[Health] General fitness thread

[FishPants]

That's 1,500 out of 1,600 calories, and it is nearly impossible to be that precise when eating actual food. In practice, that means that if I don't work out at least some, I can't get the minimum protein I need, as there won't be enough calories left for the overlap. (I've actually had to start giving myself an extra 250 calories 'bonus' on my rest days in order to meet the demands.)

Sounds like you are already doing the right things, but a digital food scale + MFP premium; I don't find it that hard to track what I'm eating. Especially if I preplan the day and know for dinner I need 400g of chicken breast.. Whenever I start logging on the fly, the day usually goes to hell.

But the challenge, more often than not, isn't in being hungry. I'm not. More often, the problem is that I get to the end of a day after I've done exercise that burend an extra 800 calories and not having enough of an appetite to cram the extra down my throat. Since the burned calories aren't always planned, I can't just eat extra throughout the day to prevent that last minute deficit.

I don't eat my exercise loss, that's my deficit for the week often - eat to maintain, workout to lose; idea being that's long term manageable. Life got hectic and didn't make the workout? That's ok, you already ate to your macros for the day to maintain. Sounds like that approach might work for you?

Try the premier protein shakes from Costco - I drink the chocolate ones which are 30g protein, 3g Fat, 5g carbs and they taste pretty good. If I need a powder form I use Diesel whey isolate (chocolate), and mix in some dried PB powder (again costco).

[Blackhawk]

Sounds like you are already doing the right things, but a digital food scale + MFP premium; I don't find it that hard to track what I'm eating. Especially if I preplan the day and know for dinner I need 400g of chicken breast.. Whenever I start logging on the fly, the day usually goes to hell.

I have a digital scale + MFP free. It does the job. It isn't the tracking that's tricky, it's finding the right foods to hit the minimums of the macronutrients without going over my calorie goals.

But the challenge, more often than not, isn't in being hungry. I'm not. More often, the problem is that I get to the end of a day after I've done exercise that burend an extra 800 calories and not having enough of an appetite to cram the extra down my throat. Since the burned calories aren't always planned, I can't just eat extra throughout the day to prevent that last minute deficit.

I don't eat my exercise loss, that's my deficit for the week often - eat to maintain, workout to lose; idea being that's long term manageable. Life got hectic and didn't make the workout? That's ok, you already ate to your macros for the day to maintain. Sounds like that approach might work for you?

That's where I'll likely end up, but I have a lot of weight to lose, and that is my first priority (followed by mobility/stability, endurance, and strength in that order.) I figure I'll start changing my approach after another 70 pounds. 1k deficit per day is the highest that's safe, and it's the fastest I can safely get results. I want to nail that goal every day, seven days a week, which would be hard to pull of with exercise (I'd have to work out an exact amount every day, no more, no less.) My approach is setting a deficit and a nutrient goal, eating to that target, and using exercise to 1) give me the extra calories to hit it, 2) to prevent physical degradation from the caloric deficit, and 3) to pursue the secondary goals I mentioned above.

It doesn't have to be sustainable long term, it just needs to be sustainable until I lose most of the weight (hopefully within the next year), after which I will re-prioritize my goals (replacing 'lose weight' with 'maintain weight' and shifting them around.) At the same time I will convert my dietary approach to a long-term approach, including recalculating my calorie intake for maintenance and rebalancing the macronutrients a bit to fit my new priorities.

[Blackhawk]

Today was a regular workout, and it felt good. The last two weeks have been a mess. First some minor strain in my right quadriceps, then I cause myself a fair amount of back pain while painting a bunch of wood lying on the floor (my kingdom for a garage and a couple of saw horses), and then a day or two of blech after my second COVID shot. I still got in more than the minimum number of 'active minutes' each week, but I had to switch to lower impact exercises for most of it (mostly VR stuff that pushes movement, but not intensity.)

Still, they say the most important day in any project is the day after perfect. It's not about staying firmly mounted on the horse 100% of the time; it's what you do when you fall (or are pushed) off.

And I don't think I made any mistakes. I had some physical warning signs, then pain, then illness (sort of), and I slowed down - but didn't stop. And today I got back on the horse.

[Isgrimnur]

(my kingdom for ... a couple of saw horses

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-22- ... /203768844

[Blackhawk]

(my kingdom for ... a couple of saw horses

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-22- ... /203768844

Do they have a folding garage?

