Gym time is both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because I can't hear the phone... my music is up WAAAAAAAY to loud...LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA can't hear yooooooooooouuuuuu... and I refuse to leave until I am sweaty. At least in the gym. It's really hard to tell if you are sweating in the pool.
The curse part comes in when you are really gunning it to see what you can accomplish in the least amount of time and trying to work in the muscle toning/building circuit to make sure the old bod doesn't collapse into a pile of goo.
The ideal is, of course, to work enough to feel like you have accomplished something, but not so intensely that they must call for Med-Flight.
Today was a good day.
According to folk wisdom and Kelly Clarkson, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I may or may not be stronger for the efforts but I certainly SMELL that way. And isn't that half the battle? If you smell like you worked out, surely that translates into some tangible proof down the line that you haven't spent your entire day sitting on your ass doing nothing of substance. Doesn't it?
Modern lore and wisdom decries anyone who doesn't fit the fitness mode. A little cellulite here or there or a paunch over your belt means somewhere along the line you must have "given up" on yourself.
Au contraire, mon ami!
Sometimes those precious bits of flab, fat and cellulite are markers of a life's passage. Shifting gears to do what is essential often means that the reasonable person puts themselves on the back burner in order to care for the needs of those unable to care for themselves.
But getting back into the swing of things and being able to 'walk and not be weary, and run and not faint' is not an exercise for the faint of heart.
Thighs jiggle and shake in a most unbecoming fashion and seeing the reflection of your changed self is hardly an appealing way to see yourself first thing in the morning. We all tend to have a body image of ourselves that is out of date and reflects us at our absolute best. Sadly, what we tend to portray is the reality of our circumstances. Tired, not quite ready for prime time and booted from the Olympic trials even for consideration as a scorekeeper.
But today was pretty good. Although my body shape doesn't reflect the effort, it does have a shape. I am "round". I'd like to go back in time and paste this head and brain on the body I left behind a couple of decades ago. It was the one that still played racquetball a couple of times a week, the one that could still run and the one that hadn't been smashed up by a drunk driver.
All in all, I'm rather thankful to just be here in ANY shape... even if that shape is round.
The assumption that all I do is eat is kind of frustrating. I have a bowl of cheerios for breakfast with a small glass of OJ. Most days, I have some fruit about mid morning. And since my morning starts at 5:20 a.m., mid morning is most people's late breakfast. Then I try to have something sensible for lunch. The other day, I splurged on myself and had a sandwich from Subway. It was whole wheat, turkey, mustard, provolone cheese and all of the vegetables they could shove in there minus the banana peppers and onions. Of course, there were a few extra black olives. I drank water to wash it all down.
As luck would have it, that night for dinner, we simply feasted on leftovers du jour. I had the homemade Chinese sweet and sour. It was mostly oriental vegetables, broccoli and a few oriental noodles. I also had a glass of chocolate milk. Skim milk, or 'nekkid milk' as it is called around here, should count as some kind of bonus because it doesn't seem like much even with a spoonful of chocolate whipped into it.
Sad.
I realized as I was racking up the five miles today on the bike that there are people who can and do accomplish a lot more. Rather than being jealous, petty or angry that I'm not there yet, I've often wondered if my lack of success is a combination of a lifetime of various injuries added to a dead thyroid for which I now take medication or if some folks are just born with more physical ability and haven't learned to see both sides of the coin yet.
SIGH.
I keep doing what I am able to do as I am able to do it. Maybe one day, I'll get to go back and pick up that more vibrant and youthful body.
I think that day is about 10-ish on resurrection morning.
I'll let you know how that works out.
Meanwhile, I'm offending myself with the smell from the gym, and I have things to do besides marinating in my sweat.
Happy trails.
