Too Much Exercise

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Since Nevada forced me to wear a Fitbit and prove I wasn't "too fat" because I was sedentary, I have obsessed over the feedback it gives me. I have also obsessed over reaching new heights and beating goals, mostly to beat myself. Yes, I compare my steps to some friends, and I enjoyed impressing some Brits at Yellowstone when I told them I was very proud of my two 45,000 step days. Of course, my best friend from high school marveled at my weekly totals, but he's doing more important things with his life and time. Exercise, when it goes to an extreme, is no longer about good health, being a good mate, or just routine health maintenance, because it becomes about YOU. Eventually, you exceed the capacity of your body, your genetics, to reach an arbitrary fitness ideal. That ideal becomes the goal, rather than fitness a means, and we become obsessed with exercise, essentially as addicted to it as other people are to drugs. They tell us to do all things in moderation, including moderation, but you can't always see yourself as you really are when you're in the middle of things.

Like most people who exercise, I do this for me. The problem is that too many people do it in order to vaunt themselves rather than as a means to improve themselves. I read today about the "revenge diet", in which people who lose their significant other turn their suffering into motivation to get in shape. However, this is about pride, about what CS Lewis called "the pleasure of appearing to be the best". For many years, I have maintained that a man who has the physique over which women drool does not do so for a single woman; he does so to get attention from as many women as possible. We know that's true with many women, particularly those who use their beauty to purvey pornography or sell salaciousness. I suspect many people who do this are doing it so they can brag and say, "look what you lost" or "look what you'll never get to have". It's not about being better for the sake of being better, it's so they can shove it in the face of someone they claim they loved that they traded down. Well, the women I dated "traded down" in my opinion, but they ended up with guys who were what they truly desired, and I am happy for them. I am unwilling to go to the effort required to be a body builder, and I don't care for the attention it might garner, so for the one who married her husband because he had a waist under 30", more power to you. I enjoy exercising, and I feel bad on days when I don't. I notice changes for the better. However, no matter what I do, I weigh around 203lbs all the time. I'm fighting genetics, and this is my "healthy" exercising weight and size.

Too much causes short term and long-term physical risk. Everyone wants to be attractive, but few of us have the genetics to be olympians or underwear models. Still, society preaches that we ought to be, and so we push beyond the wise limits of our genetic makeup rather than playing to our strengths. Even if we take care of ourselves, other forces conspire against us. As my step count rises, my shoes wear out. I burn through a pair of shoes every four months. However, before I realize I need to replace them, they lose the ability to cushion me, and as a consequence I hurt my foot a few summers ago. It was difficult to walk, to drive, to hike, and racquetball was out of the question. Anything done to excess portends problems. Later on, I possibly got sick running in bad weather. My obsession with fitness eventually started to become counterproductive, and I knew I needed to walk it back. I didn't. It's one thing I control, so I pressed forward and reached longer stretches of intense activity. I started doing this, in the summer of all times, to keep busy, to keep out of trouble, and to keep my mind off the Heartbreak of 2013. Soon, however, I began to do so intentionally to exhaust myself. The Music Man taught me "the idle brain is the devil's playground", so I would exercise to the point of exhaustion. On days when I don't have late class, I frequently fall asleep early, like around 9PM, because my body knows it doesn't need to do anything. Well, last weekend, after a record-breaking week of 256,000 steps, I went up to St. George to get out of town. Well, since you sit while driving and it was late at night, my body decided it was ok to shut down some non-essential functions like my eyes and rest, which is a huge issue driving at night in the Virgin River Gorge. A landmark study showed that prolonged periods of exercise have long-term consequences on health, leading to decreased quality of life later in exchange for peak fitness today. I have long wondered why so many endurance and performance athletes actually look unhealthy. Now I have an answer as to why.

