Tag Archives: fitness

Skywatch Friday – Fitter and Fatter in 2018 Edition

Turnpike Bridge-Edit - Topaz Studio

This is part of the Liberty trail, paralleling the Creek Turnpike for miles and miles.

It has been hot and humid here lately. Since I quit running I’ve been trying to replace the calories I spent in running with other things like bicycling. I love biking but it burns a fraction of the calories that running does for a given amount of time. I’ve been also taking stand up paddleboard classes and weight lifting classes. So far it is not working too well. Oh I am getting stronger alright and more fit but fatter as well by a slow an inexorable amount. I am thinking that I might have to start the most  effective exercise of all.

Bicycle Topaz Studio 43171936422_6651203752_o-Edit

We are getting rain and lots of sun, so everything is still lush.

Pushaways, you know where you push away from the table and eat less. Eating less is the most effective weight loss tool there is. Running only burns about 150 calories per mile or the calories in one slice of cheese or one beer. I’m trying to prove the first doctor I went to see wrong. She said, you know, for you, weight loss is an option. I’ve seen a million of you guys. You get injured, you quit running, and then get really fat, and can’t do anything. Believe or not, I loved it. I didn’t love it so much that I went back for more abuse (that I paid her for). I  got another doctor. He told me my “tread was think.” So I just quit running. I walk, bike, elliptical machines, weight lifting classes, and walk a lot.

20180705-160410-1

I rode by this freshly mowed pasture, where often I see horses and I got a bad allergy attack. Everything was hurting especially my eyes. So I turned around and went back home. Everything turned out okay. Strange.

Biking has turned into my first love though. I love exploring and going different places and taking pictures.

How about you? What is going on with you?

I’m linking with Skywatch Friday

Our World – Thoughts on a Turkey Mountain Ramble

Turkey Mountain Barbed Wire_

I have run by this a bunch of times and never noticed it. A big trunk with several wraps of barbed wire. Turkey Mountain used to have farms on it and was an active oilfield back in the day.

Sunday morning I went for a walk on Turkey Mountain here in Tulsa. There was a running group that was leaving at 8 am but I didn’t join them. I have not run since I injured myself during the Route 66 Half Marathon in November. Since then I have been walking, cycling, rowing, walking, elliptical machining and a lot of resistance training. I still don’t feel like I should be running. My knees are popping a lot and I don’t know if I will ever run again. (sniff??)

Turkey Mountain Wire fence

This was a wire fence, almost decorative starting from the tree in the first pic. In fact, if you go back and look at the first pic you will see that it is this fence that is imprinted in the tree trunk! It makes me wonder if there was a house here at one time. Turkey Mountain has a history, and a lot of ghosts. I can sense the ghosts when I run here at twilight. Again something I never saw before. Maybe walking and hiking will give me a new perspective on things?

So I have been thinking about why I started running in the first place. I started running a little late in life. I am not a natural athlete.  I was 37 years old and had found out that my cholesterol was sky high and my cholesterol ratio was terrible. The exercise guy I consulted said that running was the most bang for the buck. So I started running and really never stopped. I entered races and eventually ran a couple of marathons and a whole bunch of half marathon and 15 to 25k races and countless 5 to 10K’s. I loved the hopeless feeling of being 5 miles from the finish and exhausted and then somehow making it to the finish. I didn’t care that I finished 57th out of 62 in my age group. Finishing was the goal, and I always finished, one way or the other.

Turkey Mountain pumpjack base

A base for an oil well pumpjack from way back. There was a geocache here that I never could find and it is no longer active.

So that was then, and this is now. I can see me hiking instead of running the trails. I can see my biking a lot more. If you can’t do what you want, do what you can. So my doctor says “… your tread is running a little thin.” So I am going to save my tread for hiking and maybe the occasional trotting 5K. I’ll be on my bicycle a lot more and in the gym a lot more. Taking care of my tread.

Turkey Mountain Tree

I collect trees. Here is one on Turkey Mountain. It seems a little here and there and perhaps unstable? Do you know unstable trees? Do they make you nervous? This one makes me nervous.

I can deal with it. Circumstances change, you have to change with them. My goal is to be as active as I can for as long as I can, however I can.

DSCN9055

Turkey Mountain is an urban wilderness and is maintained mainly by volunteer labor. It is not groomed like a city park. The trails are kept clear. Many of them by people showing up with their hand saws and power saws and cleaning things up on their own initiative. The cuttings are tossed to the side. They are not hauled off. So the woods show the cumulative effect of windstorms, ice storms, and tornadoes. We vounteers pick up the trash but leave the organic material to rot on its own. It works. No way could anybody afford to come clean everything up. The people who love Turkey Mountain don’t want them to do so. I’ve had friends say, “It is so icky up there, why don’t they clean it up.” And I would never tell them but my thought is, “Turkey Mountain is not for you maybe?”

The ironic thing is that all this running didn’t do crap for my cholesterol levels. It lowered it by about 10%. Now drugs, drugs knocked my LDL’s in the butt. At $7.50 for a month’s worth, I am sticking with that. Of course, with statin drugs, deaths from heart attacks are cut but total mortality doesn’t change!! Huh!! Yep, true fact. I am going to continue taking them anyway. In the long term, the mortality rate is 100%!! You can’t argue with that.

What about you? Are you having any changes lately?

I’m linking with Our World Tuesday