Staying fit for five weeks in Thailand

[Craig krup]

Now here's what started all this!

"Last year I spent five weeks in Thailand. I'm basically quite fit - on a distribution of fifty year old males I'd be way out on the right. That's not boasting, it's just noting a fact for what comes next. I tried to stay fit in Thailand but it just proved impossible. For twenty minutes I can kick out about 300w of power, which is 600 watts of heat. With high temperatures and high humidity you just can't ditch that heat into the environment, so you overheat and have to slow down. Running stairs, doing step ups fast in the park.....you're just saturated in water after ten minutes and your heart rate is 132 beats a minute. If I try to use the next thirty beats - to try and maintain fitness - the heat production soars and you're looking at a heat injury if you keep going. I tried step ups under the air con in the hotel room, which works a lot better, but you're still looking at low 150s on the heart rate, for the simple reason that half the time you're lowering yourself, so there isn't much work involved. The only practical way that I could see to maintain fitness is to join a gym with air conditioning. It's that or buy a bike, and I'm not convinced that cycling is that safe or (maybe) that effective.

So, it's either 1) set down for a month in somewhere with a decent gym and buy a month's membership, 2) plan an itinerary around gyms that allow you to pay daily, or 3) find a better way to beast yourself under the air con in the room.

Am I missing something? I came within a hairsbreadth of buying another flight - £510 return from Glasgow with 41 day stopover! - but then someone reminded me of the state I was in when I arrived back last year. I was in bits for months, and I'm not completely right even now."

Now for anyone's who's interested on how this website actually runs - and specifically how many people are prepared to ignore what was actually said - it's quite an education.

[Craig krup]

You will hate Thailand, whether or not you are able to figure out your extreme workout regimen or not.

This country does not bode well for perfectionists. It doesn't even bode well for people who are "slightly fussy". This is my position.

That might well be true, but again you're over-interpreting, and it's a chronic problem on this site. I'm going to start talking a load of "incoherent babble", so you'd better look away for a moment. There's denotation - what was actually said, and connotation - what the expression or form of words excites in the mind through a kind of association. You, and an awful lot of other people, are always trying to see "what's really there". You're falling over yourself to pigeon-hole people, to fit them into a category that you already understand. The number of people on this website who make a sweeping and definitive claim based on the square root of **** all is quite remarkable. But the mindset is wider than that. The number of people who are proprietorial about Thailand: continually declaring who will and won't fit in, or "make it". How many expat destinations have so many people talking about "making it", or using similar expressions. As someone said, "It's not the Thais you need to worry about, it's the farangs".

To make this point in a way relevant to the topic, contemplate the following. I was in a really nice gym and I said to the owner, "This is a really difficult place to find. You don't advertise. There's a lot of farangs around here. It seems pretty quiet. You could get a lot more customers". You know what he said? "The people who I want to find this place will find it. I don't want the rest of them. They come in here filthy and stinking of alcohol, they don't know what they're doing, they want to argue with you for 500 baht off an annual membership. I don't need it".

How many expat communities around the world present themselves in a way which causes local businesses to actively discourage their custom, do you think?

Or am I overthinking?

Edited May 26, 2015 by Craig krup

[Craig krup]

http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/training/heat-acclimatization-for-runners_12035

How to Acclimatize

Each runner is slightly different, but generally it takes about two weeks of continual training in the heat to acclimatize. Averaging at least one hour of moderate exercise daily in hot conditions is enough to get results in that timeframe. Gradually ease into heat training by keeping a low intensity at first (quality runs can be done in a cool gym). Depending on your normal running volume, fitness level, and natural heat tolerance, you may need to reduce your running volume slightly or significantly in the first days of heat exposure. As adaptations occur, intensity and volume can increase.

Certain adaptations occur quicker than others. Decreased heart rate can occur in as little as five days, while changes in sweating response could take weeks. Furthermore, trained endurance athletes usually adapt faster than untrained individuals.

Read more at http://running.competitor.com/2014/07/training/heat-acclimatization-for-runners_12035#JYKruex4RzeI4rti.99

The actual issue has got nothing to do with acclimatization. You won't engage with anything thoughtful, so here's a question - do you think there's a problem in holding the World Cup in Qatar, or will it be fine so long as the players "acclimatize"?

