So after all that frass and rigmarole, what's next? Combining Vibram runs with my low-cushion shoes was helping my race-training and keeping my knee's and joints healthy and hale. (Knock on wood) I was still a little frassy that the change in drinking habits didn't have a more profound affect on my bod. (Was I expecting to go from puffy-pancake to svelte with just one change? Well, yes. Actually) Moda was complimentary in terms of noticing the differences, and promptly started her training for her first full marathon- an endeavor I support fully- but wasn't even sure if I was racing at all in 2011. I was still thinking about going topless. And then once again, I find the universe speaks to us in strange ways. This time a couple of things happened in rather rapid succession:
-The costume fitting. I found out that I wasn't going to be running around like Tarzan with a pompadour and they were leaning toward the more traditional "Elvis" jumpsuited look. Still, the fact that I split the seam on the costume wasn't very encouraging. (pictured, again- Willem Dafoe backstage theater pose in costume change #2)
-I got super. Duper. Sick. In fact, I don't think I've been that sick/voice lost/wiped out since 1996. (Oddly enough, another children's show.) I looked back on my mileage on Mapmyrun over the last year and I logged a paltry 15 miles for the whole month of February. My priorities, however, were just being able to make noise when I sang.
And the coup de grace: My ass got fired. Citing missed days and an inability to be kosher with an actor's lifestyle, I was released. Sooooo...that was stressful. And I was left wondering "What Next"? So while I was juggling finding a new job, re-evaluating my life/work future et.al. I decided to make good on an idea I'd bounced around in my head the last time I was shitcanned- I'd use this as an excuse to start up a fairly intensive fitness program that incorporated race-training along with a pretty high-level weight routine in the interest of seeing if that had results.
See, I've always lifted weights. I've always been a strong advocate for cross training with iron no matter what your fitness pursuit- be it karate, pilates, yoga, running- whatever. It's good mechanics, and the pundits aren't wrong- You develop and improve lean muscle tissue and you'll conversely improve your metabolism in addition to strengthening joints/flexibility. You wouldn't be muscle bound per se, but you're improving the machine with which you explore the aforementioned "preferred pursuits".
Except what that meant to me since joining my gym was "Do a couple of quick sets hitting the whole body just to keep some muscle memory". (In other words, it was a 15 minute hiccup until I got my miles in) So I started doing two things: I increased the number of sets/reps - and I went heavy.
What's important to know, is that if you want to reap any sort of benefit from any exercise it needs to be at least somewhat taxing. That's why even though I don't consider snow-shovelling "exercise" necessarily- it still gets you breathing heavy and sweating. If you politely go through the motions of a weight routine with no effort, you aren't reaping the benefits. Period. (This is why, since the dawn of pumping iron, they say that you should work with a weight that is about 60-70% of your "max"- or rather- think of it as those last 2-3 reps should be tough to bang out)
One of the guys that filmed "Pumping Iron" wrote a corresponding book about "Arnold" that had a great quote in it describing how a teardrop of sweat was a permanent fixture on the end of his nose during his workouts. So while (for my part) I wasn't squatting the equivalent of the QE2, I was sweating. Not as profusely as a run, but I was getting sticky. And little by little, week by week? I was increasing the weights and number of sets I did. I was being careful to make sure my form wasn't compromised, or that I was "cheating". I ended up adding open-squats to my routine. Which was a first, since I used to always figure that my legs were getting worked out enough on my runs and that I didn't have to do a leg workout as intensively. And guess what? It started to be a bigger benefit to my running than I thought.
And yeah...the rest of my body responded to the shock, too. (I'm convincing myself that one nice thing about getting older is also that I'm getting stronger as a result. Nice, huh?
So what's the bottom line? The point? I could end it here by saying that I was able to run nearly a half-marathon distance during a training run a few weeks back and while it was tough, I was still mobile and was able to "go the distance" without stopping. (Or be incapacitated the next day) Or that even while someone squeezing your bicep is the knee-jerk way of seeing how "muscular" you are, I'm actually digging the definition and "hardness" of my calves and quads. (Although, polite society may frown on someone squeezing your leg. Recently I just dropped trou in front of Moda to show her, but we have pretty weak boundries)
I guess my strongest point in all of this, is that while it's taken over 7 months to work on and discover these new changes- it is possible to do it with some effort. The drawback is "yes- I'm spending a lot of my limited free time in the gym lifting" but I hope that once race training tapers off it will balance out. That the stipulation people put on aging and our bodies can be subverted. And that you end up with friends and a growing mutual support group along the way.
In addition to the improved self-respect with a smidgen of being a little happier in your own skin to boot. I'll be frassin about training in the weeks to come.
(pictured: The author, Moda, and D-Gang. Running buddies on their first outdoor partnered training run of 2011. And the weather was awful)
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