It's now the middle of July. While it took me until about the third/fourth week in June to finally get to where I didn't feel like I was getting too much of a large-muscle work-out - not from the injuries, but from being out of shape after not walking outside at all for most of the Winter (or at least once the blizzard/snow and record cold started coming - which was "most of the Winter"). The problem at that point in (in June) was, however, that when I go out walking to the store it involves the long walk. That means having to take with me an umbrella and the folding cane that I bring just in case I need it for some reason. I've actually never used a cane for walking because by the time I got started walking again a cane just slowed me down. BUT, I sometimes to use one to climb or use the handle as an arm rest if I find a place to sit and have a coffee.
Just this week I decided that if I wasn't going to walk the long walk to the grocery store, and was instead only going to one of the closer convenience stores, I would no longer bring a cane with me. As it happened, the day I decided I would no longer bring a cane with me was a day after I'd done something awkward when carrying groceries upstairs, so even though I didn't really do anything much, I had a "funny little thing" go on that made me think it may be wise to bring the cane just this one more time.
Feeling "regular" when walking, though, means not having to bring unnecessary weight with me (like the umbrella and cane). Well, I'm not going out walking without those, which then means whatever else I'm carrying or will be buying will add to the weight of what I'm carrying.
Anyway, the day I went out it was July and - without a doubt - a hot Summer day. (We actually had some 40's/50's in June this year). So, while it hasn't been the leg injuries that have been the issue since I've started walking again after Winter, the "large-muscle" work-out aggravated by carrying extra weight with me remained, to some extent, into July. Then the heat turned things particularly uncomfortable. Even without too much heat, however, I've found that pretty much work up a sweat even when it isn't hot out.
I doesn't help that because I may start out feeling really good and as a result tend to walk to quickly. That means starting to feel it far too soon along the walk on the way out. I have this whole "routine" where I then kind of try to do a "slow-down" time if I've started out walking too quickly.
The real point here is mainly that the heat is now factored in right at this time when I've a) finally got the injuries pretty much "there", and b) I've finally gotten my "general self" (back, general leg muscles) used to doing long walks again.
There are two other factors that I want to address in separate posts. One is the matter of trying to make the bag I carry as light as possible (and yet needing so much of what I carry in it BECAUSE I'm a) on a long walk, and b) going to some store).
The other, and more serious matter, is that over the course of the Winter (but particularly after a few weeks of not being able to get out more than once a week most weeks), I got to where I was in some "real burn-out/exhaustion" thing.
I've been working on getting out of that, or at least getting to where I feel mainly like myself, even if not running on "all my cylinders".
The exhaustion thing is something I'll address in its own post. Where it has been a problem as I've been working on getting out of it (at least to some reasonable degree) has been that |at least from what I've heard/read) if a person lives under too much stress for too long and runs into "adrenal gland issues" some types of work-outs actually put too much of a strain on the person's system.
I've seen one PBS "thing" which featured an author and fitness person who offered some simple-but-not-too-draining exercises that can help encourage some better balance (of the system) without putting too much drain on it. These are "small" exercises/movements that people can do all through any day. They aren't a big, work-up-a-sweat, kind of work-out. (I've kept thinking that I may order that program at some point; but I've built up quite the library of fitness DVDs over the years, and because I've had to so dramatically modify so many of the moves in any of them, I've already pretty much got any number of fitness DVD's don't involve working up a sweat - at least haven't involved it while the two leg injuries were such that I couldn't do much of anything that involved either of them. Well, let me put it this way: There was a time when I kept a couple of hand-weights at my computer desk and kind of considered that "about as much working out" as was going to happen.
Once the injuries got to where I could at all, and reasonably, expect to at least do some modified version of a regular fitness routine; it kind of seemed as if that was all I needed.
The trouble was that as the post-blizzard, snow-an deep-freeze weeks of Winter wore on, my "exhaustion thing" got worse and worse. So, by the time I was finally able to get out and start walking again (AND getting some Vitamin D from the sun, by the way); I wasn't just dealing with being out of shape from not having walked all Winter, or with whatever remnants of issues there were associated with the injuries, or with anything related to how much weight I carried in my bag. I was dealing with what seemed clear to me that "exhaustion thing" that made anything that at all seemed like a large-muscle work-out feel like it was too much to deal with.
Over the three or so weeks since I'd finally gotten to where I felt reasonably normal (provided the circumstances were at all normal and reasonable), the weight and awkwardness of lugging extra weight haven't helped much.
After some trial and error in my efforts to get used to doing the long walks again, I eventually reallized that once I reached a certain point it was actually better not to go out and walk at all. I'd walked enough (since May/June) to assure myself that I'd reached enough of "used to walking again" point that I had to be careful not to do something that threw off whatever progress I'd made.
