home and write.

Now, after that whole almost dying thing, I’ve become a lot more interested in what I can do with my life. And I know my time is not infinite. Better now than… possibly never. You just don’t know what’s going to happen around the next bend.

It’s a part of the big projects I’ve been working on the last year and change. Being better at relationships, getting control of my finances, finding real strength and security in my life. These are really fucking tough things for me, and training for a triathlon is no less tough.

But these are attainable things. Yeah, it’s hard fucking work. Just like writing, you have to do it every day, and you have to plow through the hard stuff, and people will make fun of you and some days you’ll hate yourself, but if I can write books, why can’t I do this? If I can travel around the world, why can’t I run a Triathlon?

If I can keep on breathing, despite having a condition that will kill me within about 12-36 hours of ceasing my medication (being a zombie is my secret superpower!), really, I should be able to do anything.

Also, while I’m at it, I’m going to have a level 70 in WoW.

And learn Arabic.

But anyway, first: novel writing and event training.

Yeah.

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30,000 Steps to Peru

So, as many of you know, we have a health and wellness program here at the day job. It includes two hour and a half long training sessions a week, diet and nutrition advice (should you choose to solicit it), quarterly fitness assessments, and monthly fitness challenges.

It’s all voluntary, of course, and one’s participation does *not* affect one’s health insurance premiums, so I’m all about that (we pay $5 per pay period for our health insurance, have a $100 deductible, and then it’s all expenses paid 100% after that – seriously).

Anyway, this month those of us who wanted to participate got free pedometers and we’re all tracking our steps in a big spreadsheet. Pedometers are incredibly easy to hack (as one work colleague said, “I’m just going to hook mine up to a vibrator.”), but it’s a neat little toy to pass the time with while trekking up and downstairs to the main floor to get some diet Coke (granted, having one more piece of hardware hooked up to me, small as it is, is kind of annoying. I’m glad it’s only for a month).

It’s considered a “team” challenge, so individual results aren’t supposed to matter (as a group, we need to have 5 million steps at the end of the month, and then, like, we all get a free water bottle or something), but it’s interesting seeing what everybody else logs in.

According to the chart:

Less than 5,000 steps a day = Inactive
5,000 – 7,499 = Slightly active
7,500-9,999 = Moderately active
10,000-12,499 = Active
12,499 or more = Very Active

Really, I don’t think this chart goes high enough. Because, you know, I don’t have a car and I work out regualarly, so logging in 10-18,000 steps a day really isn’t all that difficult for me (tonight’s scheduled workout will be just under 10k by itself).

On the other hand, one of our personal trainers is training for a half marathon and is averaging over 30,000 steps a day.

So at least there’s a high bar.

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OK, Srsly

25 minutes running, followed by 15 minutes swimming last night. After my eye appointment. Which meant I didn’t get home until 8:30pm.

Ate some pre-made dinner that I made Sunday, logged into WoW for some weird reason for an hour. Spent two hours alternating ears on my heating pad (I’m going to need to get real earplugs and a swimming cap if I’m going to keep this up).

Woke up at 1am, adjusted my sugar. Woke up at 3:30am with low sugar. Corrected. Still low when I woke up at 5:30am. Puttered around the house wondering why I’m so bloody tired.

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Sunday Swimming

10 minutes of swimming sounds really easy when you see it on your training schedule, especially when you’ve done 20 min jogging followed by 20 min biking twice the week before.

But whoa boy, seriously.

I haven’t done more than the 5 min of lap swimming I did last week since… since… I was about 11 years old and still doing swimming lessons. Biking I do everyday, and I’m not a total stranger to jogging. But lap swimming? Damn.

I subtracted 2 units of insulin from my morning pancakes dose, which I though might be overkill because, hey, 2 units is what I kick off when I’m doing 40 minutes of cardio. But better safe than sorry, right?

I forgot that swimming is a full body exercise, and there’s a reason that Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day.

After clawing through the last of my laps, I came home and tested my sugar, expecting that I would have to do a correction.

Oh, no.

I was a perfect 95.

After only 10 minutes of swimming.

When I get up to 20 minutes I’ll be subtracting *4* units of insulin from breakfast in order to get through it. That’s pretty awesome.

I love that I can judge energy output entirely based on how much or how little insulin I have to shoot myself up with…. heh heh. My life measured in units of insulin.

So: swimming was embarrassingly tough this morning, but I got there, I did it, and the ear plugs made a big difference. As did the moment when my old swimming instructor’s voice came back to me, “Kick kick kick!” and I realized I wasn’t kicking enough. Things went much more smoothly and quickly after that.

I also need to figure out how to rotate instead of just plowing through while horizontal, which is one of the reasons why it’s so fatiguing right now. I’m wasting a lot of movement and losing my balance.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done this, seriously.

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Weekend Training

Working out on weekends is new to me. At least, I haven’t done it since Alaska, when I had a lot of time and very long summer days.

According to the training schedule, Mondays and Fridays are my off days, so today was 20 minutes on the bike and 20 minutes jogging. It’s easy enough now that I’ll be upping my jogging speed, which is cool. It’s fun to be stronger than you thought you were.

Tomorrow is swimming. Let’s get in the full 10 minutes this time, OK? For serious. I’ll also be bringing my ear plugs (the ones I use for when I go shooting, funny enough). I’ve always had trouble with my ears, and just one swimming session was enough to remind me of them. I spent two days shaking water out of my head.

So. Onward.

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Training

Did 20 minutes of jogging followed by 20 minutes on the bike. I skipped the bike yesterday because my weight training session at work was brutal. Not physically brutal, oddly enough, but mentally brutal. That whole almost crying because I had to do three sets of pushup rows and squat jumps thing was pretty demoralizing. I just couldn’t stomach getting back into the gym after that.

But today ended up going really well. The jogging is already getting easier, and this is just my third session. It’s fun to feel myself getting stronger, getting back into that old Chicago jogging mindset. It’s funny to remember that I used to do 3 (and, when I was feeling cranky, 4) miles back then, before I got sick.

I keep trying not to look ahead at the schedule. At the end of week 11 I should top out at 30 minutes swimming (right now I’m thinking: 30 minutes of laps holy jesus), 45 mnutes of running (HAAH AHAH AHAHahah ahaaha ahah um ha umm hrm), and 55 minutes on the bike (now *that* I can do, seeing’s as a bike is my primary mode of transit, and I was commuting an hour and a half to work on a bike [3 hrs a day total] in Chicago for several weeks there at the end).

And now, you know, looking at what I just wrote, it’s funny. I forgot about the jogging 3 miles thing. I forgot about the 14 mile roundtrip bike commutes.

You know what?

I still have it in my head that I’m a totally doughy, unfit geek. Isn’t that funny? I just had this thing in my head that was like, “Well, you’re a doughy person, so this is going to be HARD.” But then I remembered biking to work in 25 degree weather with crashing lake water splashing up at me and a brutal headwind and not being able to feel my fingers while I biked merrily home, and I’m remembering… dude. I can do this stuff. *Sticking* with it will be the challenge. But the actual, physical ability to do it?

Shit, I *have* that. I just need to fucking *do* it.

Like I said: just trying not to look too far ahead. It’s the vertigo that’s the killer, not the fall. It’s the fear of failing that keeps you down, not the physical doing.

I just keep telling myself that.

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