"Chariots of Fire" This is Not

My recent workouts have been less Chariots of Fire than relaxed Beethoven, less Rocky and its training montage than a punchless 12 round split decision.  The month has been heavy on stationary bike at the gym, while very light on the boring and intense runs throughout the city and on the beach.  The reasons for this sea change?

There is something comforting in the objectivity of the red numbers on the stationary bike, featuring the number of calories burned per hour (414 at the "3" resistance level, and 333 at the "2" resistance level).

There is also something comforting in the objectivity of the scale.  The ten pounds lost in the last month have shown me that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  

My routine for the last month has been heavy on stationary biking and devoid of any running, save for a few twenty-foot sprints as I refereed scrimmages for my high school team.  I have not yet played basketball with any anaerobic seriousness, though I now live in a complex that features a rudimentary outdoor basketball court.
There is a healthy (pun intended) guilt associated with this recent training regimen.  There is negligible lactic acid buildup, no cramps, infinitesimal shortness of breath.  Only a healthy amount of sweat on my back and left behind on the backrest show any evidence of a workout.
When I run, even for my amateurish high of twenty-five minutes, there is much chugging/trudging along, much shortness of breath, multiple cramps, and a constant awareness that I'd rather be watching Flo and her Progressive Insurance commercials than running.  A constant awareness that I'd rather be reading Fifty Shades of Grey, eating paint, attending one of those meetings that set up meetings, doing, well, anything else besides running.
When I bike (even the verb is ill-fitting here), I read (Kindle or otherwise), follow NFL and NBA games on the TVs, cast a omnipotent eye over the length and width of the gym, seeking out both attractive women and gym regulars who seem to be working so much harder than me.  I even check my phone for texts an average of seven to thirty-seven times, send e-mails (from a bike!), and check for both received e-mails and phone numbers of movie theaters to which I want to go after I complete my supposedly-rigorous one hour "bike ride."  Let's just say that the number of visits to Fandango.com from a sitting position at the gym have far outnumbered my number of internal pep-talks in which I tell myself that I have to work through the fatigue.
The lesson here?  Maybe that hard work comes in different forms?  Maybe that slow and steady wins the race?  Or maybe it's that vanity--these ten dropped pounds have definitely made my former six-pack at least worthy of the ridges of a mattress covered by a bedsheet--wins out over performance.  After all, I am trying to get to a point where my body's form and function allow me to dunk a basketball.
Naw.  You know what I learned, having hit the stationary bike for at least 90% of the days in the past month?  Sometimes the reward goes to the one who shows up, then shows up the next day.  And the next.

Ugly

Four minutes in, and I know today is going to be a struggle. It’s gonna be ugly.


The climb up the stairs is exceedingly brutal, the sweat starts earlier, and the second wind ain’t coming. I think about quitting at ten minutes, twelve minutes, fifteen minutes. Those are nice round times, and a man can’t be faulted for one “easy day,” right?

But I keep going. I trod through leafy streets, around dollies used to bring in beer to the convenience store, over dried dog crap (doh!), and by lecherous fifty-year-olds at the bus stop. I keep going, at speeds perhaps approximating those of bronze-medal race walkers, if I’m being generous.

Three minutes to go, ok, I can do this. Three minutes is nothing. That’s only ninety seconds, I mean, 180. It’s nothing. Then I see that I’m off a minute somehow. Four minutes left.

Those last four minutes? Nothing pretty. Sweat in eyes, shadows seeming to disappear in favor of more direct sunlight, cracks in sidewalk seeming to crop up out of nowhere. But I get to the finish line, my apartment gate at 22:50. I do ten seconds of hardcore running in place and finish at 23:00.

Now that’s a round number.

22:19

The brilliant teacher of writing, Ann Lamott, writes in the book of the same name about the importance of writing “bird by bird.” She uses the example of the blank page being so daunting for the writer, and therefore, the key is to just start by describing some birds. Start by doing something.

