Well Hello There!
Welcome to the sixth 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 marks the final week in Pai, Thailand at the Muay Thai training camp.
Unfortunately, it was a week that found me bed ridden for nearly the whole time, but so it goes sometimes when you travel. This week’s main topics include: Travel, Fitness, On Being Sick, and my Book of the Week.
Travel
Pai, Thailand
The Stay
This week marks the bittersweet end of a full month at Sitjemam’s Thai camp!
I’ll talk more about it in the Muay Thai section
Bangkok, Thailand
On Sunday March 27th Akshay and I flew down to Bangkok to start our southern Thailand exploration!
Fitness
Mileage
No running this week! I was drained out by the food poisoning and in recovery mode the entire week
Runner's High Thoughts
I find a lot of meditative solace in running these days, so it was difficult to spend nearly an entire week in bed. But, it’s from flirting with the lowest lows that we understand the rapture of the highest highs. I very much look forward to getting back on my running routine soon
Muay Thai
Muay Thai training was an additional physical activity that added to my routine of running and maintenance workouts. I even ran one my Project 30 30-milers during my month at Muay Thai. I searching for my physical peak performance.
In the end, I found my one of physical peaks. During the first two weeks of Muay Thai training I was able to consistently do two 2-hour Muay Thai training sessions combined with a morning run that averaged about 5 miles and an extra session of 100 pull ups, 200 push ups and an ab circuit that totaled 500 abdominal reps
By week 3, an injury in my back forced me to rest for a couple training sessions. After that bout of pain, I decided to stop doing any additional running until the Muay Thai sessions ended
And then, of course, the fourth and final week ended up being a full week of skipping running and Muay Thai sessions with the exception of Monday
Even though my final week was a major disappointment, I am extremely grateful for the month I had at Sitjemam’s Muay Thai camp in Pai, Thailand. It truly is a special place where anyone can feel welcome. Being able to wake up every morning and walk only 20 paces kept me motivated to make as many sessions as my body could physically make. Living on the camp also allowed for building stronger connections and relationships with the other Muay Thai fighters. It reminded me a lot of the positive aspects of the military environment. The uniqueness of living, training, and recovering together makes for deeper and more meaningful conversations and bonding moments. The schedule and pacing of each day was perfect for someone like me who is actively looking to be pushed to their physical peaks.
I most likely will not actively pursue Muay Thai in the future but I will always fondly remember my time at Sitjemam and the profound environment that Mam and Em have created there.
On Being Sick
Food Poisoning
Unfortunately the last week I had in Pai at the Muay Thai training was mostly spent on bed rest trying to fight off a bout of food poising
From Tuesday morning all the way through to Sunday I felt varying degrees of being sick. There was a point early on in the sickness that I was shivering so hard that my muscles started to contract uncontrollably. It was so intense I was genuinely scared that it wouldn’t stop. Thankfully though, I was able to calm myself down and do some breathing exercises to return back to normal
With late Tuesday night and all of Wednesday being the peak of terribleness. I chose not to eat any solid food throughout all of Wednesday, sticking only to electrolyte powders and lots of water
Being sick like this was one of the thoughts tests I’ve had since training and performing Project 30. Looking back, this is the first time that I have dealt with being bed ridden-sick since I had COVID back in 2020
Like every time I recover from being sick, it makes me appreciate every moment that I feel healthy and strong. It’s an important reminder to be grateful of my health and to live every moment as if it is precious, because it truly is
Hospital trip
Bangkok Hospital Chiang Mai
I decided after 6 days of being sick that it was time to get myself checked. In the end no parasites or fungal infections were found, I guess I was just unlucky enough to get hit with a bout of food poising that lasted nearly a week
My total trip from door to door at the hospital was just shy of 50 mins
The whole experience was a breeze. Extremely short wait times. AC and cleanliness was superb. Hospital staff, from the nurses to the doctor, were all great.
I met with a doctor and within 10 minutes she examined me, ordered a blood and stool sample, and ordered drugs for me to pick up at the pharmacy
Once I got both the blood and stool sample, which is a lot of fun by the way, I went down to pay for the whole hospital visit and drugs for a total uninsured cost of only 70 dollars!
Book of the Week
Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut
Snapshot Thoughts
This book is a collection of speeches, interviews and commentaries and even a play by Vonnegut
Like everything else Vonnegut, it is filled with satire and humor while touching upon important topics
For any true fans of Vonnegut and his work, I highly recommend giving this book a read, there are great pockets of wisdom lurking behind his satirical humor
Favorite Quotes
Vonnegut understood modern loneliness as one of the biggest plagues that his generation and subsequent generations would face. In this quote he explains our willingness to destroy the planet in order to create more material things to fight off our creeping loneliness. It’s something that he was hoping we would gradually move away from as a society, but he might as well have written this in 2022, because I don’t think there has been much change. Loneliness still plagues a lot of us. For a while there, I was compensating for my bouts of loneliness through the compulsive buying of NFTs and crypto, something I did to purely fill the void.
I have found meditation, running/fitness, traveling, and making deeper more meaningful relationships to be my only true cures to loneliness, not the purchase of things whether they be physical or digital
“Our grandchildren will surely think of us as the Planet Gobblers. Poorer nations than America think of America as a Planet Gobbler right now. But that is going to change. There is welling up within us a willingness to say 'No, thank you' to our factories. We were once maniacs for possessions, imagining that they would somehow moderate or somehow compensate us for our loneliness.”
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
Did you get your trophy for most improved?
The part on loneliness is interesting when you realize everyone has it to a certain extent