Last week was a better week for me. After a few weeks of feeling lazy and lacking direction, I made a concerted effort to re-examine my goals and get myself back on track. As a result I’ve exercised every day, not quite so intensely as previously but it’s a step in the right direction

Walking

One of my biggest joys this week was joining in with blogger friend Sue’s Fly into July steps challenge. The challenge has pushed me to get out and walk, even on the cold, wintry days, when I didn’t feel like it. A highlight has been watching  the other team members log their steps each day.  We have an amazing team! We are in our senior years, but we are out there getting our exercise done, and racking up those steps.

Walking has been my main priority this week, as I try to increase my distances and get them back to where they were pre-injury. I’ve walked every day for at least 5k with two longer walks of 10k.  Two of my walks have been on the O’Keefe Rail Trail, one of my favourite places to walk or ride.

One of my most looked forward to cardio sessions is hill intervals on the hill at our front gate. I haven’t done them for a couple of months, but managed to fit in two sessions during the past week, which made me remember why I enjoy them so much. These sessions were only for 30 minutes, but they were of quite high intensity. The hill is short and sharp, at 80 metres, so is perfect for intervals. The session involves walking as fast as I can possibly manage to the top and slower walking back down to the bottom. In the days before the knee injury I would walk really fast up the hill and run to the bottom. But the intensity can definitely be maintained by walking instead of running. Walking up and down this hill, over and over, for 30 mins, is a really intense workout with lots of huff and puff. The plan is to gradually increase the time up to one hour.

Gym

Gym has been the usual three strength training sessions in the week, but I’ve been more intentional about them. I’ve mentioned before that I love having a home gym, but one of the downsides is that it’s easy to get away with not working hard. There is nobody there to look sideways at you, and make you feel guilty. Even though I’m working hard again, my weights aren’t necessarily heavy. It’s taken a while to get my head around this, but I think the penny has finally dropped. It was all well and good when I was younger to use really heavy weights and I did enjoy that type of weight training. I now understand that heavy weights are not essential to a weight training program, especially now that I’m getting older. It is possible to get a good workout with lighter weights. My weight training sessions are now revolving around using slightly lighter weights, but doing more repetitions. Lifting weights this way seems to have freshened up my attitude and I’m now looking forward to every session.

Cycling

I haven’t been out on the bike for a while, mainly because the weather has been so cold, wet and windy. In previous years that wouldn’t have bothered me, but these days, I prefer to be a bit kinder to myself and do what feels good. As much as I do love cycling, it doesn’t feel good on a freezing cold, wet or windy day.

I’ve done two RPM classes in the gym, which I love and which are as intense as you want to make them, using speed and climbing level. There are plenty of RPM classes on YouTube to use for these workouts

How is your exercise plan going? I’d love to hear what you are doing to stay fit and healthy, and promise to reply to all comments made.

 

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