The first interest I had in fitness was as a supplement to alley cat racing in Denver. They were bike races in the city, often in traffic, on brakeless track bikes. The fastest among riders rode every day, so I rode every day. There was no math. There was no routine. I wasn’t interested in exercise. I was interested in adrenaline and speed and how to get more of it.
Four years later, I was about as good as you can get on a track bike in traffic unless it’s your day job. But I had a near miss in Chicago that ended it; this Oldsmobile ran a red and we veered alongside each other up on a sidewalk. A year later, a fellow classmate was pulled under the wheels of a semi. She was killed instantly. I didn’t hear this quote till much later but it sums up why I hung up the bike: “Luck runs out all at once, never by degrees” - Mark Twight. It doesn’t matter how good you are on the bike, chaos is omnipresent.
Lifting was next. I started after college because I’d dropped weight from 155 to 137. How people maintained weight while going to school in the Loop 12 hours a day, working part-time, and bearing the weight of art world expectations is beyond me. After getting back some aesthetic weight, I lifted just to lift. The gains could have continued or not. The point was depletion. I wanted to feel struck by a vehicle. I wanted to be in pain when I slept. As long as my injuries didn’t keep me from lifting, they were welcome.
I’m reminded of a writer friend in high school. She said she bruised her rib during a spat with pneumonia. I asked if it sucked. She said it was painful, but she adored the visualization enabled by the pain. Bones in her skeleton often forgotten or taken for granted shimmered all day like a heat map.
Then the mountains called. They are the supreme church of suffering. The ratio from the simplicity of the end goal to the input required is as extreme as it gets: summit the peak and wage total war on your mind and body to do so. The bar to entry is tricky with mountains. As long as you can get to them, you can try them. But you realize immediately how much they will take from you. Running became the main boot camp to increase my odds. After breaking my legs in, running shifted from supplement to drug of choice. Running was right outside my door, while mountains were hours away and demanded strategy and tactics.
Freedom is the first pleasure in running. Something ancient in that. Triggers to primal flight—but also the joy of exploration fused with the speed at which you can discover. Houses, groves, creeks, towers, bird sounds and quiet air—all neglected in a car—hit you with blunt force on a run. Then there’s the 1st-mile burn, your legs, chest, and back are aching and pinched. After the 5th-mile hump, the body is oiled, the burn is gone, and everything is liquid. You feel like you can live the rest of your life while running. At mile 10 the lungs adjust and they reckon this is the new normal. An entity of momentum. The heart isn’t pounding now, it’s sitting at 120 bpm. Then, at mile 15, the bones begin to show their fragility, and little fissures in the tibias begin throbbing. Every footfall is an aggravated assault. I’d stomp a little harder on the downhills to abuse them. Lactic acid turns to concrete in your thighs. Calves in a perma-charlie horse. You sweat ammonia if you lacked carbs the days prior. I could feel my tissue being eaten while sprinting up the steepest paved street in America. At Zone 5 uphill, the idea of a heart attack is a serious question. It doesn’t beat; it vibrates.
Endorphins can’t take full responsibility for the serenity. Running, the pace, the meditation, the breath, the impact, all of it concerts to the Anarchist spirit. You can run away from anything you can name. You can suffer consensually.
Self-harm had never been an MO for me. Roundabout, sure, via drugs and alcohol. But I never considered self-harm as an end in and of itself, just a tool for proliferating fine art, music, and writing. Exercise showed me how intricate and keen self-harm could be exacted on the body like a lunatic with a scalpel and how splendid the treasure could be. If I ever stretched before a run it was to feel the white thresh of tendons aching to be released.
So much was pent up in me that to deliver pain felt transgressive in a heroic way. The mind tortures the body and the body revolts against the mind. Gains are nothing but time-release confidence with a two-month half-life. Engaging in the torture of exercise breaks the mind that develops concepts like confidence or defeat. The part of your brain that assess your worth transfers all energy to the parts of your brain dedicated to physical maintenance. It can’t possibly give a fuck what you think of yourself. There are no beliefs, there are no inner children, and when there’s nothing left to burn but brain matter, there is no more You.
High on my sweat’s ammonia, my brain vomited this sentiment: When you consider the persistence of muscle, its very existence insinuates terra impersona. The proportionate response to this condition is hate.
Like those victims of trauma in the BDSM community who gain agency in the practice of domination, fitness is a reclamation of pain and suffering. The very spirit of Anarchism is to recognize the authority of pain, and steal the torturer’s devices for yourself, to commit seppuku on your time, with your autonomy.