Week in Review #5
Pai, Thailand: March 13-19
Well Hello There!
Welcome to the fifth edition of Week in Review, where I look back at my previous week of living Project 30 and try my best to distill it into short and sweet bites. This week’s 4 main topics include: Travel, Fitness, On Being Injured, & my Book of the Week.
Travel
Pai, Thailand
The Stay
This week marks the end of three weeks at Sitjemam’s Thai camp and what a great three weeks it has been!
It’s so nice to be able to roll out of my bed and immediately go for my morning runs and return back to the gym to start the 2 hour morning and afternoon sessions of Muay Thai training
Favorite Restaurant
This place specializes (and absolutely crushes) in the Northern Thai dish called Khao Soi
I have had Khao Soi before but nothing quite as delicious and tasty as this one. It’s something about their broth, whatever they are doing, they are doing it absolutely right!
Fitness
Mileage
21.5 miles across four days of running
Runner's High Thoughts
On Sunday morning I ran on a beautiful forest trail alongside the Pai river. I was reminded of just how powerfully freeing running in nature feels. My pace was slow but every step was consciously accounted for and the level of mindfulness I had during it left me desiring for more
I hope to have more trail runs and to have a good amount of my future Project 30 runs be wilderness trail runs
Muay Thai
Training Muay Thai has giving me a lot more respect for amateur and professional fighters. Training to be a fighter is no easy task and the more hours of training I have, the more I realize how much I don’t understand and how much time and dedication is needed to be a fighter
I have learned that while I may have the cardio conditioning and strength to be a fighter, I don’t have the technical prowess or mentality needed to be a fighter
I continue to enjoy training Muay Thai but the level of commitment and mindset needed to be a strong Muay Thai fighter is just not within me. But I do love being able to say I know how to deliver a powerful kick (even if it’s not perfectly correct yet)!
Plus it’s one hell of a cardio workout!
On Being Injured
The Injury
I hurt my back during the Wednesday morning session this week. Something in my upper spine felt like it tweaked and it sent shock waves throughout my back
I had to stop halfway through the training session as the pain worsened
In an attempt to recovery quickly, I decided to get a Thai massage right away. Unfortunately it did not help much
As I am writing this (Sunday evening), I still feel the throbbing and pulsing back pain but thankfully at a lesser degree
Fragile Identity
Getting injured this time around was a very difficult pill for me to swallow
Ever since training for and running Project 30 runs, I have not been seriously injured. So, it’s been a while since the last time I was humbled by and reminded of the fragility of my body
I got an overwhelming surge of depressive thoughts and feeling of darkness a few short hours after getting injured
I felt myself sinking to thoughts of inadequacy and failure
This is a stark reminder that I have over indexed my identity and my self worth to my body. Something that is clearly a dangerously fragile thing to do
It’s for reasons like this one that I am actively pursuing mindfulness and fulfillment through meditation as well as writing. I don’t want my identity to be solely tied to physical feats.
None of us are one dimensional beings. We are more than the feats and milestones we accomplish
After a night and day of sulking, I was able to remind myself of these truths and I was able to forgive myself for frankly being human and being susceptible to injury
While I can’t say that I have mastered this yet, but I temporarily detached my identity from my body and was gave myself the freedom to be proud of who I am and all that I am
Pushing Past
I know that the best thing I could do for myself is to fully rest and allow for my back and body to heal itself, but I came out to Pai, Thailand specifically to train Muay Thai and to push myself. So, after missing a couple of training sessions, I decided to try something out:
I experimented with what actions specifically were hurting my back and where my limitations were. I quickly realized the pain came from anytime I twisted my back too quickly and while my arms were simply raised parallel to the ground. So, I began to stretch out.
After a while, I decided to do pull ups and I immediately felt better. The natural stretch and decompression that you get from a pull up was exactly what I needed to help alleviate pressure while simultaneously warming up my body
After getting a light sweat on, I found that the pain in my back persisted but it was little more than a shadow of the pain that I felt while my body was cold
By Friday morning, after missing three sessions of Muay Thai, I was able to start training again, albeit at a slower and much more conscious pace
Book of the Week
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Snapshot Thoughts
Ever since I was introduced to Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 back in 2015, I have been a fan of his
Cat’s Cradle is dark humor and satire at its best
Reading this book during these turbulent times was all the more perfect. Cat’s Cradle is about our all too foolish human tendency to be our own most destructive force
I highly recommend giving this book a read, you’ll find yourself taking in some very deep wisdom guised in dark satirical humor
Favorite Quotes
“I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays.”
“But they are murdered children all the same”
This quote hits hard for me. When I first joined the military, I was only 18. I was nothing more than I child. And so were many of the friends I made and lost in the military…
“Think of what a paradise this world would be if men were kind and wise”
What a world it would be indeed
Gratitude & Feedback
Thank you for reading up into this point. Please share with me any thoughts or recommendations that you may have. I appreciate all of you that are continuing to follow me on this wild project as I try to live an uncharted and non-traditional life.
Keep pushing & much love!
-Dylan
Not tying your identity to one particular thing is really important. It's your character and who you are at your core that matters. Easy to tie it to a job, appearance, friend group, location, etc. Good lesson.