Friday 26 January 2007

Ups and Downs

Well, I'll start off by saying the ups definitely outweighed the downs today, but the timing leaves me a little frustrated heading to bed.

The rest of my physical exam turned out well. I'm far to the correct side of the bell curve on every measure they could think of. My blood has lots of good things, and not many bad things, and it's at a pleasantly low pressure so I'm not likely to blow a gasket anytime soon. My absolute levels of cholesterol are low, as is my ratio of good to bad cholesterol. Both are better than what is prescribed when people with high cholesterol discover their issue, and use drugs and diet to make immediate extreme adjustments to treat themselves as fast as possible. So I'm just walking around in extreme treatment range all day, guess I shouldn't clog up the heart any time soon. At least it makes me feel good that nearly always watching what I eat isn't all for naught. I hit the maximum on the upper body strength test (surprising), abdominal curls, and was the only person the tester says he'd seen that pushed the measuring stick right off the end of the box on the touch past your toes test. My body composition came in leaner than expected, and he observed that proportionately I carry a lot of muscular weight in my calves, quads, hamstrings and back. That's what I aim for, glad it turns out that way. I've heard others come back with lists of dietary recommendation, referrals for exercise, indicators showing that they drink "socially" way too much, smoking cessation programs, cholesterol scares, allergy alerts, other random follow up testing to hone in on "problems", you name it. The VO2 test they did wasn't maximal testing, rather it was inferred. But it came out exactly in line with my U of C guinnea pigging a few years ago, so it seems their protocol works. It's scary how low I've heard some of the other scores come back in our office banter... no wonder people can feel short of breath at the top of stairs... or shaky for an hour after they have to sprint a couple blocks to make a meeting on time.

I had a discussion once with Jon Nutbrown on the approprateness of pride as an emotion, and I think we agreed that it serves it's place as long as it isn't overdone. I have to admit I walked around with pride this afternoon. Health is what makes life, and I try very hard to be healthy. I feel good that my efforts have worked, cause I kicked every indicator they looked at to the far end of the best side of the spectrum. Good fortune isn't to be overlooked either, the luck of the draw play a part in health as well. And I definitely do feel fortunate. I even got two check marks next to the "testes" boxes, which is a hell of a lot better than missing one somehow.

The best part of it is, I honestly don't see why I couldn't score nearly the same for plenty of years to come.

The downs today were little annoyances. My iPod bit the dust, I did have a few years of wear on it. House is a mess, I gotta pack and do laundry, so I started that then didn't get to Bow Cycle in time to fit my new Cervelo, bummer since I carried a bunch of my parts down with me (biking). Which also means I didn't have time to do a few hours of riding. A thread appears to be stripped on my Strong frame - one of the rack mounts. Bummer. Only one of my 29er wheels held air on my tubeless conversion. Lots of little things... but I feel better cause I ran over to London Drugs to pick up an iPod Nano, can't do 10 hours of flying in the next few days without some Espanol!

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