Personal Life Update: Rare Consistency

I joined Cross Country when I was in high school, and was pretty mediocre, at first, but the summer between 9th and 10th grade, I ran laps around my driveway (we lived on what was an old farm, so the driveway consisted of two parallel farm lanes that may have been 1/8 mile in circuit) for 20-30 minutes every/other day. It made enough of a difference that by the spring, I was in such good shape that I decided to take things up a notch. Instead of just running for time, I would time my runs and go for distance. And between the summer after 10th grade, and the end of the Fall season in 12th grade, I managed to run nearly every single day (missing a grand total of 20 or 30 days, perhaps), getting to the point where an average run could easily be a 4-mile or 6-mile jog with the mile-splits between 7:00 and 6:20 minutes. I loved the energy I had as a result, and I want to get back to that. It's only been about 8 years since I fell off my hardcore "run every day" routine, but it looks like I'm finally getting back to it.

Following is a record of my runs (longer than 1 mile at a time -- seriously, if your heart rate isn't at target for more than 5 minutes, it's not worth keeping track of), where splits are separated by commas, and stretches with a walk in between are separated by a colon.

Wednesday, July 29: Run 0520 @ 7:20,7:55,9:35  ; 8:35 Friday, July 31: Run 0525 @ 7:50,8:10,9:30  ; 8:10

Tuesday, August 4: 1mi @ 8:10
Wednesday, August 5: Run 0555 @ 7:52,8:12,9:16  ; 8:15 . Thursday, Aug 6: Run @ 7:45,8:07,9:21 ; 7:52 Friday, Aug 7: Run @ 8:05,8:30,9:45 ; 7:45 Saturday, Aug 8: Run 0535 @ 7:50,7:45,8:50  ; 7:15

Did you see that? ^ I've managed to control my schedule enough that I've run each of the last 4 days in a row  -- did I mention that all of these runs are pre-dawn runs, so that I can escape horse-flies and energy-draining sunlight? I'm so excited :D

My heart rate within the first 30 seconds after any of these runs has tended to be 160 beats per minute. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it's statistically normal for a strenuous workout according to the little chart at the Y.

Some things that are neat for me to note: my first miles are not stellar--but can be, as the July 29 run shows--part of this is that I've been dealing with figuring out how to avoid chafing my heel. Every day a different part of the body feels whiny, but it loosens up after 2 miles, which I find extremely gratifying -- running makes your body feel less achey? Sign me up!

Also, the standard deviations of the individual runs appear to be diminishing, meaning that my performance is getting more consistent per every individual mile, as opposed to getting really good first miles but worse later miles. Compare the 29th with today, for example. There's a 2:10 minute range for my splits on the 29th, and only 1 minute for today's 3-miler. This shows in my enthusiasm for the 4th mile on each day -- it was worse than my first mile on the day I "bit off more than I could chew," but today I had enough oomph in me to run harder on the return mile. Arguably, though, every time I push myself, it improves my ability to do the same work next time. It's just a matter of pounding the pavement, and soon enough I'll be back to breaking the 7-minute barrier without totally gassing myself.

official Phys. Exam bp: 112/70. Good, but can be better! :D. A young woman in my summer class had a blood pressure of 90/45, I kid you not. The professor explained that as long as you're not dizzy, faint, or weak, the lower the better. Such a low blood pressure (she'd been running 4 miles every day and was training for a (half?) marathon) is indicative of an extremely efficient cardiovascular system. The heart doesn't have to work as hard, and the vessels are in such good condition that there's next to zero risk of hypertension or the associated atherosclerosis/blood clots/strokes that come with high blood pressure. I don't know if I can drop down to her level, but it's something to shoot for.

That's where I am in my journey to become hard-core, once again. :)

~ Rak Chazak

I haven't died! (PLU)

Not yet, anyway. After my summer course ended, I've been reviewing various subjects from old textbooks I kept (I never resold a single book at college, figuring there could be some value in the information one day). Then, as my Fall textbooks have been arriving, I went to Staples and grabbed some non-spiral notebooks (so they'll lie flat and not have an irritating ridge in the middle), and I've been going through the early chapters, compiling and condensing the stuff I think I won't remember off the top of my head, and making neat, neat notes out of it.

