Soreness

End of the month.  To keep my exercise commitment humming, I need to build into the schedule recovery time and reward.  Every date divisible by 3, I let the leg muscles heal.  As one month transitions to the next, my treadmill time halts for three days.  A longer recovery and a small reward for dedication to exercise over the previous month.  It also serves as time to reflect on what my month's efforts accomplished.  Longer time, faster pace?  Some months, an unexpected layoff for illness, medical procedure, or travel.

It's been a mediocre month as I begin the first of three days of recovery.  One day off for a colonoscopy.  Reduced effort during the restricted diet.  Only partial recovery by the end of the month to where I had started at the beginning.  I worked through a sore right knee, getting by with an elastic brace but experiencing an ongoing soreness.  My breathing never limited what I could perform, but I could tell that my cardiovascular tolerance has ebbed gradually over six months.  And the last few three day recovery spans did not fully restore me to optimal for the next month.  

My legs, mainly thighs and knees, can tell that I did not shirk my best effort at optimal health.  I avoid oral NSAIDS, but have gotten benefit from topicals.  I could ice my knee twice daily, whether exercise days or days off.  

What I do not do is set treadmill goals for the month that follows.  I do not know what my stamina or soreness will allow.  Typically I resume at the intensity and duration where I left off.  That ache never fully disappears.  In the absence of real disability, my willingness to proceed with the benefits of an exercise schedule, which have been many, takes on a life of its own.  Within my capacity to cope.

Treadmill Respite

Every month at the end I offer myself three consecutive days without treadmill sessions.  Those days are 29-30-31 or 29-30-1, depending on the month.  They are welcome, they are needed.  Often I find myself sore, mostly legs, as most recent months I push myself to a new walking duration or up the speed by 0.1mph.  Many months, including the one currently transitioning, have setbacks, days of illness or injury.  I do my very best to avoid any zero days, mostly succeeding.  But a drastically reduced session rarely resumes at the full level of where I left off.  This allows me to reset at sessions 5-10 minutes below where I had exercised previously, then resume to full sessions, usually by month's end.

Those three days pass rather quickly, often with recovery more functional than complete.  Back still a little stiff, knees still needing local care, if not a couple doses of naproxen.  The new month invariably begins, filled with some optimism of reaching another new level when the new month concludes.

I have been fortunate that limitations have been mostly orthopedic, not cardiovascular.  I had some symptomatic volume depletion following a blood donation this past month, one that reduced this timed walk to five minutes.  I've also over-extended, feeling energetic enough at 25 minutes to push for 30.  Additions of two minutes go un-noticed, even reset the new normal.  Additions of five minutes bring soreness. This creates a branch point, endure or cut back?  I mostly choose the prudent option and reset my sessions downward.

Having now done this for a couple of years into my 70's, I definitely feel more energetic, maybe adapting to a basal level of lower extremity soreness.  Good decision to allow some healing each month.

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.

Treadmill Respite

At the transition of each month I grant myself a three day break from my treadmill schedule.  It is something I look forward to, perhaps even offering an incentive to push on as those off days approach.  The stretching component of my health program does not change, nor do I designate specific times to make major detours from a sensible diet.  But brisk walking, paced by the treadmill requires periodic recovery time.

To best assure that I will walk the walk on scheduled days, I've also set a reasonably fixed morning time to step onto the 3.2 mph belt.  It's not first thing in the morning, more typically after coffee and after checking my email and social media messages.  Having a stretch of days off frees up three mornings to do other things.  Sometimes I go out to breakfast.  More often I do not designate the newly captured time for any particular purpose.

Those three days pass quickly.  While the purpose is recovery from leg muscle strains, that is often incomplete by the next scheduled exercise session, though always adequate to resume my program.  New calendar month, new schedule resumes.  

Soreness

After extension of a three day scheduled treadmill recovery time an additional three days, my sessions have resumed.  OLLI classes begin at 9AM most mornings, so to complete my program in time I need to start walking at 7:30AM.  Then I will have a half hour to dress and brew coffee into an insulated mug before I head off.  What I've not done well has been on the nutritional end, eating a reasonable breakfast before driving off.

My legs have gotten a bit sore with no meaningful reversal from my every third day off.  I am still able to complete my eight minute stretching session twice weekly without serious myalgia, though a bit of stiffness.  

