My Journey With Health And Fitness – A Rant About My First Run In A While

Today was my annual physical. My doctor was pretty impressed with how well I am doing (except my weight is more than I anticipated but I assured her I am working on that). We went through all the medications that I no longer take and she was surprised to realize I don’t take anything any more. My blood pressure was on the high side when she took it but when I told her that it averages 105/75 normally and she agreed it was likely white coat syndrome. I assured her that the next time she sees me I will be back to 54kg and my A1C will be 5.0. She sighed and asked if I understood that my A1C is normal, not normal for a diabetic but absolutely normal. I told her yes, but I need to have a goal to keep me on track.

Yesterday I opted to run to the coffee shop to meet my friends. It was a bit cold and of course it had snowed the day before and frozen over night. I decided I would just go at a pace that I was comfortable with. I should have realized that this was not going to go as well as I hoped when I approached my first intersection and a man in a van didn’t even look (or stop for that matter) and just turned through the intersection. His hurry? Why dropping his kids off at school and there is nothing I respect less than a parent teaching there kids that driving like that is ok.

As I continued my run I was stunned at the number of people who had not cleared the sidewalks in front of their homes. This is an extremely busy time of day in my neighbourhood with kids walking to both the nearby elementary school and the high school. At some points it was so unsafe that I was running in the street which was not much better as there was some black ice. I think the sections that bothered me the most was where someone had gone out and shoveled a small path in the snow, by small I mean about a foot wide. How those people seriously think that is an appropriate way to ‘clear’ their sidewalks is beyond me.

I did make it to the coffee shop and after the usual political discussions in which my group solves most of the world’s problems I decided I was going to do a longer run (the coffee shop is only 2 km from home). I thought it would be much safer since I would be running on sidewalks in heavily populated areas. Boy was I wrong. When I was running on one of the main roads I finally decided to give up with the hit and miss sidewalk and just simply run on the busy street. I figured running in that heavy traffic was far safer than risking a major fall on walkways that were mainly ice covered snow.

I get that there are people that may have physical challenges that prevent them from clearing the snow (even though they are legally obligated to make sure it gets done) but that is not likely the case in most of these instances given the types of houses where the snow isn’t cleared. There is one near my house where the occupants had done nothing in terms of snow removal (though I note they had done their driveway). This is a house that was recently on the market for $3m and I know a younger family lives there so there is no excuse for this. In our immediate neighbourhood, my husband (who by the way is a senior citizen) had cleared most of the sidewalks on our side of the street and one of the ones he hadn’t done simply didn’t bother to clear their section. Not sure if they did that out of spite because he hadn’t included them in his clearing adventure but quite frankly he does this for our friends and the other seniors in the area, not for everyone.

Ok, I’ll stop my rant now and end on a positive note. My run actually went quite well and I was a bit surprised to find that doing 6 km wasn’t too hard. It felt so good that today I went out on another run and found the same. I guess I am at the point that I really don’t need to be working so much on my endurance with interval training. I think I’ll do several 6k next week then start adding in an 8k or two. Still a way to go before I get to where I want to be but after the past 2 days I know I am on the right track.