Monday, June 16, 2008

Getting Too Old For This

[The Gov]

Yesterday I realized that my intermittent sense of being a stiff, sore, helpless, bent-over, fat little old man who could barely and painfully hold his obese body upright, came only in the mornings. It is not brought on by tiredness from bicycling, but is the stiffness brought on by inactivity, and particularly by the stiffness of sleeping with my back cold. Prolonged exercise makes me feel fine, even bicycling in cold and rain. I am at last becoming slightly stronger and developing the first hints of stamina.

This is great news. It means that I am not as nearly a cripple as I feared and felt. I am not way out of my depth in attempting this, I am not engaged in something clearly futile at which I cannot succeed. It also means I have a future as an early-elderly man in denial about aging. I can continue to do this, this year, and next year. I don't have to give up, go home, and take up bocce, golf, and television. I am still me.

Even so, it is not so long ago that bicycling only 75 kilometers in a day would have been a disappointment. Yesterday it was a success.

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