5-8-14

Yoga today. Good group. Our co-worker instructor continues to crank up the pace of her power yoga routine. I want to improve in two areas: flexibility in hamstrings, hips, glutes etc and balance. Progress today in the side angle pose that is a vertical posture evolved from the airplane pose. Very difficult for me. Requires leg strength and endurance and great balance. I got further today than ever, but lost it on both sides when trying to reach a bind. Something to shoot for.

We are doing this during lunch hour in a company conference room. Move the tables and chairs, line up  mats and go for it. I like the power yoga approach because adding strength is desirable and I feel the workout all afternoon on yoga days. We have 4-5 women and 3-4 men participating most days, all claiming measurable benefit. Thanks to our instructor who does it because she loves it. She is making a nice contribution just out of a belief in yoga and a healthy lifestyle. Here's to Pam.

Musing

R.A.M.

Thanks for the e-mail and the concern.  You are spot on with observing the ambivalence I'm struggling with regarding exercise.  Or, perhaps reduced expectations of mid-life.  Another interesting aspect of your note regards the blog itself.

For me the blog has evolved as my reasons for exercise have changed.  Initially, I was training for martial arts.  Accordingly the links, the workouts, all were slanted in that direction.  Indeed some of those resources are still present.  As my interests shifted to my outdoor activities and my work with the Boy Scouts, the links, the resources likewise shifted, and many of those are obviously still present.  I know that other bloggers keep their interests discrete writing separate blogs, but, for me that lost the point of "life span" and it lost track of the twisting and turning of ones intellectual curiosity.  I thought it better to let the residue persist from each turn.  Indeed, I linked back to some key texts that informed my thinking as well.  In this way resonating withe the Body Tribe ethos.

During the winter you talked about writing a blog that detailed your hikes.  I really liked that idea and I encourage you to consider this either a place to publish those, or, to draft them -- publish the final to your preferred site if that suites you better.  I liked your linking of the GPS data from your work walk/runs.  Linking to other trail reviews and providing pictures would really round this project out.

Too, I've tried to encourage RATZ to install the blogger app on her phone and to start logging her activities and her ruminations on diet.  She is quite devoted to the plant based diet and has learned a lot in the last 18 months.  I think it would be interesting to read her reviews and modifications of recipes.

Lastly, returning to my own exercise.  I am struggling with motivation, first at a strategic level, "what are we fighting for?"  Oddly enough the negative motivation does nothing for me.  Exercise to avoid "x" whatever negative, frightening future, that the lack of exercise apocalypse will rain down on me.  I do best when I'm going after a positive outcome.  Between the bad juju at work during this last year and my own mid-life angst I've really lost sight of exercise towards something positive.  The summer before A went to college we tried to hike Katahdin, I logged that fiasco here somewhere.  Too, last year during deer hunting and this spring going turkey hunting I really noticed my level of condition.  These are the outdoor activities that motivated me for several years of hard work -- yet, even while loving doing them avoiding the negative element of diminished fitness doesn't motivate as noted above.  I've got myself some sort of double-bind going on here.  Sometimes one can play the Camus card and simply be absurd, "fake it till you make it" and that will break the log jam.  But for now I've got to grapple with this issue.

One, thought that occurred to me was to do exactly what I was encouraging you to do and log the adventures themselves.  So RATZ and I go for a hike or a canoe trip and log that.  Once a new habit of those activities is developed the workouts to support that might follow.

5-6-14

An hour of power yoga today. It was a nice change from yesterday's run. Finally able to get my whole carcass off the mat in wheel, although just barely. Nevertheless, progress. Day off tomorrow.

5-5-14

3 mile lunch run with 2 work associates. Yesterday's walk seemed to have set it up for me. I felt really good and enjoyed the cool sunny weather. Even reclaimed mine land looked good today. Time was 40:35 and it was pretty relaxed. Anticipating a good stretch at tomorrow's yoga.

5-4-14

Walked the neighborhood circuit with Tate today. Finally remembered to use my GPS watch to measure and time the route. I had estimated 3 miles, but it is 3.33. Time today, for a walk that was interrupted by a problem with Tate's harness was 59.16, a 15:56 per mile pace. If I take 4 or 5 minutes off for the repair, I'm at 55 or 56 minutes and a more respectable pace. Highlight was coming across a pileated woodpecker working on a dead birch tree along the street. Awesome bird.

5-2-14

An hour of yoga during lunch. Satisfying as usual. Latest discovery, after starting to do forward folds with knees bent rather than straight, is that my hamstrings are really sore. Intuitively I thought that keeping legs more or less straight would focus the stretch on hamstrings, while bending knees puts more of the stress on quads. Somehow though, that doesn't seem to be true. After months of straight leg bends with no real progress in flexibility, I am now feeling the work coming from bent knee folds.  Hoping that in a few weeks, the increased flex follows. We'll see.