My Journey With Health And Fitness – Wait, What?

Somehow today despite being super short on time I have still managed to clock 44k steps today. Seriously, surprised I was able to to that. I got up at the usual time to do bootcamp (which was excellent today) and driving home I realized the run down to the beach was out due to the pouring rain. So, hour run on the treadmill and then got myself changed and ready to go on a tour of Fort Langley which was an excursion my sister had arranged for us. I had some time so before meeting the bus I got in another hour walk. Turns out when we got to Fort Langley the first place we went was to a walking trail and despite the fact the group we were with was quite elderly I hooked up with someone who was also an avid walker so her and I got to do a 4.5 km walk at a pretty good clip. After lunch we got to walk around the town and then when I got home I went out for another 2 1/4 hour walk (including Oxford Hill). Ok, reading all of that maybe it isn’t surprising I got in as many steps as I did today.

Yesterday I was out for my usual morning run followed by my 5 km walk (note as of today I have run every day for the last 13 days and 8 of the 10 previous days). Of course the walk starts out climbing up Oxford Hill then I can carry on with the rest. I got to the 2/3 mark up the hill and all of a sudden I realized I wasn’t even breathing heavy. I thought hey, when did that start happening? Now don’t get me wrong, the muscles in my legs still groan their displeasure at this near daily torture but all of a sudden I realized that my overall fitness level has gone up a notch. This might explain that whole Fitbit telling me my cardio fitness is excellent thing.

But there is something else I realized, I’m not sweating profusely when I workout. To put that in perspective, I have always been a person who sweats a lot. At my worst fitness level I could start sweating just at the thought of moving. Even as I slowly got into better shape that didn’t stop me from being dripping wet at the end of a workout. Now, however, I am in the best shape of my life and somehow that has meant that even during fairly heavy exertion I’m not soaked in sweat. I realized this at bootcamp yesterday when I was working really hard and just had to lightly dab my brow. When the hell did I get to this point? Oh, I will note, I do expect to go back to sweating like crazy when I am in Mexico in May but that will have far more to do with the rampant humidity that I will be having to deal with.

The sudden realization of these improvements had me going wait, what? I guess I just didn’t see these changes to my fitness happening but apparently it has. The good news is the weather is about to really improve so despite my brutal schedule this week I am on track to hit at least 5 days at 40k steps and maybe even push that to 6 days. I can’t believe how much I am currently enjoying pushing myself this hard most days and still finding ways to go even further. Sigh, somehow I turned a corner without realizing it and became a fitness junkie.