Balance. Like any skill, it can be learned. And no, I’m not talking about the biomechanics we use every day to stand up straight. I’m talking about finding equilibrium in life and the importance of balancing different facets of our existence, whatever they may be.
How hard is too hard? This is a question it has taken me 27 years to ask, but only after I was forced to step back through injuries and reevaluate. Perhaps life doesn’t have to be an inefficient grind after all.
With the New Year bells marking the start of 2023, I came into the year determined to meet new people, go to new places, push my limits in multiple dimensions, and put simply, have one hell of a time.I did all these things, but I didn’t find equilibrium along the way. In fact, I pushed my body past the breaking point on multiple levels.
The crash.
During the winter of 2022-23, I spent almost every night after work running, trying to hit a 5-mile-a-night minimum regardless of the fact that I was living in a state of constant fatigue. As the temperatures warmed that spring, the realization that I had pushed my body too far became more and more apparent. My hip was getting seriously painful after only 5 mins of running and I knew I had to take some time off. Flash forward to the summer, it hadn’t improved, if anything, it had gotten worse, hurting when walking around at work and throbbing in the mornings as I lay in my bed contemplating whether it was worth it.
All through my 20s, I viewed eating as a necessary evil. Some climbers may relate to this. Instead of maximizing, I constantly found myself minimizing when it came to my diet. I don’t know if I always had food intolerances or if it’s something I’ve given myself by chronic mismanagement of diet. As 2023 rolled on, I realized my body was not absorbing the nutrients I needed. I was constantly getting fatigue that would last for weeks, my stomach would get inflamed as soon as I ate anything. I would get headaches most days and lived with brain fog constantly.
During all of this, I never found the time to take a step back and evaluate that this was not normal or that I had to take the time to fix this. The train just kept on rolling. I felt obliged to keep grinding at work to keep people happy as I felt obliged to keep pushing myself in multiple disciplines because that attitude had been drilled into me.
During the summer of ’23, I was able to mitigate some of the symptoms by adhering to a restrictive keto diet. But this unfortunately only masked the issue and did not solve it. On a trip to St Kilda this September, our team sailed over 100 miles out to the archipelago. The foods that I could eat without bringing on symptoms at this point were basically rice and after sharing meals and food on that trip, I was having issues again. The next 2 months were the living end. I had to work, after so many climbing trips I was destitute. I would fast till 12 each day to avoid making the symptoms worse then the rest of the day would be a confused and painful mess. My weight has fluctuated 7kgs in a month several times this year. As someone who has been so focused on my weight over the years, this was hard to deal with. Not cool !!!
Tunnel vision. On walking a path that prioritized training and performance, I neither improved nor found contentment. building stone walls in the pissing rain of the Lake District, I have had time to reflect upon life. I realized conclusively that I hadn’t taken the time to strengthen the relationships of people nearest to me or taken the time to look after myself.
A less resistive path. With the NHS in the Lake District seemingly the equivalent of an 18th-century surgery, the 2 options of ‘go away it will get better by itself’, or ‘it’s broken let’s cut it off’, didn’t apply in my situation. Eventually, I bit the bullet as it were and I paid some coins to get private tests done and see specialists.
When something’s not right, it’s wrong. It is worth taking a step back to recalibrate and find balance, preferably before stepping over the precipice, because once you’ve gone down, it’s a long way back up.