![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Refining the Walk
May. 3rd, 2013 10:04 amWhile I've been steadily tweaking my stretch-balance-strengthen routine, I've also had to rethink my fitness walk. Several years ago, when I was doing a fairly intensive daily walk, I began having a problem with my left ankle. After a half-mile or so, it would begin to feel fatigued. Within another half-mile, it would begin to ache. Another half and the pain would reach my knee. And by the end of my two-mile walk, my hip would be hurting as well. This, along with a period of illness, which came with the approach of winter, was what finally knocked me out of my fitness quest, potentially for good. Well, that and an equally ill-timed failure of resolve.
Unfortunately the same problem reappeared this spring, almost as soon as my feet hit the track. And I knew from my previous experience that it could once more be the game-changer, deal-breaker, fitness-wrecker, whatever, which it had been in the past if I didn't find some strategy to deal with it. I first thought of getting my 20-year-old Cannondale converted mountain bike out of the shed and spending $150 to replace the awful shifters I had put on it just before I hung it up. Because cycling is a no-impact, highly-aerobic form of exercise that works well in this latitude at least until the snow flies.
And I might still have to come back to this idea. But the more I think about it, the more costly I realize it might be. (New tires and tubes, new lighting system, complete tune-up, shoes and seasonally-appropriate, all-weather cycling gear, etc., etc. Bikes, like cars, tend to deteriorate when left idle and, for this one, it's been more than 10 years.) Besides, I'd really like to keep what I'm doing more, what, organic? Or, perhaps, quite literally grounded, in the sense of having as little as possible between me and the earth during whatever time I have left to walk or ride upon it.
So what I finally started doing is stretching, walking a quarter then stretching again, and then stopping and stretching after each quarter until I'd completed my mile. Which of course totally negates any aerobic benefit which might otherwise have accrued, but that's not really the point. The point is to get moving, and to find a way that I can keep moving, towards my eventual goal of once again walking at least two miles a day.
Having done this for a couple of days, the method has definitely shown some promise. Which may be life's way of confirming that adaptability is as important to individual survival as it is to the survival of the species. And that it's indeed fortunate that such wisdom, if that be its name, should at last come to us in the fullness of our years...
LPK
LiveJournal
5.3.2013 (b)
Unfortunately the same problem reappeared this spring, almost as soon as my feet hit the track. And I knew from my previous experience that it could once more be the game-changer, deal-breaker, fitness-wrecker, whatever, which it had been in the past if I didn't find some strategy to deal with it. I first thought of getting my 20-year-old Cannondale converted mountain bike out of the shed and spending $150 to replace the awful shifters I had put on it just before I hung it up. Because cycling is a no-impact, highly-aerobic form of exercise that works well in this latitude at least until the snow flies.
And I might still have to come back to this idea. But the more I think about it, the more costly I realize it might be. (New tires and tubes, new lighting system, complete tune-up, shoes and seasonally-appropriate, all-weather cycling gear, etc., etc. Bikes, like cars, tend to deteriorate when left idle and, for this one, it's been more than 10 years.) Besides, I'd really like to keep what I'm doing more, what, organic? Or, perhaps, quite literally grounded, in the sense of having as little as possible between me and the earth during whatever time I have left to walk or ride upon it.
So what I finally started doing is stretching, walking a quarter then stretching again, and then stopping and stretching after each quarter until I'd completed my mile. Which of course totally negates any aerobic benefit which might otherwise have accrued, but that's not really the point. The point is to get moving, and to find a way that I can keep moving, towards my eventual goal of once again walking at least two miles a day.
Having done this for a couple of days, the method has definitely shown some promise. Which may be life's way of confirming that adaptability is as important to individual survival as it is to the survival of the species. And that it's indeed fortunate that such wisdom, if that be its name, should at last come to us in the fullness of our years...
LPK
LiveJournal
5.3.2013 (b)
