Exercise

21289 Steps

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

21289 steps…. the average number of steps I took yesterday as shown by my Fitbit, an app that came with my iPhone, and an app I downloaded later.  Three ways to count steps!!! That does not include the Runtastic app that analyzes distance, time, pace, average pace, and a dozen other fitness markers. Having four ways to “anal-ize” my steps might be excessive.  I might be more obsessive or anal retentive than I credit myself.  Or I don’t trust my Fitbit. 

Taking the time to average my number of steps from my three tracking apps might be a symptom of my peculiar brand of insanity.  Even my insanity has insanities.  Taking 21289 steps might be excessive, period.  Some of my steps were not easy.  The morning after my knees decries my brutality…and stupidity.  Where did I put my Tylenol?

21289 steps are over twice the recommended number of steps the fitness gods say should be our fitness goal. The fitness “gold” standard, ten thousand steps accompanied by gothic organ music. 

One of the more inquisitive voices in my head asked, “Why is it ten thousand steps…why not 9999 steps or 10001 steps?  Why can’t we be fit eating a slab of bacon?”  The call to wander down a pig trail was strong.  “Indeed, why are ten thousand steps the fitness gold standard?”

“Turns out, it is not based on anything scientific!” …or should I say, it did not start out that way.  Ten thousand steps were nothing more than a marketing ploy.

“There doesn’t appear to be any scientific basis for the idea that 10,000 steps should be everyone’s daily fitness goal”, according to I-Min Lee, professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. I quoted Ms. Lee but understand, there are other studies that parrot her.

Ten Thousand steps turn out to be a marketing strategy, propaganda?  Lie?  Shades of the shades of the parental phrase, “drink your milk so you’ll have strong bones.” That propaganda certainly sold more milk. No really.  Calcium and Vitamin D are good for you but do not guarantee strong bones.  While we are exploding myths, “Superman couldn’t have turned coal into a diamond either.” What?

In the early 1960s, a Japanese company introduced their pedometer with the interesting name, manpo-kei.  Interesting?  Hell, I can’t even pronounce it.  I can however translate it, “10,000-step meter.” “man” stands for 10,000, “po” for step and “kei” for gauge. “Well, ain’t that the catfish in the trap?” (Southern idiom for surprise)

Okay, before you go out and trash your pedometers and fitness trackers and trade them for a bacon wrapped cheeseburger, do not.  Studies made since the 1960s bear out the science behind ten thousand steps…not as a “gold” standard, but a worthy and attainable goal.

Without boring you anymore than usual, in a 2010 “step” study, it was found, on an average the Japanese walk 7,168 per day and the Swiss at 9,650 per day.  A 2004 study showed Amish men “pickin’ ‘em up” at an average of 18,425 steps a day.  Wow, I outwalked an Amish man yesterday.  All three of these samples are healthier as an overall population than your average American.  And yes, there are other studies from other places and demographics that agree with this.

In the same 2010 study, Americans averaged less than five thousand steps per day, and Americans are getting fatter, and dying sooner than most “advanced” nations.  I know, our diet doesn’t help either.  Bacon, bacon, bacon!!!!  I admit I would rather be sedentary with a BLT in my mouth than going out in the wee morning hours or rain and hoofing it for three or four miles. I do not walk in the rain if I can help it.  There are limits to my obsession.

My 2006 heart attack changed my outlook but not my desires.  There is nothing more sensual than disrobing a wax paper wrapped bacon cheeseburger on a soft sesame seed bun.  The tomato and onion slices, along with lettuce peeking seductively out from the edges of the bun. Tantalizingly and teasingly licking the juices running down my fingers.  Fried onion rings looking on quietly awaiting the orgy. “Was it good for you,” I asked my taste buds…it was until I felt the tightening in my chest.  It was not desire and there was no passionate release…until the four stints were “surfed” into my blocked arteries.   

