too much information theater presents: is that blood?

by mg at 10:33 AM on September 24, 2002

In my ongoing attempts to get fit and trim this summer, I managed to make some very dubious inroads this morning.

At the beginning of the summer I’d made a personal vow to get healthy. So far I've added about 15 lbs - mostly muscle (the rest, ice cream). For all my work, I'm really no more than maybe 0.3% toward getting the Vin Diesel body to go along with the Vin Diesel hairdo.

[ On a somewhat unrelated note, I’m also only about 0.3% closer to finishing the Bad Samaritan design. ]

At any rate, I woke up this morning at a hearty 6 am with the intention of running. It was still dark out. I’d only gotten to bed about 3, as part of a marathon attempt to finally get through Infinite Jest. At the beginning of the weekend I had a short 100 pages to go. I only managed to get through 60 of those, so I had to carry it again with me today. I think the majority of my exercise this summer has come lugging that 1,100 page monster around.

But, so, the running. I did go running this morning. I waited ‘till about 6:30, and sunlight, to begin my leisurely jog. As much as I’ve done this summer to try to get healthier I’ve only managed to go running twice. Both times I collapsed into a soggy ball after a mere 15 minutes.

At my best, I could run for an hour, at midday, and still feel fresh enough to… well, I didn’t have anyone to engage in strenuous two-back style exercise with, but if I did, I still could have.

That I can’t go more than a quarter hour now without feeling as if my heart is going to explode is a little depressing. But, when all is said and done, I am pretty healthy. I have zero fat on me. I’m surprisingly strong for my overall build. And those days I did run, I didn’t stop because I was tired, but because I couldn’t breathe well enough to get oxygen to all my poor little asphyxiating cells.

I suppose that might be from having smoked for 10 years, but, until it comes time to sue the tobacco industry, I’ll choose to blame it on poor conditioning.

So, to increase lung capacity, I’ve been doing this breathing exercise I saw Jacques Cocteau’s son do on PBS where you breathe in until you can’t breathe in any more, and then you force yourself to take as many more short sharp breaths of air as you can.

It’s really the same principle as how at the end of the night you think you can’t possibly drink any more without dying, so instead of getting a pint of beer, you just do some shots. Yeah, it’s just like that.

But, needless, it works.

I went out today and ran for twenty (20!) whole minutes. Okay, so that isn’t that impressive, but it is for me. But, so, there is more, the dubious part. I walk the next couple blocks home, to warm down, and I’m not feeling so bad. Sure, as soon as I get home I collapse on the floor. That’s a given, right?

[Now, the rest of the story is where the too much information bit comes in. At this point I urge anyone who doesn’t want to hear something gross to stop.]

Okay, so I’m lying in a sweaty fetal position on the floor of my living room after having stripped off my sneaks and most of my clothes. As much as my body is telling me that it’d be quite happy to just lay there for a little longer, I’m starting to get this feeling in my stomach that my still fully functioning intellect recognizes as nausea, and thus I now have plenty reason to get vertical.

I crawl, then walk, to the bathroom, where the inevitable happens. Post exertion stomach expulsion is something many athletes, even professionals, experience. I vividly recall Pete Sampras and an incident during the U.S. Open. Sure, he’d been playing tennis for like 4 straight hours on a painfully hot New York August afternoon, but throw up is throw up, you know?

This all makes me feel like I’ve joined some elite echelon of athletes with poor tracheal control. “I’d finally made,” I’d thought jubilantly.

But my joy was tinged with a little something darker. Literally. Looking down at the partially digested fruits of my labor and seeing a little ribbon of red within the mostly water prompted me to ask a question (re: the title of this post) – “Is that blood?” The end.