Health and Fitness

When we were in China, we walked everywhere (and breathed in a lot of air that tasted awful and you couldn't see through). It was a mile to the classroom building (and another one back). It was a mile to a restaurant, and a little over a mile to one of the lecture halls. We thought nothing of walking everywhere but church, which was 18 miles away.

When we got back to the US, we walked a lot less.

A year later, I found that I had trouble walking. It was strange - it was just for the first 10 minutes, and especially after a meal. Then I found out I was seriously anemic.

So now I am working to build up my walking endurance again. I exercise using the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises (which I began in 1964, the instructions for which Juan just resurrected from somewhere) first thing in the morning. Then I go out and walk the mailboxes.

This is a particular way to build up endurance.

It all started when I read a true account of a couch potato who had to go get the mail from his mailbox at the end of the his driveway (30 feet away) when his wife went out of town. It took him considerable effort and he thought he was going to have a heart attack before he got back to the couch. But he bummed himself out - he realized he was no longer in good shape. (!). So he figured the next day he'd go to his mailbox and one more mailbox along the street. Which he did. The next day he added another. And then another and so on. He added one more a day, without fail. At the end of the year he celebrated by running a marathon.

I decided to do that several years ago. I put Gimli the dog on a leash and went to our mailbox and back. He looked at me like I was crazy. The next day, the neighbor's mailbox. And so on. The mailboxes can be fairly far apart around here, or jammed together, but we did it no matter what. We ended up walking over an hour a day before we left for summer vacation.

And that was the end of it. No marathon!

So I've started again. I am on Mailbox #5.

That doesn't mean it's Day #5. There are rules to this, and if you miss a couple of days, you regress. Rules to follow. Does anyone want to do this with me? PL