10/19/2012: Drawing Inspiration from "Why We Run" by Bernd Heinrich

Morning weight:  167.0  Really.  I have weighed exactly the same weight for the last several mornings.  Not even fluctuating a tenth of a pound.  Craziness, I say.  I'm more than ready for a little downward movement on that ol' scale.

This morning's exercise:  Strength training circuit.  Same as Wednesday morning.

Yesterday evening's exercise:  Wii Fit's Biggest Loser game.  8 minute warm up, 18 minute light full body workout, 8 minute cool down.  I decided to do the Wii Fit for my exercise last night because it was cold, windy and wet last night and I just didn't feel like getting back into the car to go to the gym.  I haven't used it in a while, but after doing it last night I think it will be an excellent fall back for my evening exercise this winter.  In addition to the cardio benefit of getting myself moving in the evening, it includes a lot of stretching exercises that I don't normally do.  I think it will be a good addition to my weekly routines through the winter months.

Yesterday's calories:  1425

While surfing the Internet yesterday I came across an article that reminded me to drink plenty of water if I want to lose weight.  Obviously this is not news to me.  On the other hand, when I am super busy at work I tend to forget to drink water.  The article said that it is difficult for your body to burn fat if you are dehydrated.  I always thought of drinking water as a way to keep my body from retaining water, I never considered drinking water as a factor with regards to burning fat.  While I haven't been drinking as much water as I usually do, I certainly wouldn't consider myself dehydrated.  I drink at least 32 ounces of water before I leave for work in the morning, a minimum of another 32 ounces of water while at work, and then at least that much more in the evening.  That's more than the recommended 8 eight ounce glasses a day, even on one of my light water days.  But with my exercise, the recommended 8 eight ounce glasses of water probably isn't enough.  Also, with the exception of my 2 cups of coffee in the morning, water is the only thing I drink.  I don't drink pop, tea, juice or anything else.  Nor do I drink any more coffee once I get to work.  For the next week I am going to focus on drinking more water at work and we'll see if that makes a difference!

Emotionally, I have had a much better week this week than last week.  My two days off from exercise helped my body feel more rested, making my exercise this week more fun.  Work is still super stressful, but I am enjoying it and I am able to leave it at work and not bring it home with me.  I've also been consistent about my evening exercise, which seems to make a difference in my overall mood.  I feel very different after I get home from work and before my evening exercise than I do after my evening exercise.  My after work and before exercise mood is kind of sullen and draggy, and my after exercise and before bedtime mood is much lighter and more cheerful.  That little bit of light exercise in the evening seems to be just enough activity to erase the day's stress and put whatever happened during the day behind me.  I still resist it a little, for some strange reason.  Last night, for instance, a was lying on my bed for a good 20 minutes debating whether I should go for a walk (that's what I really wanted to do, but it was cold, wet, and windy), go for a swim (I wasn't really in the mood to jump in the pool), or use one of the cardio machines at the gym (ugh...really?  Boring and requires driving to the gym).  Finally I remembered my Wii Fit and added that as an option to mull over.  It still took me another 10 minutes to talk myself into that, but once I changed my clothes, worked through the routine and got it done, I felt great!! 

That having to talk myself into exercising last night in spite of the fact that I knew it would be good for me reminds me of a book I just finished reading, "Why We Run," by Bernd Heinrich.  It was slow going at first, a bit of a slog for me to get through the first few chapters; but the more I read the more intensely interested I got in the story.  Heinrich is an ultradistance runner and the book is about his training for and the running of a 100K race.  Yes, 100K, that is 62.2 miles.  It's insane, really, it's totally nuts.  Heinrich is a biologist and used what he learned about various animals' physiologies to create a training regimen for himself.  I learned a lot of amazing facts about a lot of different animals by reading the book and I enjoyed the comparisons Heinrich drew between the other species in the animal kingdom and human beings.  But the sentences in the book that spoke the loudest and truest to me were in the last chapter, the chapter about the race itself.

Somewhere after the halfway point of the race Heinrich says that, "Fatigue to the point of pain is over-whelming other sensations.  My body is screaming at me to stop, and it would always win if it did not have a mind to play tricks with it, boss it around and delude it."

