Days Fifty, Sixty-something or rather: Forrest Gump and the PCP Rescue

Right, so a lot to catch up on. Apologies to my fellow PCPers, I will be reading up and catching up on your blogs this weekend.

I could go on and on with the stories about life in post-quake Japan. The 600 or so aftershocks, the worried calls and emails from friends and family abroad, the extended hours at work (business as “usual”), the stress, the lack of sleep, the contingencies upon contingencies, fear, radiation, hoarding, etc. But there is no point. The fact of the matter is, things have been rough, but no amount of moaning about it will do anything, and the more important fact is that I have a roof over my head, food to eat, water to drink, a bathroom to do my business in. I am not cold. I haven’t lost a thing. Except sleep. And weight. I am fortunate. “And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”

United Nations of veggies continued...Japan of course (or Canada, but in this case, Japan). Hang in there. Times are tough, but you will pull through.

I went on a rescue mission this weekend. A mission to rescue my mindset and my PCP. The diet was a blessing in that it kept me in a routine in terms of what I ate. I was lucky to have that or my eating habits would have been far worse. I say far worse because the timing wasn’t ideal. Late nights meant big gaps between afternoon tea and dinner, and compression among dinner, evening snack and post and pre-workout food. What I was eating was PCP food. When I was eating it wasn’t really PCP. Still, need to ignore my perfectionist voice gnawing at me on this one and focus on the positive. The jump-rope, I missed one day. The exercises, I know I missed one somewhere, and then two in a row at least last week. Three workouts missed, one, maybe two jump-rope sessions at most missed. Look, it just wasn’t happening. Even the exercises I did, sometimes my heart was in it and my mind was on it, and at other times, it wasn’t. It was on reactors, and micro-sieverts and 15% drops in the market, on refugees and tsunamis. And more often than you would think if you aren’t one of us here in Tokyo, it was on getting under a door frame or a table during another large aftershock.

So, things were threatening to unravel for me. I decided to take matters into my own hands and get my PCP life back. About 1am Friday morning, I decided to head for Guam with my girlfriend and her mom. We all needed a break, and it would give me three days to reset mentally and get back on track. A little sand and sun was just what I needed. I felt human again instead of like a mole living indoors all the time. The sun gave me energy and a bit of a sunburn, but crucial was the energy. My hotel had a nice, soft, foam-like floor perfect for jump-rope. Just firm enough to keep the rope going, just soft enough to go easy on the knees.  Big open spot, a mirror. I could actually see what I was doing in the there and distract myself. Intensity on workouts high, gym a touch warm, each workout was a killer. Especially Day 64’s legs. I could barely walk for 5 minutes after the floor jumps were done. Likewise for Day 66 and the planks. Could not hold 90 seconds on the last two. Focus on the workouts the whole time, not on other matters. Pull-ups? Not a whole lot of luck there, so I improvised and used a piece of equipment with a bar to pull myself up. As the bar was diagonal, I alternated sides in order to work my muscles equally. Not perfect, but good enough, in my realist , not perfectionist, books and better for working my back than inclines.  Kung-fu sit-ups--nowhere to do them. Did regular sit-ups instead.

My imperfect pull-up set-up (using the diagonal bar at the top).

Food-wise, things were ok. Breakfast protein had to be extra eggs. No way around that unless I went for pork. I did not. Sometimes, white rice was unavoidable. Had muesli twice, went very light on that and picked out all the dried fruit and nuts before pouring in milk. Basically subbed in low-fat milk for yogurt every time. Boiled eggs were not a problem, and a grilled chicken sandwich with brown bread and nothing on it served nicely as well. Had one lean fillet mignon as well. Just about all my veggies were steamed. And caught up on some sleep. I know from looking in the mirror that I have lost weight, including muscle. It has been a stressful time, and I hadn't slept four hours in a row, let alone eight, since March 11. So this was huge.

Just three days before the quake, I saw some people in peak condition perform some pretty amazing things. I resolved to improve my jump-rope skills after that.

Time to finish strong.