Theophilus is a Yo-Yo

[theophilus]

 

Oh. Hi there. 

 

I'm late on this one, but jumping in for the duration because I turn thirty-[redacted] at the end of this challenge and I want some good momentum going into this next year. The past six months or so have been lots of ups and lots of downs for fitness/health. Rather than try to find some middle ground, I'm just going to embrace the fact that I'm yo-yo: up-down-up-down-up-down. My challenges are building off of things that have worked in the past to make sure I have more ups than downs.

 

 

Yo on the Go

I stuck to a running plan for a whole four weeks in May and June. It was really good. I was getting faster, feeling stronger, ran a couple of 10k long runs. Then work got crazy, and I lost steam. For the rest of I'm going to redo two of the weeks I did before I bailed.

 

 

 

No Fro Yo

I'm going to cut the sugar intake: desserts, soda, alcohol, fake snacks. I've logged my food sporadically for a few months now, so I'm going to renew my focus on that to keep track of this stuff. No specific goals, but just an increased attention to it. 

 

 

 

Find my inner Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma's live classical instagram concerts during the quarantine-times have been such a source of peace. And while I don't play cello, I count playing guitar among the things that brings me peace. So for this challenge, I'm going to dedicate at least 15 minutes per day to one of these intentional, peace-giving activities: playing guitar, guided meditation, reading fiction, writing for pleasure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Xena]

Great to see you back! A two-week mini is great for getting back into a groove.

[Kestrel Grey]

Happy early birthday! A two week warm-up to your next year sounds like a great plan.

[theophilus]

So far so good.

 

 

I've been out running twice this week. Did hills last night. Yuck. I hate hills. I grew up (and started running) in a very flat city, so hills were always this mythical geography (or is it geographical mythology? or maybe geological mythography?) on some other plane of existence. But now I live someone hillier and decided to incorporate them into my training. I get that they're beneficial, but... yuck.

 

Eating's been going alright. Went full-on stress-induced double cheeseburger, fries, and a shake on Sunday night, but then tracked food Monday and Tuesday and did a lot better. 

 

Not finding a ton of time for peaceful/mindful activity. My mindfulness app has been collecting virtual dust on my phone in recent months, so I'm thinking the easiest thing to do is just pull that up tonight and do a little mediation before bed. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Kestrel Grey]

1 hour ago, theophilus said:

Did hills last night. Yuck. I hate hills. I grew up (and started running) in a very flat city, so hills were always this mythical geography (or is it geographical mythology? or maybe geological mythography?) on some other plane of existence. But now I live someone hillier and decided to incorporate them into my training. I get that they're beneficial, but... yuck.

 

My vote is for mythography. If that isn't a real word, it should be.

 

Getting to run downhill makes up for having to run up them. 

[theophilus]

18 hours ago, Kestrel Grey said:

 

My vote is for mythography. If that isn't a real word, it should be.

That was my favorite too. So I just looked up:

 

my·thog·ra·phy

/məˈTHäɡrəfē/

noun

1. the representation of myths, especially in the plastic arts.
2. the creation or collection of myths.

 

Not totally the way I used it, but I’m sticking with it. 

 

[Xena]

good job getting through the hill workout! Do you run repeats on the same hill, or just run a hilly course? I find repeats kind of satisfying (even though you are also correct that they suck).

[theophilus]

On 7/16/2020 at 6:53 PM, Xena said:

good job getting through the hill workout! Do you run repeats on the same hill, or just run a hilly course? I find repeats kind of satisfying (even though you are also correct that they suck).

I did repeats: 45 seconds up at moderate effort; back down easy for 75 seconds; up 15 seconds all-out; down 45 seconds easy. Repeat 5x. Exhausting but definitely satisfying. 

[theophilus]

My (first) internship of the summer wrapped up last Friday, and it's been so nice having a little downtime. It's not exactly "down" time,  what with summer camp cancelled for the littles and Mrs. Theophilus slammed with grad school right now. But one less thing is nice. It's given me some space for longer/more consistent runs. Hit 4 of the 5 runs I had hoped to get in last week and am 2 for 2 so far this week. I did an interval speed run yesterday and absolutely crushed the pace on some of the early splits. But I clearly pushed too hard because the back half was pretty abysmal. Been religiously logging food and finding that's been a helpful tool for keeping me on the rails. If I have a feeling I'm going to want something indulgent at the end of the day, I log it early so I can budget throughout the day accordingly.  

