It’s hard to work out in the spring. I had a great routine going all winter long, and a fantastic stretch during February and March where I got to the gym every day, hit my activity goals every day, and more or less felt like a middle-aged juggernaut.
That didn’t survive contact with April, when my friend Eric and I started coaching our sons’ recreation baseball team. With baseball practices every other night and Cub Scouts the nights we weren’t practicing, getting to the gym became nearly impossible.
But I’ve kept moving.
I work at a local college, and I walk to work most days. Until January 2017 I worked on campus, which is about a 15-minute walk from home. Starting in January much of the college’s IT staff — including me — moved to a renovated office building downtown. It’s 1.3 miles from my house, so if I walk — and I try to do that a few days a week — then I know I’ll get in at least 2.6 miles a day, maybe 3 or 3.5 depending on how circuitous my route is.
Baseball plays havoc with this as well though. The walk home takes 25 minutes (thanks to a big uphill climb; they don’t call it “College Hill” for no reason). I need to be at the field by 4:45 p.m. for 5:30 p.m. games, which means I need to be home no later than 4:15. Regularly leaving work at 3:45 p.m. isn’t tenable, so I drive … and lose a few of my walking miles.
Ideally I’d get make up for those by walking in the morning, but spring also brought with it a sustained bout of insomnia that makes early morning rising harder than it should be.
So I get in my walks when I can. I set a good example for the team by jogging everywhere and when they run as part of their warm up routine, I run with them. I make an effort to take the dog for a long walk at night, and take the stairs as often as I can.
One bright spot has been the personal trainer that my wife and I started working with over the winter. We’ve kept up our weekly sessions, and knowing that I’ve got a hard-but-good session coming up usually motivates me to exercise more and crash on the sofa less.
Another has been that I made it through the winter without gaining a ton of weight. I’ve been trying not to get too fixated on my weight — looking back at my old fitness posts, I can see I spent a lot of time thinking about that — but it feels good leaving winter at about the same weight I about the same weight I entered it.
I’m at 210 lbs. now, which was my goal weight at the end of last summer. Ideally I’d like to get that down to 200 lbs, but 210 is pretty damn good. It got me back into my 36″ waist jeans and more importantly, it feels good. It feels like my old self — maybe not 18 year old me, but probably 28 year old me.
And, I’m happy to say, I could probably outrun either of them.