Eventually, too much exercise becomes an end rather than a means. Even I now view the fitbit as an end rather than a tool. At first, I worked out to earn the incentive offered by insurance for meeting the fitness criteria provided. It earned me almost $1200/year in savings from my health insurance premiums, so I looked at it as getting paid $25/week to exercise, which was fantastic. Later, it became a way to compete in 5k, 10k, triathlons, and in preparation for difficult hikes. I managed to get back to a 33" waist and meet or beat all of the bloodwork goals that NV sets as standards for fitness, but it wasn't enough to impress people. So, it became the end itself. I tried to wear myself out every day so that I wouldn't have time for any pain besides physical. It was something I measured, that I controlled, and that I could achieve without other people, so I tried to beat myself. The first time I accidentally got to 39000 steps, I went out for a walk around the block just to get to 40k. Now, I get upset if I don't break 200k steps/week, and it is now the end rather than the means. Now, I obsess about getting a certain number of steps, of being up and about, and the fitness apps aren't any help. They alert you if you aren't active every hour, and they encourage you to compare yourself with friends. I know it's supposed to create motivation, but I'm already motivated. On Sunday, the day of rest, I get more steps than most people get in a regular day when they exercise. I find these new apps to be deleterious to the prescient participation in sports rather than encouraging. Pride gets no pleasure out of having a thing, only out of having more of it than the next man (CS Lewis). I even smugly look on prior days when I get more. I walk rather than run because running steals steps from me, and some days I walk the equivalent of 20 miles. Good thing I'm not also carrying a 130lb rucksack and fighting for my life.

Even a virtue, carried to an extreme, becomes a vice. Exercise is good for your health, water is good for your health, but too much of either can actually hurt you physically, emotionally, etc. I mean, in many cases, I am so much more interested in steps, so that I know I really care about someone when I'm willing to disrupt my routine to make time for them. The steps are THAT important. I am interested, not in health, but in steps. I am so interested in steps that I take more than I should under conditions that are bad for it and put my other health aspects and my life in jeopardy sometimes. Although I don't usually publish my success and I'm not competing with friends through apps to show who is the "most fit" I do compete with myself. I have 586 days with 30k steps, 282 days with 35k steps, 29 days with 40k steps, and my 2 days of 45k steps. As of January 2017, I logged 12,400 miles walking. I feel good about these achievements. I also feel tired. I wish I had something else towards which to strive. I believe in chi^2, goodness of fit, so I'm not interested in a revenge body. I want to live well if I live to be old, so I am not interested in doing the Ironman and risking my own death just to be average in a group of super athletes. I want something else out of life besides living a long one. Exercise doesn't mean as much. My high school friend is a bishop, a husband, and a father, and that's far more important. Besides, someone who really likes me will think the sun shines out my arse even if I'm a little fatter than maybe she or I would like.

Unexpected Return

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When my fortune cookie last week prognosticated that "an old friend will return to your life" I admit my skepticism. Fortune cookies are notoriously unreliable for many reasons, but I read them anyway just for the halibut. Last night, before class, when someone unexpectedly called my name and walked towards me, I swore she looked vaguely familiar. I don't have many friends, and I don't usually have many people come back for any reason other than to borrow money, and so it was a great surprise to see Jennifer after several years, and she was surprised what I remembered about her and about the time when we knew each other. Usually I don't get to see other people's perspective on shared experience, because they leave before they tell me. Usually I don't get to see people again unless they need a loan or a letter of recommendation or some other sort of help before they vanish again into the nether regions of memory and time. Usually I don't get to feel what I expected it is like to see people you love again after a long period of separation, people who know private and intimate things about your attitudes and passions, because the people with whom I share those things have all married other men only to never return. Sometimes people come into our lives only for a season, and sometimes that season is shorter than we like. Sometimes they come back, and I'm curious to find out why Jennifer of all people returned.

It's interesting what people remember about your history together. Jennifer told me that she recognized my voice. Well, I didn't recognize hers, but I did remember that she's the one who suggested I go look at the house where I have lived since, even though she doesn't remember giving me that tip. As I mentioned, she was surprised that I knew her current last name; well, I remember when she introduced me to her husband and that I disproved, but it wasn't my decision or my consequences, so I let her do what she liked with her life. I didn't realize she knew where I lived, but I was touched that she had tried to find me and even remembered that I didn't use my real name on Facebook when I had an account. She couldn't find it because I deleted it four years ago almost exactly, so there was nothing to see. It's nice sometimes to meet up with someone from your past and find that they not only remember you well but that they still think highly of you even after all these years. You see, things and people do change, and all too often the evil that men do lives after them.

