canaday

the hatch lowers quietly down into it's vacuum lock housing; a satisfying, weighty click and then the faintest sucking sound lets you know that it's closed. suspended in nutrient-rich gel, you lean your neck back and relax your spinal column.

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at first you think it's about the workouts. of course you do. you push them closer and closer together, you phase them intelligently. you build a base, quietly, over months. you push against your aerobic threshold, then stimulate your musculoskeletal system. lactic build-up workouts bricked with anaerobic efforts. things happen for you and they happen for you and then they stop.

you realize that things cannot just go out. they have to come in too. you realize that simple carbohydrates before workouts brings results. that your body cannot metabolize a protein recovery shake without a glucose booster first. the correct ratio is 6:1 twenty minutes prior 4:1 immediately afterwards with a complex 2:2:3 90 minutes after that. that these numbers matter, seriously, if you're going to continue on this path. the workouts come in shorter and shorter waves like contractions during labor.

eating is not just a thing that happens before and after workouts you realize. the furnace burns at all hours of the day. you start setting your watch at 75, then 60 then 45 minute increments. first it's easy things. clif bars. bananas. but these things are not optimized. the fuel must be optimized. so when it's still dark outside you spoon un-mayonnaised tuna into a tupperware and then weigh it with a gram scale. small 10oz salads dressed with omega-rich oil blends that you buy from whole foods that cannot see sunlight or ever drop below refrigerated temperatures. you bring a cooler with you, in your car, and make it the last thing you put in your basket before darting towards the checkout. later, the watch beeps and you open up another little container.

of course you think the eating is what it's about because you're progressing and you're progressing but then all of a sudden you're not.

sleep. it's not a luxury it's a training ground. if you're not sleeping at least nine hours a night then who gives a fuck about what you're eating really. buy expensive oils and pour them into the sink. your sleep becomes an obsession. you staple velcro to your walls for the blackout curtains, the hum of the fan over all other noise. phone permanently on do-not-disturb. this is the time that things are put back together, you're sure of it. flavorless glutamine stacked with mango-peach BCAAs & whey protein isolate feed you through the night. you wake up in the same exact position with a ring of white chalk around your lips. these are the signs that the supplements are working. tomorrow is AM: 8x1200/400 NOON: Squat press + core PM: 1hr recovery swimming. get it. get it. get after it.

there is a tent that goes over your bed and simulates sleeping at altitude. you follow a guy on twitter who works at the company and you message him and he sends you one. you move your computer and desk into the tent. then you start eating dinner there. you think the tent is helping you and for a while it really is until it really isn't.

in 1869 a German physiologist named Friedrich Goltz removed the brain from a frog and placed him in a saucepan. trained in surgery for more than two years, this was the way science worked in his day: you cut things out and you saw what happened. Goltz also learned that you could remove whole sections of a dog's cerebral cortex without affecting it's ability to run through a maze. but that's besides the point really. a tiny knife, a tiny frog and then splash! down into the water. the water heats slowly, the frog never jumps out. Rechtfertigung eines Vivisektors. I spread my toes in the goo and think happily of this. 

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 there's a massive humidity in the chamber. closed for 14 hours at a time, it's about what you'd expect. I've laminated photos of my rivals and taped them to the curved surface above me. there's such a massive mental aspect too which I've really forgotten to mention. except I'm losing focus now. I like to look up at them as my thoughts get fuzzy, as my visualizations start to blur. I drift off into my long, medicine-suspended sleep.

atm1