While on the extended hiatus, prompted by soreness, I took a naproxen tablet night and morning but have suspended that.  I am reluctant to resume, though I tolerated the pills adequately and felt less pain.  I do not think the earlier exercise time has created the soreness and it has enabled me to not skip a session on days that I return home late.  

Just put up with this, a few more days, then reconsider the NSAID.

New Schedule

First week of this semester's Osher Institute.  Have been off about 7 weeks. Previous semester only one in-person 9AM class.  I requested seven classes this semester, all 7 first half, 5 second half. Despite overwhelming registration, the computer algorithm found a place for me in all seven.  And six meet in person.  Every day except Wednesday, I have a 9AM on-site starting time.  On Thursday afternoon I have a gap followed by a second class from 12:45 to 2PM the first five weeks.  That makes for some adaptations on my part.  Allowing for traffic, the drive in each direction plus parking and walking to the entrance comes to about 25 minutes, so it does not pay to add another full round trip between classes on Thursdays.  And my scheduled exercise times run 8:15-8:45 two days of three.

Some decisions needed to be made.  I moved exercise to 7:35 on the scheduled mornings of 9AM classes.  Did that on Monday and Thursday, cutting speed and duration a little on Monday, keeping speed but cutting three minutes of duration on Thursday.  I performed adequately, but definitely not my customary rhythm.  It made my legs sore.  It made me eager for an afternoon snooze that morning coffee could not offset.  And it put me to bed earlier than Sleep Hygiene standards would recommend.

And there are nutritional concerns.  While off, I made myself coffee in the Keurig machine each morning, took my morning pills, typed on the computer, made some more coffee, made a calorie decision on the second trip downstairs.  With 9AM classes, the second trip downstairs is out the door.  Some quick first downstairs initiatives still squeeze in easily.  Water plants on Tuesdays and Fridays, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway, finish as many dishes as will fit in the rack.  Then bring coffee upstairs.  The treadmill days impose an uncomfortable deadline.  If I start the session at 7:35 or so, I can go back upstairs in time to get dressed for class, then make a second cup of coffee in a travel mug to sip during my first class.

On Thursdays, I also need to make lunch, as I am on site from arrival a little before 9 until just after 2PM.  Sandwich, some vegetables, a dessert of some type, an herb tea bag. The University contracted with a caterer to sell lunch. While I think it is important that those in attendance support the project, my kosher limitations and the prices of what I am willing to eat are sufficient deterrents.  I found a backpack from a previous Endocrine Society Annual Meeting that accommodates my plastic writing portfolio, laptop, earphones, a pocket for a tape recorder, and an insulated lunch kit, while I carry the insulated mug separately to sip coffee in the morning.  

A week's experience with this has created a needed learning curve.  Morning adaptations seem about right, but I pay a price in fatigue and productivity by late afternoon.  I am optimistic that this is ordinary adaptation, much like would happen at the end of intercession or on returning from a two-week work vacation in the past.  I need to be a more rigid at not taking advantage of the proximity of my bed when I am tired.  I have a recliner in My Space.  And I need to use a timer to keep me on focus for projects that I undertake despite fatigue.  Things seem to fall into place when I do.

There is a one week spring intercession after six weeks of classes.  I have some travel plans that also entail some morning attention to exercise and nutrition, with some recreation thrown in.  It would help to have this guided by a successfully implemented class schedule that can continue during vacation and resume seamlessly when classes resume the following week.

Treadmill Hiatus

Sometimes it's the small victories that mean the most.  Exercise does not come naturally to me.  It makes me tired, often sore.  I rarely find it recreational.  Over the years, now decades, I've had a number of schemes to keep me at it.  A one-year participation on an athletic team in college which harmed my grades.  An after work jog with good New Balance shoes through a very pleasant path as a resident. JCC gym membership as a young adult.  Always a chore, never a destination.  To be fair, I did feel better the months that I engaged in physical activity.  And I really don't remember why the lapses occurred.  I've purchased exercise equipment at yard sales, now adding to clutter in my basement and garage.  I've purchased a bicycle.  I've had a garden which I found enjoyable but did not accelerate my heart rate.  Neither did fishing, though I had to walk from the parking lot to the water.

