Flat tire
A chunk of time has passed since I inked in the second eye of the Daruma. My body has continued to heal, and I generally feel better than I have in a long time, despite the fact that the years keep accumulating. Throughout most of that chunk a worldwide pandemic has been raging, but in my own little world of health, not much has happened. I had another exercise stress test. “Mild mitral regurgitation” and “calcified chordae” were noted. My doctor wrote, “Your stress echocardiogram looks good with no evidence of ischemia and excellent exercise capacity.” I started taking a daily low dose of a statin. I wear an Apple watch, which can deliver an ECG at the drop of a hat, and I am diligently on guard for any signs of atrial fibrillation. (So far nothing.) And for the last six months, I’ve been doing CrossFit.
It’s not a new thing for me. Thanks to my friend and former colleague Rick, I was introduced to it over a dozen years ago, and not only did we embrace it, but we morphed it into an innovative and effective approach to high school physical education. You can read about it here and here, and you might also enjoy this cool video. But after my doctor discovered that I had a broken mitral valve, he discouraged me from doing anything that involved lifting weights. His reasoning was that lifting causes an increase in blood pressure, which puts even more demands on an already faulty mechanism. So I walked a lot. It didn’t take much convincing. I sometimes wondered if it was CrossFit that caused this whole mess in the first place. I could easily imagine a scenario where in the middle of a particularly intense WOD (workout of the day), my calcified chorda snapped, leaving the second posterior leaflet of my mitral valve uselessly flopping around in the arterial current, and altering my life forever. I remember asking the cardiac surgeon if I might be somehow prone to snapping chords. He paused, as if the idea had never occurred to him before. “Maybe,” he said.
That doctor fixed my valve, another tamed my fibrillation, and they all eventually lifted any restrictions to my physical activity.
As the pandemic tightened its grip, I continued my long walks, but I started to feel like I was missing something. I think it was intensity. I started to run more. I discovered Crossropes, a system of weighted ropes and a workout app that I could do within the confines of my little garage, with no chance of exposure to deadly pathogens. I sent a set of ropes to my daughter in North Carolina, and we jumped together over Zoom every Sunday morning. And still I felt like I was missing something. I think it was people. I mean in real life, not just faces on a screen. I got vaccinated, and I got braver, or maybe I just got needier. A local CrossFit gym offered three classes for free, and for the first time in six years I was swapping fist-bumps, swinging kettlebells, jumping up onto boxes, and doing my best rusty, bent-over, old-man impression of a power clean.
That was about six months ago. Currently, I’m on a pretty consistent four day a week schedule, and I’ve fallen head over heels in love with the place. All of the coaches I’ve encountered have been knowledgeable and attentive. Because I tend to go at the same time every day, I see many of the same people, and they’ve become my workout buddies. I’m nourished by the details of their lives: the rigors of study at the local military language school, the husband adjusting to a new pacemaker, the five-year-old home from school because of a tummy ache, the family vacation at Disneyland, the new job in the local elementary school office, the student getting ready to go off to college, the latest bread recipe. I often forget that I’m at least twice as old as most of the people there, and I’m grateful for that. And yet, I’m starting to feel like I’m missing something.
Crossfit is a game. It is elaborate, but it has rules, and if done correctly, the nature of it changes from day to day. The variety is part of what makes it compelling. It’s as hard as you want to make it, and it’s fun to play. There is nothing magical about it, and you could probably achieve many of the same fitness goals with little or none of the fancy equipment you might find in a CrossFit gym. Some approach it casually, some are relentless and competitive, some come for a few classes and never come back, and in the end we all towel off and go to our jobs or our ailing kids or our rising bread dough. What’s interesting to me is that I know for a fact, without the CrossFit class, I would never work out with the same intensity or regularity. In addition to the charming community, I’m paying for the peer pressure. As a result, I’m redlining my heart--held together by baling wire (literally, if you’ll count Gore Tex thread as baling wire)--at least four days a week.
There is a rule of thumb for determining your maximum heart rate: 220 minus your age. That gives me a maximum heart rate of 154. Apart from the fact that the derivation of this formula seems to be based on some pretty fuzzy science, it seems to generally work for me. Before my surgery, as many times as I ran a hard 400 meters on short rest, mid 150s was about all I could squeeze out. After my surgery it took a while before I could push it up that high, but that’s eventually where it settled again during a tough workout or an exercise stress test. My Apple watch allows me to keep track with a glance. Over the last few months in Crossfit, the number has crept up. When I first saw 160, I was startled and concerned, and took some time off to marinate in calcified chordae anxiety. Now I’m no longer surprised to see 173 during a set of, for example, burpee box jump-overs. So I’m tempted to say that CrossFit has helped me to increase my maximum heart rate by about twenty beats per minute. That’s a good thing, right? Right? I posed the question to my new cardiologist, but I don’t think I ever got a straight answer. This may be territory he isn’t used to wading in.
A couple of weeks ago, I hit a wall. After several consecutive days of vigorous exercise, I suddenly had the energy and enthusiasm of a wet rag. I took a full day off and still had nothing in the tank, so I took another. Then I got my COVID booster, and felt like crap for another couple of days. Then my daughter made a last minute decision to fly in for Thanksgiving. By the time the dust had settled, I had avoided visiting the CrossFit gym for over a week. Unexpectedly, I started sleeping better. Things that had been keeping me awake at three in the morning seemed less troublesome. I got back into my old walking routine, and it brought me joy, while seemingly giving my brain a chance to sweep out some cobwebs and open some windows to let in a little fresh air.
Is CrossFit bad for me? I look forward to doing it, I thrive on the challenge, and I revel in the community. Despite the difference in age, those are my people. How can any of those things be bad? Is it possible that I have a tendency to overdo it? To quote my cardiac surgeon: “Maybe.”
Noam Chomsky is a proponent of the bicycle theory: "As long as you keep riding fast, you don’t fall.” He’s 93. But riding a bike is one thing, and burpee box jump-overs are another.