[Isgrimnur]

(my kingdom for ... a couple of saw horses

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-22- ... /203768844

Do they have a folding garage?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/ShelterLogi ... /206292639

https://www.shelterlogic.com/shop/depar ... gs/garages

[Blackhawk]

(my kingdom for ... a couple of saw horses

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-22- ... /203768844

Do they have a folding garage?

https://www.homedepot.com/p/ShelterLogi ... /206292639

https://www.shelterlogic.com/shop/depar ... gs/garages

Now we're getting somewhere! If you could, please link the folding back yard.

[Isgrimnur]

Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
- Mark Twain

[Blackhawk]

Buy land, they're not making it anymore.
- Mark Twain

The landlord and neighbors beat me to it.

If only Twain had said that sooner!

[Chraolic]

I just made it through my first year of biking daily, so I ended up at 5250 km in total. My goal for year 2 is 6000 km.

[Hipolito]

I used the Fitbod workout app for a free trial, and decided to sub to it at the yearly $60.00 rate. Here's what it does and why I like it.

- You start out by entering basic health info and what equipment you have. Then it starts customizing your workout plan.
- You keep the phone with you and tap buttons to tell it when you've completed sets. It makes you rest between sets.
- You can adjust weight and # of reps and sets.
- It groups exercises into supersets (to minimize the rest in between sets, for a better burn)
- Can tell it when an exercise was too hard, too easy, or just right, so that it adjusts your workout for next time.
- It rotates your exercises so that you're not straining the same muscle groups too often.
- If you can't or don't want to do a given exercise, you can replace it with a similar one, or delete/ban it altogether
- Has in-app videos of every exercise. I'm learning a bunch of new ones.
- It almost always gives you an achievement at the end of a workout, in case you need the dopamine hit.
- If you do a workout without using the app, you can log the workout into the app later.

It took a while for me to learn the interface so that I could use all these features, but I feel pretty comfortable with it now.

While it does give some yoga/stretching exercises, and makes you do a little cardio at the beginning of a workout, it's really focused on strength training.

There are other, similar apps, but aside from Aaptiv and iFit (which didn't click with me) this is the only one I've used. I'm sticking to it because it gives me a technical workout to focus on, teaches me exercises, and makes me use muscles I tend to neglect.

Fitbod™. "It's like having your own personal trainer who doesn't smell like egg yolks!"

[Isgrimnur]

I haven't been pain-free since last July. I threw my back out while climbing into the attic to change the air filter. Around that time, I got the new office chair. It took a few months to realize that the aggressive lumbar support was prolonging the issue. I corrected those settings. But by the time that resolved, I had picked up some sciatica in the left leg. Turns out that WFH with my sedentary lifestyle caused some issues. I didn't balloon in weight, but my IT bands locked up as well. Rest and pain meds didn't resolve it, so this past week, I joined the gym.

I signed up for a year at Planet Fitness. I went Tuesday night, walked about 1.5 miles at 2.5 mph because I couldn't walk any faster due to the pain. I also did some hip ab/adduction and leg curl/extensions. Wednesday, I felt a little better, but Thursday brought on some shin strain pain, so I didn't make it back until today.

I was able to get the speed up to 2.8 mph for my 1.5 miles, and upped the weight on the exercises. I'm hoping that if I can continue to motivate to get to the gym, I can actually get back to a pain-free state before the end of the summer.

[The Meal]

Stretch before and especially after. My shin issues got better when I added 20+ minutes of stretching on either side of activity. (They were never solved, mind you, but of the things I could control, stretches and compression-wear were both life savers.)

[Kraken]

The first mile of my walk is the warmup mile. The second mile -- the one with the hills -- is my workout mile. The last mile is my cooldown mile. I maintain the same pace throughout (16.5 minutes, give or take 30 seconds), but only the middle mile makes me break a sweat.

[Jeff V]

Tomorrow I will attempt an outside run for the first time in about a year (it's nearly the one-year anniversary of unemployment -- I ran 5 miles the first day and none since). Today I took my first bike ride of the year and was gassed after only 12 miles. In the before times, I'd be at around 1500 miles by now, perhaps a century in the books, and in mid-season form. My current bike is such a tank, I don't imagine ever getting back to that point -- I really need a kinder ride.

Spoiler:

I also need my ass to re-harden. Squishy butt on a hard seat is not a pleasant combo (and vice-versa)

[Blackhawk]

I've had to tweak my workout a bit lately. Due to some ulnar nerve problems, I can't maintain some motions - like curls and floor pushups. I'm addressing the nerve problem - likely caused by sleeping on my side with my arm bent under my pillow - separately, but I switched from traditional curls to hammer curls, which changes the grip enough that the nerve isn't impacted by the motion, and I've switched to using pushup handles.