Honestly, most people who return do so in order to gain some benefit. Unlike those people, Jennifer is the only woman who ever borrowed money from me who paid it back. I don't think she actually expected to run into me, and I doubt very much that she spoke to me in the hope of some personal advantage. Even when we knew one another, she was actually independent, and she prided herself on the fact that, although her parents essentially disowned her when she converted, she paid her own way in honest employ and overcame most challenges without any help. Our friendship was one of the few that really reached what Aristotle wrote of as the highest form of friendship- for shared principles, but we would also commiserate and converse about anything and everything, and when a woman I liked broke my heart in 2009, Jennifer defended me and took my side, which is rare in my experience. Then again, she did that with others, and if anyone had ever written advertising for me about why you should date me, hers might have been the most laudatory, which is why I helped her when she needed it. I drive by the bank sometimes where we met for her to repay me in full, and on time I might add, and think about how embarassed she was to have to ask and how small she must have felt to know only one person in a position to help without guile. It was hard when her husband felt threatened by that.

Like almost everyone, Jennifer and I parted ways because her family didn't like me very much. She and I met shortly after she converted to my Faith when I was assigned to minister to her as a fledgling member of the Faith. Naturally, her family was upset about her baptism, but she valiantly stood her ground and followed her impressions anyway even though she had been an atheist only six months before we met. Subsequently, her friends didn't like me because they, like Jennifer, were all latina, and I'm a Nord, but after some of them met me, they were impressed and sort of let it go since they no longer viewed me as a threat to their station. Finally, when she met her now husband, he protested our association, because he felt insecure about the kind of relationship Jennifer and I enjoyed. I wasn't interested in her romantically, and she wasn't interested in me, but he didn't want to take that chance, and shortly after they got together, he wisked her off to Idaho. Although Jennifer and I weren't bosom buddies who did a lot together, she was a kindred mind, someone with whom I could talk about anything, and she would make time for me. I suspect she regarded me as a trusted older brother given that I was about eight years or so her senior. As someone ostracized from her actual family, she probably appreciated having someone she trusted without an ulterior motive with whom to spend time and on whom to spend effort until someone wow came along for her to pursue romantically. It's too bad he never gave me a chance, but it's actually the rule rather than the exception that he did.

Since I was late to class, I gave her my phone number and rushed off. I don't know what this will actually produce. I keep telling myself that people who are important will return, so maybe Jennifer's season in my life isn't over, whatever that means exactly. It was unexpected. More than anything, Jennifer didn't ask me for money. Maybe she will yet, but she didn't last night, and I appreciate that. Maybe she really was and is my friend. So very few people from my past made it to my present. Most of them lasted only a year or two before vanishing into the ether from whence they initially sprang, and since Tracie cannot return from the grave, Jennifer is the only other woman I met here who knows anything firsthand of my proclivities, personality, and private thoughts. She has seen things most people never do, and it might be nice even if I only see her sparingly to see someone kind, someone good, and someone supportive from my past even if it's not romantic in nature. At the very least, I can hardly believe that my fortune cookie was true. Even a broken clock is right twice per day.

Doug Does Dumb Things

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Last Saturday, I decided to drive up to Mt. Charleston to hike in preparation for my summer volunteering. Since I like to actually look like I am fit and since the mountain is more difficult than my regular hikes, I like to make a few trips up to the Bristlecone loop and carry a backpack with rocks just to get myself in shape for the more arduous terrain. I was also tired of the people down in the valley and thought it would be hot, and knowing the mountain to be cooler even without snow and cheaper since you don't need a pass to get in, I decided to drive up and stick to my routine. Except the day was anything but routine. This was probably the most difficult hike I've ever done at Charleston Peak. Last year, we hiked up in April at night to watch the sun rise, and as dangerous as the dark is, at least the trail was clear. This was not. It wasn't just blocked, but it was iced. I told myself I'd hike to the snow line, but in truth the snow line was visible from the parking area, so I went further than that of course to stave off boredom, and that's what I did. At least it was only I. Nobody else was put in jeopardy because my brow was brass, and even I wasn't hurt.

