What's Gotta Give?

Day 23

January 30, 2011


I have this old good friend Eli. We go way back, like circa 7th grade. We have different approaches to our respective endeavors and we both garner our desired results most of the time, although I'd say he has substantially fewer dramatic complete misses on his record than I. That would be because his general rule of thumb in taking up with commitments, especially ones of the physical fitness variety is to only do things that are sustainable in the long term. Sounds like smart practical thinking right? I agree. My problem is while I recognize the intelligence of that I can't bring myself to do it. I know how to do zero, I know how to do sixty, I just have no idea how intentionally capping out at forty is supposed to work.

I haven’t done any cardio since Friday morning and I haven’t done any weights since Thursday afternoon. I think the earliest I will return to either is going to be Wednesday. That can’t be good, but it is what it is. I’m more worried about midterms right now than my training. I haven’t put down a deposit on an overpriced custom sparkly bikini not fit for swimming (aka competition suit) yet so if I have to decide to not do the Emerald Cup than my forfeited sunk costs will be negligible. I don’t want to quit, but oh, what was the name of that movie whose plot doesn’t apply at all, but whose title does, ah right Something’s Gotta Give. I’ve been averaging only 6 hours of sleep a night for over a month now and that doesn’t cut it for me. I really need 8 to sustain my immune system. I’m pretty sure C had this same cold a week and a half ago, but he only ever had the cough never a fever. The same thing happened around fall quarter midterms, he and I both got a cold, him first then too, and I got knocked out an entire weekend with a fever while he was fine. Then my congestion hung on for another 4 weeks. I’m thinking we react so differently to the same bugs because he averages more than twice the sleep daily I do, 12-13 hours, and he doesn’t choose to steep himself in stress all the time like I do (thank goodness – he is only 3 after all!). There’s little I can do to eliminate the stress, but I can make choices to garner more sleep. If I sleep an extra 2 hours nightly I will lose 14 hours a week of productive time, basically the amount of time I now commit to training. So the opportunity cost of committing to the Emerald Cup is a weakened immune system and a heightened risk of overall unaffordable downtime and the opportunity cost of adequate sleep and a strengthened immune system is giving up which irritates me, ah trade-offs. That is why my original goal was the Washington Ironman. It takes place in the very beginning of October so 6 of the last 7 weeks pre-competition I’m off from school. That allows me to commit to what is needed without overextending myself as I am now. Just a silly side note, but I have to pause and laugh because despite my intense dislike of all things econ I sure have a propensity to integrate basic econ lingo into daily life applications: sunk costs, opportunity costs, trade-offs. I guess I just need to calculate whether the demand for the competing in the Emerald Cup or the demand for taking better care of myself is more elastic, haha. It isn’t an obvious choice to me. Fixating on goals to the point of mild self-detriment is a longstanding personality attribute. I’m not going to make any firm decisions until I am feeling better and can get back in the gym and see how much strength I’ve lost and get back my midterm grades and see how much I’ve lost there too.

8:00 am ½ Breakfast

1 peach Chobani NF Greek Yogurt (14 g protein)
Went back to bed, sort of.

10:30 am Other Half

½ cup oatmeal with 1/3 cup blueberries
Coffee

12:45 pm Lunch

1 bowl chicken noodle soup
1 orange
Hot tea

2:20 pm Snack

200 cals raw almonds
Fuji apple
Hot tea

6:30 pm Dinner

1 strawberry Chobani NF Yogurt
1 chili lime chicken patty with a 100 cal high fiber bun & greens
½ yellow bell pepper
4 oz. veggie soup
1 zero cal Pepsi Maxx

I decided to do a set of push-ups before bed just to be able to say I did 0.01% of something instead of a straight nothing, but that was actually mostly dumb. It wasn’t real failure at 17 ½ reps I could have paused and kept going, but I was feeling overheated and generally shitty so I decided to quit while I was behind.

Daily Cal Tally

1,380 Ingested
(1,448) BMR
(0) Forced Rest (I want my health/general energy back!)
(68) Net Loss