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Archive for the ‘exercise’ Category

The failure of resolutions to exercise

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, resolutions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 11, 2008| Leave a Comment »

Eleven days into the New Year and already the throng that appeared in the exercise room on January 2 has disappeared, leaving only the regulars. I can’t say I’m surprised; just looking at them, most people would have predicted that they would break their resolutions quickly.

You could see in their faces that they didn’t want to be there. The fact that they had screwed themselves up just to go to the gym could be seen in the wary way they approached the exercise machines, almost as if the machines were animals that would turn and savage them. There was a doggedness in the way they pushed the pedals around or plodded along the treadmills, and a twist to their features and a slump to their shoulders that showed their reluctances. And when they finished, they did not so much walk away as drag themselves, held up largely by their wills, looking faintly disgusted by their own sweat on the designer clothes they had bought for their efforts.

I’ve got back into shaped so many times in my life that I sympathized with them – I really did. The trouble with starting an exercise regime is that it’s at the start, when you really need the encouragement, that you feel the most discomfort. Later, it gets easier, but in the first few days after exercising, when your throat is dry and your legs feel deboned, when you think at the end that your whole body is about to burst out in the shakes, any relief seems far away. And if you haven’t been through the experience before, so that you know that your sense of humiliation will be slowly replaced by a sense of confidence, you don’t have very much to keep you going. I considered telling one or two of them that it gets easier, but I didn’t think they appreciate a stranger observing their difficulties.

Besides, they weren’t likely to stick around, as I said. Most of the people who suddenly appeared with the New Year were at least in their early thirties to mid-forties: Young enough to remember the resilience of youth, but old enough to have lost it if they hadn’t kept physically active. For some, it may well have been the first time their bodies hadn’t lived up to their expectations – a milestone of aging that’s uncomfortable for anyone.

Experienced or strongly motivated people might stick out the discomfort to win through to fitness. But, to do that, they would need an ability to take pleasure in using their muscles, and most of them manifestly couldn’t do that. They used iPods and magazines while they were exercising, but they got bored anyway. To them, the exercise bikes were a chore, somewhat more pleasant than housetraining a puppy, but not very much. Not being used to exercise, perhaps they didn’t even imagine that there might be some other form of exercise they might enjoy. All they could think of was that getting into shape was something that needed to be done, so they marched down the gym, braced for the failure that became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It seems to me that New Years’ Resolutions are a cruel custom, because they encourage people to try to make changes, while everything in our culture says that the likeliest outcome is failure. Having seen all the cartoons and jokes about breaking resolutions, people expect to fail to change their lives in January. Perpetuating such a vicious cycle seems a needless refinement of cruelty, especially when the average person has enough failures in their life.

For me, I don’t mind so much. Now, I can get on the exercise bike when I want to, instead of waiting in line while someone struggles through their self-appointed misery. But other people’s disappointment in themselves does seem a high price to pay for my convenience.

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Mobility is wasted on the able-bodied

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, injuries, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 1, 2007| Leave a Comment »

For much of the past week, I was on crutches because of a leg injury. It wasn’t the first time, and, unless I learn to regulate my exercise better, probably won’t be the last. But going from an active routine to a crippled one, even for a while, can be a major change in perspective.

To start with, your entire concept of the immediate space around you changes. The horizon that represents “far” diminishes – in my case for a day or two, to the front door of our townhouse (anything beyond the door briefly ceased to exist). Even a trip across the living room is undertaken only when absolutely necessary. If possible, you try to plan your movements so you can do two or three things at once, and save yourself effort. The effort, to say nothing of the pain, makes you want confine your movements only to the necessary ones. There’s no darting back for a book you forgot, either.

Your relation with those around you changes, too. When you are sufficiently injured to need crutches, you almost inevitably need some help, if only to help you carry some things – it is nearly impossible, for instance, to carry a cup of just-boiled tea when you’re on crutches without scalding yourself at some point. Some people might adjust quickly to be waiting on, and become imperious, flinging out orders at any point, but, for myself, I find myself resentful. I don’t like being dependent on anyone for little things, no matter how close I am to them emotionally. Being an active man, I’m used to doing for myself.

