If you have a body you are...

Tired? A bag of foie gras and bacon grease? No, silly- *an athlete!

*Bill Bowerman quote and Nike Maxim

As some of you know, I had a Physical Fitness Assessment done several weeks ago at work. I wanted to have the actual data describing my physical condition. Of course, I already knew that I weigh more than I'd ever dreamed I would, and that I feel winded every day when I climb the stairs to my 3rd floor cubicle. But what I wanted- and needed- were the hard facts. I liken it to getting your finances in order: you have to write down every single penny you owe in order to know exactly where you stand and what you have to do about it.

My current method of maintaining physical fitness is lot like the way I balance a checkbook- I go by instict. I tell myself stories ("that broccoli spear has negated the entire wheel of Epoisse cheese) and ride on intuition. But all of a sudden (or gradually over the past 8 years) I now find my body is weak and fat and getting weaker and fatter. Apparently the intuitive approach works just as well on physical fitness as it does on finances. Who knew?

My "physical assessment" consisted of:

• caliper body fat test (it's called the Jackson-Pollack caliper test! Really!)
  
• RHR (resting heart rate)
  
• EKG
  
• maximum heart rate
  
• Vo2 measurement (oxygen-use efficiency)
• upper body strength
• core body strength
• flexibility

I got my results back today. They rate you by where you fall compared to others of the same age and gender group. These tend to be people that have an interest in their physical well-being- so keep that in mind when you look see my numbers. My overall rating is that I am below average physically. Like, around the 30th percentile. Wow, if this were the SATs, I'd really be bumming. Or retarded.

I do have 2 scores that were relatively high, though! I was in the 70% for flexibility and scored 90% for RHR (resting heart rate). That's because I'm really good at resting my heart. I do it all the time and practically all day.

This is not to say that I'm sickly, as we all know I am pretty hearty. Considering my gluttonous tendencies, I'm surprised that I'm not the wreck that I would be if I hadn't inherited the metabolism of my mother's family and the strength and fortitude of my father's. But I now know exactly what I have to do to improve, and in 3 months I'm going back for another assessment. I am definitely going to bring some smaller numbers (fat, weight) and some bigger numbers (strength, breathing).

Then today I found out another thing that kind of relates to this whole theme of age, health, challenge and statistics. There is a group of work friends and associates and that I occasionally get together with for happy hour. They are,of course, all much younger than me but that's just the way I roll. Anyway, one of these women has also recently experienced an athletic achievement. Now, I don't know her well- but we do have several significant things in common: she is 25 years/I am 45 years; she works with Running Footwear/I used to work with Running Footwear; she graduated from Princeton=I went to art school for 5 months (I know, I know- this is CRAZY, right?); I get a physical fitness ranking/she qualifies for Thursday's finals for a spot on the Women's US Olympic Track & Field team, Steeplechase event.

Yeah, it's been one of those days.