My granddaughter was home from school with cold/flu symptoms and stayed with us for two days this week, which, before you start asking, has everything to do with skinny jeans.
One of the items on my 60th birthday bucket list is “start using my skinny clothes wardrobe again.” Thanks to our new NutriBullet and its ability to serve many fruit and vegetable servings in one delicious low-calorie go, Bob and I are both losing weight. Much credit also goes to increased time at the gym, especially in Bob’s case. In my case, a new muscle care routine involving self-massage and a roller to work out stiffness and muscle knots along with new hip and back strength exercises has also been key, because concerted efforts in the past two years to increase my physical activity have been aborted after just a few weeks due to extreme stiffness and pain, which I didn’t realize was affecting even my “regular” physical activity. For example, I knew I was having lower back pain—unusual for me—during and after bike rides that should have been easy, and even short runs caused soreness in my right calf that would keep me off the road for a week. How stupid of me not to look for the cause much sooner than this.
It wasn’t more stretching that I needed, it was the muscle massage to target a very unhappy ITB and constantly knotted calf and shoulder muscles. I am more than excited that this is working, and I am officially checking off two items from my bucket list: “do a strength routine for more than two weeks” and “do a stretching routine for more than two weeks.” I am silently changing “stretching” to “muscle care,” but you can see by the wording of these two entries that “two weeks” was that magic number beyond which I could not formerly go without injury. Now, I’ve been at an exercise routine for two whole months, and former successes at swimming, biking, and running are once again looking possible.
For example, I have returned to swimming after a long absence, and though my shoulder still takes some babying, after just five sessions I’ve gotten back to being able to do at least a mile at each session and have taken 5 to 10 seconds off my old lap pace (depending on whether I time myself in the middle or at the end of the session).
The back pain has disappeared from my biking, and a good indication of how much stronger I’ve gotten was my ride last Sunday. Winds were gusting up to 18 mph that day, but I made it through 31 miles of riding, 21 of them on gravel roads on my friend CE’s mountain bike. I had never ridden a mountain bike before, or even ridden a bike with a triple crankset, but all went very well and even though the wind was in our faces for every hill climb (or so it seemed), I didn’t really need the lowest gear it offered. My thigh muscles were very sore that night, but with massage and a little rest, they’ll be ready for the next ride.
As for my granddaughter’s part in the plan, that was twofold. First, she and her family having been passing around a germ, and they gave it to me. Muscle aches (flu aches, not 31-miles-in-stiff-wind aches) that kept me from sound sleep on Monday night turned into a day of yuckiness on Tuesday. I was terribly tired and my stomach was not hungry (thankfully not puking-upset), so Maddie and I spent that day largely on the couch together. Second, on Wednesday I was back to eating, but carefully, and Maddie was back to smiling (as in the above photo) and running around our house despite her continued congestion, which beats a day in front of the computer as far as weight loss goes, so after two days of less food and more activity, I was down another pound and a half—and fitting into an old skinnier pair of jeans. This is not the pair I’m aiming at mind you, but it is an encouraging milestone!