Run Through The Finish

So, the exploration continues.  The calendar creates little fear if you don’t do the math. 

Wrinkles ARE the truth, but I prefer to think of wrinkles more as a badge of honor.  Like scars, wrinkles merely express a life lived.  Of course, I would be a fool to look at my skin with my reading glasses. 

A bright light is hardly my friend, indoors or out. 

The goal, my wife and I decided a few years back, is to look good with our clothes on.  Which reminds me of the time I took an ecdysiast to her first nude beach, but I’ll save that tale for another day.

Death, my own at least, never crosses my mind.  Ellis “Red” Redding, the old con – he was all of 58, by the way – in The Shawshank Redemption says something like ‘you have two choices in life: you can choose to keep on living or you can choose to start dying.’ 

That makes sense to me and my choice is clear.

I started working out twice daily last week.  Typically, in the morning, I walk four miles in less than an hour.

I want to break into a jog.  I want to, I want to, I so want to.  But one wrong step and I could easily end up flat on my back in bed.  But I am a runner to the very core of my being.

And I really want to break into a jog.

In the afternoon, I spend an hour or more on my spinbike.  Never less than an hour.

I hope to start riding 25 miles or more outdoors, but I have gotten out of the habit of putting on a helmet and pushing myself in the heat.

There’s also the problems posed by the regular lightning storms that time of day.  And the heavily medicated seniors who don’t see so good, driving in large sedans.  But I will start soon, maybe today.

I have discovered two workouts per day can be fatiguing. 

And I am also scheduled to increase the load of each workout. 

So, I continue to feel like my own science fair project.  How much is too much?  Will I explode if I add this or that? 

If I add much of anything, I think I might add some rest. 

Dr. E.C.”Ned” Frederick and I wrote an article (Runners’ World 1975) called “After The Work, The Rest Is Easy.”   In a nutshell, we noted the importance of adequate recuperation from exercise in order to achieve optimal results. 

Seems a no-brainer today, but in ’75, this was some notable insight.

You can get old aggressively or you can let it just happen to you.  I choose aggression.  In virtually every phase of life, in virtually every activity, aggression will win the day.

To be successfully old, we must attack aging.  But attacking as we might compete with a training partner.

Getting old is not a problem, it is a vehicle to a better you.

And I am guessing that is what Mark Gerzon means by “the deepest dimensions of life.”