For the aspiring dunker and recovering Achilles tendon-er, the advice rings so true. After watching (and watching, and watching) the pitiful first leaps towards the rim since my injury, hope does not seem to be easy to find. With so much room to make up—I barely touched net—it is easy to convince myself that dunking is as likely as Lil’Wayne being named “Best Rapper Alive.” Wait, bad example…

So what to do? Lamott has her birds, and I have my seconds. Though I would eschew running long-distance in a second for sprints and basketball running, I know that all I have at this point is my stopwatch and my word—sorry, Tony Montana.

My stopwatch usually runs to 15 or 20 minutes before I stop, but two nights ago, I ran for 22:18. Do not forget the 18 seconds.

And last night? I had to show some improvement, some Northeast movement on the graph, so I decided that I would, come hell or high temperatures, run at least 22:19.

It’s one of those nights. You know the type. There is no reason that I should already be tired after (what!) four minutes. 18 minutes, 19 seconds to go, and I’ve already approximated that slouchy, head and shoulders not above the knees, posture of the struggling long-distance runner.

I slept well last night, though I maybe lost 15 minutes here and there with that early morning text—stupid Eastern Standard Time. I have been eating well, and not too heavily, for the last few days. Yes, it’s a few degrees hotter than usual, but still, enough to make me want to quit after four minutes?

I take my usual trek across the street and down the level cement to the park that is as close to my “usual” as exists. Running the bike path, I make sure to not look behind me after I pass up walkers—it’s a little embarrassing to see people who should have been left in the dust still shuffling along, not too far behind, in my rearview.

My breathing is fairly regular, and I get a bit of that fabled “second wind.”

At just before 11 minutes, I decide to double back, as the stairs I’m about to climb will delay me enough to break my run into almost-perfect halves.

Oh, man, the stairs. There are three sections, each with about ten steps, and there are times on the stairs that I feel like a stalled car, wondering if I’m making any forward momentum even though my legs are moving. The stairs are my toughest test, even tougher than the last minute of my runs.

Except for today. Today, I feel good, despite the heat, despite the shoulder/upper chest cramps, and sweat that makes me squint like I’m continually winking. I feel good because I have taken myself to my limit, and I even lose track of the stopwatch for a minute.

I see the gate to my apartment that signals the end of my run. I look hopefully at my stopwatch, hoping I have crossed the 22:18 threshold.

22:38. Yep, now I guess the bar has been raised. So much for going at least a second more each successive run. So, tomorrow?

22:58, it is.

August 15, 2012: Chillin with The Bees

I went to the gym yesterday, knowing full well that I wasn’t ready to play with the college ballers yet, but hoping to shoot around a little bit. With the gym floor being redone, I decided to hit the weight room to maybe make an incremental improvement in leg strength. Little did I know I would be entering the World of the Bees.

The name “Bee” was invented by my friend Jay, and it was derived from the fact that these guys are, act like, or want to be, “swoll,” “ripped,” “cut,” etc. They are swollen like a finger after a bee sting.

There are many species of bees, including The Gregarious Bee—the guy who knows everyone at the gym, especially the cute girls. There is the Top-Heavy Bee, the one who has neglected his lower body in favor of his upper body, making him look like those body builders in SNL’s “How Much ya Bench?” skit with Jay Mohr.

There is also that unique Bee, The Bee who is Involved in Pursuing a University Degree—i.e., a College Bee. I was surrounded by these Bees as used the weight room at the college rec center. They are an impressive lot, with their pinkish/brownish liquids drunk out of Nalgene bottles, their endless strutting, and fraternity t-shirts.

Man, it’s amazing how good of shape we are in, or can be, as college students. The same “bros” who drink to excess on weekends and many times on week nights (remember those random Wednesday night trips to the bars?), are the same guys who have the juicehead physiques. While there is that subset of Bees who eats very well, minds their minerals and vitamins, and drinks at or above the recommended level of water each day, many TBwiIiPaUD’s gorge themselves on greasy cafeteria food and cartons of whatever cereal, popcorn, and ice cream can be bought on the cheap at the campus grocery store.