 

Still struggling to find "me"  time. I tried my meditation app before bed, but I just fell asleep. Oops. Played some guitar yesterday and wrote some lyrics, so we'll see where that goes.

[Xena]

10 hours ago, theophilus said:

did an interval speed run yesterday and absolutely crushed the pace on some of the early splits. But I clearly pushed too hard because the back half was pretty abysmal.

 

I'd blame the weather for that. Once you overheat, it's all downhill. The effort you are putting is sounds completely solid. Once it cools off and/or the humidity drops, you'll crush the whole thing!

[theophilus]

Ok a positively insane thing happened today and I’m processing a lot from it. The fam and I headed to a fairly popular natural recreation area today, and when we came back to the car, our license plate was missing. The oldest kid needed to pee, so we went to find a tree before leaving and I was looking around the parking lot for any sign of what might have happened. Close to where we headed into the woods, I saw a car, idling, super tinted windows, backed into a parking space that backed up against the woods. Looking through the trees, I could clearly see our plate on this car. I didn’t have my phone on me, so we started walking slowly back to our car. As we did, the other car pulled out and started to leave. I shouted at it and started following it, eventually running after it as it sped off. Called the cops, gave them a description of the car and my plate number. Cruiser came to meet us, and told us they had pulled over a car matching the description the next town over. So we followed him to ID the car. The car had uniquely dark tint and was the same color, make, and model so I was pretty positive it was the same car, but my plate wasn’t on it anymore: it was an out of state plate from halfway across the country. I hadn’t gotten a look at the driver on account of the tint, so I couldn’t ID any of the people in the car. Cops took my info, said we could go and they’d be in touch. As we pulled out, I saw people getting out of the car as the cops started searching it.
 

So here’s where I’m hung up right now: the people getting out of the car were three young male BIPOC. Given the racist policing in most of the US (and my understanding as a law student of how easy it is to get to reasonable suspicion/probable cause for a stop and arrest), I’m really torn up about how I reacted and what role it may have played in perpetuating that system. I didn’t see the people in the car and so I feel confident there wasn’t personal racial bias or bigotry in my response. But I put gears in motion that I would have rather avoided putting in motion in the first place, especially knowing what I know now about the guys who were stopped.  

 

I guess the issue is how an incident like this fits in with my advocacy to defund the police and avoiding escalating things to law enforcement when they can be resolved elsewhere and anti-racism and allyship. I think if I hadn’t seen that vehicle in the lot, I would have just called the DMV or the non-emergency police line. But under the circumstances my instinct was 911. So now three people are pulled over on the highway, they probably tossed my plate, so the cops won’t find it in the car, even if they were the right guys to begin with. But the cops will search the car, run the VIN, run the license of the drivers and the occupants. If they find anything else in the car or in their records, who knows where it goes. And because they’re BIPOC men, there are all sorts of implicit biases (or outright racism) that will color the whole interaction. I’ve just been looping all the things that could have gone wrong after I pulled away and all the things I could have done better. 
 

I dunno, it’s just a crappy feeling to be caught up with that. The closest feeing I can compare it to is moral guilt. But I guess that makes sense: racism is a moral failing, not an intellectual one, right? And being anti-racist involves cultivating a new mindset and new habits and a new moral character that pulls us out of the patterns that perpetuate racism in all its forms. 
 

Thanks for taking the time to read through this. Not sure why I chose to it post here. Maybe felt too vulnerable for another platform or a face-to-face conversation. Just processing a bit. If anyone here has found any success as a white person in cultivating anti-racist habits, I’d love your suggestions.

 

And most importantly, for the BIPOC folks on the forum, I’m sorry I wasn’t a stronger ally today. Thank you for your continued patience with those of us stumbling along on this journey. 

[Sloth the Enduring]

Defunding the police only works when there are other structures in place, which there aren’t yet.

You only steal a license plate if you’re up to no good. Having the police investigate seems appropriate.

You didn’t know they were BIPOC so that didn’t inform your decision to involve the police.

I don’t think you need to feel bad about this event. It gave you things to think about which may help you to make a decision next time.

[Xena]

I agree with Sloth (though I'm not an expert...just a white person trying to muddle through this). You had legitimate information about a non-violent crime that had been committed. It sounds like you acted reasonably, didn't accuse a person in particular, and didn't ask for any extreme measures to be taken. As someone with a law background, you can probably do more good in advocating to reform the system than most of us.

[theophilus]

Finished up the challenge yesterday with a birthday 10k. Felt really good. Overall pretty decent mini to round out this year of  my life. Looking forward to building on it next challenge. 

[Xena]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!