Identity Crisis!

What am I? Am I this ultra endurance dude? A guy that does seven one hundred milers in a single summer, comes home does his chores around the house and still has enough for a night out on the town? Or am I something else entirely? 

 This picture is ingrained in my memory! It is what I don't want to be. It is not me, I don't wear glasses like that! But then I always told myself, I didn't want to be like X and now in my later years I have become that which I didn't want to be. So yeah, there's an identity crisis!

What is an ultra-exerciser that cannot exercise? Are they a couch potato?! Are they a cheeto flinger?! Are they a cheese-ball whacker?! I wrote this after the Summer after the two elbow break (I must have been too devastated to even write about it before then!):

So, this Spring Break (March, 2016), I'm working out how to be inactive! I came to the realization that's it's been thirty plus years that I have been working out: running, climbing, cycling, swimming, and lately walking.
Unbelievably, now that I'm older the walking is ever more productive than all the cycling I do so regularly. Recently, with two catastrophic injuries in two years the mileage on the bike is less than half of what it has been in the past. The breaking of my two elbows this past Summer, caused me to question whether cycling is for ever or just another one of many activities I have done throughout the years.
My wife and I have adopted the slower method of losing poundage with small changes that make a big difference on weight-loss. Both of us have lost about thirty-five pounds and have kept it off.
At school I use the fasting method. A bunch of people at school are getting good results with it. I don't like to eat at school anyway so it works for me. (Please do not see this as an endorsement of the intermittent fasting method. I no longer believe it to be healthy or productive in weight-loss!)
I can feel the consequences of not staying active in my hips and in my knees. My back has never been real happy so that is still there also. My elbows, the one that did not give as much trouble is the one that troubles me more now and it even clicks! Boo! Well, got to go!

I remember the orthopod telling me to get back on the bike immediately and start putting weight back on my arms. I did, at about a minute something at a time on the bike in the basement! Putting weight on two broken arms was no fun!

A lot of times I talk about an experiment of one, meaning we all have to find our own way out of the hole, if a hole is the right metaphor for a cease and desist on the exercise front! As one grows older, is that all that is left with exercise? Use it or lose it! Put up or shut up! One injury after another! Fighting my battle! Take that pill! Subsistence exercise, forget intensity, forget endurance, and just ride to smell the flowers or ride to be an activist! Am I paying the price now for all the intense exercise I have done in my past? The injuries are here because I was too gung-ho (over-enthusiastic) in High-School, College, and Early Adulthood. Add to that all the heart issues that come with it as well: enlarged heart, heart murmur, irregular heart-beat and high-cholesterol, high blood-pressure, and anxiety. What do I say to all you young people on our campus?! "Take it easy, take it slow, but go, go, Go!"; "Use it or lose it!!"; "Carpe Diem!"; "Carpe Viam!"(Loosely translated as Hit the road!); "Noli Consequi!"(No drafting the big guy!) Would I be where I am today, without exercise and fitness? Would I be a lesser version of myself? Would the kids still say, "you look forty, mister!?"

So, after a two-week hiatus from exercising, after a debilitating Lis Franc Injury, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone that has supported me and honored me with Student Jerseys at Krueger MS. Nearly Twenty years at Krueger and two shirts in two weeks! The support is really humbling and something I would never have expected.

This is obviously a tough time, but I have gained a lot of strength from the support over the last two weeks! I'd also like to extend my gratitude to my comrades in arms, the ultra-exercisers I look up to, especially Ms. Rubio and Lupe Rodriguez. Doctor Gayle, my wife, for keeping me on the straight and narrow and everyone at Well-Med and Doctor Horn's Office for assisting me. Thank you for going above and beyond the call of duty, for which I am ever so grateful. I know how lucky I am to be here today and how much I owe to all of you. One of the practitioners said, "there is no medical reason" why I could not come back "stronger than before."

In my dreams I wish I could be like Froome and say, "Whilst this is a setback and a major one at that, I am focusing on looking forward. There is a long road to recovery ahead, but that recovery starts now and I am fully focused on returning back to my best."

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