50s - Exercise - Newly Old

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Dear Achilles Tendon,

You have done a sterling job for 57 years, and I hope you don't doubt for a moment that your support has been appreciated. You have been with me through thick and hinge, often a step ahead of me, and a rock upon which I have built the journey of my life.

But now, I know, you are suffering. Believe me, I feel your pain. No need to walk me through this.

I know also that you blame me. You think that my insistence on jogging for exercise is, well, past its use-by date. That's in public. In private, you think it's moronic.

Yes, old friend, I still hear things.

You think cross-training, swimming, indoor-rowing, gym work, pilates and many non-weight bearing alternatives are far more appropriate for someone my (our) age. And you may be right. But here's the thing. When it comes to exercise, I prefer fresh air to water, and I prefer outdoors to indoors.

Is that too much for a city-dwelling, office-bound bloke to ask?

And now my wife has organised a trekking holiday in New Zealand at the end of the year. Queen Charlotte Sound, at the north end of the South Island. It sounds like heaven.

But we have to hike for up to eight hours a day, and there's my problem. You. I've been trying to fix you for months, but it doesn't seem to matter how long I rest you, each time I try a gentle jog I spend days afterwards limping and resisting the temptation to overdose on anti-inflammatories.

Old friend, we aren't that old, are we? I'm really looking forward to this hiking tour. Please take pity on me. Stop being a heel and heal yourself.

Thanks,
The bloke upstairs

Hell

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: 50s, Exercise, Health, Achilles tendonitis

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The Pilates Kid

July 9th 2009 00:27

I'm starting Pilates lessons this Saturday morning. I don't really know what Pilates is — this was one of those bilateral decisions which my wife made on a unilateral basis — but I intend to do a little reading before Saturday.

In fact, I'm looking forward to it, not as the start of something but as the continuation of something started in the week after last Christmas.

I weighed myself that day when it all started and the scales read, in red, flashing numbers, 109 kilograms. Here I was, 55 years old and the heaviest, most sedentary, laziest, slobbiest I had been in my life. Not good.

Today I weigh 101 kilograms and I'm aiming, ambitiously, to return to a fighting weight below 90 kilograms. My brother, who is the same height and weight and drinks far less beer than me, weighs 87 kilograms and has a flat stomach.

I lust after a flat stomach.

I miss beer.

I have lost eight kilograms partly by eating less, partly by drinking less beer, and largely by moving my lard out on to the nearby river pathway three times a week and getting mobile.

I have done quite a lot of running in my time, and many years ago ran four marathons. I am acutely aware these days, however, of creaking joints, fragile muscles and susceptible tendons. When I started running seven months ago, I swore to myself that I would take things very, very, very slowly.

It has taken more patience than I have shown for the sum total of everything else I have done in my life, but it has worked. I started by walking interspersed with two-minute joglets during which I was regularly overtaken by elderly trees. After seven months, I have built up to 75-minute runs, and I have also built up the speed to the extent that the only trees that pass me now are some of the younger, more energetic ones.

The weight loss has been steady, but more remarkable and obvious has been the inch-loss. The stomach is far from flat yet, but I look like half the man I used to be. It's fun trying on old clothes. If I lose much more, I can start trying on some of my wife's clothes.

Most remarkable of all, however, is the change in the way my body feels. I have lost 10 years. I get into and out of chairs without thinking about it. It had become a groan to get in to the car, but no more. And, most stunning of all, when I bent down yesterday to pick something off the floor, I felt nothing!

I have been bending down and touching the floor ever since, reminding myself what I felt like when I was younger. It never occurred to me that I could reverse the aging process like this, although I suppose the truth is that I'm not reversing the aging process, merely hauling back the accelerated aging I had manifested by overeating, over-beering and lack of exercise.

So I feel great because, through slowly increasing my exercise program, I have avoided injury while strengthening joints and muscles and all the other bits which help us move. And Pilates, as my knowledgeable wife has explained to me, is going to improve that process even more. That's what it does.

I'm looking forward to it. There's just one question unanswered for me now: when can I start drinking beer again?
image: www.balanceinme.com

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