Afghanistan, Week 1

Well hello there. I've been meaning to write for a few days but couldn't quite find the time. It's becoming clear to me that this isn't going to be a daily blog but I'll try to post weekly updates at a minimum. Soon it'll be monthly, and then yearly, and then never. We all know how it goes.

We've been busy so far, working on replacing the Medevac company that's here now, learning how things operate over here, getting into a routine. I'm getting into a good workout regimen and eating healthy but haven't been studying much or flying at all. I'm excited for the dust to settle and get in a really good and productive routine.

There's a pretty cool running club here on Bagram that runs a lot of their own races and also shadows a lot of the bigger marathons worldwide. My commander, XO, and a few other people are planning on running the Boston Marathon shadow run in April and I think it's just the motivation I need to get in a lot of miles here. An 18-week training schedule starts on December 16th so I have about a month to get better acclimatized to the elevation. We're at around 5000' and my treadmill running has been pretty slow and short thus far.

Anyway, that's about all for now. It's amazing how healthy and productive I feel without alcohol dragging me down. Hopefully I'll be flying soon and have some fun stories. As the most junior pilot in the entire company, it may be a while but I'm hoping they didn't send me here just to get in shape and learn Japanese.

Lazy Days

I didn't do much today other than write this blog and create a two-day streak. I can't remember how many times you have to do something for it to become a habit but 2 is closer to that number than 1. We had a bit of work at the hangar from 9 to 11 then went to Buffalo Wild Wings for a retirement luncheon. Then I went to my buddy Austin's house and played Catan with his wife and Tony, ate pizza for dinner, and roughhoused with his kids until it was their bedtime. Whenever I get too emotional about this deployment, I just need to realize how much worse Austin has it than I do. He has a 5 year-old, a 3 year-old and a pregnant wife that he's leaving behind. I've gotten to know the kids pretty well and it's killing ME to leave them behind. I can only imagine what he's going through. I've known this for a while but his family has really made me realize that I need to make something like that a priority in my life. Even if the only reason is that my body can't take much more single-life punishment. I have plenty of time to think about making this lifestyle change while I'm overseas bettering myself. Tomorrow I have to finish moving out of my Clarksville home, run a load of laundey, and pack for war. I'd hate to show up to war without clean underwear.

Going to War

I like to put it as bluntly as possible. I'm going to war. I'm going to try to blog as much of my experience as I can while being careful not to add details that would compromise operational security. Really, I'm viewing this as a life-altering event and I want to chronicle the ways that my life will be altered over the next 9 months. I hope to come home the same person, just smarter and in better physical condition. Is that too much to ask?

I have some very specific goals that I want to achieve and I think blogging will help me stay on track. Obviously the pushup bet was a failure but I credit the blog for keeping it going as long as it did. It's really my shoulder's fault that I wasn't able to complete the challenge. I don't really anticipate many of my goals failing because of physical reasons(knock on wood) so we're blogging to keep the motivation up. Here is a short list of things I would like to do over the next 9 months:

Learn decent Japanese
Play a few songs on the guitar
Be able to run a 3:29:36 marathon in September 2014
Lift weights/circuit train 6 days a week
Be ready for a Pilot in Command check ride in August 2014

The last one is the most important because it's the key to my main, unwritten goal, of coming home in one piece. We're probably going to have a lot of down time and learning more about safe flying is the number one goal. But you can only read so much about helicopters so I'm going to use the other goals to balance my deployed life.

For now, I'm just going to keep this small. Dookie and Jimmy will probably be the only readers. But I'm hoping that I'll make enough progress over the next few months to advertise the blog a little more and show people how much you can accomplish even in shitty situations. How you can find silver linings in everything. How you can go to war and come home stronger.

Welp

So my previous total was 32895 and I have 650 more blogged. I probably did more but I can't remember. All I remember is 210 the day I went to Vegas and 150 on each of the next two days. When I came home from Vegas, my left arm was tingling like I pinched a nerve and the outer part of my pec hurt like a bitch whenever I did pushups. That's still true today despite giving it plenty of rest. I did random sets throughout the month and did 77 on my PT test two weeks ago. I'm going to call it 300 for the month, a number that I know is low. so 650+210+150+150+300 = 1460 + 32895 = 34355 for an unofficial count. This means I need more than 5k/month for the last 3 months and my shoulders and chest are still sore. I'm going to make one last ditch effort and I've done 200 tonight while on 24-hour staff duty. I'm watching the 2013 WSOP on YouTube and doing random little sets. My sets tonight were 40-25-25-30-30-25-25. It's pretty embarrassing but even that many makes it feel like I'm straining my chest muscles. We'll see how I feel tomorrow but I'm going to try to do another 200. It's just going to be an ultra grind if I can only do sets of 25-30. I'm pretty sure the dream is done though.

