...and we all fall down.

I guess I am going to be out of action for a while. When I fell off of my bike, onto my right side, yesterday. It hurt so bad my left leg got jealous and decided to hurt twice as bad. To make things even worse, I just ran over my bike. Now I gotta get that fixed...geez.

I've been thinking, what's left for me to participate in? My left arm still hurts, I hurt it playing racquetball. My left hamstring still hurts from when I my son decided to wrestle me and yank my leg out of the socket. And of course, now, my right arm hurts, I cannot lift a glass of water to my mouth.

Let me see, while hiking, with newer shoes, I now have planters fasciitis. Last year, the pain was at 100 out of ten. Now, it's at a nice, 1 out of ten. Getting better, slowly. Also while hiking, I've lost at least 6 toenails! I have four more toes to go.

Two years ago, while Kayaking, I went on a 42 mile kayak trip. A first for me. Now my shoulders still hurt, especially when I walk or hike over 5 miles.

What else is left? Bowling is out, I'm left handed and the racquetball pain is still in effect. I would have to guess, camping, car camping. I do need a new tent though. Last year I left some blueberry muffins in my tent and and went to the the potluck about a mile away. When I got back a racoon ripped the side of my tent open, got the muffins and had two muffins in it's tiny thieving hands. But, camping is the only other safe thing left, for me, to do...soooooo.

Golf? Softball? My equipment is getting  dusty and rusty. My back still hurts. Gotta get back into to doing planks, crunches or any abdominal exercises! Heck walking seems to be out of the question, now. I wanted to run a 5k this year and have gotten my time to 42 minutes, this year, and that was yesterday morning. My fastest, last year 31 minutes. But, as of late, just walking, it took me one hour and twenty-minutes today, my average is 52 minutes.

Yes, I am not a spring chicken anymore, is age catching up with me? As my neighbor always says, "age is nothing but how old you think you feel." Actually, that's my saying, but we go back and forth on the age thing and the things we love to do, sports related. Ain't retirement grand?

Anyway, I just got back from CVS and I really wish this Motrin kicks in sooner than later!!!

Apples, apples, apples. Spring has sprung!

Here's something you don't see every day: While on my daily walk, on an obscure street, I saw a strange vehicle coming towards me. Tons of weird protrusions on the top. As it passed I read, APPLE MAPS on the sides. So, in the near future you may see me walking by. I should have taken a picture, it looped me at least three times. Oh well...

A wonderful (active) year...

It has been another great year for me. I wanted to keep doing what I have been doing, this past year, in order to have a lifetime of being dis-ease free. As of the 12^th of December, I have been relaxing, just taking it easy for the rest of this year until January, where I will start up with all of the activities I enjoyed over the past year.

I am planning to join Planet Fitness, again, so I can get my legs in better shape for those long hikes and those long bike rides, 50+ miles at a time. My longest in 2016, 45 miles and I did that 4 times.

Anyway, here are my results for this past year:

ran – only 73.1 miles – (2015 - 235 miles, What a year a difference makes)

Walked – 425.4 miles – (2015-754 miles, ouch…)

Biked – 475.7 miles – (2015 - 410 miles)

Hiked – 294 miles – (2015 - 95.5 miles)  

Kayaked – 17 miles – (2015 - 4.2 miles)

For a grand total of – 1285.3 miles – (2015 1500.4 miles)

 Down a tiny bit, in some categories, and up a few in others, only because I either forgot to add the extra times to my recorder or my  GPS logs failed because the batteries on my phone died. But I did add a lot more other activities such as, Camping 6 times in 2016 (8 times in 2015), Laser tag, and going Zip lining.  

I ended up gaining about 15 pounds and maintained a weight of 200 lbs. for a large part 2016, considering I had lost 76 pounds in the prior years.  

I don’t know what I have doing for the end of this year, but I've gained 15 pounds since the end of November. I think it has to do with all that cake and Rum and Eggnog I have devoured in the last two week. Compounding the fact that I have done no other activities but sit and watch Movies on Netflix for the last two weeks.

In a few days I am going to have to get back on track and do what I have been doing for the last 2 and a half years. This year I plan to add more just to make sure that when I go to the doctor for my annual checkup all my numbers are lower than they were for 2016. 

Three Things...

 Three things:

Thing number 1.  I got up this morning and, as I laid on my bed and stretched, my sciatic nerve in my left leg said, NO! No stretching and you are not getting out of the bed today. Of course I ignored that dagger in my butt and got up any way.

I tried to put on my PJs, (I sleep in the nude) and tried to lift my leg and struggled to get my left leg in to my PJs. I limped to the window to look at the rain falling and then limped down the stairs to feed my cats, Tom and Jerry.

I was going to play racquetball this morning but, my butt said NO! For whatever reason I am becoming a servant to my butt, specifically, my pain. It seems that everything on my left side hurts. Anyway, I am going to sit here and write and then watch football for the rest of the day and suffer with the pain in my butt.