[h90]

You will hate Thailand, whether or not you are able to figure out your extreme workout regimen or not.

This country does not bode well for perfectionists. It doesn't even bode well for people who are "slightly fussy". This is my position.

That might well be true, but again you're over-interpreting, and it's a chronic problem on this site. I'm going to start talking a load of "incoherent babble", so you'd better look away for a moment. There's denotation - what was actually said, and connotation - what the expression or form of words excites in the mind through a kind of association. You, and an awful lot of other people, are always trying to see "what's really there". You're falling over yourself to pigeon-hole people, to fit them into a category that you already understand. The number of people on this website who make a sweeping and definitive claim based on the square root of **** all is quite remarkable. But the mindset is wider than that. The number of people who are proprietorial about Thailand: continually declaring who will and won't fit in, or "make it". How many expat destinations have so many people talking about "making it", or using similar expressions. As someone said, "It's not the Thais you need to worry about, it's the farangs".

To make this point in a way relevant to the topic, contemplate the following. I was in a really nice gym and I said to the owner, "This is a really difficult place to find. You don't advertise. There's a lot of farangs around here. It seems pretty quiet. You could get a lot more customers". You know what he said? "The people who I want to find this place will find it. I don't want the rest of them. They come in here filthy and stinking of alcohol, they don't know what they're doing, they want to argue with you for 500 baht off an annual membership. I don't need it".

How many expat communities around the world present themselves in a way which causes local businesses to actively discourage their custom, do you think?

Or am I overthinking?

It is the question how the definition of Expats is. The Expat is the foreign specialist not the retired drunk, or is it every immigrant? Than it would be the Turkish community in middle Europe as well and they are actively discouraged to be in the same fitness center.

[Craig krup]

A bit out there, but what about some sort of "chill pill"?

Craig krup pisses me off so much, the chill pill should be for me 55555

That's just the unreason leaving your body.

[Craig krup]

I think he is some sort of personal trainer that thinks he may take the region by storm, by telling us his vo2max ice chamber, high altitude workouts will make us ripped. Craig Krup, I challenge you to come to one of our training sessions or a nice and easy Muay Thai workout, and we will see how you might need your ice vest!

Jesus wept. We're still waiting for your Cooper Test score. I'm 50, and I've got some major issues with my Achilles tendons, which is why I'd like to avoid too much ballistic work. As a matter of bare fact I've got a reasonable sized "engine" - not something I deserved, it just happened - and I seem to have retained it as I aged. This also seems to be genetic - other family members are similar. At 83.5kg I ran 5k in 16:19. I held on until level 14/9 on the beep test, my best ever effort. Biomechanical issues mean I could do nothing like that now, but on a stepper, bike or elliptical I can pretty much generate the same power, and on step-ups, if it's cold enough, I come close to it. None of this is possible if you can't ditch the heat.

I know that the world is full of deluded people who have all kinds of mad ideas about Kettlebells, "core" strength and a million other daffy things. I was at university at the same time as Gerry McCann - Madeleine's father - and we were both in the running club. Lot's of the medical students did "inter-collated" degrees in exercise physiology and sports science. I know how serious trainers consider things, and the kind of "discourse" they engage in. Nobody who really trains finds it difficult to understand subtle nuances. People who don't understand why displacing the handle of a weight from its centre is a bad idea often have huge difficulty. We're talking at cross purposes. You need to go and kick a back, get sweaty and have a liquid green wheatgrass drink and a latte. Remember, stamp the foot, let the leg go relaxed, and rotate. The last thing that moves is the leg. Connect with the shin. Because, as the internet demonstrates, Thailand is full of female farang Muay Thai participants who know absolutely everything.

[Craig krup]

A long post(deleted) because I can see only one point.

Now tell me why you are doing all this fitness type exercise in the first place, is it to compete, look good, feel healthy, to beat the clock,stay alive longer, worry yourself into an early grave. What drives you to this.

By the way Im 62 and not fit(but I can walk most places, swim enough and do enough exercises to I enjoy my life here.

Christ, at 62 you shouldn't be happy with walking about. My colleague's father in law is 65 and the old bugger can ride 10 miles in 24 minutes on the bike. On a rough road surface I couldn't do that, or - maybe on tri-bars - just barely. People jack far too early, and the more you carry into your sixties the more you have in your seventies, and the more you carry into your seventies.....

[Craig krup]

Common sense tells me, using this chart from your posted link, that swimming is a viable alternative to running in this heat, based on their VO2 Maximums. If swimming is not enough resistance for you, try tying a cinder block to each leg.

Common sense isn't telling us what you think it's telling us. Swimming is a very poor exercise for maintaining high percentages of oxygen consumption, and you'd need to have enormous upper body endurance - or a small engine - to tax your heart and lungs using it. Again, the research has been done, but people don't believe in science and reason. You tell them that 2/3 of the muscles in the body are below the waist, and that swimming doesn't allow the deployment of the lower body muscles in a way that maximises their use, and they don't care. They just know, in the same way that people just know about dyslexia, gluten, massage, cancer and a million other things.

[Craig krup]

You'll see it in Thailand all the time, people jogging long distance. If your science says it's impossible then don't move here.

Your attitude towards exercise unfortunately will spill over into everyday life in Thailand and you will hate it here.

Of course you see people jogging long distance. That's the whole ******* point!! How many times? You can exercise no problem so long as you don't overwhelm your ability to ditch the heat, which is why jogging a long distance isn't a problem. As I've said - and I'll say it again - the hare and the kudu don't understand science, which is why the beagle and the bushman can catch them. The hare and the kudu run fast, overheat and ******* kill themselves, which is exactly what any other mammal will do if it tries the same trick in the right circumstances.

[h90]

You'll see it in Thailand all the time, people jogging long distance. If your science says it's impossible then don't move here.

Your attitude towards exercise unfortunately will spill over into everyday life in Thailand and you will hate it here.

Of course you see people jogging long distance. That's the whole ******* point!! How many times? You can exercise no problem so long as you don't overwhelm your ability to ditch the heat, which is why jogging a long distance isn't a problem. As I've said - and I'll say it again - the hare and the kudu don't understand science, which is why the beagle and the bushman can catch them. The hare and the kudu run fast, overheat and ******* kill themselves, which is exactly what any other mammal will do if it tries the same trick in the right circumstances.

I don't know about the hare and kudu, but normally it is the lack of water that damage when you hunt down animals over long distances (might be different in extreme hot areas). At a slow pace you don't need so much water and humans learned to rehydrate themself (can't remember if they carried water or how they did). Humans are pretty good for long distances. Can beat horses......

[Craig krup]

I don't know about the hare and kudu, but normally it is the lack of water that damage when you hunt down animals over long distances (might be different in extreme hot areas). mans learned to rehydrate themself (can't remember if they carried water or how they did). Humans are pretty good for long distances. Can beat horses......

And that was the frustrating thing about the deaths of those three soldiers. There's absolutely nothing you can say. if someone dies in the heat the public know that it was dehydration, and there's nothing you can say or do. So more die.

Dehydration isn't the issue with the rapid overheating that will kill you with intense exercise in a tropical environment. The sweat isn't evaporating, so the water won't help. It's just physics, but it's hard to get people to understand: they won't listen.

A race doctor said that he'd done his job for twenty years and had never seen someone die of dehydration. He did, though, say that he'd seen (I think he said) six people die from over-consumption of water. But again, that's way too subtle; there's nothing you can do. People aren't interested enough to pay any kind of close attention.

[h90]

I don't know about the hare and kudu, but normally it is the lack of water that damage when you hunt down animals over long distances (might be different in extreme hot areas). mans learned to rehydrate themself (can't remember if they carried water or how they did). Humans are pretty good for long distances. Can beat horses......

And that was the frustrating thing about the deaths of those three soldiers. There's absolutely nothing you can say. if someone dies in the heat the public know that it was dehydration, and there's nothing you can say or do. So more die.

Dehydration isn't the issue with the rapid overheating that will kill you with intense exercise in a tropical environment. The sweat isn't evaporating, so the water won't help. It's just physics, but it's hard to get people to understand: they won't listen.

A race doctor said that he'd done his job for twenty years and had never seen someone die of dehydration. He did, though, say that he'd seen (I think he said) six people die from over-consumption of water. But again, that's way too subtle; there's nothing you can do. People aren't interested enough to pay any kind of close attention.

If you are healthy and die in Thailand from dehydration, overheating or over-consumption of water than this has nothing to do with the heat....it is a mental problem. With such lack of common sense or feeling for your own body you would die anyway....frostbitten if you stay in the Alps, breaking your neck or by putting a nail into the electric plug......

It is extreme difficult to really die from it and in Thailand every 500 meter is small shop which has cold water, which you can drink or pour over your head. You must be extreme stupid to kill yourself with it.

Black out, heavy sunburn, accidents OK that is possible.

Dehydration or overheating (considering healthy person) is Darwin at work.....

[duanebigsby]

you've beaten this to death. You've convinced yourself that your highly specialized exercise routine won't work here, and perhaps will kill you, you've rejected everyone's alternate suggestions of exercise routine, you've called all of us uneducated, unwilling to read or learn idiots, and you still think you should come here?

I do not care anything about your exercise routine, your ideas of fitness: not one fig. I'm trying to tell you that your attitude toward life in general will not suit Thailand.

[Craig krup]

you've beaten this to death. You've convinced yourself that your highly specialized exercise routine won't work here, and perhaps will kill you, you've rejected everyone's alternate suggestions of exercise routine, you've called all of us uneducated, unwilling to read or learn idiots, and you still think you should come here?

I do not care anything about your exercise routine, your ideas of fitness: not one fig. I'm trying to tell you that your attitude toward life in general will not suit Thailand.

..and I'm telling you that your attitude does not suit the modern world, which is why you have a canary about something that doesn't concern you and which you know nothing about on this forum.

I told you right at the start what would work - 1) join a gym with air con, 2) find something better to do under air-con in a condo or 3) kill myself periodically in a gym and get by on less useful stuff the rest of the week. As I told you at the start I'm well aware of how to absolutely wreck myself outdoors in a sauna, why it doesn't work (for anyone) and why it didn't work for me (in the real world).

You say, "..you've called all of us uneducated, unwilling to read or learn idiots". Have I? Or was it really directed at a few people who would start a fight in an empty house over something they don't understand, and then start a second fight when someone points out that the first one was caused by their desire to intervene on something they didn't understand?

You want to parade "your truth", and you take umbrage if anyone suggests that it might not be true. That is a very particular attitude to language, and what we can hope to achieve by it. Using language to explore ideas is one thing. Using to proclaim identity and build relationships is something different. You can't proclaim your identity on the web - it's all in your head; nobody knows or cares. You can use the web to discuss ideas, but if someone doesn't know that this is what the web is for they really won't like it.

I was curious to see what people would suggest. I didn't want to put ideas in their heads, because people will allow themselves to be led: ask any researcher, any cop, any lawyer. Did some people use malls before they open as they do in the states? Was the view among serious trainers that the only thing you can do is buy a bike and an A-frame magnetic turbo and find a condo owner who'll let you bring the bike indoors - so nothing to be done in five weeks unless you buy a bike. Do some people beast themselves near a ring-road and ride the scooter hard up the bypass to cool off? Does anyone bribe a security guard in Bangkok to use the stairs at night, if the building is sealed and the air-con cools the fire escapes?

I've "..beaten this to death" in one specific sense: I won't allow you to proclaim your "truth" in the way you'd like to. This business of using the web to establish identity through party pieces could usefully stop, and on this site more than most others.

[HooHaa]

Sounds like a real fun guy that's going to have a real fun holiday. 5555

I know, I know....I try to avoid being intemperate, but the web's nearly dead because you can't use keyboards and words to communicate ideas. Nobody ever thinks that they have to think really carefully about anything. So if someone says - in effect - "If you're old and you've been managing to fend off the worst effects by red-lining it in the gym, there's a real issue in the tropics, and you'll be surprised how seriously fitness declines with the reduced activity imposed by heat. Any solutions?", and you try to avoid the tidal wave of colloquial statements (being replicated at the moment on the thread "why rice is the devil's spawn") by noting some science, people think you're doing a "Vic and Bob" shaking their handbags huff.

There's no way you can talk about anything without starting an infinity of tangential fires, and it pretty much convinces you that John Stuart Mill, Milton and all the other liberals were dead wrong. The truth cannot shift for itself. If everyone can talk it's just everyone's party piece. Nobody modifies anything they already think on the basis of anything that is said: or typed.

are you high?

[Craig krup]

are you high?

Nah, just literate, which - come to think about it - in this world generally produces a "low". Still, better to be Socrates(ish) dissatisfied than a fool satisfied

[mikebike]

You will hate Thailand, whether or not you are able to figure out your extreme workout regimen or not.

This country does not bode well for perfectionists. It doesn't even bode well for people who are "slightly fussy". This is my position.

That might well be true, but again you're over-interpreting, and it's a chronic problem on this site.

It's a chronic problem in forums in general...

You're falling over yourself to pigeon-hole people, to fit them into a category that you already understand.

Confirmation bias is alive and well!! LOL!!

[ElisabethA]

Good.grief is this still going on! Ok I've never done or felt the need to do a Cooper test but my average 5k hill work here is about 28mins. My last beep test was 8/12, and I ran a spartan in February coming 7th in my age group at 48 and 58kg and to be honest I hate running and do it as it the as possible. As for the MuayThai, I've never tried it, not will I. I just would enjoy watching you spa with a typically unfit thai fat thai boxer, as you seem to think all are.

As for the World Cup in Qatar, I lived in the UAE for 10 years prior to coming here in March. The local football Teams play outside and don't have any problems, and before you get on your high horse yet again, there is an Omani footballer playing professionally in the UK.

All this finally boils down to, you don't really want advice as you already know better than all of us, so have a lovely holiday in Thailand. Please don't be offended if we don't invite you round for dinner.

[phetphet]

One other thing to consider. If you were "in bits for months" after returning home, and as you say "not right" a year year later, you may have ignored your bodies warning system and done some real physiological damage, What other possible explanation for feeling the effects so long after?

Have you seen a doctor?

[h90]

Good.grief is this still going on! Ok I've never done or felt the need to do a Cooper test but my average 5k hill work here is about 28mins. My last beep test was 8/12, and I ran a spartan in February coming 7th in my age group at 48 and 58kg and to be honest I hate running and do it as it the as possible. As for the MuayThai, I've never tried it, not will I. I just would enjoy watching you spa with a typically unfit thai fat thai boxer, as you seem to think all are.

As for the World Cup in Qatar, I lived in the UAE for 10 years prior to coming here in March. The local football Teams play outside and don't have any problems, and before you get on your high horse yet again, there is an Omani footballer playing professionally in the UK.

All this finally boils down to, you don't really want advice as you already know better than all of us, so have a lovely holiday in Thailand. Please don't be offended if we don't invite you round for dinner.

5k hill...you will die from overheating

Ahh no I forgot only the elite male athletes with high enough energy output will die from the accumulated heat

(Actually I don't know any Thais who does sport......the sporty one might have been removed from the gene pool already millennias ago, due to death from overheating)

I think the only safe thing is to keep far away from Thailand. That deadly overheating is not to be underestimated......

(Dinner: he explained to eat exact 166 gram of oat in the morning and 250 gram of rice at night, so I doubt he would join us at any restaurant without exact scale).

[Craig krup]

One other thing to consider. If you were "in bits for months" after returning home, and as you say "not right" a year year later, you may have ignored your bodies warning system and done some real physiological damage, What other possible explanation for feeling the effects so long after?

Have you seen a doctor?

Interesting point. I felt fine in myself: healthy, not ill - the trouble started when I tried to exercise hard, and that was when I found out I'd lost a ton of fitness, and it proved (and is proving) damnably hard to regain. Exercising in the heat makes it very difficult to do a certain kind of exercise. You can do power stuff - lift weights, sprint flat out. You can do low-intensity distance work, because the heat you acquire doesn't overwhelm your ability to ditch it. But the kind of exercise that I've been doing for decades, and which seems to be stopping my work ability from declining in the way most people's does, is pretty near impossible. So my "in bits" is limited to aerobic exercise at the limit for 20-30 minutes. The strength picked up very quickly.

The good news! Last night I went into the gym for the Wattbike horror workout and, for the first time since last June before I spent the summer in Thailand, I managed to complete my standard effort - ten one minute 47k+ efforts, with one minute recoveries. The gym was about 16 degrees. Could I have done this at 28 degrees and high humidity. No, or if I did I'd have caused more damage than benefit.

[Craig krup]

(Dinner: he explained to eat exact 166 gram of oat in the morning and 250 gram of rice at night, so I doubt he would join us at any restaurant without exact scale).

No, I eat oats in the morning and rice many evenings, and I use two different mugs to pour out the amount I know produces the right amount. Being a pretty observant bloke I noticed that I get four servings from a kg of rice and six from a kg of oats.

That's what it's like having a working brain. People who don't have one think you're the lead character from The Rosie Project. [it's a book. People could usefully read more books. They might learn something].

[SoiBiker]

The internet is full of people who start conversations as a pretext to tell you how they're cleverer than you, or more physically impressive than you.

It's not often you meet someone who does both at the same time.

OP is not interested in advice, so I won't offer any.

Edited May 27, 2015 by SoiBiker

[Craig krup]

Good.grief is this still going on! Ok I've never done or felt the need to do a Cooper test but my average 5k hill work here is about 28mins. My last beep test was 8/12, and I ran a spartan in February coming 7th in my age group at 48 and 58kg and to be honest I hate running and do it as it the as possible. As for the MuayThai, I've never tried it, not will I. I just would enjoy watching you spa with a typically unfit thai fat thai boxer, as you seem to think all are.

As for the World Cup in Qatar, I lived in the UAE for 10 years prior to coming here i British n March. The local football Teams play outside and don't have any problems, and before you get on your high horse yet again, there is an Omani footballer playing professionally in the UK.

All this finally boils down to, you don't really want advice as you already know better than all of us, so have a lovely holiday in Thailand. Please don't be offended if we don't invite you round for dinner.

Jesus wept, are you still going on? It ends when you stop saying inconsequential Roger Irrelevant things. Why talk abotu "..5k hill work"? What kind of evasion is that? So we're all supposed to recognise that this "orange" of a non-specific "hill" can't be compared to the "apple" of flat and level ground, and so conclude that you make Paula Radcliffe look like Elizabeth the Second? You talk about your "average" 5k hill work - implying that it's not infrequent - and then, notwithstanding your strong views on training and fitness you've "..never done n[or] felt the need to do a Cooper test". Why? You're obviously the Yoda of Thai exercise, you almost certainly did the "highlight, right click, search with google" to find out what a Cooper Test is. So you cover 5k on foot regularly, you're full of opinions on health and fitness, you know what a Cooper Test is, you (presumably) know why it might be significant and relevant, but you've "..never done [n]or felt the need..." Doesn't that strike you as odd?

You say you'd enjoy "watching me spa" with a "..typically unfit [T]hai boxer, as you seem to think all are". I'd like that too - there are some beautiful spas in Austria and Germany, although British spa towns are terribly overrated. If you mean "spar" what ******* possible relevance has the fact that someone who has trained for 10,000 hours to put his shin through someone's thigh have to do with the matter in hand. I've taken a Thai kick though a pad, and I couldn't walk right for a week. It didn't make me any fatter, or him any thinner. John Daly can hit a golf ball 600 yards: it doesn't make him any less of an obese alcoholic. Having a hardened right shin, spending thousands of hours doing "stamp, relax, rotate" and being too poor to worry about brain damage means the square root of **** all with regard to the issue we're discussing, as (I'm sure) mature reflection will convince others, if not you. Besides, my remark - factual, and about one particular picture which someone seemed to think proved something about threshold aerobic exercise in tropical climates - hardly concerns "typical" exponents, does it?

Your remarks about football are similarly ill-considered. The fact that the local teams play outside is an irrelevance. The conditions are the same for both teams, but nobody wants to watch a world cup where players who are brilliant at controlling the ball can't be closed down because of the heat: it'll look like netball. You just don't know what you're talking about, and don't care to think about it, and yet (paradoxically) can't stop talking about it.

Right at the start I said, "I train seriously, does anyone else who trains seriously have a solution to the heat problem other than the three things I've already thought about".