I'm also supposed to run a marathon on Sunday and I haven't run in 3 weeks, other than the 2-mile PT Test 2 weeks ago. I was still drunk and ran a 14:31 while all of my organs screamed at me. That's the other thing...it's not just that I haven't been running, I've been eating like crap and drinking my face off. All I do these days is work, eat, booze, and sleep. And sleep is definitely last on that list. I blame pre-deployment stress and I actually don't feel horribly guilty about it. I'm going to be gone for 9 months without pizza or beer so why not eat and drink as much as I can while I can. Anyway, I want to bail on the run but I'll probably do it just to see how much pain I can put myself through. I already have my tickets to MSP, may as well do something while I'm there.

Anyway, I'm going on some pretty sweet travels over the next few weeks and I'm hoping to have some good pics and photos for the blog. Let's hope my tendons magically repair themselves but I'm not holding my breath.

Tired

Doing some great Army training here. I have some sweet pics and video that I'll post when I get home. Unfortunately I only did 270 pushups today and it felt like a million. 60 in the AM and 60 before bed and then a few sets of 50 during the day. I really need to use some card games or ripdeck to get the numbers up there.

I suck at life

Mostly I just suck at doing a lot of pushups. I did 210 on Monday, 60 on Tuesday, and 110 on Wednesday. The days have been busier than expected and I've been lazier than expected. I have 110 done this morning but I need more than 400/day to get my 2k. Let's try to start with 400 for one day, shall we?

DC Weekend

Had a great weekend with the family. Knocked out 300 on Friday and 210 on Saturday but only managed 110 today. Should have been higher, just got lazy and now I'm too tired. I'm getting back to the point where each morning set is 60 and each set after that should be 60 soon. Those extra couple of pushups help a lot in the long run.

This week 8 of the pilots in my company are flying 2 Blackhawks down to Texas for some training. It should be fun and I should get a lot of pushups done. Making 2k my goal, really no reason not to get there.

Weekend: 620 Total-32895

Busy

Ended up getting super busy at work and only managed 50 on Wednesday morning. Yesterday I flew up to DC and got 210 done throughout the day. Today, big number, promise!!

W/T: 260 Total-32275

70 straight

Today I knocked out 70 straight before breakfast and then didn't do any more for the rest of the day. 70 straight is better than I've been doing so I'm pleased with that. Tomorrow I will go for 250. I was going to say 500 but I'm going to take baby steps to getting more. My right shoulder is still taking to me and I don't want to go too nutso. I've been eating pretty healthy and running a bit and I can tell the difference in only 10 days. I'm taking progress selfies every Sunday and if the ladies are lucky, I'll post them all (I think there will be 4 pics total) when I'm done detoxing, right before Labor Day weekend.

M/T: 120 Total-32015

HUNGOVER

Yesterday was awesome. An old friend was in Nashville for a bachelorette party and they were kind enough to let me party down with them. Pure insanity.

Only got 50 done today, right before bed. I'll do a lot this week, promise.

Week- 810 Total-31895

Consistency

I've been pretty consistent since Wednesday and can feel myself getting into a flow. Thursday night I knocked out two sets of 50 at work and didn't get made fun of too badly. Friday morning I did my 50-40-30-20-10 pyramid and it kinda sucked but I made it without having to rest too much. Today I've done 210 and we're about to hit the bar so that'll probably be it. Here are the numbers but I won't have the sum since I'm blogging from my phone. Sum tomorrow. And maybe some day soon some bigger numbers.

Wednesday-150
Thursday-200
Friday-200
Saturday-210

I guess I'm doing alright

Had another drunk weekend but focused on getting at least 150 in per day and can't be too disappointed with the numbers I got. On Monday, I was at work from 2 PM until 4 AM and spent 7 hours in the air. It was really exhausting and I haven't been doing as hot during the week but once my schedule returns to normal and I combine it with my no-drinking clause, I should be fine. I've pumped out 100 this morning already and I'm going to start doing more at work. Once I get past the guys making fun of me, it'll be a great step toward doing more overall.

As the weekend creeps up, I find myself considering cheating and boozing it up but this 24-day detox cost some money and I think that'll be my saving grace; not wanting to waste money.

Thursday, 1 AUG: 200
Friday, 2 AUG: 150
Saturday, 3 AUG: 150
Sunday, 4 AUG: 250
Monday, 5 AUG: 60
Tuesday, 6 AUG: 50

Week-860 Total-31085

August?

My God how time flies. Happy August 1st. I just finished a 24-hour staff duty shift and it sucked. I did 4 sets of 50 pushups and felt pretty good. My shoulder still hurts but I can definitely suck it up. I'd like to get back into the card games soon.

And yes, Dave, I wanted to add the 500 miles but my competition refused. But I'll definitely get there anyway. I just need to focus on pushups for a minute and get back on track. Even with these two horrible months, I'm happy that I'm ahead of pace and feel like the goal should still be easy to achieve.

