Week 1 - Time to Start Building on Fitness

Monday, 10th April 2017, the day after the golf, I expected my legs to be very sore and unable to walk properly. This usually happens after doing exercise after a long break, and over a 5 hours slog around a hilly golf course is a lot for me. Anyway, my legs felt fine, so I decided to go for a 2 mile walk with a bag in hand carrying my camera & camcorder and taking a few photos along the way.

The following day I increased the distance slightly, and on the third day I managed 3 miles with 3 x 100 steps jogging downhill.

On Thursday 13th, I had to go make a visit to another local town, but I did make a point of including a 2.5 mile stiff walk, although done in two parts. I know I was making slow progress, but the main thing was I had kept making an effort to do a little every day and not build up too quickly, like I had done in the past.

Another thing I have learned from the past, is before doing any exercise, spend a few minutes to warm up and loosen your muscles. The years I ran many miles a week, I would always spend at least 5 minutes warming up beforehand, and injuries never seemed to be a worry. However, I did have a habit of looking too much around me and on many occasions was prone to go over on my ankle. Yet, when you are young and fit it only takes a few weeks to get over a sprained ankle. Many years later I forgot about warming up, and this was probably the reason why my training would come to an abrupt stop, caused by a injury. No matter how bad the injury, it was always enough to make me loose my confidence and enthusiasm to keep going.

Back to my exercise. Come Friday, and after only walking the previous day, I felt good. A hot shower, followed by a few minutes stretching and off I set. By now my walk from home has become repetitive, but it's not a bad thing. I walk about 0.4 miles to the entrance to a glen. I follow the footpath down through the trees to the river, then cross a footbridge over the river and follow a loop of 0.6 miles, firstly along one side of the glen, then over the river and back along the other side.

The footbridge across the river

There are 3 footpath, all mainly running parallel with the river - by the way, when I say river, it is only a small river, but it is very scenic. The lowest path runs along the side of the river, the other two are elevated above the river. I follow the higher ones. This makes it a slightly longer and hillier route, and makes me feel I am doing a slightly tougher workout.

The 3 paths along the glen with the river below

I set off walking up the hilly path, thinking how many laps today. On reaching the highest point I decided to jog all the way to the bottom. This was slightly longer than my previous jogs and was about 160 steps. After 3 laps I decided I would do another one, before walking back out of the glen and home. The total time was just under 45 minutes, and after warming down, I felt I had achieved something.

The following day was Saturday and I reverted to 3 laps with 160 step downhill jogs plus an extra smaller lap walking. I was minus my bag and camcorder, but I did still take my small camera in hand, and stopped to take a few photos of a mess someone deliberately caused by throwing 100's of paper bowls into the river and on the grass at a few different places. I hate when people have no respect for their surroundings and try to stop others from enjoying themselves. Thank God, that apart from a small car park at one end, there is no access for people to fly-tip on the footpaths.

Lots of dumped paper bowls by the small waterfall

So to the end of my first week of fitness. If you are a seasoned athlete and you have read this far, you probably think "what's all the fuss about, that sounded like nothing"; if you are as unfit and as overweight as I am, you'll probably say "I feel knackered after reading that, I need to sit down". The main thing is anything, no matter how little it is, is better than nothing, and everything always starts with one small action.

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