Silver Case

Every day I look in the mirror and face it, I’ve turned into a slug during the last two years. I have no strength or conditioning or endurance, and I’ve suddenly put on weight as well. I’m as heavy as I’ve ever been, and it’s nothing but sloth and flab. When I weighed myself the other day, I was astonished to see I weighed 80.6kg. Not just astonished, but nauseated. Enough is enough.

So what to do about it?

A few basic facts:

• I hate gyms. I despise them. They’re the pimsleur guides of physical fitness. Dry, boring, monotonous, de-inspiring. Just gross and horrible. To subscribe to one is to throw money away.
• Weekends are reserved for family, hobbies, and fun physical stuff, like kayaking or jungle-exploring, not for conditioning exercise.
• Although I feel nauseous when I exercise early in the morning, I rarely have the strength or motivation left to exercise at night after work. Often I’m additionally distracted by hunger.
• Like language study, I need to find a conditioning program that holds my interest, achieves measurable goals, and is feasible in my schedule.

Ling made a very obvious suggestion, almost in an offhand way, which later affected me. “Why don’t you run to work?”

Yuck, I haven’t enjoyed running since high school. But damn, it would be a way to get some conditioning in. I already get up early nowdays, and my office isn’t far away (in fact, the map page says it’s only 5.4km away… the classic 5k). If I was really disciplined about it, I could run both to and from work. It shouldn’t take any more than thirty minutes. I could get all my exercise out of the way in the morning, during my work week. Minimal hassle.

How could I improve the idea though? Well, clearly I have an iPod, and I could use the time to listen to my JapanesePod101 lessons. My current drive is only ten minutes, time to listen to one lesson, but running to work would give me time to listen to two or three segments. Multi-tasking. Nice.

It’s sounding better, but not brilliant.

Back when I was in university I was watching a foot chase during an episode of the X-Files. There’s Fox Mulder running down alleys, jumping over fences, climbing drains, etc. I always wanted to go out and do, what I called, ‘X-Files Runs,’ basically dashing around an urban landscape, leaping, jumping, climbing, sprinting. I never really did it much, and then I moved to to Wichita, Kansas, a hell-hole, for my first job, and the idea just sat dormant in my lists of things to do. Without a good base of conditioning, it’s pretty hard to do an awful lot of that.

About a year ago, I discovered the wild videos of David Belle, the inventor of Parkour.   It occurred to me that this is the perfect addition to my fitness program.  First, I [will] have have a baseload of running, which gives me endurance. However, that does nothing for a my weak core muscles, my skinny arms, or my focus.  Parkour strengthens that.  Secondly, I live in Singapore, which could be described as a concrete urban hell-hole, except if you’re talking about parkour, then it’s full of all sorts of exciting terrain.  Thirdly, I have a [too] rich imagination, so it’s always more inspiring to be jumping over drainage ditches and off ledges to escape from Alien Hitmen than to be counting down reps and sets as I lap a track or treadmill.

So my current plan is:

1. Get running to, and later from, the office as soon as possible.  I think I am so woefully fit right now that it will take a few weeks before I can run it with any sort of pace.  But I will think of it like learning hiragana, the necessary baseload to do the fun stuff (Parkour)
2. As I have the chance to (early mornings, during my commutes, weekends) work on my basic parkour moves, jumping, rolling, balance, etc.  There turns out to be a small park on a huge hillside five minutes from my house that is my perfect training ground.  There’s lot of practice there.
3. Get my disgusting weight down. It’s sickening. I’ve been drinking too much booze, eating too much rich food, and now that I wake up earlier, eating inappropriately heavy breakfasts.  Means eating less and eating better.  I plan on eating a lot more  Japanese style stuff, particularly onigiri and other simple, healthy things.
   
4. Keep lots of telemetry on my weight, times, and dependibility.  This sort of monitoring also keeps me honest with myself and motivated.

Funny how I’m posting all these articles about new goals and programs around the new year. It’s not really intentional. I just think that after two years of struggle, I’ve had two, almost three months of recuperation, and now I’m rested enough to actually start thinking big picture again. These aren’t common New Year’s resolutions.