Fisherman’s Trail

Cycled Fisherman’s trail on my Ebike on Tues morning.  It’s a gravel trail that follows the Seymour River seemingly heading to wilderness oblivion. Very few people on the trail and fewer cyclists.  Rather peaceful and tranquil being in the big outdoors. I would love to ride longer when I heal my body but I am thankful I can get out for a short ride for now.  

 

Hitting speed bumps

 

They say you will encounter speed bumps and bad weather during your life’s journey.  You don’t always get warning signs, sometimes shit just happens.    Sometimes, you need a helping hand, sometimes a lot.  When shit happens, hold on hard.  I am so very fortunate to have the supports I have, especially my friends and family.  I am fortunate to live where I do in a great community.  Living so fortunate, I learned to be kind, lend a helping hand, be there, be present.  You never know when life throws a curve ball, a speed bump or a crazy-ass storm.    

Knowledge is Power

 

November 15, 2021

They say knowledge is power.  I've been  in search of acquiring knowledge in my quest to get heathier as my priority job.  Specifically, in search of knowledge to lose weight.  Not only am I too overweight, I need to lose weight so that there is less pressure on my spine - less chronic back pain and hopefully more ability to be more active longer.  I may never be able to run or race again, but I'd love to do  more than what I'm doing in this state. 

"Losing Weight", the holly grail which most people are in search of.  I came across this book which I quite enjoyed listening to.  I have to admit, I am a fan of Chris Crowley's Younger Next Year books.  I quite enjoyed listening to the audio book Thinner Next year while I cycled on my indoor Trainer.  I got quite a few good nuggets which I will endeavour to follow.  It's all really a lot of common sense.   Unfortunately, not so common yet.  Here are Jenn's 10 rules:

1. Make up your mind and go for it

2. Exercise 45-60 / day, six days a week, for the rest of your life

3. Eat Less and be mindful

4. Don't eat dead food

5. Eat plenty of produce, half of you diet should be veg's and fruit

6. Eat healthy fats in moderation and avoid saturated and trans fats

7. Eat less meat and make it lean

8. Don't drink you calories

9. Don't skip meals

10. Embrace change

I highlighted the rules which I particularly related to and found to be good new rules to try to religiously  follow as much as possible without being a zealot. 

Limping into my 60s

 

It's a typical rainy Vancouver day in November.  Every Sunday, my wife and I use to run Stanley Park's seawall, about 10kms.  Now, she runs the park while I try walking 3-4 kms pending how well I feel and how far I can endure.  The numbness and weakness has returned and my GP recommended intervals of  walking 1km then resting 5 minutes.  haha, 12 mins of slow walking with a 5 minute walk break intervals, walk shuffle is what it's come to.  Well, I am thankful  I can get out and at least do that, even enjoying the dreary dark and wet Vancouver weather.  So I limp into my 60s, struggling to walk but at least I'm walking.  I still hold out hope that I will eventually walk around the full seawall again.  

Getting Healthy is MY ONLY JOB - Time to reset

I just turned 60.  OMG, I'm officially an old fart.  What I didn't expect as I hit that milestone was that I'd be severally injured and disabled by that time.  I've always been very healthy and taken care of myself.  Where did that come from? Why did life throw such a curve ball? 

I've been suffering chronic back pain for a couple of years now.  Hard to believe it's been that long already.  I've had back surgery 9 months ago and been trying to recover and get back to good health.  It's been emotionally up and down for the last two years due to this injury but I focus on doing what I can.  Just like this pandemic we're in, this back injury was a huge shock to me.  Suddenly all my plans changed, can't travel, can't exercise, can't run, can't hike, can't do adventures....If I think about it too much (I do often), it gets me down and depression sets in.  The recovery hasn't gone as planned.  I was improving but the numbness and chronic pain seems to have returned to my dismay.

I do feel fortunate that I am somewhat mobile although my endurance is crap.  I can do some light exercises like biking, walking and swimming.  My doc and PT advise me to give up running, hiking and racing.  That really saddened me.   Although I was not great at it, I loved running, I loved hiking, I loved adventure, I loved the big outdoors, I loved racing.  I loved the training, setting goals, pushing myself to new levels, I even took pride in all the sacrifices to get to the start line. Racing even scared me to a large degree.  Testing your body to do things that are hard to do and race against others.  On the day of the race, seeing if all the training sacrifices paid off.   It made me feel alive!

I am on work leave hoping to get back to work so I can properly finish off my career.  While on leave, my goal has always been to get healthy again so I can resume "life".  I am working with a good medical team to help me get there.  However, I need to do the "heavy lifting" to get back to health.    To do that, I needed to resolve my lower back chronic pain as much as I could personally do.   One of the recommendations my doc told me was to lose some weight.  Now that it's fall, it's going to be even harder to lose weight, I always put on 10-15 lbs every fall. In the spring/summer, I exercise so much that I always lose that weight.

