Work can be tough. It can drone on an on with meetings to attend, deadlines to meet, and bosses to please. It wears us down, sometimes both physically and mentally, no matter how much we love our jobs and coworkers.
Eastern Afghanistan is tough too. The altitude itself, almost 7,000 above sea level, can take a toll on ones lungs. The air is dry and so is the ground, which means that the rain turns every inch of ground into mud. That is, the ground that is not already covered by craggy rocks. The land is actually fairly flat, except where hills and mountains jut up out of nowhere with steep slopes.
Combining work and Afghanistan is even tougher. Here work is seven days a week and "home" is nothing more than a 8x8 plywood room (if you're lucky). Despite many people's belief that the war is over, the reality on the ground is that the enemy is still present. We have to work seven days a week, because that's what the enemy works. You are always subject to being woke in the middle of the night, having to work till the small hours of the morning to prepare for the next day, or having to detour a route because of indirect fire or IEDs. Nothing ever goes as planned.
It's easy to make excuses here. "Personal time" is never quite what it is in the states. Your family isn't around. There are no comfy couches to stretch out on. There are no cold beers to drink. It's easy to feel a little down.
With all this, workouts can be tough too. The gym is always the same people and eventually having the gym as your only personal time can get to be a little depressing. Add in the hours spent walking the hills in body armor, helmet, and weapon and you start to come up with yet another excuse as to why you shouldn't have to put in a full effort. After all, isn't this what I trained for? Wasn't walking the ground and fighting the war WHY we work so hard?
In ways, it is. The stakes are higher, but this is now my event, just like hockey, baseball, and lacrosse were in a former light. All my life my workouts have been about training for the next event. Sometimes I was "bulking up" (relative term for my body type for a military school or an athletic season. Other times I was working towards a running, biking, or triathlon race. It's easy to just take it easy once you're finally done "training."
Today I broke through all this garbage on my run. Actually it was my second run. I ended the first run and felt a little bit of energy so I practiced a few core lifts. I left the gym feeling tired, but wondering why I felt so mentally weak.
For me, I then chose to run again. Running is in my family's blood. We all do it. It's my favorite exercise even though I know it's the area of my training which needs the least actual repetition. But the lesson learned on this run was not about running, it was about the mind.
I picked a steep hill on the base, the only steep hill, that goes up to a guard tower overlooking the land to the west. I started with one sprint and came back down unsatisfied. It was at that point where I realized I needed to push harder. This wasn't about running, or entertainment, or personal time, or training. This was about giving everything I had NOW. This was TODAY'S chance to achieve my best.
I climbed the hill four more times, each time wheezing at the top as if I couldn't breathe normally if my life depended on it. I literally gave it everything I have.
It made me feel good, to give everything I have. It was painful and rejuvenating in a way that we sometimes forget. i trained for TODAY. I set aside the soreness, the rest plan, the excuses, the possibility of tomorrow's pain, and everything else. I literally give it everything.
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