It was a beautiful day for a walk at the beach today. There were tons of people and dogs walking the promenade. There was a man walking in front of me with one of those dog strollers. I try not to be judgmental but I really don’t like it when able bodied dogs are being wheeled around as walking is so much better for their health. However when I caught up with the man I realized it was a cat in that stroller. Apparently the cat loves going for walks in his stroller and if he sees the stroller open he just leaps into it. To me, that is a great use for a pet stroller.
Yesterday I started my day as usual doing a class at my fitness centre. We were doing an exercise called a farmer’s hold where you just stand there holding heavy weights. I had pulled out a pair of 15 lb dumbells and was ready to go. That’s when another member brought over a pair of 35 lb weights and told me if she was doing 40 lb weights I could do 35 lb. Much to my surprise I got through 3 sets of that exercise. Then we were doing side bends (holding 1 weight and bending sideways) and the instructor said to use heavy weights but they didn’t have to be as heavy as the farmer’s hold weights. Wrong, shouted the other member, Gwenne use the 35’s and so I did. Apparently it didn’t kill me.
But then I was on to meet this week’s goal, walking more than 50,000 steps. This was a big goal because that is a lot of walking. Of course I do it in segments of at least 90 minutes at a time. And yes, this took up most of my day but I got it done. At the end of my walking I was at 53,000 steps, 35.5 km and had burned 3,100 calories. I actually got my cowboy boot badge from my fitbit app which you receive when you walk 50,000 in a single day.
I acknowledge this is the best day that I have ever put in exercise wise. I also admit that today my body is reminding me that I am 58 years old and yesterday was a lot of work. The problem I have at this point is that was such a big goal to meet, what can I do next?
My husband came home from our trailer on Saturday because he said his foot really hurt. I had a look at the swelling and redness and told him I was pretty sure he had gout (I didn’t know it is now also known as inflammatory arthritis). He was able to get an appointment at a walk in clinic yesterday (I find it ironic that you now book an appointment at a walk in clinic) and sure enough it is gout. He started his medications today and let’s just say they are strong enough that I won’t let him drive right now because I am sure he is legally impaired. But, he is happy, really, really happy.
I always check the weather forecast to see what I am going to be deal with. I have managed to avoid even one workout on the treadmill since returning from Mexico and my hope is I can keep it that way until I return there in September. My weather app told me that yesterday would be light rain. I figured, ok, I can handle light rain. I did my normal 2 hour walk and got a little damp and cold. After coffee with my senior group they opted to skip walking since the rain had picked up. I had no choice though, I had to walk home. About 5 minutes into that walk the skies opened up and by time I got home I was absolutely soaked through. It was so bad that even by this morning my shoes still weren’t dry.
The forecast was the same for this morning but if faced with reasonable temperatures and some rain as opposed to the dreaded treadmill, I am taking the rain. Once again off I went and when I got home and took off my running jacket I was once again soaked through and a hot shower was necessary. I pulled out a rain jacket for my next walk to at least try and keep me reasonably dry (I was walking to a volunteer gig). There was only one problem, my husband bought me that jacket when I was much larger and therefore looked pretty ridiculous on me but oh well. Fortunately for my walk home the rain had finally stopped.
The bottom line is I am not letting the rain stop me. Yes, I could give into the rain as an excuse but I am just not willing to do that. By time I get back from Mexico the end of October we will be in to our rainy season meaning I will have no choice but to get on the treadmill. But you know what, I am going to avoid that for as long as possible. Seriously, other than making my hair go frizzy, what harm does the rain do?
It was a challenging bootcamp this morning. I have to admit by time we got to the finisher I was slowing down quite a bit. But, when we did the last Tubthumping I opted to kick it back into high gear and get ‘er done. Why I am suddenly on this push to the limits kick is beyond me.
I’ve mentioned I am having ongoing problems with my ankle. This started just before we left on our last Mexico trip and while it is nowhere near as bad as it was at first it still tends to bother me and it keeps me from running which I really want to get back to (who the hell ever thought I would say those words). Yes, I do have an appointment with my doctor to look at this but unfortunately not until Aug 12th. I decided there had to be something I could do in the meantime and I thought hmm, why not try the orthotics again?
I had stopped using my orthotics nearly a year ago. Why? Because I was wearing those horrible NB runners and the orthotics made the discomfort even worse. Ok, I acknowledge I should have gone back to the place I got them to see if they could be adjusted but really, I should have given up on the NB shoes long before I did as well. Just to remind you, I ended up hating those shoes and no matter how long I wore them to break them in it never happened.