I need to make Getting Healthy, my job.  I need to really focus on my diet.  I need to be smarter with my light exercises, I need to get better sleep, I need to get better educated, to be smarter, I need to make getting healthy my job.  Even though I'm a couple of years into this journey already, as part of helping my mental health, I will journal and blog  my journey.  

My new Health Office:

Racing through '14

I set a lot of goals this year.  In February, I ran the Yeti race, a snow shoe race on Cypress Mtn.  In March I participated in an exhausting  Adventure Race which took me close to 5 hours to complete.  I finished 2 of 5 Trail Races.  I also completed two long Road Bike races, one that was 160km Fondo race, that took me close to 7 hours to complete. 

Last year as the riding season was ending, my riding buddy John came up with a suggestion to do a triathlon this year and it inspired me to tackle that goal.  I've always admired anyone who could do them.  The one issue I had was that I could not swim (more than 10 meters anyways) and even worse, I was very afraid of the deep end.   Even so, I liked that goal so I registered for adult swim lessons last fall.  Since then, I've taking swim lessons 2 times a week and so far, I taken some 100ish swim classes. Imagine to learn to blow bubbles and do the pencil swim at 52, not a pretty sight at all.  What's more, it took me more than 60 classes to get out of beginners level...augh!  It took me that long to get over my sheer fear of the deep end...omg.  It's a phobia that I still have to manage.  I knew it would be a stretch as I wasn't quite ready, but I signed up for the UBC Triathlon in July, all be it a short one.  The swim portion 400m with a max time of 20mins.  Till the week before the tri, I could not swim 50m continuously without resting at the end of each length.  The pool I learned in was 25m.  When the event came, I saw the 50m pool and freaked out. I literally was the last person in the event (only 38 in the short tri).  On my 4th lap, I tired and panicked  a bit and mid-length I switch to  the back crawl till I could catch my wind and recovered and then switched back to the front crawl.   I finished the swim without drowning (hurray!)  and even passed a few people.  On the bike I ripped it and even from the way back of the pack, I just killed it,  I managed to catch up pass 12 people on such a short course and then on the run I passed 2.  My wife mentioned that many of those students don't have carbon bikes.....yup, but I'm not 20 either! so I figure a fair trade.  I finished 2nd in my age category...ok there were only 3 of us, but overall, I finished 22 of 38 even though I was last to start.

Next, I registered for the Mec Tri, Sprint Distance, in August. A 750m swim, 20k bike and 5k run.  I chose this Tri as it  was an indoor swim,  but even so,  I needed to complete some 30 laps.  Still a big challenge for me.   As the event came, I felt a fair amount of nervousness but I did it, and did it all front crawl.  So I completed my first Sprint Tri.   Now I'm focused on my first Open Water Tri, a Sprint Tri on Cultus Lake.  Wish me luck!

Setting 2014 Goals

Reflecting back on 2013, the big goal was getting into road cycling.  I bought a road bike in April and then cycled over 5100 km this year, the main event riding the STP (Seattle to Portland) some 340kms over 2 days.   Although most of the 5100 kms I road this year were road cycling,  my cycling does include weekly mountain biking with my buddy Pete.  I love the technical riding and excitement of mtg, although I don't like the crashes that you experience when mtb.  This year, I also got into trail running.  I had to pretty much give up road running, at least for now.  I haven't run a marathon or half for a while as my running injury seems to persist when I road run (I don't think my body can take all the repetitive pounding, hour after hour needed for distance running).  The positive thing is that I'm able to trail run, it seems to be much easier on my body and trail running doesn't aggrevate my injury.  I'm glad I found trail running.  I'm loving being in the forest and being connected to nature.  Best part, I'm only minutes away from the trails.

Looking ahead to 2014, I've  set some goals.  I've signed up for 5 trail run  races  with 5 Peaks, about a race a month.  I also will ride 2-3 big road bike races 100 - 160 km per race (Valley Fondo one of them).  I'm also planning one or two mountain bike races.  lets see.   And the big stretch goal in 14 is possibly doing a triathlon.  One problem: I can't swim.  I started swim lessons from ground up, learning to blow bubbles, dunking my head under water and swimming in the deep end, what a fat dweeb I am.  I completed two beginner classes (16 lessons so far), and starting my third beginner swim class in January.  In swimming, I facing my fear of the deep end and somewhat getting over my automatic panic attacks when I'm in the deep end.  I'm not sure why I even want to do a triathlon? Not sure but I'm making progress learning to swim and  I'm starting to swim laps.  I figure, I'll need to swim about 20 laps in about 20 mins to do a short sprint triathlon.  That would be cool but I'm realizing it'll be a big stretch for this year.  We'll just have to see how the year unfolds.

All the best in your fitness endeavours.   No fear.