Tuesday was an absolutely gorgeous day here in the Pacific Northwest. The temperature reached 69 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit
and the sun was shining like crazy! I
knew I had to get out in it. I was
craving the sun on my face. It’s not
that the sun never shines here—it does—but it doesn’t shine as much in the
winter as in the summer and the combination of the sun and warmth was just irresistible
that day. Add to that my need to go to
the post office to pick up a package and I made an arbitrary decision to take
an hour off from my work and take a walk.
To add a bit of context to this story, I have fibromyalgia
(I think I’ve already talked about that) and this winter it has been particularly
bothersome. I felt that my work required
me to do less exercise so I didn’t hurt so much. As a result, I have gotten into pretty bad
physical condition. I didn’t realize how
bad it was until Tuesday. OK, I should
have had a clue when I was going from gate to gate at airports on my trip to
Tennessee but I was in serious denial then and now I’m not.
Whatever the reality is, here’s what happened. On my way to the post office I started
feeling a lot of pain in my legs, especially the left leg that has been
bothering me for several months, and my back and when I got to a place where I
could sit down for a minute or two, I did. I got to the post office and stood in life—just for a couple of minutes—and
was in some fairly severe discomfort from standing there. After I got my package I thought—I’m just
down the street from my bank—I should go there and make a deposit. I walked there and stood in another tiny line
for another couple of minutes and conducted my business. I sat in one of their waiting area chairs for
a few minutes before heading back home.
My route home took me past the library and I stopped in to
say hello to the librarians (it didn’t matter who was working that day—I know
them all) so I stood at the counter for a few minutes. I walked another block and stopped for lunch
at a diner, not because I wanted to stop for lunch nearly so much as I really
wanted to sit down for a while. After
lunch I walked the rest of the way home and I was totally exhausted. Here’s the part that scared me: the entire walk was under a mile. It wasn’t much under a mile but a hair under
a mile. I used to walk a mile each
direction to and from work. After I
moved I walked almost a half mile each direction. Now I can’t walk that far without several
rest stops. Oh, and when I got home and
sat down to work for an hour or two and then tried to get up for something, I
almost couldn’t stand up because of the pain and I had to stand there,
balancing myself against the desk, for 20-30 seconds before I could get my legs
to work properly. I was in agony. The next day, Wednesday, was the same. I hurt so badly when I got up I could barely
move.
That put me into a bit of a depression for a while, then I
had my coaching session with Lynne and we did some “Coaching 101” where we went
back to basics and talked about what was it I wanted to accomplish and how I
wanted to accomplish it. Then we talked
about the steps I could take (quite literally) to make it happen in a way that
wouldn’t build in failure for me. That
was quite a concept because in the past I have set out to make everything
better immediately and that doesn’t work well for most of us—it certainly doesn’t
work for me. Walking a mile a day, five
days a week, isn’t going to work right now. I’d do it one day and be totally unable to walk more than a few steps
the next day and that would be the end of that program.
We talked about when I would walk outside and what I would
do when it was too cold and/or wet to walk outside. If I was feeling like I could only walk to
the end of the block and back, that was fine. If I felt like I could walk all the way around that block, that was
fine, too. No, not “fine,” it was all
Great!
By then I had taken over the counter pain relievers and had
done some very cool EFT stuff with Lynne and I was feeling quite a bit better
so, in the spirit of my commitment to feel better I walked to the end of the
block and back—not a huge distance but pretty amazing considering I could
barely walk from the bedroom to the bathroom that morning.
Yesterday it rained and I was busy with work and only did a
little walking in the house but I did some and I felt pretty pleased with
myself that I had done any at all.
Today it was raining when I got up so I walked 5 little laps
around my apartment. I can go from the
living room to the kitchen, through the tiny hallway that leads to the
bathroom, down the main hallway, and back to the living room. It’s not much of a walk but at least it’s not
pacing back and forth. I don’t do well
with pacing back and forth.
What I did that really helped was to sit here thinking about
how that didn’t seem like I had walked very far and wondering how far it
actually was. I remember hearing about
how you can count your steps when you walk extra and keep track of them and see
how far you walked beyond your normal routine.
I walked around the circle one more time and determined it
was 50 feet. That still seemed pretty
little so I did the math and it turns out that just 26 times around the circuit
is ¼ mile. Not bad—not bad at all. Since then I’ve walked an additional 8 laps
and it’s just lunch time. If I can do
that a few more times today I can be up to at least a quarter mile and this is
just the third day of my plan to get more in shape.
Oh, and as soon as I get my stretching/yoga DVDs from the
library, I’ll let you know what I think of those. I can’t help but believe this is going to
make a huge difference in how I feel. I’m
already feeling more optimistic than I have in a long time.
