Today is Friday, and that means it’s time for a fit check. How is today’s fit?
I’m on the last stretch of my daily walk and I am going to absolutely crush this last hill. But let’s back up a bit and put things into context.
For my health, and now to meet some additional goals, I take a walk, almost every day. It is fortunate, given this, that the town I live in has many sidewalks and footpaths. My daily walk is a round trip, starting at a section of one of those footpaths that runs behind my home. This path snakes between various neighborhoods opposite a forested area complete with streams, whose outer edge is defined by a local arterial road. This path connects to some others, which I suppose means it has no end, but there is a technical end, one which is also an opportunity to make my trip into an actual loop. At not quite two miles from my starting point, the footpath has an underpass, the topside is a road, barely noticeable to drivers as a bridge. On the other side of the path is a standard, street level sidewalk, and if I continued on, it would go down some familiar neighborhood streets that would eventually bring me home. But I prefer, once I’ve made it to the underpass, to stay in the relative calm and serenity of the path by making an about face and heading back the way I came. Small changes in elevation, proximity to the streams, and tree cover makes for differing qualities in air, temperature, and pressure. There is a big clearing that I pass through, it’s a familiar spot, and I sometimes wonder if it was one of the places that I would occasionally gather with friends in the summers of high school, but that was lifetimes ago and I don’t quite remember. These days, to me it is about the halfway of the halfway, either the first or last quarter of my trek, depending on which side of it I am on.
From previous walks and a few too many meandering thinks without substantive geographic reviews, I’ve surmised that somewhere on this stretch, which lies between a foot bridge and a steep hill, is about one mile out from my home. The overall is just shy of four miles, so logically, the underpass flip must be slightly more shy of two, so if I bisect one half and push out just a little further than exactly, that must be right around one, or at least that’s how I’ve figured it, and the little map on my fitness app corroborates well enough. I’ve been training to start running again. Training seems to formal for how I’m going about it, I have no stop watch and as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t actually know how far this is. But it seems about right, and a mile would be too long anyway right now, but this seems well enough for the current needs. But for my training and in my expectations, I imagine this about the best place to spool my legs up to sometimes take my walk to a run, or at least as close to what a run looks like in my current state. On this side of the leg, the hill I mentioned is just up ahead. I figured, lacking in specifics though I am, that this is probably enough lead for me to warm up my stiff joints and aging muscles to really give that hill a go. It’s also the biggest hill, I think, and something about starting with this challenge right away also feels right.
It’s the first few yards that feel the worst. I called my joints stiff, and that is the common euphemism, but it doesn’t quite capture the reality. My ankles feel like stuck pivots on an old control arm – years of paradoxically overworking and under-using have stiffened the rubber gaskets, a few too many cycles of rain and shine have rusted and swollen the housing, and the Teflon washers must of cracked away in years past, ‘cause they just don’t glide like they used to. It’s rough, enough so that at the start of each of these, I wonder if I should even continue, lest I risk greater injury, but I press on and by the time I reach the bottom of the hill, I’ve started to find my stride. And I charge it.
In my days in the Air Force, I was fortunate enough to receive a few different and key tips regarding exercise. I find that I’ve grown quite cross with my younger self for not so diligently adhering to the best of them, but I suppose there’s no changing that now. One of my favorites was the least formal, not something I read in a book or was instructed on from a coach or medical professional, but from a colleague. A boss, really, one of the Sergeants in my unit while I was an Airman, though I don’t recall being in his direct chain of command. He said, “Whenever you get the chance, always charge the uphills and ride the downhills”. I’ll never forget that and though I can’t fully explain it, I know that when I’ve put this idea into practice, it has always served me well. And so as I shake the rust out of my ankles, I feel myself preparing to charge that uphill. I try to pin my shoulders back, reducing that motion can conserve energy, but if you do it too much you might also cut off momentum. A few more rules from then, likely nonsense of course, but they too have served me well. Try to flatten out the hands a bit, so they glide through the air on the way forward and scoop it out on the trip back, like the cut-and-paddle in a freestyle stroke. My knees start to rise higher, faster, longer, and my stride lengthens, then shortens for the staccato bursts required to pull up this incline. My thighs start to burn and my lungs just can’t fill enough without feeling like they’ll burst, and I am on this hill, halfway up it, and it hurts, and a euphoria takes over me as the angle steepens and I drop my head and rise my elbows to make room for more air, and I fly, the wind that was pushing me is now carrying me, and I crest that hill.