What I got was the usual "ab-roller, Kettle bell" crowd telling me that the heat wasn't a problem. I already knew enough to dismiss that inane notion, but I suppose - deep down - having been on the planet for half a century, I knew I wasn't going to get away with it.

[ElisabethA]

No I tried to let you know it is possible to keep fit enough here. You asked for specifics about my training, I gave you what I have. I'm a retired bank manager not an athlete and I'm typing on a tiny phone screen whilst being bounced round in a mini van.

I'm terribly sorry my intellectual and physical standards do not come close enough to your's to be able to communicate effectively but they always say people who have to fall back on sarcasm and insults to make themselves feel important are just bullies.

I'm makes me feel sad that I feel the need to defend myself for my obvious stupidity and total worthlessness but my family love me and I have FUN working out with my friends.

On that note, I'm out of this 'discussion' thank you and goodbye

[Craig krup]

The internet is full of people who start conversations as a pretext to tell you how they're cleverer than you, or more physically impressive than you.

It's not often you meet someone who does both at the same time.

OP is not interested in advice, so I won't offer any.

Well, I began with a pretty blunt statement of fact: this isn't boasting, but I've a reasonable work capacity, I've tried to use that work capacity in Thailand for five weeks, it didn't work and I lost a lot of condition, here are my three solutions, are there any others?

The "..cleverer than you" stuff only started as - if you look you'll see - responses.

All I was looking for was time triallist and runners to give me their views, which might amount to, "F****** forget it. I tried everything and frankly all you can do is buy a bike for transport if you live here, and use a magnetic turbo in your own room. The Thais don't push themselves in the gyms, so the air-con is never set high enough, so use a bike for transport and twice a week knacker yourself at home. Buy plastic tubing to protect the top tube from the sweat". That kind of view expressed by someone on the same wavelength is absolutely impossible to solicit, however, because - and as I say, I suspected this would be the case - there's nothing you can do to stop people telling you that swimming is the best exercise, or that you have to get acclimatized, or that you have to toughen up, or that you have to drink water. The instant they've done that you've two choices. 1) let it stand. 2) Point out the error so that they and others know that what they've said is mistaken. As soon as you do that you're "boasting" and telling people that you're "cleverer than they are". The reason they think that is because they can't ever imagine themselves speaking the truth just because it's true. They don't have that in them. The great philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that the fundamental difference between children is not intelligence but interest: interested children become smart because they relentlessly pursue the causes of things. Most people, however, use language to build relationships. They've no idea of how to use it for anything else because they've no taste for it. So if someone says, "You should try our outdoor sessions and see how long you'd last", you're "supposed" to say, "Hey, I'm only looking to stay fit for five weeks, not kill myself ".

And then everyone thinks you're a regular guy, rather than a manipulative regular muppet.

Edited May 27, 2015 by Craig krup

[SoiBiker]

I run regularly here. But like I said, you're not interested in hearing what anyone else thinks. Just telling us what you think. So I'll pass.

[Craig krup]

I run regularly here. But like I said, you're not interested in hearing what anyone else thinks. Just telling us what you think. So I'll pass.

Honestly, on a stack of bibles, I'm interested. How quickly, how far and with what consequences? The only way I could see to make it work was to turn the air con up full and blat around (say) 800 yards and then back into the air con to do some step up and similar stuff to keep your heart rate up while you cool down. Maybe being next to the Mekong made the humidity worse than it would be elsewhere, but I honestly couldn't see how it was going to be possible to use the last 20% for long without being ill, without using a bike and getting the benefit of airflow.

[beau thai]

You've already convinced yourself though your appliance of science that you will be unable to maintain your fitness levels here, so it really doesnt matter what other people tell you does it?

I am considerably older than you and just back from singles tennis. 48c on court in full sun and exhausting.but fun. Helps me maintain my desired fitness levels but it clearly wouldnt work for you.

You you knew the temperatures and humidity levels here before you came, and using your equations, you already 'knew' you couldnt stay fit here. so why come? i dont get it. Retire somewhere cooler and dryer.

[SoiBiker]

No, really. You've amply demonstrated that there's little point in discussing this with you.