Great News! I’m totally out of shape. Although that’s not really me in the post image, it’s close. I’m feeling downright mediocre! Isn’t that wonderful?
It means I have a great baseline for my weird biohacking experiment. I’m 6 foot 2, 250, and I can run about 4 miles at a pace of about 12 mins a mile (with no weight). That’s not great. But it’s not completely gone either. When considering that over half of us are medically obese, I’m probably somewhere around average.
So what is this? Well last year I made it a challenge to do a half marathon. But due to circumstances, I didn’t train. Finally, it was less than a month to the event, and I could barely run 7 miles. My pace was probably over 13 mins a mile. Not good!
I’ve lost weight before, putting it back on of course, I knew my only chance of making it was to feel light on the day on the race. My mind racing for some ways to somehow cheat my way into shape, I busted out an old weight vest, started taking pre-workout, and did a bunch of youtube research. I came across research into NMN and resveratrol. Decided to try it out because of, well, what the heck.
I think I lucked out on my pre-workout. Maybe I had a vitamin deficiency, but what a difference. I will swear by it. It’s basically every vitamin you can imagine, in a water soluble powder. It’s better than protein. For me, at least. The NMN and I think resveratrol made a difference too. But this, in combo with running with a weight vest, did a whole different kind of cardio, something I had never felt before. I used to be a decent swimmer. In USS and Junior College at least, haha, before I started an ill-advised smoking habit, and I was a MVP in high school, in the 3rd fastest school in the district haha. But I’ve done cardio. This was different.
In less than a month, I was able to do a half marathon at under 10 mins a mile. And it felt great. My ribs started cramping up on the last half mile, but energy-wise I felt great, cardio wise it wasn’t even challenging, and when it came to my knees and feet they were fine and I was still weighing like 240-ish.
But the way I felt was impressive to me. My morning fatigue was gone. I still drank coffee, for the buzz, but I would wake up not feeling tired anymore. My mental stamina and focus increased by probably like 10 percent. I didn’t know exercise actually did that. I know that’s what it promises, but what is more filled with scams than fitness (except for maybe MLM and crypto?) I didn’t know it could be real.
I think I have a legit biohack. It makes sense. Humans – when it comes to the animal kingdom, basically suck at everything, except running over long distances. We’re actually more efficient than horses at this, if we train, believe it or not. That, making tools, language, deductive thought, and opposable thumbs are basically our evolutionary skills, Running is pretty much our only physical one. So it’s the exercise that we’re built for (if we can avoid injury – it’s also one of the ones that given our current lifestyle is very likely to injure you so be careful!) Add in a weight vest to make it hit your cardio systems harder, your body will adjust for cardio before it adjusts to make you faster. Add in a ton of vitamins and some supplements that increase your cell energy, and you just might have …. something that can deliver on all the promises that fitness is actually supposed to do.
Well I live in Minnesota which is frozen for about 6 and a half months every year, so I got nice and out of shape again in the winter, like I do every winter. Being a beer-a-holic doesn’t help much. So I’m back and out of shape.
But I’m ready to try this again. And make measurements. I am gonna measure so much stuff! And focus on it. And blog about it. And see what happens!