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Blog entries | Comeback
Brisk morning air hit me full in the face as I walked down the driveway this morning, resuming a too-long-ago abandoned practice of morning walks. Frost-covered grass crunched under my feet as I headed across the lower lawn towards Sandy Flats Road.
My left knee, wrapped and braced for morning event, popped as it bent, still recovering from a sprained ligament and bone bruise from a fall more than two months ago during the December ice storm. Foolishly, I allowed that injury to turn me into a semi-invalid, taking stairs a half-step at a time and giving up more often on activity when it started to ache.
No more. Mind over body. Too little activity combined with too many calories had ballooned my weight and left my body too weak for even the simplest of household chores. An attempt at yard work on this past warm Saturday left me grasping for breath. Not good.
So I limbered up for 30 minutes on an exercise bike, then bundled up to venture out into 16-degree weather for another 30 minutes of walking. The cold air rejuvenated me as I headed south up the hill on Sandy Flats. I reached the top winded but determined to push on, heading east on Harvestwood to its intersection with Christiansburg Pike.
A brief rest at the church and then a return trip, picking up the pace as I forged along the frozen ruts of Harvestwood. Some 45 minutes had passed when I reached the foot of our driveway out of breath and started up the 450-foot, 35-degree anglem knowing this final stretch would be the hardest. By the top, I gasped for breath, inhaling lungfulls of frozen air.
In the kitchen, I gulped down two bottles of water and headed for the shower, exhausted.
Day one. Let the comeback begin.
Rachel
February 28, 2006 at 2:33 am
Good for you!
Elise
February 28, 2006 at 8:33 am
I always thought that when I got older, things would be easier.
Who fed me that line of crap?
I give you a lot of credit, at least you are doing something.
Tom King
February 28, 2006 at 2:12 am
Bravo!
Ron McKinney
March 8, 2006 at 12:59 pm
The Comeback
I plan to start mine when the Vernal Equinox rolls around. Here you could walk for 45 minutes and the only hill you’d find would be one of the pedestrian overpasses for school kids. They are a real challenge, but I haven’t hiked over one in the past year.
It seems that the older I get the easier it is to come up with reasons to procrastinate, and the harder it gets to go out the door.
Your Loki post above sort of hit a raw nerve. My old lap cat, Tobi, limped out to our back yard on Saturday night and failed to return. Sunday I found his body beside my workshop. Toby’s death was not unexpected. He too was old and a tad senile. But he is absence is painful. My wife, Chris, snapped a photo of Toby last Friday, as he lay curled comfortably on my side of our bed. She printed the picture on magnetized paper and put it on the front of the refrigerator. Seeing him deters me from snacking when I get bored. OldMack