Anyway, there’s a psychological difference between asking someone to do you a favor, and asking them to do something because you either can’t or would have to go to go through considerable effort and discomfort. Or there is for me, anyway.
Standing up with crutches is always a minor crisis as you look for secure surfaces to help hoist you up. Then, once you’re on your feet, you have a moment of panic as you sway and start to position the crutches under your arms.

Once underway, your progress is like that of a sailing ship: slow and stately, and accompanied by lots of swaying and groans, sometimes from your crutches (if they’re wooden) and always from your body. The problem of navigation arises, too, with even the bent back corner of a throw rug or an object on the floor becoming a major obstacle.

Perhaps that’s why I always find myself singing sea chanteys when I’m on crutches – although “Blow the Man Down” can seem terribly prophetic at such times, particularly when someone wants past you in a hallway. You need more space than normally when on crutches, and most people don’t realize that even brushing past you can leave you scrambling to preserve your balance and your dignity.

When you finally reach your destination, the relief is immense. Should that destination be bed, the relief is even greater, since you know that you don’t have to worry about moving for another seven or eight hours.

How the permanently disabled endure, I don’t know. Just the effort of getting around is so great that work or any other daily activity becomes almost impossible. For me, the first sign of improvement is like the first week of spring, and throwing away the crutches and regaining the walking reflex (which you lose after a few day of advancing one step at a time) has something of the excitement of a first love. I have to restrain myself from throwing myself unrestrainedly into my usual routine, and only the thought of fishing out the crutches again restrains me.

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Recovering — again

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, running, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 2, 2007| Leave a Comment »

If there’s one thing I know, it’s recovering from a leg injury. In fact, sometimes, I think that recoveries define my life: I remember, for instance, the period I spent limping around after my knee crashed into a steeplechase hurdle, or the time I tripped on an uneven piece of sidewalk and lost long strips of skin from my leg and palms. For the past few weeks, it’s been a torn muscle – and a long and dreary time, it’s been, too. Frankly, the process, is getting repetitive – and my apparent inability to learn wearisome.

To start with, many of my injuries are due to strain. Although I haven’t raced for years, I still tend to push too hard and fast when I don’t have the energy. A denial of middle-age, perhaps? Or, more likely, I’m so much in the habit of training that I drag myself out for exercise even when I shouldn’t. I don’t think it’s a residue of macho – at least, I hope I’m not that shallow.

Then there’s the question of which injury actually deserves rest. Some injuries, I know, disappear if I do more stretching and ease up a little. For others, that’s the worst thing I can do. But knowing which is which is almost impossible. So, I have the choice of either gambling or resting just in case, neither of which appeals.

And if the original injury isn’t enough, a few days of limping around, without or without crutches or a cane, often produces collateral damage in the other leg as I try to keep my weight off the injured one. That can go on for two or three rounds, long after the original injury is healed.

Meanwhile, I’m sticking close to home and rapidly spiralling down into cabin-fever. It’s one thing, I find, to stay at home out of choice, and entirely another to be confined there. Moreover, if there’s one thing I hate more than being subservient, it’s being waited on, even when doing things myself take twice as long. And, while in theory, spending time reading, watching DVDs and playing computer games sounds like a leisurely break from my regular routine, none of these activities are so enticing when I’m using them to fill up time rather than relax.

The only good thing about this enforced inactivity is that escaping it gives me a good incentive to start my comeback. I need all the help I can get, too, because the first few days of returning to exercise make me feel decrepit. But if I can endure the first few days, exercising slowly gets easier (although, more than once, the thought that maybe I’m getting too old for all this crosses my mind). If I persist, I know that I’ll soon be enjoying the benefits of heavy exercise. But at the start of the process – where I am now – I feel a sort of constant low-grade irritation at just about everything.

The worst thing is, I don’t really know how to break out of this cycle of recoveries and crashes. Paying more attention to my physical state is probably key, but one of the disadvantages of being a life-long heavy exerciser is that you get used to taking a high level of fitness and health for granted. For over fifteen months, I have been being careful – but one moment of carelessness, and I was back in the cycle.

If this is what growing old is like, I’m tempted to say, I don’t want any part of it. The only trouble is, I’m already too late for the alterantive of dying young. As for leaving a beautiful corpse — well, that was never an option in my case, anyway.