It was during my senior year of college, when I regularly ate grilled, boneless and skinless chicken breast, rice, and sourdough bread (carbs are no biggie when you’re 22!), followed by a fresh-fruit smoothie for dessert, that I was at my peak conditioning. My thin arms rippled a bit with veins and muscle, my chest had gone from concave to pec-worthy, and my abs, while not washboard, were at least rough cement-wall quality.

The fact that I was drinking a good, but not unhealthy, amount—senior year, braghh!—seemingly had no bearing on my physical conditioning, as I played full-court regular basketball games and put myself through long weight workouts with minimal fuss.

And to think that I thought that it would always be this easy. This easy to recover from workouts. This easy to stay in aesthetically-pleasing shape. This. Easy.

As I stare at my slightly-protruding gut sideways in the mirror, I wonder if somewhere inside the gut, and somewhere inside me, is that Wannabe Bee of nine years ago.

Anniversary

Where the great Toni Tony Tone when you need 'em to sing a little "Anniversary?"  Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my injury, and in a slighty-weird homage, I found that I needed to take a shot from The Spot.  The free throw line where I jumped and landed so horribly seemed not to have shed any tears from the accident, and there was something about the gym and its ecletic mix of surfer dudes, legit ballers, and men of and indeterminate age above 35 that made me think of cycles. 
I was once the legit baller (maybe I will be again), and now am some ten or twelve years older than the youngest guys out there.  I received a hearty greeting from Brad, a guy I used to play against, and before he could get the words out, "What up, man?  Haven't seen you since..." I told him the short story of my post-injury recovery, and had a notion that it seemed like I'd just been talking to him, but at the same time, it had been ages since I'd talked to him.  Brad was the one who remarked that my shoes were "Mr. Rogers-style" and not basketball ready, just a few minutes before my Achilles cracked like a Kit Kat commercial.
We were both a year older, and I hadn't played a single competitive minute in 365 days.  Brad, being That Guy that You Always See (in this case, at that gym), must have played tens or hundreds of times in that stretch.
Was this a well-needed rest for an aging athlete, or a missed opportunity where my vertical and chances of dunking took a nosedive that is impossible to regain?
As I took that jump shot from the spot of my injury, I felt a chill that was dwarfed by the chill I get when I think of the fact that if I fastforward a year, the same guys will be there, and I'll be a year older.  And I know that all of the days in-between, the calf raises, the weight lifting, the (hopefully) pickup games, will seem like nothing more than a breath.
It's up to me, though, how much better, how much fitter, how much stronger I get in the meantime. 

*See above video for the jump shot and my first rim jumps in a year-with me barely able to touch rim...err...net.