My Organic Chemistry notebook was done the same way, and I was so thorough and explanatory with it that I've been using it to reteach me, to great success. Organic Chemistry 2, which I have not taken, is a required course for a Chemistry Minor, which I'm going to squeeze in to my course of study. See, because I already have a degree, I don't need to pursue the general education requirements which the program left slots open for, so I can pick other courses to take instead. And as it turns out, all that's required for a chemistry minor is to have a minimum number of courses taken at the university, and a certain number having to be upper-level (300-level and above) courses. And that number exactly matches the slots I have available in between my other classes. (The only question is whether Orgo transfers. I graduated with the class but not the lab (wasn't required), but this university has the lab and class together. It could thwart the minor objective; in that case I suppose I could just retake Orgo once again and get an unquestioned A....then I could pursue a biochemistry major part-time when I become duly employed. I kind of want to do it just to show myself that I can, and that my rocky road the first time around was because of non-academic reasons.

On the subject of not having died, I'm still a little bit skeptical of the accuracy of the blood pressure cuffs at the YMCA, but the values they're giving me are pretty consistent. The across-the-board medical consensus on what's healthy is a blood pressure of 120/80. Either number being less is a sign of above-average cardiovascular health, but higher pressure in either number indicates danger signs for heart issues. The lower number, the diastolic pressure, is the one to watch out for. It indicates the elasticity of your arteries--higher pressure, more trans and saturated fats in your cell membranes, ergo, stiffer arterial walls, meaning that the blood pressure can roughen them, exposing underlying collagen, to which platelets react, then dislodging and causing embolisms. Or not dislodging, and causing atherosclerosis.

[Here's an image] -- comparing the two pressures

The higher pressure indicates the strength of the heart--it is when the stethoscope first hears the pulse, which means that that is how much pressure your heart can generate with each contraction. It's essentially an estimate of the strength of your ventricles, which means that an abnormally high systolic pressure can indicate an enlarged heart muscle, for whatever reason. Conversely, the lower this pressure is, provided you're in visibly good health, the less effort your heart has to put in to do its job.

Yesterday morning, I woke up early enough to start a run at 5:20 a.m. I ran three miles at 7:20, 7:55, 9:35 pace, walked one, and then ran another at 8:35. Heart rate was 161 beats per minute after each segment (the 3-mile and 1-mile). That's a good baseline that I'll use to keep track of how well I'm progressing. The more you run, the better your body optimizes and the lower your resting heart rate, aerobic heart rate, systolic and diastolic arterial pressures will be.

So I was thrilled that the electronic cuff measured my pre-workout blood pressure at 110/57. When I get my physical exam later in the month, I'll find out how accurate those cuffs are.

And in the meantime, I'll keep running. Which requires me to go to bed really early. Days I sleep in are my rest days. My body and I have a two-way dialogue when it comes to exercise. :D

~ Rak Chazak

The Dekadius Workout

Using the metric system's prefix for 10 and the Latin word for 'day,' that's the name for a new plan I figured out for "total body transformation." Its strengths are that it starts off very slowly and lazily, intentionally, to make it easier to create the routine and not fall off the rails immediately and forget about it, and also that it requires minimal use of equipment. The only stuff I'll be using are my bed, the floor, the ground, a pullup-bar contraption that hangs in a doorframe (also used for pushups) and two ten-pound dumbbells. 

I increment the intensity of every muscle group and movement that I've added, every 10 days, as well as adding a new one. Initially it's just 20 situps, then 10 pushups, and so forth, but by the end of June I'll be doing 3 sets of 100 situps (which I know to be possible only because I've done this before, back when I was 17), and 5 sets of 40 pushups, and so on.

It's going to yield massive results, if I only keep to the one central thing that will make the whole plan work: consistency. Skipping days will make it incredibly difficult to catch back up, but as long as I'm determined, the exercises are incremented so gradually that there's really no risk of soreness or stress injuries from the exercise, even when it gets really intense.

