Fitness?
Every year for the past 26 years, I've done some form of a fitness test.
Early on, it was a bike test and a height/weight test, the former I was perpetually in danger of failing. It wasn't so much the concept of riding a bike or even my general fitness (which was starting to take a dive), but rather simple test anxiety. As soon as I would get on the stationary bike and words like "bike" or "test" were mentioned, my heart rate would shoot through the roof and I'd fail before I ever started. It would just be outside of the expected parameters, and the algorithms just wouldn't adapt. It wasn't a rare occurrence, and eventually methods were developed to "beat" the test. Mostly it was about breathing control, not fitness. They fiddled with the program for years before abandoning the bike, because it just wasn't an effective gauge of how "fit" a person was.
Replacing it later was a run, pushups, sit-ups, and an abdominal measurement. My knees soon killed my running, so I had a test where I stepped onto and off a short step for a while and they measured my heart rate. Another breathing test. This went on for a few years, and I did nothing but get weaker, gain weight, and still pass the test. I'd knock out near the minimums for sit ups and pushups (they're harder when you're fat), suck my gut in for the ab measurement, and take deep breaths. I'd meet the baselines, but I was nowhere near "fit". I'd get out of breath tying my shoes, and I was far from alone in the military.
Eventually I realized I was fat (duh) and started to do something about it. In a relatively short amount of time I dropped 50 lbs riding my bike around, cutting back on the 2 liters of Coke, and not eating everything in sight. It had absolutely nothing to do with passing a test to meet the current standard, but rather I wanted to live long enough to dance at my daughter's wedding. Since I will allow her to date when she's 30 and /or has finished her residency, this could be considered a long-term goal. She was barely an infant when I started racing.
This change in lifestyle had fortunate timing, because the standards were tightened. Instead of a step test, a timed walk test with all sorts of calculations factored in was implemented, which actually measured aerobic fitness. This time around, instead of squeaking through with breathing cheats, I was lapping people on the track with a speed walk and barely breaking a sweat. I still sucked at sit-ups because my core is perpetually weak despite several attempts to correct the issue, I never worked on push-ups because I prefer my upper body to look like Urkel's, but my walk score more than made up for those deficiencies. Life was good, and supervisors no longer wondered if I was going to pass. I was "fit", but I wasn't in any sort of balanced shape.
Because the military can't leave a good thing alone and were looking to lose even more fatties, they tightened the scores again after a few years and made the walk test pass/fail. Since the pass/fail results were scored as "exempt", the rest of the tested areas took on a greater importance in your overall score. I started having to do more pushups and sit-ups, and worked on getting my waistline down to achieve maximum points. My fitness, while not as balanced as a lot of people's, was certainly better than it had been in almost two decades. I felt pretty good.
It worked for a couple years, and then cyclocross wrecks and chronic back pains started to tear me down again. I backed off on the sit-ups, because I had a tendency to do them until I would strain a back muscle, which wasn't a sustainable plan. Pushups fell off as well, because I hate doing them almost as much as I hate sit-ups. I was still passing comfortably, so I didn't worry too much about it.
This year is different. After the latest wreck and the resulting damage, I'm just not there. My back has its good days and bad days, and I never know what kind of day it's going to be until I feel a shooting pain. The last fitness test I will do in the military is approaching, and I'm not sure I want to "gut it out" or "push through the pain" anymore. For what? For the chance that I might do additional damage to a body which has already seen its share? I'm finding it tough to rouse any sort of enthusiasm for the effort. I have to play the long game, because when I transition from DoD asset to DoD liability, the standard of care is going to drop. Like with my goal of dancing at a wedding in the distant future, I have to play the long game. Being middle-aged means this chassis still has to last for a lot more miles. Uncle Sam has gotten his fair share of them.
And so I'm likely going to shoot for the minimums again. Aerobically, I probably won't be too far off from what I consider good shape for this time of year. My waist hasn't grown too much, even as my weight has shot up (don't know where it's going). The rest? Screw it. The first sign of a twinge I'm going to throw in the towel and take the hit. It just isn't worth the risk.
The expectations of my "fitness", both internal and external, have evolved over the years. I'm more interested in my own perceptions than those designed as a force-shaping tool, but I've learned that I can easily delude myself- even as my fat cascades over my belt. For the unbiased viewpoint of my fitness, I can always rely on my fellow racers to put me in my place and highlight my dietary excesses. That's what friends are for- public shaming.
I figure as long as I'm still moving, I'm still better off than I was at my fattest, and fitness always trumps fatness.
