Exercise

So, the running is continuing. This fat middle-aged man appears to have lengthened his stride a bit. I am using a pedometer, so I have to enter in the length of my stride. When I started out, it was at 2'6". I used that to pace out a couple of routes, near our apartment, and near my in-laws house. Then, suddenly, last week, the pedometer was not agreeing with what I had measured before. So, a recalibration on a route of known distance puts my current stride at about 2'11". So, I seem to be improving. My energy level is improving a bit, although today, running at 11am, it seemed to wear me down a bit. And my weight has finally turned south enough that I can say it's not just a fluctation within the usual limits.

I also did a bit of research on treadmills, this week. I prefer to run, or jog, really, because walking doesn't really seem to get my heart rate up until I am walking so fast it is awkward. And, I want a surface that is a bit easier on my overloaded knees and ankles than tarmac. So, I checked into treadmills for runners. It was not heartening. I could expect to pay no less that $1k for a sufficiently sturdy model. Yes, I could probably fined one used on eBay for less, but with no certainty as to what it had been through. A bit more research turned up rebounding. Basically, exercising on a minitrampoline. My wife is buying me one for father's day. There was some stuff about NASA's use, etc. I will let you know more after I have been on it a bit. The price was low enough that I felt it was worth a try for joint-friendly exercise.

So, where am I, now? I seem to have adjusted very quickly to family life, with a wife and daughter, after ten years on my own. It is wonderful. Problem is, I just don't seem to have enough energy to enjoy it. For a few years, ballroom dancing was my main form of exercise. Now, feeling kind of disgusted with my waxing waistline and waning energy level, I have started getting some exercise again, and I am starting to really feel the effects of middle age on my body. This is going to be a project, I can see.
I can remember being an obnoxious young punk, laughing to myself at fat, old people waddling along around the track. That karma came due pretty quick. And I know, now, it's not a question of laziness, but of time. There are so many things to do, and I ended up having to reprioritize in order to get the exercise in. We'll see how it goes.

I've got to warn you. I tend to be more expressive the unhappier I am. As much as anything, I write when I need to vent. I am going to try to be more communicative in a positive sense here, as well. Writing out by hand had the advantage of giving time to think. The disadvantage of that medium was that I sometimes had many thoughts I wanted to pin down, but I couldn't write fast enough, and some of the thoughts would fade away. I type much faster than I write, but something typed into the computer has a much higher chance of disappearing forever in a hard disk crash (this has happened). I haven't found it any great loss to me, since, invariably, I find it difficult to read what was appropriate to a painful moment, and so I don't generally go back. But my wife was very disappointed when I lost some journals I was keeping when I was first chasing her. Not that I would have let her see them. <grin>

I just started using Safari Books Online. Sweeeet! I can get through a lot of material this way, without adding to the clutter of technical books I already have both at home and in the office. And the way I work with these books, this works better. It is a lot easier, when I am learning about coding something, or administration, to just switch windows than it is to turn my head to a book that I have propped open with a stapler or other such heavy object.