Exercise

I hear that if you do not keep moving you’re either going to be dead or dead already. I have enjoyed exercise in the past when I was trying to get healthy after a couple decades of smoking and the not too occasional battle with the demon rum. Well, not exactly rum but if you drink enough alcohol based drinks, even if it is only beer, for an overly extended amount of time your body does get used to it and your brain does also and eventually it will develop into a lifestyle problem. I did feel better, after a time, but usually after the exercise was over. Oh yes, and of course by eliminating the bad habits.

I still like to keep moving even though my aging body is curtailing many of the activities that I used to love to do. If I run eventually my knees wish that I had stuck to walking. If I cycle my neck wishes that I had stuck to walking. With the advent of the Winter season, I still like to cross-country ski which, depending on how much snow piled up overnight, is much like walking except that you have a long pair of thin boards attached to your feet and long poles attached to your hands. Your heart and breathing rates are easily accelerated in a short time but usually not to the point of any debilitating pain and you actually become used to it. Until you fall down.

Now, like many, I have put on a few pounds since my 1965 high school graduation. Coupled with slightly atrophied musculature and the fact that I am exercising just below the threshold of being out of breath and the aforementioned cross-country ski equipment, my first action, after berating myself for being so stupid to have put myself in this situation in the first place, is to think just how difficult, not to mention slightly exhausting, it is going to be to try and right myself.

After, what seems to be an interminable amount of time and effort I am finally rid of the equipment and it is far easier to get to the standing position. I am lucky my cross-country skiing area is the now snow-covered corn fields across the street from where I live. Not feeling like donning all the equip again to make it back to my home, I make the short trek on foot in the not too deep snow. It takes a long time for my body to recover to its sitting at my computer norms.
This mishap has not soured me on further winter exercises or even eliminating the cross-country skiing altogether just awakened me a little to the limitations that aging puts on myself and my activities and learning to put myself in these tenuous situations less often by just planning a little better.