Thing number 2. After racquetball I was going to go on a 7 mile hike and finish with a picnic. When the food had been devoured I was going kayaking. Looking out the window, the rain hasn’t stop. I just checked the radar and all of Michigan is covered and the rain will be out of here by 5 pm. So, the organizer cancelled the hike and the Kayaking. But, she re-scheduled the hike for tomorrow. All in all I still might go and walk 3 miles, in the rain anyway, just because… (I ate two donuts this morning).

Thing number 3. Last but not least, this morning was a good thing, no, a great thing. A couple of weeks ago, while grocery shopping, I needed to get some coffee. Since my Keurig died I have been drinking Folgers Breakfast Blend and ran out. So, I thought I try something really different. Of course anything Starbucks is out of the question. Sometimes, what you don’t know may or may not hurt your, philosophically speaking, of course.

As I scanned all of the coffees on the racks in the coffee aisle and I spotted something different, a coffee I had not seen before. Since it was $2 cheaper it’s what I wanted, so I bought it. It turned out to be Seattle’s Best coffee, more on that later. Today, I opened that bag of Seattle’s Best coffee, brewed it and waited for a bit before I drank it. I was surprised by the taste.

Talk about the best tasting coffee I have had today, and probably for the next month, too! I am not a coffee snob, but I know what I like and I have tasted quite a few great tasting coffees and this was one of them, this month. Even though, in the back of my mind, I knew that Seattle’s Best was owned by Starbucks. I Googled Seattle’s Best and sure enough…Starbucks Best.

I don’t know why I cannot stand Starbucks coffee, at their stores, and I now know why people who drink it add lots of sugar and cream. Now that I think about it and I’ve had three cups of coffee, (my cups hold 3 cups,), I probably will stick with this brand for a while longer, considering it is the least expensive of most coffees on the coffee rack.

Oh well, it’s still raining, I guess I will sit here and watch the last three episodes of Dark Matter and later, Football … and finish that pot of “Seattle’s Best” coffee.

Too sweet for me…

It has been about six days since I decided to stop eating sweet sticky stuff, you know, like donuts, cake, pies, and cookies and of course, my favorite, ice cream…vanilla. It had just occurred to me, even though I have thought about it many times in my lifetime that I really need to quit the sweets.

I figured, in 2015 and the earlier part of this year, for all the exercise I do I could at least have something sweet once a month or once a week. I really went overboard last year, though. However, I was doing three times more things last year than I am doing this year.

Another thing that just hit me, three weeks ago I weighed in at 199. Six days ago, I was at 208! During that time span, I had consumed three dozen cookies, a couple, half gallon, tubs of ice cream and a couple donuts. Eight pounds! The peanut butter cookies were 150 calories each and I had four with my coffee every morning.

Six days ago, I decided to pick up my walking and run at least one mile in between. Yesterday and today, I ran most of the three miles. As of yesterday, I weighed 202 pounds. I really haven’t included any extra activities this year, yet but I really think I need to. In addition, the best way to help drop those pounds, lift weights. 

Earlier this year I hurt my shoulder, playing racquetball, and it still hurts today, but not as bad as it did in March. That is the reason I stopped lifting. However, I stopped the lifting part and only walked, every day.

It’s funny, strange or just real…in 2014 I didn’t eat sweets at all, (at least I don’t remember eating any sweets), and I dropped almost 80 pounds. 2015 was a different story.

I am not doing this to look slimmer or great, not saying that I don’t all ready, but in 2013,  a visit to the doctor and I found out that my sugar level was super high, my cholesterol was super high, and my BP was elevated, higher that I have ever experienced in my life. The doctor put me on blood pressure drugs and I am not into drugs. So, I stopped the drugs at the end of 2013 and started my workouts.

Now, I am afraid to stop, well, not really, I enjoy working out, sort of. I would love to ramp my routines up, a lot, though. This, so I won’t be as weak as I was at the beginning of this year, I am going to join one of those gym, the $10 a month gym and stay on the bicycle so won’t get as tired and I’ll be ready for those long, long bicycle trips. 

I know I am not going to live forever, (most of my aunts and uncles, on my mother’s side have lived into their 90’s and the last living aunt is 98 and still gets out and dances and enjoys life), but I want to make the most out of the life I have now and if it means getting out and running, walking, hiking, kayaking, biking, softball, racquetball, and golf, (all the things I do now), then that’s what I am going to do to stay healthy and do away with sweets and stuff…oh yeah, and potato chips, too. 

If you build it...

Facebook: "Talk about progress; On my walk yesterday I noticed a bulldozer had been parked at a house, about 1 kilometer away from where I live. I paid it no attention, I figure that it was there to dig up the driveway or something.

As I was on my return the bulldozer was starting to rip into the garage. I thought that it was just going to tear the garage down. Today, on my walk, the house was torn down! My guess is someone is going for a bigger house! That is the second house, on my route, that was torn down and rebuilt."



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