Feel free to follow along (or just compare yourself for fun). After the jump, I've posted my plan. 

Personal Life Update: Discipline

I'm thrilled to pieces over the fact that for three days running, I have gotten up before sunrise and run at least one mile. My fastest time was on the first day, (7.35/mi.) whereas yesterday and today (8.45), I've done worse, probably because of soreness and tiredness from the sudden restart of a routine that I haven't trained myself to do in a very long time. If I can keep up the consistency, then I should be able to improve by leaps and bounds over the coming week or two, and after that, it'll keep getting easier.

I'm really strongly motivated to once and for all get back to my high-school habit of running every single day. I have stellar cardiovascular health as of now (120/70 blood pressure and 64 bpm resting HR), but my pulmonary and muscular endurance is embarrassing. I shouldn't be out of breath after one mile, when I could run 3 miles straight at a minute's faster pace at the age of 17 and not be as winded. I'm not running for Calorie loss, as I've noticed it's become popular to do: increasing and decreasing your speed to keep your body from becoming more energy efficient, so you burn more fat. No, I'm running to build up my long-distance endurance. I want to be able to run 15 miles at a 6:30-minute-mile average clip and feel relaxed and rejuvenated at the end. I once had that. After incorporating situps into my daily routine, I almost never experienced abdominal cramps again, and I have never had chronic pain in my knees or ankles or shins.

I want to experience that again. And the physical benefits will of a certainty accompany the exercise, because a 6-mile run will burn 500+ Calories without having to gimmick your muscles into utilizing glycogen stores, as the heady modern technical body-sculpting think-tanks now recommend.

I have a suspicion that my idle time outside of work is given to me in this period of my life to allow me to work hard at becoming a better man: to train in matters of fiscal responsibility, time management, physical fitness, practical theology, developing a disciplined routine, and accomplishing the task of "completing" this blog so that I will have no concern that I "missed something" by the time I become de facto disqualified from writing as a single man.

So there's four big areas in which I'm striving to apply and strengthen discipline:

• In a daily routine, to ensure that I go to bed early enough to be able to wake before sunrise.
• In a fitness regimen, to become outwardly the man a wife deserves, and for many more reasons.
• In career searching, to minimize the time spent in a rut, living at home.
• In writing, to deny the time outside of work to be wasted, so that my sojourn in economic dependence can not be said to have been a wasted period of my life. To complete the purpose of the blog, so that I can mentally move on to the next phase of my life's adventure.

And it's a daily choice to work at it. So far, I've made it 3 steps without stumbling. I'm encouraged by the thought of what I can accomplish with my hands (and feet! :) ) over a longer period of time, if I do not grow weary in being diligent with the time I'm given.

Time, after all, is a gift from God. Rather than see it as a curse (loneliness, prolonged debt), I will see it as a blessing (time to improve myself in other areas, and to reach out through this medium to glorify Him in the intervening time).

~ Rak Chazak

Personal Life Update, End of March

Frustration as a Source of Motivation

At work, our store has been two months in the process of a series of inspections to evaluate whether it should be elevated to "Training Store" status. This would bring along with it a number of perks, such as more attention paid by Corporate on the level of replacing damaged or missing equipment. It would also, supposedly, make the upper-level bosses more inclined to confirm promotion requests for crewmembers, which the General Manager would send. But according to the GM, Corporate has "put all evaluations on hold," pending the outcome of the store evaluation. My 6-month date was nearly 2 months ago, and I still haven't had that "6-month evaluation." I'm taking the GM at his word and waiting to see whether I and others get promotions--and for that matter, back-pay for the lost 2 month's raised pay--and will wait to take any action until afterwards. But I have many ideas for how to go from here. As always, it's a waiting game and a matter of time.

