This needs to be better

Wednesday 6/24/26

I've not done a good job with fitness lately. I'm displeased with where I'm at and disappointed in myself. My legs should be stronger and not feel like they're wearing out in the muscles around the knees when I get to a certain point of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument, and my breathing ought to be much better than it has been. It's been frustrating and disappointing and I haven't done enough about it.

I feel like the last time I was at all closer to where I should be was back in September before the government shutdown, and that wasn't good enough either. I can't be losing anything as just a part of life. It's too early for that if I want to be what I want to be and able to do what I want to do a long time down the road. Really, it'll always be too early for that, which means I have to stay up on this. I should be improving, not falling back. So I need to make some changes.

I understand this would sound strange and/or crazy to someone else following along with this record and specifically how it pertains to fitness in this case, but the truth is that what sounds impressive to someone else can mean something very different to me. For instance, if someone in the Monument sees me going up for the second time, they think that's amazing because they can't conceive of doing that. But say I could only go up that second time--that would say that I was a shell of what I had formerly been. How this relates to me is all that's relevant here.

A problem has been the pace. On the one hand, that I'm not going faster, and on the other and more important that I've struggled to go any faster. The times aren't good. I should be doing ten circuits in that Monument in about an hour, not seventy-five minutes. If I'm trying to push it on five circuits, I should be able to do that in around twenty-five minutes, not thirty. That's really pushing it, but still, twenty-minutes or so should be the norm, not this thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two business.

At the same time, it is a bit tricky evaluating just how much of this is me and how much of it has to do with the air. It has been very humid. This is the worst time of the year. The worst time of the year for running stairs, and, slightly off subject, just the worst time of the year for me. I hate it. How people feel about the dead of winter is how I feel about June and July. I abhor summer.

I've run stairs for a lot of years now. I know how my body is supposed to respond. I know what a normal amount of sweat is for a given workout. Lately, I'm becoming drenched--we're talking like if I'd been tossed in a pool where my clothes drenched--pretty quickly. I'd say I'm sweating in five circuits of Monument stairs what I normally would be in a dozen. I'm so wet that it really is a challenge to carry on. It's so disgusting. My clothes are glued to my body, including my shorts, if I didn't wear a mesh pair that day.

That's an obvious change of late. I reach that saturation point far faster. I sweat so much that after my shirt is soaked through, I'm able to see streaks of additional sweat on top of that, which is a weird effect. But when you can see sweat on top of the sweat, so much fluid gone out of you.

The way humidity works is that sweating, which ordinarily cools your body, doesn't do so nearly as well anymore, because that sweat on your skin doesn't evaporate. There's too much moisture in the air already for that air to take on anymore.

It didn't help that I ran no stairs from Monday through Friday last week. With the new week, which starts for me on Saturday, I decided to try and resolve--that's how it works now with just about everything now for me, given that I have nothing to live for and no hope that I ever will, which would be completely irrational, because this isn't going to change and there won't and can't ever be anything at all that is any good for me--to do better, which means force myself, which started with just getting out there again. Literally lifting a finger takes so much exertion for me now. I'm basically dead. Shaving can be what's now tantamount to a victory, and that obviously isn't a victory at all. Those days inside last week.

On Saturday, I walked three miles, ran five circuits of stairs in the Monument, and did 300 push-ups. Was right around thirty-one minutes probably. I did a bad job. Legs bad, wind bad. Utterly soaked. On Sunday, I walked six miles, did 100 push-ups, and forced myself to do ten circuits in the Monument. I get caught up in these numbers, but my focus right now, I think, needs to be pace. Quality over quantity. Doing five circuits better and faster. Everything builds off of that anyway. If you can consistently do five circuits well and fast, then adding on is just you wanting to stick around longer and keep at it.

Normally I might not have run stairs on Monday and Tuesday with the Monument being closed, but on each day I ran 5000 stairs at City Hall, with 150 push-ups on Monday and 100 yesterday. You can't feel much more disgusting than after doing stairs outside like that in this weather. You don't even want to sit down once you're finished to rest because you're clothes feel so gross against your skin. Yesterday, the humidity was 97% as I ran the City Hall steps. No breaks, two stairs at-a-time going up.

Sunday marked 3626 days, or 518 weeks, without a drink.

That's the situation and what I plan to do about it as I try to be as healthy as possible to live as long as possible for no other reason apparently than to make myself suffer as long as I can while I mostly only think about death and it feels each day like there is a real chance I'm just going to kill myself. It doesn't make sense to me and it even feels pathetic to me that I'm doing this like it's part of me trying to delude myself that it could somehow matter and I'll be glad I did this. When I know better, because of course I do.