I've also switched my lateral shoulder raises for seated rows. Now that I am building a little muscle and can see what's doing what, it seems like the cancer surgery had a bigger impact on my lateral deltoid (muscle going over the shoulder joint) than on the trapezius (across the back and up the neck.) The lateral lifts are primarily about the lateral deltoid, but as I've done work on my shoulders there's just nothing there - the front deltoid is growing, but there is just a gap in the shoulder where the lateral deltoid should be. The rear deltoid may be similarly affected (although I haven't worked that specific muscle enough to tell.) In other words, I was doing an exercise focused on a paralyzed and atrophied muscle.

I also kept adding stretches to my post-workout until it was starting to get a little unwieldy. So a few weeks ago I broke the stretches into two groups - upper body and lower. I added a couple of extra back stretches to the upper to round it out to two sets of five stretches. I do each group twice each week (two holds at 30 seconds each) rather than trying to do all of them after every workout. That brings the daily stretching down to about 15 minutes after the 30+ minute main workout. That feels about right, and makes the overall length easier to manage.

[Blackhawk]

One of the hard things about getting healthy is trying to see results. Progress is slow and subtle. You don't work your ass off today and see a difference tomorrow - if there is a difference, it's a fraction of a percent. It's why we love numbers: number of reps, how much weight we lifted, how far we ran, how fast we finished, what the scale says. It's measurable progress, although it only applies to a tiny sliver of what you're trying to do.

Today I got to see results. I took the family to the zoo. I've taken them to the zoo every two or three years for probably the last 15 years, so I know what the experience is. About halfway through my lower back starts to ache (I now know it was really my upper hips, not my back.) At about the 80% point my middle back is in pain, too, probably because I'm hunching to take the pressure off of my lower back (hips.) By then I just want to be done because I'm in constant pain.

Today we walked the whole thing, including a fair amount of doubling back to hit talks and shows. Not a twinge, not an ache, and there was still bounce in my step when we finished every corner and hit the parking lot. I was even happy to walk around the mall to get to the food court. Still nothing. By the time we got home tonight the bottoms of my feet ached - but that was it. My knees were fine, my back was fine, my hips were fine, and I'd be perfectly happy to go walk around town.

Compared to two years ago when I'd have been in pain for three days, it's awesome. And it is the kind of achievement I wanted when I started out six months ago.

[Isgrimnur]

While I haven't made it to the gym this month, I did make it about ten times in June. Tone and definition increase were noticeable on the parts that I worked.

I need to get back there tomorrow and get a schedule together. Probably Tu-Th-Wk, as I'm in the office on Monday and Friday now, and after two hours of commute, getting back out is going to be the last thing I want to do.

[Kurth]

One of the hard things about getting healthy is trying to see results. Progress is slow and subtle. You don't work your ass off today and see a difference tomorrow - if there is a difference, it's a fraction of a percent. It's why we love numbers: number of reps, how much weight we lifted, how far we ran, how fast we finished, what the scale says. It's measurable progress, although it only applies to a tiny sliver of what you're trying to do.

Today I got to see results. I took the family to the zoo. I've taken them to the zoo every two or three years for probably the last 15 years, so I know what the experience is. About halfway through my lower back starts to ache (I now know it was really my upper hips, not my back.) At about the 80% point my middle back is in pain, too, probably because I'm hunching to take the pressure off of my lower back (hips.) By then I just want to be done because I'm in constant pain.

Today we walked the whole thing, including a fair amount of doubling back to hit talks and shows. Not a twinge, not an ache, and there was still bounce in my step when we finished every corner and hit the parking lot. I was even happy to walk around the mall to get to the food court. Still nothing. By the time we got home tonight the bottoms of my feet ached - but that was it. My knees were fine, my back was fine, my hips were fine, and I'd be perfectly happy to go walk around town.

Compared to two years ago when I'd have been in pain for three days, it's awesome. And it is the kind of achievement I wanted when I started out six months ago.

This is awesome, Blackhawk. That’s the kind of fitness results - functional fitness - I think way more people need to be striving to achieve. And it sounds like you are seeing those results and appreciating them. Good for you, and thanks for sharing! You may not think so, but that kind of story is inspirational.