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The courage of the early morning

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, health, Personal, running, sports, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on October 3, 2007| Leave a Comment »

The Courage of the Early Morning is the name of the biography of World War I flying ace Billy Bishop that was written by his son. It refers to the characteristics needed to get up in the dark and cold and risk your life after too little sleep. It’s also a phrase that I like to apply to going out for a morning run in the damp and darkness of fall and winter.

Admittedly, I am not facing planes that are waiting with machine guns to knock me down, although in the dark, cars and half-awake drivers aren’t a bad substitute sometimes. Still, I like to think there’s the same sense of going against the inclinations of comfort in order to do something difficult. And, if I’m honest, there’s also a sense of perverse satisfaction in believing that I’m the sort of person who wouldn’t make a completely hedonistic choice.

This bit of self-dramatization (because that’s what it is) dates back to my days of playing soccer and rugby when I was growing up. When going to practice or play and hearing someone voice a variation of “Sooner you than me,” I used to like to think that I was tough enough not to let bad weather discourage me. Of course, in reality, I had all the toughness of boiled spinach, but adolescents do need some shred of self-assurance to cling to. And, rather than admit myself a hypocrite, after the first tackle that left me sliding through the mud, I soon found myself taking a grim satisfaction in my ability to adapt to a condition that others still shied away from. It was a good way to score, too, because those who weren’t muddy themselves would often avoid me as someone who was slightly crazed.

Something of that same insanity persists in me to this day. When I leave the warmth of the bed and stumble outside into the wet and cold of autumn, I reflect that hundreds of people around me wouldn’t consider doing what I am, and then I don’t feel so miserable. Except on the coldest days of the year, the satisfaction lingers enough for me to fall into a rhythm and to warm myself with the exertion, so that the misery I’ve walled away disappears.

I suppose that something of the same train of thought drives people who take up dangerous sports or take chances. By comparision, my courage of the early morning is a very minor strain of the attitude at best. But middle-age, I find, needs its illusions as much as adolescence, and if it gets me out the door each morning, this is one to which I’ll cling.

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An unexpected compliment

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 25, 2007| Leave a Comment »

“It was a compliment,’ said Merry Brandybuck,’and so, of course, not true.”
– J. R. R. Tokien, The Lord of the Rings

When I use the exercise bike at the rec center, I mostly keep to myself. After years of running by myself, I just don’t think of exercising as a social occasion. So, I was surprised yesterday when a man in his early twenties approached me as I staggered off the bike and said, “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” I said warily, supposing he was about to criticize my technique. In my experience, everyone in the weight room is an expert, and few are reluctant to give you the benefit of their advice.

“You’re a warrior, man!” Then, as I was wondering whether I had heard him right, he said, “I see you running when I go to work. Then, at the end of the day, I see you here on the bike, working your guts out. You’re a warrior, a real warrior!”

I muttered something about just trying to get away from the computer after twelve hours, and sat down at a weight machine, bemused and – if I’m going to be honest – slightly pleased.

When I’m praised (or abused, for that matter), it’s usually for my writing. Most people don’t notice me physically, because I’m heavy-set for my height. I don’t look fit even when I am, and regardless of the fact that I’ve exercised daily since I was in elementary school. So, to be praised for my endurance (which I suppose was what he was saying) is unexpected. Yet, because I’m proud of my endurance, my vanity is tickled to have it acknowledged.

At the same time, I feel uneasy that it was noticed at all. Like many people who are observers, I’m mildly disconcerted to realize that someone has been observing me. I’m not altogether sure that I like it. It’s a bit of role-reversal that I didn’t expect.

Moreover, so far as a warrior-like appearance goes, I’m not exactly a rival to Ghengis Khan, or even someone civilized like Xenophon. Years of reading and keyboard work have taken their toll, and, if random people were asked to describe my face, chances are that many of them would use the word “mild.” Don’t get me wrong – I feel passionately about many causes and people, and I probably have more than my share of self-righteousness. But most of that doesn’t show on my face.

Finding a minute part of me inclined to preen at the compliment, I told myself that I wasn’t one of those middle-aged business executives that need to imagine themselves a samurai warrior to find some meaning in their lives.

Later, it would occur to me both how rare compliments are between hetrosexual men, and how I still don’t know how to receive a compliment from anyone with any dignity or grace.