And so I put the orthotics in my Brooks runners and thought ok, we will go slow and break them in. Well dammit, no need for that because they contour to my feet perfectly. I walked just about 27 km yesterday and they felt great. I realized I so made the right decision when I changed my shoe brand. I am hoping that going back to the orthotics will help not just the ankle but also the cranky knee.
Lessons learned through this process 1) if shoes are not comfortable, get rid of them 2) wear the shoes that do feel comfortable despite what your podiatrist says 3) always use your custom made orthotics and finally 4) when something hurts (like my ankle) for more than a couple weeks get it checked by your doctor.
My Dad had another saying, no matter how bad things are for you someone else has it worse. It is a saying that I like to think I have always taken to heart. Lately I seem to have lost sight of that as I continue to struggle with my own grief but it was brought home to me a few days ago. I was out walking and ran into a longtime friend who was at a local restaurant having lunch on the patio. I stopped and we chatted and then she got a bit weepy as she apologized for missing my brother’s celebration of life but she had COVID. She proceeded to tell how bad her husband had it and that now he is trying to build up his strength again so that he can go back east in September to spread his mother’s ashes. I asked when she had passed and was told the beginning of April. This is when my heart stopped and I thought of my Dad’s saying. You see this friend lost her mother back in January, a few weeks later their adult son died suddenly and then about a month after that her husband lost his mother, all of this in a little over 3 months. As she said, this is a shitty year.
It was Powerhour at the fitness centre this morning. The instructor is awesome and I find her, like the other instructors, to be very encouraging. She is always encouraging us to go faster or squat down farther or you can do more than you think. I kind of agree with her but really, I always go at the best pace I can pushing myself as hard as possible.
We started this morning with Thunderstruck which involves intervals of fast feet and burpees. Fast feet is where you take fast, little steps standing in one spot. Now I do these fast feet at the best pace I can so that I can maintain the pace throughout the entire exercise and I know I work hard. I do see some of the other women doing it fairly slowly and not pumping it up until near the end when the instructor is saying to go faster. I’m not criticizing them for doing it this way it is just for me I need to finish as strong as I started.
The squats and lunges are different for me. The calls from the instructor are always to try and go deeper, which I understand. However, my squats and lunges are fully dependent on the mood of my cranky knee. On a good day I can bend my knee 110 degrees, on a bad day it is 90 degrees and sometimes I have absolutely no control over what amount of flexibility I am going to get. Today it was closer to the 90 degrees because I once again stupidly did split squats yesterday (you put 1 foot behind you on a bench and squat with the other leg) which I know the cranky knee hates.
But here is what I remind myself, when I first started on this journey I walked at a much slower pace and was often embarrassed when even seniors passed me. You know what? I walk faster now but walking at that slower pace still helped me to lose an awful lot of weight. It is the same with running (which I so want to get back to) in that yes, still a slow runner but guess what? my consistent endurance was pretty impressive.
So go at your own pace as long as you are pushing yourself to do your best. All you can ask from yourself is that you giving it your all.
There has been a lot of Canada geese at the beach for the last several weeks. All of the goslings are pretty grown up by now but they are still hanging around with their parents. This morning I witnessed a young girl of about 5 trying to pet some of the geese. Her (I assume) Mom was busy looking at her phone and as I neared them I was getting anxious because I know what these birds can do if they get angry. I picked up my pace a bit as I wanted to get that little girl out of danger when finally the Mom looked up from her phone and pulled her daughter away from the gaggle of geese. When out with children people need to be a little more diligent.
It was an interesting strength class today. Ok, it was more like a bootcamp class. I realized I have come a long way in the past year. Most of the exercises they have us do I have now mastered. I stopped feeling like an uncoordinated buffoon months ago. So now I am focusing on my form. I watch how I do the exercises paying particular attention to how I am holding myself. I also make sure that I am not letting my body twist in any way and that I am not ‘swinging’ the weights but rather I am appropriately engaging the correct muscles. Yes, I have become one of those people that obsessively stare at myself in the mirror while working out but I’m doing it for all the right reasons.