Most often because of some awkward combination of weight-carrying/movements, it has taken about three days to get past any "little muscle stuff" I've done on the walks (between, say, May and now). Ironically, when conditions have been good (and I've been feeling good), it's been kind of natural to walk faster or decide to walk farther). I wasn't planning on this one, but a couple of weeks ago (and just as I thought I was "all back" with the walk), the store closed. That meant adding x number of yards to the walk. It also meant carrying anything heavy-ish in my bag on the turn trip that much farther. Since there's pretty much no place for a person to sit and cool off and/or rest before doing the return walk; on that one or two days when I wasn't used to longer walk I did the longer walk with only limited opportunity to break it up.
As a result, an extra "thing" of increasing the distance got thrown into the mix. Fine. I worked with it. A few times, though, doing that extra meant getting thrown off with regard to whatever muscles were used to doing whatever walk there was.
I'd already noticed this on my own, but I've since read that any time someone "gets a muscle thing" after increasing exercise, it generally takes three days for it to get back to feeling normal again. Boy, can I vouch for that (not that anyone needs me to vouch for it). Just as fitness people/resources have said (and I've noticed) on the day when I "did the thing" I hardly noticed it too much I'd be enough of a mess for other reasons that any twinges I knew there were because a day's walk were barely noticeable, or at least, the least of my problems.
It's been on the second day when i've essentially felt "crippled". The third day has generally been much more reasonable. A couple of aspirin late into the third day has most often meant speeding up feeling "good as new" (at least with regard to whatever I'd done that "crippled me" yet again, for a day or so).
The trouble, for me, has been the combination of things I was left with after Winter, because not walking would mean not getting used to walking again; while walking made "the exhaustion thing" worse. Then in the mix were those times when I couldn't go out and walk because I was in a "rest the muscles" mode. There have been days when I've done the walk on "the last day" of muscle recuperation. I've either taken aspirin before leaving or else waited until I was out and took a couple of aspirin while out. Depending on the rest of "all the circumstances and issues", sometimes that hasn't been too bad.
There have been (still are) a number of different types of "Catch-22's" involved with the whole "project" of getting all the Winter and "rusty" issues ironed out. So many of those issues have been a matter of having to be dealt with simultaneously and on each walk (and depending on any of the variables mentioned in an earlier post).
Based only on how I feel, I have no doubt that being able to get out and walk (and get some sun and fresh air, as well) as helped, to some degree, the "exhaustion thing". One important factor is just being able to get out to some store and get what I need to get myself to where I feel like I'm "the regular me" enough to have the "mental energy" (and it isn't all just "mental") to function reasonably well within some generally challenging circumstances that are related to any number of things in my "overall life".
What I have noticed has been that just as with trying to improve on any number number of "issues" simultaneously, so, too, has the gradual improvement of those things been simultaneous.
The "exhaustion thing" is something I'll write some separate posts on. As it is at this point, I can see how I could be very close to at least getting that "exhaustion thing" to better than where it was, say, at the beginning of the Winter - mainly because, while I've been dealing with some degree of feeling burned out for quite awhile now, it has (at least to some degree, and in a lot of ways, sometimes depending on the variables) been manageable (or at least mostly manageable) ).
One problem was that just as I'd gotten so close to getting the both leg injuries back to normal and to the point where it was almost as if there had been no injuries (first or otherwise)... That was when Fall Winter kicked in and threw off a lot of progess I'd made. That, by itself, was mentally draining. Christmas was in the mix, so there was that (and Christmas is a nice thing). I won't even get into any number of less-than-nice things there were (and in some cases, had been for a long time).
It was just, I suppose, that I've had some degree of "burn-out" or "exhaustion thing" since before the first leg injury (and therefore completely unrelated to it). So, once Winter and everything that went with it kicked in, it was only a matter of time before not being able to get out (most weeks) at all other than one day on the weekend would really start to get to me. From the time of the first blizzard (and beginning of ridiculous cold), I could feel the exhaustion thing getting worse and worse. Even with that, though, it wasn't really until, say, late February/early March when I really saw things (me) getting out of control.
What I didn't know was whether I'd ever be able to turn the exhaustion thing back into something sort of manageable or not. Of course, at the end of Winter and through the Spring, I was looking at the exhaustion thing from my pre-Winter, "tail-end-of-the-injuries" viewpoint. Now, I've had May and June to be working on making up for the time lost as a result of Winter (and after the second injury had its second anniversary). So, now that I've had that time to make the progress (of one kind or another) that I've made up to now, I have the "mental energy points" of looking at the whole picture from truly a "post-injury" (and also "post-Winter") viewpoint.
I don't have visions of the "exhaustion thing" completely disappearing at this point. I do, however, feel as if I've emerged from the deepest depths of that particular thing to the point where I can see "manageable" (or "mostly manageable") again (and in fact, feel it again under the right set of circumstances).
In any case, I'll post later about what contributed to the exhaustion thing in Winter. It was mainly a matter of not being able to get the right foods/substances I needed (and I'm assuming as a result of "where I was" exhaustion-wise) AND it had nothing to do with not having plenty of decent food in the house.
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