new muscles, hey you look different and the lady at the park.

New Muscles:

Here are some muscles I’ve recently discovered on my body:

The first being the Rectus Femoris. I noticed it yesterday while I was walking my dogs. I put my hands on upper portion of my thigh and BAM there is was working away. The second muscle is the Latissimus Dorsi.  This happy little discovery was this morning while I was doing the 3 minute walking portion of the c25k (week three day two). I put my hands on my upper back and lo and behold there were my two new friends letting me know that they were getting bigger, stronger and happy to be making an appearance. I am now starting to notice physical changes happening to my body. My back is definately smaller. Face thinner and I’m pretty sure my belly is shrinking at least a tiny bit. I took a side shot (naked) of myself back in Late December and then retook the same pose today. There is a difference that even I can’t deny:

December 29th, 2009

February 16th, 2010

So there you have it folks…my belly in all it’s glory. It may not look like much something is better than nothing!.The changes are coming and after all this hard work it’s nice to finally notice them.

The lady in the park:

My run wasn’t as enjoyable as I had hoped for. Each 3 minute run I was pretty damn tempted to give up and walk. I didn’t. I wanted too. Oh man how I wanted too. It felt like 3 minutes was taking forever. I pretty sure I swore at my podcast for secretly forcing me to run longer than 3 minutes (I feel a conspiracy theory in the making). In the end I did finish without stopping. I was feeling a little disappointed at how difficult this particular run turned out. As I was doing the 5 minute cool down I saw an elderly woman walking her two dogs. She stopped me and in the sweetest grandmotherly voice warned me about the dog poop that was on the sidewalk  up ahead (I of course had  taken notice the first time around). She asked me why someone wouldn’t clean up after their dog, to which I had no answer. She then said (not to me but to non poop picker upper) “This is your park. You should take care of it. If you don’t it won’t be here anymore”…

As we part ways I start thinking about what she said.

I was frustrated at the way my body was reacting to having to work hard just to run 3 minutes. But in reality I hadn’t been taking care of my “park” very well over the last 30 years. I let it go just thinking that it would take care of itself. You can’t imagine a beautiful garden and then assume it will magically  grow on it’s own without putting work into. I can’t just close my eyes, think about a 5k and then get up and do it. It’s a physical impossibility right now (unless a bear was chasing me but I’m pretty sure the bear would win). What I can do today is run 3 minutes. It’s more than I was doing just 7 short weeks ago.  7 weeks from now I might be getting ready to pick a 5k (but please don’t hold me to that just yet).

7 weeks ago I closed my eyes and began to imagine what my park might look like and today this is what I did to get closer to that reality:

• Completed week three day two of c25k (22 minutes)
• Walked the dogs (30 minutes)
• Ate a good breakfast
• Walked up a total of 6 flights of stairs
• Walked on my lunch break
• Bought the latest issue of “Clean Eating”
• Consuming water
• Blogged about all of the above.

What are you doing to take care of your park today?