The Animals of Summer Are Arising

I saw a bat earlier this week when I took only my second outdoor run all winter. You've gotta have good eyes. They flap very much like small birds, and don't make any noise, but their flight-paths are very irregular. The typical sparrow will bob or dip in a sinusoidal wave pattern as it crosses a street, but bats move side to side as the presence of insects allows, so you can spot them that way, even if it's a bit too dim at twilight to see their wings against the lighter backdrop of the sky. 

Speaking of insects, that there are bats out means that it's getting warm enough for the flying crawlies to come out. It's been nice not having tons of fluttering creatures stuck to the front door on account of the light, at night, when coming home or after taking the dog for a walk. That's going to end by the end of May, I figure. Not that I know what this year's weather is going to be like. I've never seen so many individual snow days ever. It's been a very wet winter.

Yesterday, it rained all day and extremely hard at times. I walked the dog in the morning and must have passed by nearly 1,000 or more earthworms in the span of the mile distance I went out from home. They were all over the road, choked out of the wet ground by the moisture.

Allegra

I'm taking Allegra (and since 3 days ago, Allegra-D) for my springtime allergies, and I made sure to start very early, as soon as there was a mild week in March, anticipating the pollen spread. So far I've sneezed once a morning and that's been it. It's too early (too cool) to tell whether this means the drug is working to control my allergies, but by mid-April it should be more obvious. If Allegra does the job, I won't have to go back to the allergist specialist and beg for immunization shots. Something to pray about :)

YMCA

I'm closing out the second month of my Y activity, although only the first month of membership (got fortunate that the lady who handles applications got the flu for a week, and didn't get to mine for the rest of the month, so I got to use a guest pass all of February). It's been just as much fun to meet people from school as it's been to notice the improvement on my biceps. That's the only muscle I've really been pushing hard with increasing weights; the others I've been really careful to not stress too far, until I 'feel out' where my limits are, so I don't overwork myself and get taken out of commission for a week due to soreness. It happened once. You can lift beyond your threshold for soreness, I found when I went way too gung-ho on the back-situp machine at my college. One of the guys who has had the biggest body transformations since high school is in there frequently, and he spontaneously referred to himself with an accurate nickname I liked: Boulder Shoulders.

Upcoming

Going to take care of my taxes the next time I get to use internet in a non-public location. I also went to church today for the first time in 3(+?) weeks, and the youth pastor (28, and has been married for 7 years!!!) gave a sermon on 1 Peter 3. He made a pretty good point at the part where it says "don't let your adorning be in jewelry, or hair, or clothes," by saying that if this meant that women can't wear jewelry or 'do their hair,' then it would logically also require that they don't wear clothes. Probably a fun interpretation for the nonchristian, but it's plainly not the intent of the author. Instead, the point is that jewelry and hair and clothes are not WHERE your beauty should be found--it should come from the heart. Being outwardly beautiful is not evil, but it shouldn't be used to compensate for, or be at the expense of, an atrocious character.

If the warm weather stays, I'm going to be happy to pick up my running routine again. Perhaps by mid-July I can once again reclaim my former physique (my peak cardiovascular condition was in my 17s)

~ Rak Chazak

Aw Shucks!

Good news can bum you out!

Today I got the results of several tests I've been doing at an allergist. According to him, I am "off-the-charts" allergic to some trees and especially grasses. But I have no asthma, or exercise-induced breathing difficulty--in fact, the exercise test showed breathing improvement after 10 minutes of jogging at about 5 miles an hour. So that's something to rejoice over! But the theory is that exercise during allergy season can cause issues, because of how allergic I am to the seasonal stuff.

So the conclusion is that I'm healthy! Which means there's nothing I really have to do to get treated, except as a matter of preference. I don't know how much it'll cost for allergy shots, but I suppose I will eventually have the procedure done to make me immune to the allergens (you can actually do that!!). For now it's just a waiting game until next season, when I'll see how much of a difference Allegra makes (Claritin was useless for me), and then decide if shots are the way to go.

It feels good to have a clean bill of health. And I can't help but chuckle at the idea that my level of reaction to grass pollen either surprised or impressed the allergist. I have a "get-out-of-cutting-the-lawn-free-card" that I can use whenever I want, now. xD

~ Rak Chazak