[Sudy]

Cross-posted from Weight Loss:

Well... it happened. I dusted off the Wii Fit balance board and put in new batteries. I climbed on top and it laughed at me before making that exhausted sound like when anthropomorphic cars run out of gas in classic cartoons.

I'm literally too heavy for the balance board. As in I get an error message and then it reboots. The internet confirms the sensor limit is 330lbs. I knew I was at my all-time heaviest. I just didn't know by how much. And I still don't, as we don't have a proper scale. But pre-pandemic, I don't think I've weighed this much since I was in my early 20s when I hit 327. It doesn't feel good. I'm starting to experience some concerning health side effects (I'm 36 and it obviously starts to become harder to turn things around beyond this age), and I've gone from a 2X to a 4X in collared shirts. I'll save the rest for the General Health thread.

It's the last day of my vacation. All I can do is start now, start again. Big things have small beginnings, and all that. Going to boot up Ring Fit Adventure for the first time and see if I can fit the thigh band on my thick fucking leg.

Well, I did the first world/three stages of Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo Switch) and I almost died. The report said it only amounted to 10 minutes of exercise/1km jogging (i.e. in place)/130 calories burned, but that's more structured exercise than I've done in a very long time. It feels good. Though it's about to feel very bad.

[Chraolic]

Well, I did the first world/three stages of Ring Fit Adventure (Nintendo Switch) and I almost died. The report said it only amounted to 10 minutes of exercise/1km jogging (i.e. in place)/130 calories burned, but that's more structured exercise than I've done in a very long time. It feels good. Though it's about to feel very bad.

I know the feeling. I did three matches in Thrill of the Fight and my shoulders were really sore the next day. They're only 3 * 2 minutes each, but quite intense. It is pretty awesome that it's possible to play a game and get a fairly good workout at the same time, though.

[Blackhawk]

I've had to moderate my workout a bit. I kept growing it to the point that I couldn't keep up with it. Originally my workout was five 30-minute sessions a week (to hit the 150-minute recommended before I really understood how that worked), plus planks beforehand. The planks became a 15-minute series of five exercises. The 30 minutes stayed five days a week, even though I was getting 300-400 minutes. I added a strength workout. I added a few stretches that grew into 20-25 minutes per day.

Then the psuedo-post-COVID world opened up and I found myself having multiple offspring-related appointments per day, then school started for my youngest, and I was essentially turning my free time into workout time. So I culled, and I reconsidered, and I focused.

First, I cleared up my goal. I wasn't to get in shape, or to build muscle, or (whatever.) It was 1) lose weight, and 2) become more physically functional (as in not having to climb out of chairs, not being in pain, and not being winded from bringing the groceries in.)

Second, I cut the exercises down by eliminating those that didn't directly work toward those two goals. I kept the five daily exercises and even added a sixth, but made it four days instead of five. The six touch on every major muscle group (which is why I added the sixth), so I eliminated the dedicated strength training day. I need to get functional, not built. I split the stretching into two different 15-minute sets, and I alternate them. Set 1 twice a week, set 2 twice a week. I don't need to be flexible enough for ballet, and I'm still stretching all of the major groups enough to solve the functionality problem. Last, I cut the workouts from a minimum of 5 30-minute workouts to a minimum of two workouts totaling 150 'active minutes' (high intensity exercise counts double toward this - what I didn't understand early on.)

Realistically, I went from one long strength plus five long cardio workouts to 2-3 total, from five 'base' workouts to four, and from 20-25 minutes x5 of stretching to 15x4.

Last of all, I decided to let myself be flexible. I allow myself to combine two of the stretching sets into one day once per week, and as long as I get in 150 active minutes and 2 separate cardio workouts in, I don't care how they're portioned. This lets me do an hour workout and two sets of the stretching exercises on days when I am largely free, giving me less to do on busy days.

And for the final compromise, I created a 'maintenance' workout for those weeks that are so nuts that it's hard to do anything at all. The 2 workout/150 minute rule still applies, but I only need two of the basic sets, plus one of each stretching sets. I can, if I need to, do the entire week's workouts in two days on these weeks. The idea is to do just enough to not lose progress, and minimize how often I let myself substitute the alternate routine.

In the end, I'm still far exceeding the recommended amount of activity, still increasing my flexibility and mobility, still building muscle, and still losing weight. And that was the goal.

[dbt1949]

And I am up to four naps a day.

[Pyperkub]

And I am up to four naps a day.

Good for the immune system!

[Isgrimnur]

Living the dream!

[coopasonic]

I've had to moderate my workout a bit.