Ten thousand steps became my daily obsession, but my neurotic fascination with the number did not begin that way.  My first post heart attack walk was one third of a mile, seven or eight hundred steps at best.  My legs felt like over cooked spaghetti, my perspiration resembled Niagara Falls after a hurricane, my respiration sounded like an overworked steam locomotive.  My bride had to walk back and bring the car to get me back home.  She wondered aloud, “Should I take you to the emergency room or the funeral home?”  “Thanks hon, just get me in the house and let me die in peace.”

I didn’t die and have come a long way since that day.  My screaming knees do not let me run any longer, my dreams of marathons are mute, but I walk twenty to twenty-five miles a week and average ten thousand steps six out of seven days.  Most days Tylenol takes the edge off my efforts, and I am marginally productive. 

Whether ten thousand steps were based upon science originally or not does not really matter.  Get up and out, move, stay healthy.  Move, move, move not bacon, bacon, bacon!

***

Don Miller writes on various subjects and has recently released his second “Drunken Irishman Saloon” tale. It can be purchased or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Long+ride+to+paradise+Don+Miller&ref=nb_sb_noss

Long Ride to Paradise: Tales of the Drunken Irishman Saloon

To access his authors page go to https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0podOBekn70hQc7jZnq2H5vZVw-3P7aKLsRI1slX-lVK-vWml-uR2KYJU

Running Delight

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

 

A simple joy?  I ran…I jogged…I shuffled my feet…slowly.  Call it what you want but “jogging” seven minutes out of fifty-six brought a river of “good” endorphins and a bit of hard breathing.  Little “feel good” opioid peptides that have raised my spirits at a time when my spirits have been quite low.

To think, I sooooo hated running…I still hate the actual act of running.

I flirted with exercise my entire adult life.  Flirted like the unsure introvert gazing wishfully at the beautiful homecoming queen from across the room.  I’d contemplate asking her to dance and then take a good look in the mirror as I straighten my tie.  Why would she be interested in dancing with me?

Similar to the pain of rejection, running was painful.  Aching muscles, being short of breath, the queasy stomach after strenuous exercise…and…left to my natural state, I’m basically lazy.

The mirror suggested, “You don’t look like a runner…you are too round, your legs are too short, your feet are too big.”  Compared to a thoroughbred horse, I was at best a mule, at worst a donkey…built for carrying burdens not speed.

A birthday gift from hell changed the way I looked at myself in the mirror.  I embarked on a running program six weeks after a birthday heart attack in 2006.  After the heart attack, I decided the homecoming queen could be damned.

Four stents overcame a life filled with Southern cooking, I completed cardiac rehab and embarked on a walking program.  An old school coach, I just didn’t feel the “no pain, no gain.”  I needed to hurt…and I did.  I needed to pay for those caloric indiscretions of my youth…and I did.  I used the “Couch to 5K”1 workout and found the pain to be manageable.  I also found there were unforeseen benefits.

My feet were still too big, my legs will always be too short, but I wasn’t as round…sixty-two pounds less round.  Those changes or lack thereof were foreseen.  It was the changes in my mind I didn’t foresee.

I have battled depression for over forty years and suddenly my broken kaleidoscope of a brain seemed to reset itself.  There were days I still battled but the din of battle had quieted.  The voices in my head whispered instead of yelling.

There were (are) still days when I didn’t want to get out of bed, but they were less numerous and harsh.  I had a reason to get out of bed…my early morning run.

Running for me was like the guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer.  It hurt like hell while I did it but, “It felt so good when I stopped.”

I wasn’t satisfied with 5Ks and continued to push through 10Ks and half-marathons.  I even wrote down a marathon on my bucket list and began to train.  For five or six days a week, I battled my body instead of my mind.  I was addicted.  I wasn’t fast and would win no races.  I might win in my age group if everyone in my age group had died.

My running wasn’t about competing with others it was about competing with myself.  My running was about finishing a workout or finishing a race.  I could put a 13.1 bumper sticker on my Jeep and look in a mirror and say, “I am a runner!”