I also know I am challenging myself without even considering whether I can do something or not. For example, in today’s circuit round of exercises we had to do a 30 second plank hold in each of the 4 rounds. Without hesitation I did each of them as one armed plank holds because 30 seconds is too short for me. During the first round I also realized the weights I normally use for shoulder presses are now too light for me to benefit from so I bumped them up on the next round. Don’t get me wrong, accepting challenges is different for knowing my limitations. I do not do anything in a kneeling stance (too painful on my bad knee) nor do I do step ups onto a bench (the bad knee doesn’t bend enough for that) but I know the modifications I can do to get the most out of the exercises.
I am going to keep watching my form while challenging myself to do more. That’s the fitness world I now live in.
I went to the Fusion Festival in Surrey today. Now I knew nothing about this, just that I had to show up in my NDP t-shirt. What an amazing event! There was food for sale from just an amazing number of countries as well as super diverse entertainment. I have to say I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I told you that I had set a goal of walking at least 20km 6 days this week. I had also noted in my last post that I may make that an average. Having said that, I still walked over 20km on Thursday. So what did the week look like, well even if I include Sunday I walked 154km (or 96 miles) for an average of 22km per day. It has been a long time since I have pushed myself this hard to walk and I admit I feel pretty good about it.
I’ve decided I need to keep going. I need this week to try and top last week (ok, I may not do it but I am going to give it my best effort). I admit the walking is doing such an awesome job of refocusing my thoughts and helping me move forward so why wouldn’t I keep doing it?
I am going to keep pushing myself so that I am the most fit I have ever been. Ok, I am actually already there but I know I can do better. Just bring it on!
It was a brutal fitness class this morning but in a good way. We did about 26 different exercises doing 60 seconds on then 20 seconds rest. I realized as we were getting to the end that we had way too much time available so we were about to be tortured. Yep, that is exactly what happened. There was Tubthumping, Sally Get Ups and Thunderstruck some of them done more than once. The thing I realized is I can keep up with those in the class that are are 20-25 years younger than me. In some cases I can even out do them. So yes it was tough but at the end I was pretty proud of myself at the work I had put in.
I mentioned on my last post my goal is 20 km 6 days this week. I’m rethinking that slightly and considering changing it to an average of 20 km. You see, today was family fun day also known to me as a mental health day. As you are aware things in my life have been pretty stressful lately and I sometimes find every time I accomplish something I find another roadblock has been erected. Yesterday I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel only to find something new (and in my opinion quite ridiculous for the amount of work based on a very small amount of money). Trust me I laid awake most of the night trying to figure out what I can do about this.
But we decided this summer we were more than ever determined to do a family fun day each week. We have a list that we made last year of places we wanted to go but never got around to doing many of them. And so today we went to Fort Langley and started with the Canadian Historic Site. For those of you not from this area this Fort was built by the Hudson Bay Company back in the early 1800’s and was originally a fur trading post. It was made a historic site more than a century ago and while I had been there a couple times in the past but not for close to 4 decades.
After our fascinating tour we decided to go for lunch at a fabulous 50’s diner. Trust me I had the largest egg salad sandwich that I had ever seen. And it was good, really good. We then went to some of their novelty stores and purchased a few items. Just touring around downtown was so much fun and helped me forget all the hard stuff going on in my life right now.
I am going to keep giving myself these mental health days each week. Just those few hours of doing something fun and interesting really made a difference in how I feel. And ok, I’ll likely go out for another bit of a walk and get myself up to the 20 km. That way I won’t deride myself all night about how I didn’t meet my goal.
I’m back to setting goals for each week to help push myself. This week it is walk 20 km a day at least 6 days. I like having goals because I find that it forces me to push myself harder. And, the harder I push myself the better I feel at the end of the day. Besides, with everything going on in my life it is really helping to reduce my stress level.
My Dad used to say to us ‘if you get tired of walking start running because a change is as good as a rest’. He had a litany of these sayings my favourite of which was ‘your arse is sucking slough water’. I was never really certain what that meant. Anyways, a change is as good as a rest really came to mind during my fitness class this morning. It’s not like each class is the same particularly when I mainly deal with 3 different trainers. However, they each have their own sense of style when it comes to working out but in general each of their classes follow along similar lines.
Today the instructor opted to do a completely different class which she named One Weight Wonder. Now this is a strength and mobility class and today the focus was really on the strength part of it. She set up a number of complex exercises (and by complex I mean having to do more than one move often times while at the same time trying to balance). However, the exercises tended to be unilateral meaning working one side at a time. I found that I was having to concentrate far harder than what I do in most classes and when we were done I felt like I had really accomplished something.