I totally thought about going out for a walk at lunch today... I think that fulfills my exercise quota for September. I'll check back in with you next month!

[Isgrimnur]

I made the gym 3 times in August, better than the once in July.

[TheMix]

I've had to moderate my workout a bit.

I totally thought about going out for a walk at lunch today... I think that fulfills my exercise quota for September. I'll check back in with you next month!

How is the surface of the sun these days? Comfy?

[Isgrimnur]

Quite

[TheMix]

Yowza. That does not look like a lot of fun. Oddly enough, I don't really miss the summers in Austin.

[coopasonic]

It has been a relatively cool summer around these parts. For some reason the rest of the country got broiled and we've been getting unusual amounts of rain. Weather has been pretty good for walking most days, but walking, as it turns out, is not high on my list of interests. When we were in the office I would take a walk and do some reading outside at lunch most days and also generally be doing 15-ish flights of stairs a day. Since last March I walk 30 feet to my office and maybe go up the stairs 3 times a day.

[Jeff V]

The past few weeks have been pretty shitty with high heat and humidity, but September is always my favorite month and today it starts with awesome weather, sunny, not humid, 77. I haven't been exercising all that much over the past few weeks because of the weather, but now I need to get back into it. Trying to get my wife into going on bike rides during the couple of hours our daughter is in school every morning.

[Blackhawk]

Indiana has been awful, too. We spent weeks in the low 90s, but with 60%-70% humidity, which plants the heat index between 105 and 110. And when you get hot in 70% humidity, you can't cool off. Shade doesn't help. A breeze doesn't help. Driving with the windows down doesn't help. We've had to keep the three window units in the house cranked down to 67 in order to keep the house itself around 75, and the humidity is so bad that one of them keeps icing up, while another is pouring two gallons of water per day into the house (we have a bucket.)

Luckily it finally broke on Tuesday, and we've had proper seasonal weather.

[coopasonic]

So I figured I could put something here as I am making an attempt to get active again. This will kind of be the opposite of Blackhawk's posts in most every way. I don't research or understand anything, I spent a ton of money and I've dedicated an entire room to the solution. Early in the spring, I ordered a tonal (https://www.tonal.com/). At a very basic level it is the peloton of weight training. It's a screen that mounts to a wall and has arms that can be configured to various angles and positions. At the ends of the arms are attachments points that handles, barbells, etc can be attached and the cables provide resistance up to 100 pounds per arm (200 total). It also comes with a very basic bench. Between the bench and the arms and accessories you can do a lot of different movements.

There are probably hundreds of programs and thousands of workouts with dozens of trainers that can be suggested, filtered and searched. I have been using it for a bit over a month now and my wife and oldest on have also been using it regularly. It's really a pleasure to use, the only pain point (other than recovery) is when you have to move the arms between sets. They try to minimize that, but sometimes it's just what has to happen.

The system does try to game-ify things to keep your interest. It gives you a strength score, with separate values for upper, lower and core. Also, the weight is adaptive, it can change the weight as you go through a movement and if it thinks you are having too easy of a time, it will add more weight mid set. It also has achievements, like workout streaks, early bird workout, night owl workout, lifting 50k pounds total, and lots of other things.

I mentioned dedicating a room to it and it practically requires it. It asks for a 7x7 space and that's probably a bit small if you are over 5 feet tall as, for some movements, you'll be laid out flat with arms over your head and you'll need a place out of the way to put the bench and accessories you aren't using at the time.

To top it all off, it as pretty close to $4k for the base unit and "smart" accessories. The smart accessories are optional, but not really. They basically give you a button you can push to turn the weight on and off so without them, you have to touch the screen to toggle the weight on and off and that could be pretty challenging with some positions and movements. On top of that, I did say it was like a Peloton, so yeah, there's also a $49/mo mandatory subscription.

Anyway, I am more active now than I have been since I was getting ready for that stupid race Zaxxon made me do.

Now to find a good source of protein to help my body recover from the crap I keep throwing at it and get me them gains!

[Skinypupy]

That Tonal system does look very cool, and I considered one for a blip…until I saw the budget and space requirements.

I have neither…back to pushups and sit-ups for me.

[YellowKing]

I never did give a good impressions post of our rowing machine, so I'll piggyback on coop's review of the Tonal (which is neat, I didn't know that existed).

