Friday, February 12, 2010

Slaughterhouse 58

Slaughterhouse 58
START TIME: 10:26 PM
END TIME: 11:37 PM
WORD COUNT: 1096

You’ve reference Gu Gel a number of times. Performance enhancing everything has been in the news lately. What are the least natural occurring substances you put in your body/ingest on a regular basis? What’s your philosophy on man made chemicals?

(Your narrator grins broadly, and several people who learned long ago to stop asking “Why do your hands always shake like that?” glance down and sigh.)

I’m generally healthy. By the standards of the United States, I’m about the average of the bell curve when it comes to body mass, maybe I’m on the sweeter side of the needle when it comes to endurance, and I know that I have a very high tolerance for pain. (This became evident this week, when a doctor said that I had shimmied right past a common cold into bronchitis and a sinus infection. Apparently I’d been wandering around with an ordinary cold for a while and it wasn’t until it mutated into something a little zippier that I had to stand up (or, in my case, fall asleep) and take notice.

My philosophy on man-made chemicals is, I’m all for them. Man made chemicals began when somebody mixed some grapes with some yeast and realized that the result could knock you on your ass. I’m a fan of alcohol (particularly when I’ve been prevented from having any for a week because I’m tanked up on antibiotics) and its ability to erase the interminable span of time between evening and the next morning. I remember the Cheesecake Factory, across from the Ritz, had a drink on the menu called the “Twilight Zone” which was “double everything and fruit juice.” The bartender knew the reason I was there was I’d just cranked out some upgrade work at the hotel across the street, was still jacked on the raw terror of a high-wire database maneuver that could have thrown the place into chaos but had gone off without a hitch, and it was 1 AM and I needed all that adrenaline to disappear. The first was always like playing Where’s Waldo – is that 151? I think it’s 151! – and the second was always the one that would get me to sleep as long as I could cross the street and ride the elevator. But me and booze is an entirely different subject. (And here’s where I should mention I’ve never taken illegal drugs of any kind. Street pharmacology frightens me.)

The chemicals that Beth is referring to aren’t the stuff that’s sold off of backlit shelves, but by places that are ostensibly interested in my good health. I’ve found over the years that your body is your own laboratory, and you’ll never know quite how far you can push yourself until you try. The problem is the advice is always from someone who’s selling something, who’s bashing something, who’s really trying to get you to do something else entirely – and I hate it. You will not find anything more dangerous to your health than Redline, a powerful caffeine-based stimulant that has the world’s most comical warning label on it, including “The consumer assumes total liability if product is used in a manner inconsistent with its labeling” and they point out that there are two servings in a little blue bottle the size of a can of Red Bull. (Which tastes like yellow Triaminic. This stuff tastes like Children’s Tylenol.) There’s stuff hiding out in there that they barely have names for, and next to the US Recommended Daily Allowance there’s a little cross, because the boys at the lab haven’t figured out how much “vinpocetine” the human body needs in a day. They also say “Do not use this product if you are more than 20 pounds overweight” and have the slogan “Feel the freak/Feel the freeze/Watch the fat burn off with ease!” So a little bit of a mixed message, sure. But it has no calories. It has no sugar. They don’t even bother trying to pretend there’s natural flavors in it. It’s all lightning, and if you go for a run ten minutes after drinking one you’ll feel like something out of “The Matrix.” It’s wonderful.

This is the far outlier of anything I’m willing to put in my body, even further out there than the vitamins (my standard non-event day breakfast is a lot of vitamins and cold black coffee, no room no cream no sugar) and I, who can normally knock down espressos at 9 at night and sleep like a coma victim at 11, won’t drink any of it after 3 PM.

But aren’t there consequences? Aren’t you afraid?


Sure I am. I get my blood pressure checked when I visit the doctor and when I donate blood, along with cholesterol, and even just this past week I walked in dead sick and got 120/67. I can hear the people who (rightfully) point out that I don’t eat enough and I don’t sleep enough and it’s all going to come to a very bad end if I don’t knock it off with some of this foolishness and learn to pace myself like a normal human being. And I’d be more afraid of using this stuff when I was starting out and my heart rate monitor would occasionally show “200” than I would be now.

In terms of performance enhancement, I don’t use the stuff during a competition because it makes me too nervous. Gu’s a meal replacement – coffee and a piece of danish after a long night, making sure all of my blood sugar doesn’t crater and leave me a blubbering, Julie Moss-like mess after a carbohydrate bonk. Seeing as donuts would do a number on my stomach and the coffee wouldn’t be worth tasting again, the Gu does what I want. And nothing that I take is on the World Anti-Doping Association’s list of banned substances, so I’m in the clear in that regard, though I may need to look up this inhaler and nose spray they prescribed me this week.

I spend a lot of races alongside bodies a lot sleeker than mine, a lot faster than mine, that are in better aesthetic shape than me. I see bicycles that cost four times as much as mine and I see men with shaved legs and skinsuits. I nod to myself and think, “Better to work on the engine before the paint or the tires.” Yes, some of the fuel that I take isn’t the smartest thing to be doing. It’s the one area where I’m probably less cautious than I should be. But at the bleeding edge of success, there’s always a willingness to push yourself a little further than I think is reasonable, to know that I’ve hovered out over the edge of the cliff like Wile E. Coyote and been able to scramble back.

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