I knew there would be obstacles, but obstinately went anyway. It was maybe a half mile in when I felt for the first time the full impact of low oxygen levels. Since that trail starts at 8200 feet and the top of Red Rock is 6700 feet, any amount of summer hiking fails to adequately prepare me for the elevation. I stopped a lot more often than I like. Sometimes I stopped for literal obstacles in the path, but not willing to take that as a sign, I decided to climb over the giant ponderosa pine that came up to my waist and continue on, and so at about a mile in, I already cut my leg. When I arrived in the parking lot it was a balmy 38F and breezy, and I was woefully underdressed in shorts and a short sleeve golf shirt, but I had my heater (backpack) and just told myself I'd walk faster, and the last half would be in the sun anyway. Well, the snow made walking faster impossible, and the snow or really ice meant that the air all around me was cold, and I burned more calories in the six mile loop than I usually do in a day, probably just shivering to keep warm.

Although I knew the dangers, I pushed on. I probably should have turned back when I hit that first switchback and had to grab a tree to keep from sliding down the embankment, but I told myself that it would be fine in the sun, that the snow wouldn't be so bad. Well, it got worse, and it kept getting worse until going forward was just as bad as going backwards. There were about a half dozen stretches where the trail was completely covered with 1-3 feet thick drifts of ice, hard enough that I couldn't use my boots to kick in for a better footing, so I hoped that the footings from others headed the opposite direction and days before would accomodate my path. Several sections the ice stretched so far that I couldn't see the end, anywhere from 10-30 meter sections, and although I used my hands to steady myself, I found my hands go numb through my gloves. It was cold enough my camera stopped working. My stupidity never failed me. Despite all of that, I said a quick prayer to God and then trusted that if this was my final day I'd at least die doing something I liked, even if I did freeze to death in a cell phone dead zone.

Unwilling to change my plans to accommodate others, I went alone. I hike all the time. What could happen- so you die a little? Nobody really knew exactly where I was, and my family would have wondered if I didn't show up Sunday to get them at the airport, but I really didn't feel like I should put my life on hold even for safety reasons. When I finally encountered people, I warned them, but if they disregarded my warnings, I can't blame them. I essentially said, "Do as I say, not as I do" since I'd already crossed *successfully* the section I advised they avoid. "Well if that idiot can do it, we can..." One looked relieved. Some looked disappointed. The last couple, the oldest people I met, looked like they took it as a challenge. They probably made it. So, I came across as that feral hypocrite who wanders the woods aimlessly and warns people of spooks in the elderberries. There was neither anybody young on the trail or anyone attractive. It seems like the elements dissuade all but the most foolish or dedicated from making an attempt to conquer nature. True, it's rare to still have this much snow in April here, but we did have a banner year, and the mountain has snow above 8400 feet in more places than you think. It was beautiful.

All too often, in life, we get in over our head. Unable or unwilling to see the dangers, we press on into paths unknown or unadvised because we can or because we think we're the exception. Unable or unwilling to forsee things, we go unplanned. Unable or unwilling to admit our faults, we go it alone. What need have we for a Savior? People warn us. People teach us. We have our own experiences. We know we've had close calls. We get into trouble again. Still all too often we don't reach out and insist that this is something that we can do. We're amazing, and even if we are, sometimes the mountains conquer us instead. This past week, some mourned the loss of a veteran Swiss mountaineer who was defeated in Nepal. Of course, he liked to hike in record time, but the principle remains the same. Eventually we get in over our head and either die or need rescue. Fortunately, I got down without incident, but that's not to say I didn't receive a rescue effort. I can't with certitude say that God didn't help me. If He decided not to, I wouldn't be surprised. I wasn't that stupid in Alaska. At church yesterday, one of the leaders admitted some deep-seated faults and asked me if I didn't like him. I told him that we all need the Savior. Just because you don't know my faults doesn't mean they don't exist. Doug does dumb things too.