Now goodnight. Hope I wake up before 2 PM.

Pushups: Today-200 YTD-30225

Day One

Well it's not earth-shattering but I got 200 done today. 50 in the morning and then forced myself to do 150 tonight in sets of 50 and 25 randomly. Tomorrow I have a 24-hour shift at Staff Duty from 9 AM to 9 AM and I'll try to do pushups to stay awake during that time. Maybe I'll do a whopping 200 more!!

Next week I'm flying for 4 days in a row which I'm pretty excited about. I'm also going to start a 24-day detox on Sunday and I'm pumped about that as well. I've been living way too crazy and am looking forward to 24 sweet alcohol-free days.

Pushups: Today-200 YTD-30025

Hello

It's just getting worse and worse. The lack of Internet at my new place, the transition to a new workplace, my alcoholism; all add up to one horrible blogger. Well the end of another month is near and that gives us another chance to make a monthly goal that we'll probably fail at achieving. My fitness has been pretty damn lackadaisical so I'm going to make the simple goal of hitting 150/day for the next month.

On July 2nd I had 28450 and then my month has looked like this:
 
7/3: 100
7/4: 50
7/5: 50
7/6: 50
7/7: 50
7/8: 100
7/9: 50
7/10: 200
7/11: 50
7/12: 50
7/13: 250
7/14: 150
7/15: 200
7/16: 200
7/17: 100
7/18: 150
7/19: 75
7/20: 50
7/21: 50
7/22: 50
7/23: 100
7/24: 100
7/25: 50
7/26: 50
7/27: 50
7/28: 0
7/29: 0

That's only 1375 if I can count and that's a big zero the past two days. Super gross. I'll do more than that today and try to pull my life together. On a positive note, I have been flying a lot and it's really fun. This weekend is going to be another party weekend but I'm planning on 3-4 weeks of detox afterwards. August is the month we get momentum back, we promise.

Pushups: mostofJuly-1375 YTD-29825

I'm going to quit tracking the other things since I don't have money riding on their outcome. I'm going to do some quick math to see how much wiggle room I still have. Obviously I'm still slightly ahead of pace because 25k was pace at 6 months and I'm almost 5k more than that at 7 months. But pace is actually 50/12 = 4,167/monthx7months = 29,167. So I'm 658 ahead of pace if I didn't do any pushups the next two days. Kind of amazing how big of a cushion I had built up. I know if I still lived with James I wouldn't have fallen off so bad or if I lived with Dookie I'd probably have done even more but I really just need to find my own motivation and get this fucking ball rolling again. Baby steps = 150 minimum/day. Let's dooo it.

Army Physical Training is blah

So I have to wake up at 5 AM to get to PT and it's pretty lame. I prefer running and doing pushups on my own and I also prefer sleeping in late. Anyway, we did a bunch of squats and lunges and crap that hurts real bad tonight. I did 50 pushups this morning, 50 before dinner, then I did my favorite workout interspersing pushups and pullups 25-5-25-5-25-5-25. I'm feeling decidedly less sore and can tell that I'm on my way back to 500pushupville, TN. Unfortunately, I'm heading to Denver for 4 days and I'll probably visit 0pushupville, CO while I'm there. Tomorrow we're running 60-120s in the morning and then I'm going to run this in the evening. At least there'll be beer afterwards. And maybe tomorrow I'll update my totals.

Improving

Went for a slow 3-mile run with my platoon today. It's amazing how out of shape so many people are. After the run we had to do 50 pushups and 50 situps and I finished, watched everyone struggle for a bit, then decided to do 50 more pushups. I did 100 more tonight for 200 on the day. It'd be so much easier to put up big numbers if I wasn't at the hangar all day sweating my balls off. I think tomorrow I'll try to get another 200+ and finally add up my total for the year. Hope I haven't fallen too far off pace.

Relaxed

This was one of the most relaxing weekends I've had in a while. It feels great. Still don't really feel like writing a long blog post. I wonder if I'll ever feel like doing one again. Blah.

Thursday - 50
Friday - 50/3.6
Saturday - 250
Sunday - 150

Getting Better

Still not motivated to make a legit entry. Knocked out 200 this morning in sets of 40-30-20-30-30-25-25 with 5 pull-ups in between each set. Then tonight I did another 100 and felt sore as hell. Hopefully these 300 will get some momentum building.

Still Tired

Ran 10 sets of 60-120s today because my Platoon leader made us. A conservative estimate is 320m each time so I'll take 3200m or 2 miles. Then I went to this West Nashville running group and ran 3 more miles. So I'll take 5 for the day. Sadly I only did 50 pushups tonight and I don't feel like adding everything up. It was a long day and the drive to Nashville only makes things longer. I had a good time seeing some running buddies but I don't think I'm going to do it very often if I have to keep getting up at 5 for PT. Blah.