I bought a treadmill, used episodically.  The elevation mechanism broke.  Otherwise it works well.  As a senior, though, exercise became more like a prescription, self-prescribed but put on a schedule with a set time to perform.  I chose to stay with that treadmill.  If I had to leave the house to get someplace else like a gym, there would be an excuse not to.  It's much harder to rationalize not going downstairs to my family room, especially if I need not get dressed into street clothes first.  I put running shoes and braces for my right knee and ankle next to the treadmill.  A suitable timer for each session attaches to a magnet in the kitchen.  The treadmill itself has a timer that counts up.  I prefer one that counts down.

And so, I've done a good job, now spanning a few years.  Unless physically unable, I am on the treadmill at about 8:15AM on scheduled days.  Dates divisible by 3 are days to let muscles recover.  And the final three days of each month, modified for 30–31 variations, are designated restoration, like leaving a field fallow.  I look forward to these.

As the new month begins, I'm not exactly eager to resume, but those 22 min/ 22 sec at 3.1 mph, my most customary settings no longer get excuses.  I am there at roughly the appointed time.  After coffee.  Sometimes postponed to midday if I need to be someplace else before 9AM.  And when the timer counts down, there is a transient satisfaction, though probably not a full dopamine surge.  

I've struggled to add intensity, though when I do extend the time or speed I tolerate it.  However, it registers more as a disruption than a new norm.  I don't really like the treadmill time, but I think my consistency with doing it has only benefits, no downside.

Forcing Myself

After doing great for a while and seeing beneficial results, I let my sleep hygiene initiative atrophy, first for a legitimate reason of illness, but never restored this project to baseline.  I would wake up on time but not get up.  Today I did, though more from obligation to myself than really wanting to.

The same could be said of exercise, going great, hiatus for illness, never restored though it could have been partially restored.  Just have to set a time and be on a moving treadmill at that time.

Not all is lost.  I still use the electric toothbrush and flosser as soon as I get up, weigh and check waist circumference weekly.  BP checks have gotten fewer but the relative consistency of the readings suggests the spot checks are sufficient.  Dishes get done. Doing them relaxes me and gives me the illusion that I've accomplished something tangible.  I keep up with the laundry, no sense of self-coercion on this. Some of those health measures just haven't done as well despite acquiring some measure of well being when I was doing them.

Maybe creating an obligation, maybe having somebody other than me keep the checklist.  Start by hitting the personal Reset today.  I'm up on time, morning dental ritual done, dishes done, coffee at my right hand.  Treadmill later this morning when stiffness eases.  See how it goes.

Anthropomorphics

Even though this six month cycle, I set my goal on treadmill performance, I did not ignore the previous health tracking.  Weight and waist size get measured weekly, recorded in a log along with treadmill performance.  As BP has required more medication, I've added BP readings to the measurements and the recording.  While weight has not changed in a few years, waist size has, reflected in suits, pants and shirts that really no longer fit, indeed need to go to donation for dim prospects of ever fitting again.

Like most people whose physical enlargement catches their attention, I share a frustration of correction being refractory to expected, though never extreme, interventions.  The interventions, at least on the dietary side, never achieve consistency.  My ability to do 25 minutes on the treadmill with reasonable consistency doesn't change the measurements but I feel accomplished when each preset session reaches its conclusion.  

This month I set my goals for the next six months, invariably including at least one related to my health.  Bodily measurements seem a lost cause.

Recovery Day

About the midpoint of Memorial Day Weekend.  It's not really a day off for anybody, since those who are essential workers in a Covid-19 environment still have work that is ongoing and those of us idle are still idle.  For me, though, it seems at least a physical recovery day.

After being shelved from the scheduled treadmill sessions I am back in action, and yesterday for the first time I was able to complete the program at the level at which I had left off.  That left me a little sore, particularly in the calves, though respiratory and cardiovascular benefits seem to not need that every three days respite. 

Memorial Day Weekend starts the summer mindset.  Our SDS Weatherman predicted it to be warmer than what I experienced retrieving the newspaper from our driveway but I still attired myself in classic summer garb. 

It's also a scheduled day for full attention to gardens.  Indoor plants seem on schedule.  Outdoor containers could use some minor attention.  Focus on backyard beds this afternoon if it warms up and dries out a little.  I've not weeded yet but will need to this week.

Summer may be as much a mindset as a calendar designation.  I'm on my way, and today for the first time this calendar year look the part.

Letdown

Mothers Day came and went.  It's a special day for me because I get to pamper my children's mother a bit, having outlived my own.  I get a card, a bottle of wine, and make an effort at supper elegance.  All this happened.  Maybe a little too much wine.