And then I wasn’t.  On my last run before a half-marathon in 2015, a misstep opened a can of worms.  For two years I hobbled through workouts, tried to prepare to run only to reinjure myself until I decided I was being hardheaded and put my pain into a doctor’s hands. A torn meniscus was an issue…also the discovery of early-onset osteoarthritis.  “A knee replacement is in your future,” he said.  I wish I had never gone.  I wish I had never found out.

For two years I have walked or rode a bicycle and mentally bitched over every mile. Walking doesn’t do it for me.  Cycling doesn’t blot out the voices in my head no matter how much I crank up the volume.  Walking fails to reset my brain.

This winter season has been the worst.  The SAD and depression had laid me low until the New Year.  I decided to run…jog…shuffle my feet.  A different program, a thirty-second jog out of every two and a half minutes the first week, a minute out of three the second, the same next week.2  Twelve weeks to a 5K.  I feel like a baby taking his first steps, but I am hopeful.  Even my walking days have been…hopeful.

I am also going to be smart.  Three days a week only, on the grass, not the pavement, no back to back days no matter how many workouts are rained ut.  Good shoes and braces.

I scratched the marathon off my bucket list.  It will never happen.  I do hope to do a 5K even if it is a walk/run…jog…shuffle.  Anything to reset my mind.  Anything to keep the negative voices at bay.  Anything to repair the broken kaleidoscope.  Anything to get my mojo back.

1 Couch to 5K  http://www.c25k.com/

2 None to Run Plan https://www.nonetorun.com/

Don Miller writes on many subjects, fiction, and nonfiction.  His author’s page is https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

“TAILS” OF THE SWAMP RABBIT CONTINUED

/ cigarman501 / Leave a comment

 

I have occasionally written about the denizens I have encountered along the Swamp Rabbit Trail, a twenty or so mile track used by runners, hikers, and cyclist here in upstate South Carolina.  For those unfamiliar with the Greenville, South Carolina area, the trail follows an old railroad line that was named for one of the denizens I have never seen, the elusive Swamp Rabbit.

When I have written about the Swamp Rabbit it has not been in glowing terms.  That’s unfair.  The trail itself is wonderful, its some of the people who are not so wonderful.  Usually, I ranted because of groups of cyclists riding too fast in large packs.  Old men, sans shirts, proudly displaying their lily-white chests and hairy backs, both forced upward against gravity by what one friend called “Mandex”.  Just what is that little roll?  SOME women wearing lycra sport’s bras and little else…except for the sweetie in white on that very hot and humid day several summers ago.  Oh, sweet pea, why are you running so fast?  The eight-and-a-half-month pregnant woman, if she was a day, who breezed past me pushing a double stroller, emasculating me as I struggled up that final hill. Yes, I have written about them all.

At 5:30 this morning, I expected to see little of interest except maybe a deer or a possum.  It was still quite dark when my friend, Hawk, and I made our turnaround before veering off the trail toward the lake at Furman University.  We had seen no one, something that would change as the eastern sky began to lighten with the impending dawn.  My headlamp picked up a solitary form walking slowly ahead of us.  Leaning on a walking stick, he seemed to be struggling as if attempting to climb a steep hill despite being on the flat ground.  He was also naked as the proverbial Jaybird.  A knit stocking hat on his head, running shoes and socks on his feet and nothing…absolutely nothing in between.  I actually thought he had on one of those new technical one-piece suits…well, I guess it was a one piece, just not a new one and kind of hairy at that.  The three women we tried to warn seemed to be quite excited about the prospect of meeting up with him…oops, campus security got there first.  Wonder how cold and rough the pavement was on the ole beany weenie as he complied after being asked to lay face down on the pavement.

I knew from the set of his jaw, Hawk was mulling over something, “Did you look?”

“Are you kidding?”

“I just wondered if he was walking that way because he was proud.”

What does possess someone to step out his door and decide, “Well, it’s not too cool.  I believe I’ll just take off all my clothes and go for a walk.  I will wear a knit cap so I don’t lose too much heat out the top of my head.”   Could it have been National Hike Naked Day?