With Age Comes Reinvention

I have always admired those who have maintained their greatness for so many years, largely due to reinvention.  Examples of this include Andre Agassi, Sophia Loren, Michael Jordan, and Betty White.
(I'm sorry, I don't mean that last one.  So she cusses and talks about sex.  And, she's old.  So what's so groundbreaking about that?  I say, good for you, Betty, you were great on "Golden Girls."  Get that paper, player!)
Agassi was a hot shot with hair extensions, a huge talent who did well for a few years, lost his motivation, and then reinvented himself as a well-conditioned, baldheaded workhorse who won multiple majors at an age considered ancient in the Bizarro World that is tennis.
Sophia?  Well, she was a bombshell who made young men and old men salivate, then she aged gracefully and made old men salivate (and some young men, too).
Michael Jordan came into the NBA as "Air Jordan," a guy who seemed to jump into the air, and then decide what he wanted to do, a guy who made the jawdropping dunk, spin move, or steal his Normal. 
He exited the league a still-athletic 35-year-old whose last shot was a perfect-form free-throw line jumper to win the 1998 NBA Finals.*
Though Jordan's "reinvention" did not coincide perfectly with his return to the NBA from minor league baseball in 1995, this time is a good jumping off spot for his relaunching, MJ 2.0. 
Realizing that a basketball player's shelf life is fairly short (just ask Kobe: only 33, but hearing whispers turn into chatter about how effective he will be in this year's Olympics and beyond), MJ turned to the weight room, strength coach Tim Grover, and an improved post game to prolong the prime of his career. 1980s MJ, he of the little patch of hair, cursive Chicago jersey, and butthuggers, looked to drive, drive, drive.  Mid-90s MJ looked to post up, hit turnaround J's, and drive to the hoop when available. 
Can you, then, teach an old dog new tricks?  R.A. Dickey is having by far his best baseball season at the ripe age of 37, reinvigorated by so much success and being held up as such a role model for his courage.
Can Jamie, dunk at age 32 or 33 with more force than the rim-spinner dunk of high school?  Can the teenager who aged too quickly, with a bad back and creaky joints, emerge energetic and limber?
Maybe I should talk to Betty White about how she did it...



*You may choose to include MJ's time with the Washington Wizards as part of his playing career; I just choose not to do so.

Narcissism? (Um, yeah)

Hitting the weight room as a teenager and a twentysomething, as discussed earlier, was a more straightforward endeavor-get stronger and in better shape.  And, get girls' attention.
Now, as a 31-year-old who's seriously training for no varsity team, no starting spot, I ask myself why I still hit the weight room pretty regularly?
Umm, to get attention from the opposite sex.
And, to like stay healthy and stuff.
A friend, using a tone of voice reserved for denunciations of philandering politicians and the type of people who win annual Darwin Awards, scoffed at my regular workouts, calling them "needless narcissism." 
Yeah, it's clearly narcissism, and...?
As I get older, and even now, I am aware that things that were of no concern just a few years ago will rear their ugly heads soon enough-obesity, diabetes, etc.--if not hit with a George W. preemptive strike. 
But I am narcisstic enough to dismiss narcissism as a motivating (the) motivating factor behind my exercise routine?  No way. 
But maybe there is a fundamental difference between the motivations of 18-year-old and present-day Jaime?  It is this: though I've never been an Adonis, I work out now to avoid looking like a slob, while I worked out then with a more optimistic idea that I could soon be that Hulk on the posters?
You could say  that I playing not to lose (pun intended) now, and then, I was playing to win.

Competition

A few days shy of a year since my injury, I played tennis.  This was the first time I hit the court since a day or two before my injury, and I will say that in many ways, the tennis stroke is like riding a bike.  If the ball was hit to me by my patient partner (shout out to JP), then I could easily return it, even with a decent amount of pace.  The lateral movement (obvi!) was the tough part, a bit more difficult even than the arduous forward run. 

How to qualify this return to the court?  A competitive match?  Besides a well-placed lob over my head as I "rushed" the net, my partner was very helpful in hitting returns that allowed me to move just a few feet in whatever direction in order to return the ball.  His shots were more or less prescribed, and on a few, I even told him exactly where to hit it.  We rarely served, and when we did, we both seemed to have an unspoken agreement that made us go for a winner down a line that would eliminate any needless rallies if successful or not.  We ended our play with a best of three match ("Sets?" I said incredulously); the winner getting two games.  I'm proud to say that I lost a three game thriller, winning on serve in game two.  Let it be known that the great majority of my points were on semi-long rallies where my opponent could have easily moved me around with a well-placed drop shot, but chose not to take candy from this baby. 

So, all in all, I would say our match was analogous to the "simulated game" a recovering pitcher will use to get himself back to professional baseball shape.

Do you think then, that my pumped fist at the end of my winning game was in some way "simulated" or not genuine?

Hell no.

(See above for some practice footage)

Baby Steps

The video above shows you, Dear Reader, my relative strength in doing calf raises.  You will notice that I still don't have the strength to do the calf raises without holding on to a chair or bench for support.  Thankfully, though, my left calf has returned to chicken leg status after having a I-can-make-a-circle-with-my-thumb-and-index-finger-that-is-bigger-than-your-lower-calf-status for many months.
My jumps today?  You won't mistake me for Blake Griffin or Kyle Lee Watson, but now you may be able to get two encyclopedias under my feet...

Jumping In

So, now that I've officially jumped (not high, and not many times, but jumped nonetheless), when is the right time to "jump in?"  I'm wondering how to best go about ramping up my training, getting back on the tennis court and basketball court a few days shy of a year since my injury.  It reminds me of watching my classmates do Double Dutch jump roping, and figuring out the right time to jump in...I mean, so I've heard...(clearing throat)
When do I jump in?  How do I jump in?  At the risk of being too minimalistic, I guess I just jump in before I freeze from indecision and the jump rope ends up wrapped around my waist.

Bring on the Gymnastics Vault!

The above video-shout out to my videographer, Abraham Zapruder?-chronicles my first real jumps since August 9, 2011.  Whoa.  Nothing special, and you would definitely have had trouble slipping an encyclopedia under my feet, but I'm semi-proud to leave my feet in such a way.  The video quality being poor and off-center, it may be hard to determine, but my afflicted left Achilles tendon left and arrived on the mat in a peaceful manner.  My calf and foot did not break apart like last time...small victories!
A Google search for "US Gymnast Achilles" led me to Alicia Sacramone, as well as my primary Google target, John Orozco.  My mom had told me about Orozco's story, and I saw him yesterday competing at the London Olympics, at the world's highest level. I vaguely remember Sacramone from Beijing 2008.
Both Sacramone and Orozco suffered Achilles tendon tears, Orozco at the 2010 US National Visa Championships, and Sacramone in 2011, as she prepped for the World Championships.  Sacramone didn't make the Olympic team this year, while Orozco has been competing well in early gymnastics qualifying.
I cannot imagine competing at the top of the sport, doing jumps and vaults and dismounts at such high speed and such high intensity.  A big reason, I guess, why we don't see 36-year-old gymnasts.
Good for Sacramone and Orozco.  Guess who I'll be rooting for in men's gymnastics?

Sensitivity, A Man like Me...

I feel like the man who is robbed once and is hypervigilant from then on about robberies wherever they happen.  As I write tonight, I see LeBron in his best Steve Urkel postgame uniform.  The ESPN anchor points to his partner Scott Van Pelt, saying, "Scott, you've got the height and the glasses to play LeBron."
Scott responds, "No way, man.  My Achilles would rip and I'm skinny fat."
Everywhere I go, I'm sensitive like Ralph Tresvant, as it seems to always hit my ears that someone has ruptured or partially torn his Achilles-Ryan Howard, Lee Suggs, Sir Chauncey Billups...
Has the incidence of these injuries spiked greatly, or is it just that my antennae is up?

It's Just like Chicken Pox

"How's the leg?" is the question from caring friends and family members (and acquaintances who are co-passengers in elevators--you know how awkward those rides can be). 
My answer varies from "Good," to "Getting better," to "Not bad."  Why the variation?  Because I am in a kind of awkward time where I am not yet healed but definitely not struggling down stairs or carefully negotiating street curbs as before.  Brittney Spears could write (lipsynch) a great song about me.
My running has reached an apex of 20 minutes and has hovered around the 17-20 minute mark for two weeks now.  The plan is to ramp it up to 22, 25 minutes in the next week.  I might even run a 5K in five days.
Then What?
My physical therapist, who I haven't seen in two-plus months, even gave me the thumbs-up to do sprints, tennis, basketball when you feel like it.
Do feel like it?  YEAH.  Yeah.  Yeah, I think. 
With the Master Plan being a full return to fairly-frequent (yes, purposely vague) tennis and basketball-playing, I wonder about the next, ahem, step.
Jump rope?  It'll be a pretty soft landing.
Tennis rallying while jogging to balls?  I'll need a patient partner.
Shooting around?  Can someone shag for me like I'm Jesus Shuttlesworth and his impeccable elbow-positioning before a game?
Half-speed game until I find a groove?  In the words of Tom Jackson: "C'mon, man!"
Who ever heard of half-speed games? 
As for the voice in my head that has been planted by my friend who insists that I hang up the basketball shoes lest I suffer another dehabiliting injury...
I tell myself, and anyone who deigns to ask, that my injury was like chicken pox.  C'mon, man, they only happen once.
Famous last words?

No, not Me!

We drive our cars way too fast. We tell ourselves that we can take that turn at 60 mph. That we can drink that much. Eat that much sugar, that much fat. That we can smoke that much.


We tell ourselves that one more day spent at the beach with the purposeful intent of burning one's skin will not give us skin cancer.

Ernest Hemingway, in a masterpiece among masterpieces, wrote a short, short story called "Indian Camp" in which the main character, young Nick Adams, a central figure in many of Hemingway's short stories, determines that he will never die. Nick has earlier accompanied his father, a country doctor to a remote American Indian camp, where a young woman struggles to give birth. The woman's husband, temporarily crippled by an axe injury, sits in a nearby bunk in emotional agony as his wife goes through physical agony. As Nick watches and listens, his father performs an improvised Caesaerean section, using a jackknife and Nick as his assistant. The new father, strangely quiet for the last part of the Caesarean, is soon found to have sliced his throat with a razor--Nick's father speculates that he killed himself because his wife's pain was too much for him to take.

One reason why this story speaks to me is that Nick, in trying to comprehend one of life's greatest mysteries, fools himself like we do. He asks his father the unknowable--Why did the man commit suicide? Do men often commit suicide?--and twists the answers into the answer he wanted: the way to avoid death was to avoid it, to make a concerted effort not to believe that death will one day get you.

The more you say something, the truer it becomes, right?

Nick Adams sees his life stretching ahead interminably, his childhood but a wisp in the unfolding life story. We have this same selective blindness as Nick every time we eat that extra couple of donuts, drink to excess, smoke that cigarette (even the tobacco industry tells us that we are ingesting tar and other potentially-deadly materials!), or bathe in the sun with the intention of singing our skin.

I was always taught (and I always teach in my classes) that actions speak louder than words, and when it comes to mortality, our actions shout. While we pay lip service to our fragility, to the impermenance of this life, our actions are often right in line with the final line of Hemingway's short story, a description of Nick's thoughts: "...he felt certain that he would never die."

Surrender!

The white flag is raised when the fanny pack seat belt is clicked.  The flip flops are bad enough, but then they eventualy morph into Birkenstocks, with or without socks, and often show off a terrible sock tan.  The outright surrender continues with the butt huggers that would make Daisy Duke proud.  If pants are worn, they are clearly high waters with a tucked-in shirt.
Nothing, says Kanye West, makes a bad hip like a fanny pack.
A recent trip to a school festival led me to come into contact with many members of this species; that is, The Man Who Doesn't Care Anymore.  It is to me a sign of capitulation when the belly falls over the belt, the sneakers become a shoe or sandal without laces and with velcro, and when style gives in to substance.
Maturity, maybe?  A maturity that leads one to eschew the trappings of narcissism? 
Perhaps.  But maybe these men should not be seen as ome sort of heroes of Zen simplicity.  As I see the man in a faded yellow tank top and crusty purple sweatpants approach, my gaze fixes on the vanilla ice cream sundae in his hand, cherries, caramel sauce, and crushed Oreo cookies. 
Sometimes, I think, surrender is pretty sweet.