China Journal 2008-11-13, 1:42PM I May be Addicted

So this week has been one of the hardest weeks yet for my training. I just haven’t had the energy that I usually do. My muscles are really sore, my joints are stiff and I just feel very lethargic. I woke up today at the usual time but immediately went back to sleep. If it wasn’t for the three alarms I set for myself I would have missed class. I remember saying to myself, in my head, “That’s it, I’m skipping training today!” but that third alarm slapped some sense into me. I was a few minutes late but luckily I hadn’t missed anything. The class was as brutal as I thought it would be! We started off with a friendly game of soccer, or “football” as everyone except for me and my American friend call it, and I was sweating buckets by the end of it. We lost, by the way. Next we just had some alone time to stretch. This was nice. Luckily our 老师(aka Laoshi, aka teacher) didn’t feel the need to help us out at all. When we got into the actual movement I had to really force myself to move. My form was hard coming. I stuttered on a few moves and was really feeling tired and fatigued early on. At this point we still had at least a half hour left! After failing at one tricky technique (some may know it, it’s a wushu move where I have to do a spinning cyclone kick but land on my side on the ground) for the umpteenth time I just really wanted to kick a hole in something. I was getting angry at myself for not being able to do it. granted, I have changed from Sanda to Nanchuan, which is a lot more aerobic and has a lot of nice, low stances, but I still shouldn’t be this beat. What is wrong with me? Then it all made sense. The short temper, the self-loathing, the fatigue and exhaustion. Classic signs of withdrawal. I hadn’t had a banana in almost a week. Those sweet, delicious, energy-filled fruits. Packed full of potassium and who knows how many more awesome minerals and nutrients. I heard once that there is enough energy in two average bananas to last someone through an intense 90 min workout easily! Since I discovered how cheap fruit was in china I’ve been eating at least three a day. I recently lost my bank card and am basically broke while waiting for a new one to be sent out so I haven’t been able to buy any. Now I think I may dip into my emergency funds and buy a bunch and a half again.