We ordered an Aviron Rower a couple of months ago and I've been enjoying it a great deal. It's similar to the Hydrow which is considered the Peloton of rowers, but we chose it because it has a lower monthly sub and a greater variety of workout types. Whereas the Hydrow's big advantage is instructor-led classes, the Aviron focuses on machine-guided workouts and self-motivated free-form rows, games, etc.

Some people find rowing machines boring; I really love them, it was my favorite piece of gym equipment back when I was hitting the gym regularly. I already run and bike, so this gives me something cardio-focused that I can do indoors that is unlike anything I already do outside.

The features I use the most are:

Guided workouts: These are basically programmed workouts that will automatically change the resistance level for you and guide you through sets of number of strokes, meters rowed, time intervals, etc. This is probably my most utilized feature as you can just pick a workout that fits in your time frame and go. One of my favorites is a series called Climbing Mt. Fuji/Everest, etc. in which you start rowing at say 120 strokes at resistance 1, gradually lowering strokes while upping resistance unti you get to the top of the "mountain."

Power plays: This is one of the most unique features and one I absolutely love. It's basically a game crossed with a guided workout. You're a little car going down a highway and the lane you are in corresponds to your stroke pace. So depending on which workout you choose, you're constantly having to speed up and slow down to switch between lanes and maximize score. Hard to describe but it's a ton of fun and makes the workout fly by.

Streaming services: The rower has Hulu, Netflix, Prime VIdeo, and YouTube built right in, so you can watch shows while rowing. Awesome feature and a big selling point for me as sometimes I just want to free-form row while catching up on a show.

My wife really enjoys the virtual rows, which are scenic videos that let you free-form row in different parts of the world. And of course the kids like the games, which are typically some variation on either shooting things or rowing to get away from something chasing you.

The Avriron also has one of the highest resistances on the market, so at its highest levels you can get a little strength training in.

If I had any criticisms it's that the company is fairly new so the community isn't huge yet. This can make finding live workout sessions, etc. difficult. Aviron routinely has scheduled drop-in workouts but rarely do I see anyone in them. There is a good Discord and Facebook community, though, so I think most people are just meeting up that route.

Other than that, their support has been great (not that I've needed it), but I do see other's experiences via the FB group. They also regularly release updates to add new features, so I'm sure it's only going to get better with time and as the community grows.

I've only had it a couple of months, so I'm not quite ready to say how significant an impact it's had on my health. However, I do feel like my upper body is a bit more toned and I've seen a noticeable difference in my base cardio.

[LordMortis]

I didn't know this thread existed. I've been trying to get in 8-10,000 steps a day tracked by my phone. I walk at a pace of about 1000 steps every 10 minutes and most mornings I take an 80 minute walk that encompasses a little over three miles. I was getting pretty religious about this until I had some issues knock me out for a week. They'd go in the getting older medical complaints thread but they're not the sort of medical issues people want described. As the heat gets worse and worse, I have to walk earlier and earlier.

Been doing this since I worked up to it sometime in May but as of yet not one pound lost and I feel no better. However, my resting BP used to be around 140 with meds. It's dropped to 120 with meds in these first couple of months. So while I don't feel better, my body seems to be doing better. That or it's a reduced stress life that is doing it for me. Or maybe both.

So now that I've been doing this a couple of months, when I'm limber enough during my walk, I try do things like walk with stretched gait or pick up the pace for chunks of the walk now. I managed to power walk for a mile and a half a couple of days ago. For me, that was huge. It's been a long time I could do anything like that. So that's evidence that I can reverse some of what I've let myself become and not just try to slow down the train that's been accelerating for quite some time now.

I try to stretch after my walks. That's not going well and still not getting better after a couple of months. Hopefully, one day.

[Kraken]

I'm slowing down with age. During my peak years I strove for 15-minute miles, which is a nice tidy 4 mph. It's hard to sustain that pace for three miles. I could hit it every now and then, but I usually came in at 15.5 minutes per mile. On a bad day I could barely break 16 minutes.

Lately I've had trouble beating 17 minutes, and often need 17.5. Now anything under 16.5 minutes is a good time and I only rarely break 16 minutes. I'll have been fitness walking for 18 years come November, and sadly my peak years are behind me. But I'm still getting out there 3-5 days a week and I'm still faster than most people my age.

I'm also more likely to scrub my walks than I used to be, so my annual mileage is slipping. IDK if I'm going to break 500 miles this year. This morning it was 78 degrees at 9 a.m., and humid. Back in my peak days I would've said "Oh well, there's a nice breeze, I'll just take it a little slower." Now I'm more like "F that, it's too hot."