Blur...

Much has happened in the past two days...

Sunday and Monday are a blur to me. I began a new commitment to myself Sunday, which is to say I went back to the gym for the first time in a long time. [Far too long]… partly because I have been recovering still from my surfing injury… and, well… mainly due to me just being lazy. Although, to my defense, I was in extremely awesome shape this time last year… and I was preparing myself for the San Diego marathon until I fractured my foot.

Let me tell you that story… I had worked up to running 8 to 10 miles a day. I would run down by Mission Bay and around Fiesta Island and back. I had bought a pair of New Balance cross trainers which, by the way, are [were] fantastic… but I just plain wore them out from doing so much running. I must have broken the arch support in them… because my right foot was in a ton of pain when I got out of bed one morning. I could not figure out what I had done to hurt my foot, though. I kept wondering if I had got up in the middle of the night or something and kicked the refrigerator or dropped a bowling ball on it or something… hmm… I’m rambling now… at any rate, I had a hairline fracture in my right foot, which must have been caused by running. There was no other ‘good’ explanation. My aspiration of competing in a marathon this year was put on hold…

It is no secret that one of the hardest things for a man to ever do is to get back into a routine after he has dropped his commitment to that routine. I have not laced up my shoes and went for a run in about seven months. That is a very long time. I did give my bones some recovery time off in order to heal properly and such… but seven months should be more than enough time to get over a small stress fracture.

The reality is that I was overdoing it. I don’t really do anything in moderation, or so it has been pointed out to me. My wife says I only have two speeds: Dragging ass and hauling ass. I spend most of my time just blazing away at something in my life, but eventually I blow something out or lose my footing and have to take a step back from it for a while. When people in my life grow accustomed to my full-on throttled behavior and all of a sudden see a complete shift in my progression they seem to identify this with the thought of quitting or with the notion that I have given up completely because they no longer see the same level of intensity as before. I don’t know how to adequately describe it, really… sometimes when this happens I never really return to what it was I was doing again. Sometimes I do… it just depends. I think this is normal. Of course, I could also be wrong. But we are all entitled to our own perspectives.

So, back to my triumphant return to the gym. I had been working out at the Navy gym near where my wife works, primarily because it was close to her office and therefore was more convenient that way. Also, I was working out there because it was a much nicer gym than what we had at the apartment and I also didn’t want to pay a billion dollars to join a fitness club [California is insane with prices at these places…and this gym had all the work out machines I needed, just no free weights…] … Right… so after my foot injury I began to substitute swimming laps for running. But this was back in February… and swimming laps is very boring. So I lost interest… well, I discovered a whole ‘other’ gym in the basement next door to the other gym where I had been going. This was most upsetting because this gym was way better than the other one. This gym is old school. I felt, as though I were walking back into the high school gym where I used to work out the whole lay out itself was perfect! I almost expected to round a corner and catch Arnold pumping iron there. I cannot believe that no one had ever told me about the other gym one building over. I think it is a conspiracy… really…

I decided to spend my first day back just assessing my condition due to my long hiatus from working out. So, I targeted every major muscle group and did some triad sets in order to best calculate my present physical level. I was at the gym for almost three hours. When I left, I felt fantastic!

When I woke up the next morning I felt terrible. Every muscle in my body felt like they were either tied in a knot, on fire or a combination of both. I spent the majority of the day in misery, crumpled up on my couch in front of the TV.

Today was a little better. I will return to the gym tomorrow and focus on only one muscle group at a time [thanks thre3]… We will see what happens.

I am keeping a photo record of my fitness improvement. I will be taking week-to-week pictures of myself every seven days for eight weeks. We will see how it all plays out… and I may decide to share the pictures, but again… we will have to see.