And it feels exhilarating.
In all of my previous runs, I’ve yet to make it much past this crest before having to slow to a walk, and today is no different. It doesn’t help that the wind shifts again at the top. At the crest is a turnabout that forms the end of a quiet neighborhood street, and in midday, while most people are at work, the wind is free to wash across street in cool, clean smelling notes, calling me to just stop here, enjoy the nice day, and walk the rest of the way. I’ve done enough. Mercifully, the street is quite narrow, even with the turnabout, and the other side comes about quick enough that the feeling to stay can’t grab hold. On the other side , the path continues and the hill runs back downward, past a small children’s park, a footbridge, and another neighborhood street, this one connecting through. The stream is back, and its here that I often spot a big, funny Blue Heron, strutting through the waters. There are no more streets between me and home, but many additional landmarks significant to my journey. More foot bridges, another children’s park, a “Y” that could lead me to a different neighborhood, if ever I felt the urge to explore. The land here is a little lower, and the stream is both a little nearer and a little higher. The foliage is full here, green on all sides. The air is heavy and thick, more a potato leak than a crisp consomme. I try to push my running stretches as far as I can, picking out points of interest as markers to strive for. Today, I make it past the park and all the way to the big rock, but just barely. Happy still, I don’t mind the strange looks thrown my way as I huff and wheeze through another walking stretch. There are two more hills to go.
I want to stretch out these rests as much as I can, but I also want to hit as many hills as hard as I can, as both challenges are important to my progress. My goals are many, and some are quite far off, like being able to make this one mile run without needing to walk or take breaks, and that I’d like to do that by the end of this year. With each extended stretch and each hard pressed hill I get closer, and I’ve finally come to see this as a goal that I might just accomplish, which would sure be something. I have taken the tallest hill already, now comes the steepest. Two footbridges, and I like to start at the end of the first, as the foot of the upcoming hill lies at the start of the second. By this point in my run, I’ve shaken off enough of the rust that I’m starting to glide. I’m also starting to flag a bit, as my thighs are now burning even when I shift back to a walk, and they’ll be sluggish soon, too filled with sludgy wet concrete feel of lactic acid. My lungs are bursting, and my heart is in overdrive, just trying to keep myself going, one foot after the other. But I want this, goddamn do I want this, and I push on, over the bridge and up the hill and I am exploding. The joys of being a bomb.
The hill is short but it sure makes up for it in height. Like that first hill, I always plan to crest it and keep pushing, but I usually top out just beyond its top. My thighs still hurt, but who could hear them over the screaming of my lungs. I am so far past sweaty, and in the sticky churn of this air, I am absolutely dripping, soaked through all of my clothes, soaked to the bone, even my shoes are sopping, and there’s one more hill, just up ahead. I reassure myself that I wouldn’t have made it without a slowdown anyway, and take the moment to recover as I can. There are a few bends ahead and then it’s the last hill, a compound hill – two humps with a little dip in the middle. I’ve picked it out already, just around one of those bends is a tree, not so different from the other trees but nonetheless sticks out, distinct, easy to keep track of, and that’s where I am going to begin my final attack. Better rest up before I get there, ‘cause I get there, I am gunna get it.
Here at the tree, my legs loosened again, shoulders back again, elbows pointed, chest out, stride open, I’m going for it.
I am on the last stretch of my daily walk, now turned run, and I am going to absolutely crush this last hill.
I’ve not much left, so might as well spend it all! I can hear myself now, over my earbuds, over the wind and birds, over the honks and whirs from the street through the thinning trees, I can hear my own self and my labored breaths and groans, giving it all to take this last hill and I feel a happiness and relief, one I have known and forgotten, and when I crest this final hill, once again planning and once again failing to keep stride, but not in anger or disappointment, I crest it in joy for having done what I have done. And I am happy. My run gives way before I can ask it and I slow, this time way down, now leisurely crossing the lawn and easing back up the steps to my home.
Today is Friday, July 18th 2025, and The Fit is good.
~Aaron