He goes on to explain, "To psych oneself up takes self-delusion.  That's where the use of logic comes in.  Logic is less an instrument for finding truth than a tool that we use to help us justify what our lower emotional centers direct or demand.  Lacking this self delusionary logic, we would be less able to rationalize, and so be unable to succumb to such mad, senseless, crazy things as trying to see how fast one can run 62.2 miles without stopping.  Ultimately, our logic may get wacky enough that we see through our rationalizations, and then they don't make sense anymore.  This almost invariably occurs sometime around halfway through the race, and you ask yourself, Why am I doing this?  Why am I here?  Why?  There is no answer.

" At this point, one needs faith - a combination of ignorance, deliberate blindness, hope, and optimism.  It defies logic yet makes us able to strive and survive.  Maybe it also distinguishes the mind from the computational machine.  It's what made our ancestors chase the antelope on and on till it tired.

Heinrich then quotes another ultra-marathoner: " "To run a good ultra-marathon," the world's best ultra-marathoner, Don Ritchie, has said, "you need a good training background and a suitable mental attitude - i.e., you must be a little crazy."  I had the first.  But the second?  I ask myself:  Is there anyone else in America who might be an even greater lunatic than I, who might push himself harder?  A small voice says, Probably.  So I push again, a little harder.  Am I crazy?  Perhaps.  But I must judge both my and others' ability accurately, maintain absolute integrity to my vision, and be guided strictly by cause and effect, by empirical reality.  As Yogi Berra said about baseball, "It's ninety-percent mental.  The other half is physical." "

Why do these few paragraph's speak to me so profoundly?  Because this use of logic, this use of my brain to over-power the wants of my body, is something that I have to engage in every single day.  By reading those few small paragraphs written by an amazing athlete that competed in a 62.2 mile race I am reminded that I am not alone in having to talk my body into getting up and getting moving every single day.  Everyone has to do that.  Everyone that gets out of bed, gets off the couch, and gets moving is convincing their bodies that this makes sense.  Those first few blocks on a morning run, those first few laps of the pool, those first few miles on my bike; they are always hard.  My body is going from rest, which it really, really likes, to working hard, which it resists.  Why are we doing this again? It asks me.  And the logic has to kick in, my brain has to convince my body that this makes sense, even if it doesn't seem to at the moment.  It is a psychological game that I have to play with myself every single day to get my body to do something that it really doesn't have to do in order to survive the day, the week, the month, or even the year.  The food's in the fridge.  I don't have to chase antelopes.  I can earn the money to buy the food by sitting on my butt all day.  I don't have to chase antelopes.  My body knows that.  Therefore my brain must overpower my body's own inertia if I am going to get up and get moving, day in and day out, day after day after day.  I felt the kindred spirits of athletes and exercisers around the world when I read those paragraphs.  I guess, more than anything, those paragraphs did give me hope and fuel my optimism.  It's OK if I have to talk myself into exercising every morning and talk myself into doing a little more exercise every evening.  That's normal.  I am not stupid or lazy or a non-athlete just because I don't want to jump out of bed and go to the gym.  As long as my mind wins the game and I get up and go, it's fine.  Of course my body would prefer to rest.  Duh.  It takes effort to move and my mind wants to make that effort for reasons that my body cannot comprehend.  My body knows nothing of 30 years from now.  It's not thinking of the mountains that I want to climb when I am 80.  It only knows about today and today it knows that there is plenty of food just a few steps away.  Run?  Why the hell should I run?

I am not as eloquent as Heinrich, but this is so important to me I feel a need to talk about it.  I have been beating myself up for a long time because of the fact that I have to talk myself into exercising almost every single day.  As I lay in bed and argue with myself about getting up to go to the gym, I am at the same time berating myself for not wanting to get up and go to the gym.  I think to myself, "You know you feel better when you exercise, what's wrong with you?  Why don't you want to do this? There must be something fundamentally wrong with you.  Obviously, you'll never be an athlete if you have to talk yourself into this every single day."  Those paragraphs I quoted from the book shot right through the core of that thought pattern and helped me see that there is nothing wrong with me.  In fact, the opposite is true, I am perfectly normal.  I am grateful that my mind's logic has been powerful enough to overcome the natural inertia of my body almost every single day and sometimes twice a day, since February 27th of this year.  My plan is to continue to take advantage of my brain power and, when necessary, draw deeper and go beyond logic, to keep my body moving, even though it doesn't have to chase down it's own fuel, every day for the rest of my life!