I woke up with a lot of gusto.  My lethargy yesterday had been the result of allergies after stirring up a lot of dust on Saturday, so I was glad that my body had calmed down about that and I would be able to get on with it today.  Fortunately, there isn’t really all that much dust stirring to do; we did that job already.  Most of the rest consists of things that have sat in closets or cabinets, and it will all be relatively dust-free.

My gusto created a wind at my back and while still on the slow side, my pace was very good for me.  I was watching a video over the weekend by John Glaude (ObesetoBeast) in which he was reacting to a video by Anna O’Brien (Glitterandlazers) on her quest to run a marathon.  In her video she was disappointed to find that while she had been training, she was technically walking or power walking, but only is short bursts even breaking into a jog.  She was not running at any point.  John made an excellent point, and one that I needed to hear at the moment.  It is not necessary to run.  It is just fine to walk.  I’m paraphrasing.  What I appreciate about this, and what he briefly explains, is that running is not a superior form of walking.  They are two different types of exercise.  I did actually know this, but I have found myself recently falling into a trap of thinking that if I were better at this, it would be a run.  And that thinking isn’t helpful.

I am interested in learning to run, but not as a replacement for my walks.  I’ve grown fond of my walks and in fact I look forward to them so much that I want to extend them.  I’ve already started to make plans for how life might look in a future where I can walk maybe to a park or in a park, and stop midway to do my journaling.  I love that idea.  Where I currently live, there aren’t places to stop.  It’s for the same reason that my walks tend to be limited to 2-3 miles; that’s the distance from the corner where I live to the next street and back.  I’m not quite to the point where I don’t need a bit of a rest after that distance, but as I am back home by that point I just get on with my day.  If there was a spot to sit just at Yost Rd, I might try going another mile, doubling my total for the day.  In town, that will be more of an option, and one I wouldn’t mind taking.

Prompted by my brother’s concern, I’ve been a little concerned about my heart rate at night.  I don’t know if I would have thought about it much if he hadn’t been talking about it.  I routinely drop to about 38 or 39 BPM, usually just as I’m starting to wake up.  Whether it is a function of my body waking up or I am waking up in response, I cannot say.  But heart rate is something I’ve been working on in general.  I don’t have the luxury of being able to see a doctor at the moment, so I have to treat myself as carefully as I can.  One thing I’ve been trying, and which seems to be working okay, is to do a bit of cardio just before going to bed.  I don’t think it needs to be as strenuous as my morning walks, but a few minutes of jogging in place or a few minutes on the exercise bike.  I just want to get my heart rate up to about 120 BPM for a little while.  I do pretty well with my recovery rate, so it returns to normal pretty well, but on the nights where I have done that—so far—I have not dipped below the 40s.  Of course, that could all be a coincidence and maybe I’m grasping at straws.  But I’ll keep experimenting.  In those final moments before bed, I’m almost always watching YouTube, and I can easily just get up and do some exercise while I watch my video.  

The other metric I’ve been really interested in increasing is VO2 Max, which steadily increased from 27 April to 11 June, but seems to have stalled out.  This morning it had decreased which was pretty frustrating, but I have a lot of allergy issues and I’m sure that is part of the problem.  I’ve become complacent with my allergies, rarely feeling the need to take anything at all because it has felt so much better without the 150 pounds I recently lost.  But it is possible I’m not allowing myself the full potential of my lungs by denying myself the relief of allergy medications.  I do hate being dependent on a medication, but sometimes things just are what they are.

[Walk #92]