But, at the time, I could only think:

A warrior?

Me?

Yeah, right.

Shaking my head, I bent to my repetitions with the weight machine.

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Running the summer out

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, exercise, running, summer, Uncategorized, Vancouver on August 30, 2007| Leave a Comment »

When I think, late summer is my favorite time of the year for a morning run. At 7AM, the air has the first tang of cold in the air, just enough to be bracing and not enough to be uncomfortable. Often, a hint of moisture is in the air, although not enough yet for a morning dew. And, unless the last rain is more than a week or two in the past, the air is fresher than usual, because more people are on holidays and aren’t driving to work.

Just as importantly, the area around Vancouver is at its greenest – literally, I mean, and not in the environmental sense. With the right mixture of rain and sun, like we had this year, the trees and bushes of the region have a green so rich it almost seems about to quiver.

It helps, too, that, by the end of the summer, I’m usually at my most fit. As a result, I’m running at a reasonable speed with minimal effort, full of the adrenalin-induced delusion that there is no work, domestic, or relationship problem that I can’t handle.

And, this year, the feeling of healthy is particularly strong and satisfying. For one thing, I’ve been cross-training since the first week of March this year, instead of the end of May, so I’m fitter than usual. More importantly, this time last year, the doctor was solemnly telling me that my running days were over, and I’ve triumphantly proved him wrong. Instead of feeling fat and out of sorts (and having to go to my high school reunion that way last year), I’ve regained a deep sense of optimism and more of a bounce in my stride.

Next week, I know, everything will change. With the passing of Labour Day, people will be back from holidays and the roads will be half-gridlocked again. Suddenly, people will feel that summer is over, and be angrily getting back to business. But, for the next few days, the golden time remains.

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Back to the exercise

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, health, Personal, running, swimming, Uncategorized on June 25, 2007| Leave a Comment »

After fourteen months of enforced inactivty, on March 7 I finally returned to a schedule of heavy exercise. Since I’ve been fanatical about exercise since I was in Grade Three, the return is a relief. It also has me appreciating anew all the benefits I’d almost forgot about.

Not wanting to place too much strain on my knees, at least until I discover their limits, I’ve developed two different exercise regimes. On one day, I run 5 kilometers and do 24 kilometers on a stationary bike at my local rec center. On alternate days, I run 7 kilometers and swim a kilometer. On both days, I do 100 situps, 50 pushups, 60 half-squats, 80 stretches with each leg, and roll a ball up the wall 60 times with each leg. Two or three times a week, I also walk between 1 and 4 kilometers. These routines amount to less than I did when I was running 9 miles a day, but they give me a good workout without straining my beleaguered knees unduly. They take up almost two hours a day, but, since I used to spend the same amount of time commuting before I started working from home, I have little trouble fitting them in around a productive work day.

The health benefits are obvious. I’ve dropped 10 kilograms and counting, and stopped worrying about the family tendency to hypertension. I need less sleep, which makes sense: I’m carrying around less weight and more of the reminder is muscle. I also eat less, seeming to metabolize the food I do eat more efficiently.

None of these are benefits to ignore. However, I’ve also rediscovered other benefits. The most obvious ones are work-related. I have greater powers of concentration when I work at the computer than I did three and a half months ago. Just as importantly, between swimming (which means breast stroke for me) and pushups, even the first twinges of carpal tunnel no longer happen to me.

And if I have a problem with wording or organizing an article, all I have to do is take a break and go exercise until I break into a heavy sweat for 10 or 15 minutes. By the time I’m in front of the computer again, I have either solved the problem or else found a couple of ways to approach it.

Alternatively, if I’m out of sorts, a bit of exercise restores my good nature and optimism. Some days, I use that restorative at the start of the day, so that I feel energized for my work. On other days, I save most of my exercise for when I’m finished working, so that I’m renergized when I finish working.

The only way that my routines haven’t worked out is in meeting people. Vancouver had a damp spring, so often I’ve been the lone occupant of the pool in our townhouse complex. Similarly, at the gym, most people are fixed on their own routines, and don’t communicate much with each other. But I don’t mind much. Exercise has always been a meditative-like activity to me, and, on the whole, I prefer to approach it alone. Besides, the daily benefits far outweight this small negative.