Doing a class so unlike what we normally do was really enjoyable. It made me hope that I see more of these unique classes that bring a new level of challenge. So yeah, a change did feel as good as a rest.
Ok, I know I said the other day that I might take a break today from exercise. But really, if I did nothing I would be beating myself up. However, recognizing that I have been working hard lately and that a recovery day was probably in order, I opted to just do a 1 hour walk first thing this morning. My goal overall for the day was at least 10k steps and I have done that. Really, I think all things considered that is pretty good given I have been walking at least 3.5 hours the past several days.
Being at our trailer has given me an awesome opportunity to take a bit of a mental health break. Now don’t get me wrong, while here I have been dealing with all sorts of things. For example, my brother’s estate needs to be moved forward so that when I am granted the Letter of Administration I can quickly finalize everything. As well, one of my volunteer organizations, which is a feast or famine type of volunteering, is in feast mode and I am being pulled in many directions. Having said that, I have forced myself to turn my back on all of my other types of work. Hard to do when you are in the midst of things like gearing up for a Provincial election but it was well needed.
So what does this look like? Well, to start with sitting outside in the beautiful weather and just breathing. Listening to awesome music which sometimes is challenging because my husband and I have very different tastes in music but we managed to find some common ground. Driving the golf car around the complex and finding parks to sit in and watch the tranquil water. Watching eagles catch thermals. Counting the number of doves that live in the park. All of these things are quite frankly just calming and help my brain from constantly running at 100 kph.
I’m going home tomorrow feeling better. Just taking that step back has given my mental health time to recover a bit. Don’t get me wrong I still can cry at just seeing something than invokes emotions but I’ve had time to reflect on that and realize it is ok to get emotional. Best of all is one of my good friends called today and we are going to do a girl’s weekend at the trailer in the next few weeks. While this will likely involve some bad behaviour, the two of us have been through so much that it will be good to be able to have a no holds barred conversation and emotional cleansing.
Yes, this mental health break has meant a lot to me. I’m now ready to face whatever the next week brings on.
My husband and I are up at our trailer on the lake enjoying some awesome summer weather. The one thing about doing this is we are quite isolated which gives the two of us some time to talk. Conversations have been around estate planning (it comes to the forefront when you see someone die unexpectantly) but more importantly handling the grief that I feel. Sometimes I wonder if my husband truly understands what I am going through and then he will surprise me with words that show me he does. Today it was my reluctance to transfer my phone to my brother’s iPhone 15 because I felt it was just another piece of him going away. My husband showed me his new iPhone 13 (which was also my brother’s) and said no, I think of it of always carrying him with me. Ok, I guess he does get it.
Being at the lake is often challenging. It can be hard to maintain proper eating habits (which I have done) but really it is getting workouts in that is often the struggle. I am proud to say when I talk about taking a day off it has nothing to do with the workouts as I have walked 3 1/2 hours both yesterday and today (ok, I do feel guilty that it is only 3 1/2 hours which is pretty sad). No, taking a day means something completely different.
Even though I told all of my volunteer organizations when my brother died that I was stepping back, that never really happened. I couldn’t because I felt so bad about letting them down that I tried to find a way to at minimum stay connected. Yes, I cut back a bit but I never stopped completely. I know in my head this was a bad decision because I needed some time for myself but I just couldn’t figure out a way to do that without disappointing the people I deal with (who quite frankly would have all understood me stepping back for a bit).
But yesterday I decided it was my day. I literally didn’t do anything for anyone other than myself. I took a day and I’ll be honest it felt pretty good. Just that one single day felt like it gave me the chance to breath, something that has been missing for a while. I took the day to sit outside and breath the fresh air. I took the day to clear my head and figure out what else I needed to do. I took the day to let the past month sink in and clear away the fog that has built up in my brain. I just took a day.
I feel better for having done this. I recognize that I was falling into a pretty deep hole and while the past week or so I have been trying to crawl my way out, I am not sure of my success. Now I feel I have aligned everything again and can start clearing out my to do list. This is not to say I won’t have some stumbles in the next few weeks but if I do, I will simply take another day.
What it also did was reinforce my determination to find a day each week to do something fun with my sister and husband. Already on the agenda for next week is a trip to the old Fort Langley, something I haven’t done in about four decades. Not sure the game plan for the following week but it should be something equally as fun.
As I tell people, right now it is one day at a time and yesterday was the best of those days. Oh and Saturday I might even forego the walking and just spend our last day at the trailer enjoying life.
gwennefarrell 