Early on, it was a bike test and a height/weight test, the former I was perpetually in danger of failing. It wasn't so much the concept of riding a bike or even my general fitness (which was starting to take a dive), but rather simple test anxiety. As soon as I would get on the stationary bike and words like "bike" or "test" were mentioned, my heart rate would shoot through the roof and I'd fail before I ever started. It would just be outside of the expected parameters, and the algorithms just wouldn't adapt. It wasn't a rare occurrence, and eventually methods were developed to "beat" the test. Mostly it was about breathing control, not fitness. They fiddled with the program for years before abandoning the bike, because it just wasn't an effective gauge of how "fit" a person was.
Replacing it later was a run, pushups, sit-ups, and an abdominal measurement. My knees soon killed my running, so I had a test where I stepped onto and off a short step for a while and they measured my heart rate. Another breathing test. This went on for a few years, and I did nothing but get weaker, gain weight, and still pass the test. I'd knock out near the minimums for sit ups and pushups (they're harder when you're fat), suck my gut in for the ab measurement, and take deep breaths. I'd meet the baselines, but I was nowhere near "fit". I'd get out of breath tying my shoes, and I was far from alone in the military.
Eventually I realized I was fat (duh) and started to do something about it. In a relatively short amount of time I dropped 50 lbs riding my bike around, cutting back on the 2 liters of Coke, and not eating everything in sight. It had absolutely nothing to do with passing a test to meet the current standard, but rather I wanted to live long enough to dance at my daughter's wedding. Since I will allow her to date when she's 30 and /or has finished her residency, this could be considered a long-term goal. She was barely an infant when I started racing.
This change in lifestyle had fortunate timing, because the standards were tightened. Instead of a step test, a timed walk test with all sorts of calculations factored in was implemented, which actually measured aerobic fitness. This time around, instead of squeaking through with breathing cheats, I was lapping people on the track with a speed walk and barely breaking a sweat. I still sucked at sit-ups because my core is perpetually weak despite several attempts to correct the issue, I never worked on push-ups because I prefer my upper body to look like Urkel's, but my walk score more than made up for those deficiencies. Life was good, and supervisors no longer wondered if I was going to pass. I was "fit", but I wasn't in any sort of balanced shape.
Because the military can't leave a good thing alone and were looking to lose even more fatties, they tightened the scores again after a few years and made the walk test pass/fail. Since the pass/fail results were scored as "exempt", the rest of the tested areas took on a greater importance in your overall score. I started having to do more pushups and sit-ups, and worked on getting my waistline down to achieve maximum points. My fitness, while not as balanced as a lot of people's, was certainly better than it had been in almost two decades. I felt pretty good.
It worked for a couple years, and then cyclocross wrecks and chronic back pains started to tear me down again. I backed off on the sit-ups, because I had a tendency to do them until I would strain a back muscle, which wasn't a sustainable plan. Pushups fell off as well, because I hate doing them almost as much as I hate sit-ups. I was still passing comfortably, so I didn't worry too much about it.
This year is different. After the latest wreck and the resulting damage, I'm just not there. My back has its good days and bad days, and I never know what kind of day it's going to be until I feel a shooting pain. The last fitness test I will do in the military is approaching, and I'm not sure I want to "gut it out" or "push through the pain" anymore. For what? For the chance that I might do additional damage to a body which has already seen its share? I'm finding it tough to rouse any sort of enthusiasm for the effort. I have to play the long game, because when I transition from DoD asset to DoD liability, the standard of care is going to drop. Like with my goal of dancing at a wedding in the distant future, I have to play the long game. Being middle-aged means this chassis still has to last for a lot more miles. Uncle Sam has gotten his fair share of them.
And so I'm likely going to shoot for the minimums again. Aerobically, I probably won't be too far off from what I consider good shape for this time of year. My waist hasn't grown too much, even as my weight has shot up (don't know where it's going). The rest? Screw it. The first sign of a twinge I'm going to throw in the towel and take the hit. It just isn't worth the risk.
The expectations of my "fitness", both internal and external, have evolved over the years. I'm more interested in my own perceptions than those designed as a force-shaping tool, but I've learned that I can easily delude myself- even as my fat cascades over my belt. For the unbiased viewpoint of my fitness, I can always rely on my fellow racers to put me in my place and highlight my dietary excesses. That's what friends are for- public shaming.
I figure as long as I'm still moving, I'm still better off than I was at my fattest, and fitness always trumps fatness.
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