Today, getting out the starting gate has taken more attention than usual.  I'm not tired, not really devoid of motivation either, but past the climax.  I tried to fix my refrigerator to find that a key part does not fit, adding a return and replacement hassle.  It's a treadmill day, as was yesterday.  I set a time to do it, a duration, and a speed and just did it.  Usually when I've been consistent with this and push my limits, I eventually capture more energy so today may be an investment in that end.  I'd like to go fishing and try tying the palomar knot that I just taught myself.  However, I lolled around on the couch when I could have been doing this.  I still can.  Have not yet exchanged the seasonal clothing.  Can do that when I return from fishing.

Interestingly, I feel generally well, just let down a bit.  My fingers hurt less, my lumbar area is better and the thoracic back strain has run its course quickly.  My legs ache in the mornings but not in a disabling way.  Most other Review of Systems has been pretty good, or at least age appropriate.  It's just that motivation seems more forced than spontaneous.  Try out the palomar knot, perhaps.

Feeling Groovy

It's been a while since I felt ready to move ahead, if not actually work, from the moment of arising.  Most of the age related aches have moved to the background.  I am restored from a highly satisfying day yesterday, ready to resume.  There are tasks, most of which have an end point, but more importantly, there are real accomplishments from the past few days worthy of a pat on the back.  My gardens are all set.  I completed the series of books from my six-month plan.  Omer counting remains up to date at its midpoint.  Treadmill has resumed after a brief physical incapacity.  I submitted one essay and nearing completion on another.  Some of the social media distractions have been restrained.  For the first day in weeks, I could say that I feel purposeful, at least at the day's onset.

New Treadmill Landmark

In the past, when I set up my semi-annual projects each June and December, I include a Health category.  As Covid-19 spreads globally, as physicians ramp into dedicated fireman mode and regain some of the public respect that had atrophied, maintaining health has come into better focus amid the threat.  Traditionally I have included a weight target, typically 155 lb or just under a 10 lb reduction.  While this would categorize as a SMART goal, it has failed to materialize over enough half-years that I changed the metric this cycle in the hope of making it more Attainable.  Instead of the end point being weight, it has become treadmill setting:  duration 25 minutes, speed 3.5 mph, incline 3%.  Except for speed, I made it with months to spare.  And I feel generally good having done this, despite an ingrained yetzer haRa that creates a variety of excuses for skipping a session.  With Covid-19 restrictions which have eliminated OLLI attendance, my main competitor for treadmill time and energy, I'm walking on pace as scheduled.  There are other impediments, mainly recurrent lumbar pain which has prevented being on the treadmill first thing in the morning but by mid-morning that excuse has evaporated.  My legs seem to tolerate the time extension.  My breathing has not been a barrier at all and there has been no hint of angina.  And with the progress has been the psyche boost of measurable accomplishment.  I could use that psyche boost.

Upping the Treadmill

Each week I weigh myself first thing Monday morning.  My weight has not changed in three years.  While discarding some old papers I noted a previous weekly tracking from ten years earlier when it registered three pounds less.  My target weight would be nine pounds under current.  I came close a few years ago with severe pastry restriction.  I don't recall if I felt better or worse, but at the time I was a bit overworked professionally.  Each half year when I set my six month goals, I have included a weight target which never happens.  Short of some involuntary weight loss from illness, it probably won't, so I redirected my health goal at exercise.

For years, I have avoided having my treadmill, a significant investment at the time, from becoming one more flat surface to plant things indefinitely.  In recent years, with particular attention since retirement, I set a schedule which I have done mostly a decent job maintaining, with a few lapses for lower back pain.  When I am consistent with walking, I seem to get through the preset program each session fairly easily, legs more bothersome than breathing or anginal symptoms.  I have increased the intensity randomly over the years, only to scale back following a layoff.  This time I set a six month intensity and duration goal, which I have worked toward with very few missed days.  It came time to increase the time a bit, which I did without much difficulty.  Then increase the speed by 0.1 mph yesterday, which took its toll, more on my breathing than my legs, though I can tell the difference today.  It's a scheduled day off today.  I am still three minutes short of ultimate time goal, which I expect to be able to meet and 0.2 mph short of the speed goal which seems less certain.  However, these are each significantly above the starting levels three months ago.

My weight has not changed.