Exercise Benefit

Intensifying my physical efforts has gone mostly well.  Treadmill schedule maintained over months.  Speed gradually advanced.  Duration gradually advanced.  Cool-down period initiated.  I might even approach a sense of Flow periodically, but not often.  Mostly it is a chore to complete with a daily end point but no future end point.  It has a purpose.  Feel more energetic.  And I do.  Sleep better.  Mostly improved, though harder to tie the consistency of my exercise program.

Everything has its downside, including exercise.  While I try to have a set time to put myself on the treadmill, with a ritual of placing a brace on my right knee, then adding the running shoes kept adjacent to the lounge chair adjacent to the treadmill, some minor deviations become necessary.  Morning appointments require me to exercise either earlier or later.  I prefer earlier, though when done on consecutive days during the OLLI school term, I can sense the disruption.  While I usually wear my designated treadmill shoes, I also have two other pairs of New Balance walkers.  Both are better quality running shoes than those generics kept on site.  And I walk more comfortably with the New Balance shoes, but I use them primarily as daily street wear because of their comfort and versatility.

I've also made an attempt to improve my flexibility.  Every MWF unless traveling I set the big flat screen in My Space to an eight minute Tone and Tighten program.  It had been M-Th for a long time, but due to inadequate progress, I added an extra session each week.  I feel less stiff but more achy, particularly the sacroiliac and thigh regions.  It does not seem to be the type of myalgia I can blame on each evening's statin dose.  And since adding the intensity and frequency, I've only had to postpone the treadmill once and the stretch program not at all.  Yet the soreness remains noticeable, even at each month's end when I give myself a three day recovery from the treadmill, though not the stretch.

For now, the commitment to this has been mostly good.  In addition to physical well-being, there is a mental boost.  Maybe it's Grit, that ability to perform on days I don't really want to perform.  I've not experienced Mastery, though I probably could not have endured what I do now at each session a few months ago.

It time, some illness or injury or maybe travel will disrupt what I have achieved, as it did previously.  Now I know I can reset the program, add to the intensity every few weeks, and restore what had been achieved.  Worth the effort, both to feel better and to prove to myself my ability to meet a difficult challenge and the excuses to avoid it.