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The first swim of the year

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, swimming, Uncategorized on May 21, 2007| Leave a Comment »

For me, one of the signs of late spring is my first swim of the year in our townhouse complex’s swimming pool. The pool actually opened on Saturday, but between the rain and Trish’s illness (worsened, perhaps, by our over-indulgence in piroshki, blintzes, and dumplings at the exquisite Rasputin’s on our anniversary), my first swim was delayed until today. I’m still not sure how it will fit into my summer exercise routine, though.

I came late to the enjoyment of swimming. One of the advantages of running is that, although it has been absorbed by consumerism like everything else in our culture, you can do it almost anywhere, anytime, with a minimum of equipment. Moreover, my eyes sting in chlorine, and I never cared much for the sensory deprivation of many swimming strokes that leave you deaf and unable to focus on much outside of the water. But with a pool two minutes’ walk from my computer that’s filled with a mixture of salt water and chlorine — and one that I can use for no additional cost on to our monthly strata fees — the reasons for my reluctance disappear.

As for sensory deprivation, I solve that by doing an old man’s breast-stroke, keeping my head firmly above water except when I want to cool off. The result is far from streamlined, and I could politely be called a rugged swimmer rather than a fast or an efficient one. Still, the stroke allows me to keep a steady pace throughout my workout. At times, I can even enjoy the lack of awareness, relaxing so much that, at night, I dream of flight that feels very much like swimming.

Besides, swimming has the advantage of being much less hard on my knees than running on pavement — a growing concern with me. So, over the last few years, I’ve learned to overcome my youthful distaste and enjoy swimming. If it will never be my favorite exercise, it is far, far better than no exercise, or even reduced exercise.

But those dreams of flight come later in the summer, when I get into the rhythm. Like running, like working with a strange animal — like anything, really — the secret of swimming is to discover a rhythm. And, this afternoon, I didn’t have much of one. For the first ten laps or so, my rhythm was irregular, and I couldn’t coordinate my legs and arms. When I’d done twenty-five laps, I felt a rhythm was just beyond me. At forty laps, I might have just found the beginnings of one.

By the time I finished, my chest muscles were strained, too, with the unaccustomed workout I’d given my arms (which is another reason for my modified breast-stroke).

No doubt, though, I’ll soon be used to these discomforts. Exercise, like any vice, needs to be continually practised so you can build up an immunity to the ill effects.

The only question in my mind now is what combination of running, exercise bike, and swimming I’ll take up over the summer. For now, swimming in the townhouse pool has an advantage over the exercise bike in that it’s largely private. However, that will change as soon as the good weather comes, and the neighbors sit drinking and smoking around the pool, making me feel Puritanical and, at times, too self-aware to get into the meditative state that a good workout brings.

Maybe I’ll swim and use the bike on alternate days, or make each of my forms of exercise a third of my daily workout. Not having a commute, I can easily afford the time to do both.

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Exercise room cultures, part 2

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, Uncategorized on May 11, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Last Friday, I spent all day at a funeral. To fit in my time on the exercise bike, I was at the local rec center at 6:30AM. I’m not at my most social first thing in the morning, but I couldn’t help noticing two cultures that are entirely absent from the exercise room in the late afternoon when I usually work out. Instead of the weight-lifters I disparaged in an earlier post, there was a crowd consisting of two types: senior citizens, and corporate types on their way to work.

From what I overheard, many of the senior citizens exercise at that time because they have trouble sleeping. Most of them have a slightly rumpled look, and few bother with expensive exercise fashions. Slightly stiff-kneed, often a little bent, they tend to move slowly, descending to their exercise mats for calisthenics with obvious twinges of discomfort, and bending almost double on the exercise bikes.

But, if they no longer move quickly, they have an endurance that many three decades younger lack. And many, while they walk the treadmill or pedal the bikes, are chattering away as they go on and on, obvious experts at prying the life story from any stranger on the next machine. They seem a cheery, sturdy bunch, and, watching them sweat steadily, totally unfazed by the effort, I can’t help thinking that the stereotype of the doddering old is badly obsolete.

One man, in particular, is scrawny with old age, but his legs and arms are so veined and well-defined that he must have been exercising regularly for decades. He looks good for at least a couple more.

