Oh, My Aching Leggies!

One day a fisherman got up very early in the morning. There was not enough sunlight to get into the sea. He saw a pack of stones to pass time. He started throwing the stone into the sea. While having the last stone in the hand,
the sun came up then he saw that the stone was a diamond. He felt for his misfortune of throwing all of them into the sea...
Moral of the story: *********************

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Do not get up early in the morning...


Hee hee hee
Cheers :)

(email from a friend in India)



I couldn't wake up this morning! %-0

No, that's not true, else you wouldn't be reading this, but I did have a terrible time of it this morning. At first I thought the reason was because our new blinds (cheap roller blinds from Wal-Mart) were still down, preventing the bright morning sun from waking me up. We bought them for privacy, and they sure do block out the light at night and in the morning. And I seem to have been sleeping more deeply, or "harder" since we got them last week. Nor do I like to crawl out from under my wool blanket and down comforter in the morning--it's SO cozy. :-)

I still felt spent, this morning. I didn't even exercise yesterday!

Hubby says it's because all my rolling is catching up with me. I did it four days in a row this week. And I moved my time up from 25 minutes a session last week to 35+ minutes this week.

What is rolling, you ask?

It's my/our new exercise this year: we bought a CycleOps Bicycle Roller to improve our balance and make us better bicyclists. It is an apparatus with three aluminum rollers and a belt; you set your bicycle on top and start cycling. Some describe as akin to riding on black ice! But if you're a newbie, like us, then you ought to start training between a narrow doorway, so that when you start sliding side to side, you won't fall off to the side. This is no stationary bike trainer--you really have to concentrate so you won't roll all over the place.

We love it! I love it! There are only 18 gears on my bicycle! ;-0 I've comfortably reached 4th gear after five weeks! %-) Maybe next week I can make it to 5th gear. Hubby's got 15 gears on his bike, but he can ride on that highest gear. Then again, he's got MUCH more experience of bicycling than me. I wonder where I'll be this time next year?

My leggies are still feeling tingly, like I put them through something fierce. My knees are warm. I'm creating a new set of leggies: tree-trunk leggies (scaled to my thin frame)! Blasting our favorite classical music radio station while I'm rolling helps a great deal, too. :-)

I've written before that I am NOT an athletically inclined person. I mean, p.e. was the trauma of my school years! Last one picked for a team, every single time, every day, every week, every year, first grade through tenth grade. (P.E. not required after sophomore year...yay!) One p.e. teacher in jr. high made me stay after class once because she apparently couldn't believe that I couldn't do the gymnastic type exercises that all the other kids could. Was I not trying hard enough? Let's try again after class, she suggested. I'd like to think she meant well, but she did a pretty fine job of making me feel like I was defective. :-((

I suppose I should be grateful I grew up in an era when p.e. was still mandatory in school, at least through 10th grade. Now that it seems to be barely existing in many schools, kids are becoming obese. I would hope that whoever teaches physical education these days is more sensitive to kids who are genuinely not athletically inclined, and would be encouraging to them, rather than make them feel like freaks--in part by condoning nasty behavior from other students who would inflate their own egos by verbally downsizing the klutzes in their class.

It wasn't until I signed up for taekwondo that my spirit was lifted from the ashes of turbulent years of p.e.! Yes! I have a real body! Yes! I can make it do things I never thought it could! Yes! Getting fit doesn't have to be a miserable chore! And yes! I earned my coveted black belt! :-D

I'd like go back to it someday, as I very much loved it: it was fun, enjoyable, and helped fulfill my early martial arts fantasies from earlier days (nights!) of watching badly dubbed kung fu flicks from Hong Kong! But as we live in the sticks now, I have found other ways to keep fit.

Miraculously, I've kept to my yin yoga every morning when I wake up (well, after I put my contact lenses in!) since I started last fall. I even practiced at the airports we camped out at during our Xmas vacation last year! Keeping to an exercise regimen more than a couple days is a phenomenon in my life! Stretching every morning is very calming for me.

And rolling? "Thirty five minutes a day keeps the doctor away." ;-) I'm not an apple person, so I can't say, "An apple a day, keeps the doctor away". I'd rather the fruit be a banana, papaya or fig! We have a book: The Wellness Guide to Lifelong Fitness, by the editors of the University of California at Berkeley WELLNESS LETTER. Of course, we got it used, but it's a good reference guide.

In the cycling section, it mentions you should aim for 45-60 minutes at least three times a week. Uh oh, I thought: I've got a ways to go! But maybe 35-40 minutes 5-6 times a week is just as good? Oh, and add a "leisurely" (their words) 20-30 MILE ride on the weekends!! %-0

I was being too dogmatic in the beginning, thinking I should stick to three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. But then, things came up on those days, and I wouldn't exercise. Did I think the world would come to an end? Of course not! (only if certain political figures came to power, then I might think so! ;-0) So I just try to go with the flow: roll a few days in a row, take one day off, roll again a couple days, take a day off. Doesn't matter. If I can roll a minimum five days a week, I feel like I'm doing something to strengthen my heart and legs. Six days would be my ideal goal.

Since I did it four days in a row this week, maybe that's why I was so tired yesterday, and decided to take a day off. My mind repeated the Nike motto: just do it! My leggies screamed, "Gimme a break, will you?" I think a lot of this is about listening to your body and deciding whether you want to challenge yourself, especially if you're not in the mood, or, if your mind and body were saying two different things to you, as mine was yesterday, whether to be a martyr and push your limits even though you knew your body wasn't quite up to it.

I'm not into martyrdom!

I started doing push-ups again. I used to do them all the time in my taekwondo class. It was embarrassing to me how much trouble I had, doing it yesterday! %-0 Out of shape! I don't like to be so out-of-shape and weak. It's an exhilarating feeling to feel like you're on top of the world after a good workout, rather than stewing in gloom and doom because you can't get your butt off a chair or couch, due to indecision: should I exercise? or not? ;-0

Getting motivated is the first step. Easier said than done when I'm buried beneath warm covers and the blinds are down! I've got yoga and bicycle rollers to entice me now. :-)