Flexibility

First, I must disappoint some of my readers, who are thinking I'm going to be talking about some position for having sex that I've discovered during long years of research and meditation during workouts. Sorry.

Nor have I made any breakthroughs in my own flexibility. My yoga teacher has been very kind not to describe me as a heap of animated semi-articulated bricks, but it would be the truth. Touching my toes happens more often now, but it still makes makes my day. I forget the name of a pose we were supposed to do on Wed at yoga, but I took one look and bailed. I even did a variation of pigeon, normally one of my fave poses, to take it easier on my knee.

I refer to my flexibility in adapting the workout plan depending on how I'm feeling at the moment. Except there isn't a plan these days, other than what comes to me as I get into the pool, or put my running shoes on. And really, it's not quite as loose as "how I'm feeling" which with many people is an excuse to blow off the workout and raid the stash of chocolate bars. So I suppose I should change the title to something but I'm not going to. It's all the way up there, and I'm working on down here now. So much for flexibility.

Normally Saturdays are my rest days. We like to get a slow start to the day with coffee and the papers. But it turns out some snow blew in late Thursday night and Friday morning. The roads were a mess. As well, I'd had a prolo shot on Thursday, and my knee wasn't very happy about it all day. So much for Thursday spin class. Even Friday it wasn't feeling up to coping with the world, so I took it easy and hung out at home. Some days there are real advantages to a semi-retired lifestyle.

I've been trying to work on my core strength and have been doing pretty good. Tuesday was the day on the agenda for that, but when a sweet young cutie invites you to come swimming and give her tips, it's hard to say no. And I didn't. But when I got home and ate, I didn't much feel like doing anything. Thursday after the shots I sure didn't feel like doing anything that involved making my knee work hard. Friday I was just lazy.

So, I can hear the chorus, what did you do on Saturday to banish the laziness? Lots of driving for one thing, dropping Linda off at yoga in the deep south east, then driving all the way to Crowfoot in the far north west to pick up something, then back to get Linda, then to the library to drop off and pick up stuff.

Shortly after that I held in my gut, clenched the butt, and started the core workout. Grrrrr. It went pretty well. Plank and push ups included. No side plank yet. Then running. It's only -5 C (23 F) and sunny, so pretty nice. Started easy, since I haven't run for about a week. The first K was a lot of bodily complaints. This is normal and the only ones I'm paying attention to is my knee. It took about a K to warm up and find a stride, and things went really well. For a while I had a knee issue, sort of on the inside, underneath the bottom of the knee cap. Not painful, but enough to notice. Yeah, I know, how accurate and scientific. A few steps walking and shaking it a bit, and a stretch seemed to help. I changed my stride a bit, and it was fine for the rest of the run. I suppose if someone had a gun to my head I could have gone longer, but I didn't really want to.

This was an easy 30 minutes, mainly so my legs don't forget what few running skills I already have. The pace was easy enough I could have breathed through my nose for the whole thing. The actual cardio is coming from swimming these days. After a bit of stretching afterward, I was snoreonerated by Amelia the cat. Naps are nice.