Fitness as an identity

I’ve learned some things about myself via this fucking pandemic. You know how in my writing I often put “fucking” before the word “Nazis”? I’m ready to start doing that regarding this fucking pandemic. 

I did aerobic exercise, either running or cycling, seven out of eight days, then I took Sunday off, and I’m going for a bike ride this afternoon and probably again tomorrow. The distances weren’t anything like what I was doing 18 months ago, but at least the frequency is coming back. 

My legs hurt. 

And that is a good thing. But oh, it is such a struggle. I feel like I lost my identity as a fit guy. One of the things this fucking pandemic has been good for is pondering. Sometimes it’s good, and other times, not so much. Getting back to my old level of fitness has been and continues to be a struggle, and aerobic exercise is a time when my mind is allowed to wander, and this is what I’ve pondered while my mind wandered as I rode my bike over yonder. 

I’ll stop doing that now. 

Here is a secret that literally no one outside my family knows. Prior to becoming a fitness writer, I was only moderately fit. I was strong and muscular because I lifted a lot, but I didn’t do much in the way of aerobic exercise, and I had a bit of a belly. Yet I was sick of the corporate world and wanted to be a fitness writer and the first thing that popped into my head was, “Well then I need to be in better shape.” 

This was before I learned all about how toxic the industry is and that the look of one’s physique has next to nothing to do with their capabilities as a trainer / fitness educator. I knew my ideas were good, mostly, and that my writing was better than what others were doing, but I didn’t have abs and I figured if I was going to be taken seriously, I needed abs because the competition had abs and people are shallow so get some fucking abs. 

And so, before I ever wrote a fitness article, I got abs. How? I ran. A shit ton. 

I’m a pretty hedonistic guy. I like to eat, and drink, and I don’t like to restrain my desires overmuch. While I know one cannot out-exercise a bad diet, I’m proof that you CAN out-exercise a mediocre diet. I ate quite healthy, but also enjoyed my chips and pizza and beer because I ran. I ran a lot. And cycled. A lot. 

And after a while I looked like this. Not bad for 42.

And a while after that, I forgot that I did it as a marketing gimmick. See, I liked being super fit. I liked having abs and being able to run a 45-minute 10K any day of the week and qualifying for Boston (actually, that really fucking hurt). I liked being lean and mean and because I was writing about fitness all the time for major newspapers it was all part of my identity. Being really fit who I was, because I wasn’t just a guy who exercised a lot, I was a guy who wrote about exercise a lot in order to make a living. Most of my time was either writing about fitness, or doing fitness. They reinforced the shit out of each other, and, as I said, I liked it. It felt good to always be kind of sore and chafing and wondering if that toenail was gonna stay and goddammit I have to do laundry again? 

One thing I was good at was not overdoing it. I slept great and felt great and had a high sex drive and my mood was positive. I pushed the edge and held. I’d liked that life.

And then I lost it. 

I’ve mentioned before that it was due to three things: fear of Trump winning re-election, the stress of the career change to writing about history, and the fucking pandemic. After more pondering, I realized it goes deeper than that. 

Yes, this time last year I was stressed as fuck and could not make myself run. I did cycle a lot, but running is what kept me lean. Running is psychologically challenging and also, for me, works well in terms of controlling my appetite. When I run lots, I crave beer and treats much less. Cycling doesn’t have the same effect, and as soon as it snowed, I stopped doing even that. Running makes me a hard motherfucker. But because of that stress, I couldn’t run. I did not have the mental capacity to launch a new career, avoid Covid, and not lose my fucking mind over the possibility of another four years of Trump and also be able to run.

But Trump is gone, my career is going better than I could have imagined, and maybe I’m gonna get vaccinated in the next couple of months. So why am I still struggling? Part of it is the loss of fitness as an identity. I was a fitness writer. Past tense. Now I’m a history writer, and people don’t expect their historians to have abs. 

The other part is fucking pandemic burnout. 

Yesterday I read a piece in the New York Times that totally resonated. The title is “We have all hit a wall”. It’s about how people are just so fucking tired from Covid. Anxiety is fucking exhausting. I arrange my schedule to be able to exercise, and in the past, I’d be excited to do it, but it’s still feeling like a chore. 

I’m tired. I’d rather nap. But no. I slept enough. Just do it. Ugh. I hate that saying. 

These days, I always feel better after I’ve exercised. Before, I felt better before, during, and after. The desire was almost always there. I was excited and disciplined and it was just a part of who I was. 

But I also wasn’t so fucking stressed. Just because Trump is gone doesn’t mean the stress from the chaos he caused is. And I’m in Alberta which is run by a Trump wannabe who is destroying this province. Another thing is that career success can be stressful in a similar way that career failure is. Yeah, things are going great with the history writing, but that comes with its own anxiety. And, we had a Covid scare recently. 

My son woke up feeling like shit, with shortness of breath. He got tested and didn’t have it, but it was a tense 24 hours. I was thinking “Fuck we’ve made it this far and now we’re all gonna get infected.” And no one in the family is vaccinated yet. Even though my wife is a family physician, she still hasn’t got it. 

Yesterday I read on Facebook a post by a friend who is, I mean was, a high-level marathon runner. I think his best time was around 2:30, which is stupid fast. He’s written a number of popular books on running. Then he got “long” Covid. The kind that lasts and lasts. And it fucking wrecked him. He posted about how he can’t even walk two miles right now. That kind of shit terrifies me. And now there are variants running wild and we don’t know if the vaccine prevents the Brazilian one. Fuck. 

For right now, I’ve progressed from struggling to exercise to persevering and getting it done. Mostly. My conditioning isn’t where it used to be, but that just means I need to keep doing it, keep pushing. Will getting vaccinated change things, will it help renew my passion? I think it will. I hope so. 

Fear is exhausting.