The corporate men and women are another story. They rush in, striding briskly, eyes bright with a caffeine buzz. If their preferred machines are being used – and the early morning is a surprisingly busy time – they pace up and down impatiently, glancing constantly at their watches and bending to duck around the weight machines so that they can watch the clock on the wall. A few wait around the ever-ready TV hanging from the wall, watching a report on business. They exercise briskly and briefly, then stride off in the same way, their spandex swishing on their legs just at the edge of my hearing range.

Unlike the seniors, the corporate crowd has no interest in talking. For them, exercise is just the first item on the day’s To Do list. They have no time for anything except their agenda, although exactly what the urgency might be is something that doesn’t seem to occur to them. Instead of evaluating their approach, most of them are too busy frowning their impatience at the time this part of their daily routine is taking.

If I had to face strangers every morning, I could easily stand the seniors. But the corporate crowd is enough to remind me of why I’ve ordered my life so I can work at home. They bring an unnecessary hecticness to my exercise routine that I would just as soon avoid. If I wanted to surround myself continually with their sense of needless urgency, I’d still be commuting on the Skytrain.

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Physical fitness is an altered state of consciousness

Posted in Bruce Byfield, exercise, Personal, running, Uncategorized on April 29, 2007| 2 Comments »

Sometimes, I seem to have spent most of my adult life getting back in shape. Starting with my recovery from having my knee smack into a steeplechase hurdle – an injury that sidelined me for six months when I was 19 and ended my slim prospects of running in the Olympics – I must have got back into shape at least a dozen times. This time, I am recovering after a year of chronic knee problems that left me bloated and feeling out of sorts. I’m being especially careful this time, going slowly, and doing more cross-training than ever before, so I’m more aware of the process than usual. I’ve decided, half-seriously, that being in shape is an altered state of consciousness.

For me, it takes about six to eight weeks of heavy exercise before I get the first tentative sense of fitness. The first couple of weeks are pure will, full of endurance and aches. This is a time that I can only stagger through, driven by a hazy conviction that I need to keep going and that, if I do, things will get easier. My appetite increases, too, and I have to remind myself constantly not to give into it very much.

After a couple of weeks, I realize that I am no longer hurting. I seem to metabolize food quicker and more efficiently, so I no longer crave extra calories. My face looks thinner when I risk a glance in the mirror. Deep in my veins, I can feel my blood pressure subsiding. I no longer have to be so careful about getting eight hours of sleep every day. Continued life seems possible, at least in theory.

Suddenly, somewhere around the forty-fifth day of daily exercise, I burst into a new level of existence. My center of balance seems to subtly shift, and I find myself moving more lightly, with more of a bounce to my stride – the results, no doubt, of losing a few pounds, or of converting fat into muscle.

Mentally, I find myself noticing more. I become more inventive, coming up with projects and solutions almost effortlessly. I become more intense, more focused. I’m sure that, were I to test myself during the process, I’d find my intelligence increasing with my fitness, possibly because of an increased blood supply to the brain, or because of the adrenalin and endorphins swimming through me.

My biggest problem is making sure that I evaluate the soundness of my thoughts in this phase, because, at this point, I become so full of optimism – so downright cocky – that I could believe in my ability to do anything if I didn’t rein myself in. I could easily over-commit myself to projects, or do something unwise like trying to take on a mugger when walking at night. More directly, I could abruptly increase my exercise until I hurt myself and have to start the whole process of getting in shape all over again.

In many ways, the first awareness of being fit is like being drunk; it gives me what, logically-speaking, must be an exaggerated sense of my physical and mental capacities. Some of that feeling may be justified, since I do become more productive, but most is probably illusion. Yet the elevation of spirit and capacity seems very real when I experience it, even surmounting — to a certain extent — serious events in my personal life.

So far, no visions or spirit guides, though – although, the way that sweat pours off me that I might as well be spending my time in a sweat lodge.

This is the stage I am at now. This time, it seems especially intense because it’s happening in the middle of spring, so that my external and internal landscapes seem in sync. Fortunately, I know that the euphoria will diminish as I learn to take fitness for granted again. But, until then, I know from experience not to take myself too seriously (not that I ever do).

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