I also wondered why it couldn’t have been the fit young lady in the white lycra…or in this case, without the white lycra.

If you enjoyed this, Don Miller has written six books that can be purchased or downloaded at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM.  Be sure and follow him there.

GROWING OLDER GRACELESSLY

/ cigarman501 / 3 Comments

Lying in bed I go through the same progression every morning. I wonder if I move, “Am I going to break?” I begin by wiggling, first one little toe, then the other and gradually work my way up. My goal is to get my feet on the ground and stand erect without making the same noises my father made when he was my age…I am now faced with the realization I have outlived my father by five years. That is a sobering thought. My second goal is to check the local obituaries and find that my name is not listed there.

While I am aware of my age, it has not been an issue until recently. For the past year I have battled an arthritic knee that keeps me from running and rocked a vertebra onto my sciatic nerve while splitting wood that, for a month, kept me from doing just about everything else. Bad enough but a conversation with a friend of mine really made me pause to consider the question of my age. Married, hers is a May-December romance. She is May and he is December…which is not true. She is more April and he is more, say, October. With his impending retirement she has suddenly become concerned about her husband’s age or rather what her husband’s age might have in store for them both. Seeking enlightenment from me, I was not able to give it. My mind asked “Why is she asking me? I’m not old?” My body answered, “You’re three years older than her husband.” Gee, where is my cane?

Today I got to do my “Medicare Wellness Profile.” It included an eye test, whisper test, walking test and questionnaire with such thought provoking questions as “Can you bathe and wash yourself without help?” Yes, and I can wipe my butt too. All went with the normal check of BP, ability to process oxygen and EKG. “You want me to get out of a chair, walk six feet return and sit down again?” Oh me! The nurse in charge said I passed with flying colors until you consider I am being compared to “really old people,” something the old bat pointed out. Funny, I think like a young person, but I guess the mirror doesn’t lie. Why couldn’t I have at least had Sam Elliott’s hair?

Forty years ago, during the first jogging craze, I began a haphazard exercise regimen. Haphazard in that I would allow anything to get in the way in order to avoid it. Finally getting my mind right in the Early-Nineties, I got into the habit of exercise…until a side lunge put me in the hospital to have cartilage removed. No more lunges of any type. Later a miss step on the baseball field would require the other knee to be scoped for the same reason and in 1999 I had the second of two operations on an arthritic big toe. I found myself out of the habit of exercise and into any habit that involved sitting on a couch and consuming mass quantities of fried foods and beer. Forty pounds later I could not deny what the mirror was showing me. Two hundred and thirty-two pounds on my five foot nine frame could no longer be hidden. I was sloppy fat. On April 8, 2006 I made the decision that I had to make radical life style changes. My realization would be further emphasized the next day.

In a month I will celebrate another birthday and a ten-year anniversary. “Happy birthday to you…How old are you? F@#$ YOU and your horse!” Family had gathered to celebrate my birthday on April 9. Always irreverent, my brother presented me with a birthday card featuring a grim reaper reflected in a car’s rear view mirror and the warning “Objects may be closer than they appear.” Five hours later I found myself hooked up to a gazillion monitors after having just survived a heart attack and having had a catheter and stint surfed into a clogged artery. One month later the original stint would be joined by three more in three different arteries. I was six months away from a loss of seventy pounds and running a 5-K. Yes, it was a radical life style change. My brother was so broken up about the card he had given me, I got it again the next year. It is now framed as a constant reminder of what I am trying to outrun or out walk at least.

For ten years now I have drug myself out of bed and done something. Now at least I wait until the sun is up. At any age, walking, running, cycling, stretching and strength training, I guess it’s all about movement. Moving your ass out of bed and onto something more productive. If I happen to live to be ninety-five I want to be mobile and not in bed…wait. Bed? I just thought of a great way to die…traumatic as it might be for the other individual…or group. I would have to stay in good shape to do it. I believe I will get out of bed in the morning and do what I have been doing for the last ten years.

Move that butt Lard-O! Time’s a wasting!

For great #nonfiction try Don Miller at http://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM