When I first started to go to the gym a little of two years ago it was to drop a few pounds. Two years later and many hours at the gym and swimming in 
the pool and I’ve dropped the pounds but yet I want something more. Once I started to get toned I realized I needed to continue to stay in shape spurring me to go workout more. I keep telling myself I’m doing all this to be a better and faster swimmer but lately I’ve noticed I look a myself in the mirror more. Each time patting myself on my back over how my arms look bigger or my chest is showing definition. Each time finding something else that is wrong. Promising myself to stop drinking so much so I can get rid of this spare tire around my waist. When did my BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder) become training for life?
The good thing about working out so much might be that it just cancels out the alcohol drinking so I’m maintaining the status quo. Plus I like eating hamburgers and french fries every so often so I could never give up fried food. 
Oh and I so can’t give up my daily Hostess Cupcake! The tough part of having BDD, as most gay men do these days, is that when I get a compliment it just reminds me how that my working out is working and that I need to go and do more. One example of this in my life happened this weekend with the boyfriend. While in bed fooling around he mentioned that my arms and chest were hot as they were in a flexed position above him. Another example has happened twice to me, swim team mates and a coach at different points have asked me if my navel piercing is new which it isn’t but has been released from the roll of stomach fat hiding it. So now I keep doing crunches to work on my stomach and keep on pushing it at the gym on the arms. The cycle never ends.
All this leads to yet another problem, my flat feet. I have flat feet with no arch support so when running I need sneakers with arch support. The thing is over time the arch support weakens and leaves my feet, legs and knees in pain. Today I realized my sneakers are at that point. It is time for new sneakers. I only ran about 1.5 miles today as my feet were cramping up and my calves were burning. This all could be from running Sunday, doing leg weights on Saturday and swimming yesterday combined all with my flat feet to cause the pain. Then I was reading today about runners kick. In a newsgroup and article I read:
Runners and bicyclists are notorious
terrible kickers. They're feet are attached to their ankles
like metal ells. No big quad is going to get you through
the water like the loose floppy feet of a swimmer.
Maybe I just need a day to let my body relax and then figure out a schedule for swimming, running and gym training. Since I’ll be out of town for the Labor Day weekend and not working out the plan is to comeback and work out a schedule for gym and running around my set swim days. Maybe just maybe that and new sneakers will let me run without feeling pain and then feeling more leg pain during kick sets at swim.
Then again I could chuck it all away and just get plastic surgery.
