I have been, let's say...lackadaisical...in maintaining my level of fitness, which at one time was relatively high. It's especially easy for me to neglect my health because I don't ever gain weight, but I do sometimes worry that that only means that all the crap I eat is being deposited straight into my aorta. Anyway, I accepted a long time ago that I'm not the athlete that I used to be, but I always figured that I wasn't too far behind, maybe 75 or 80%.
Well, I was wrong, and today I hit a new all-time low. I want to preface this by saying that every time I played softball while I was in grad school and earlier, I never thought it was strenuous, ever. I once played five games in a row in law school. But today, after just four innings, I was so tired that I didn't even take a warm-up swing when I was on deck, to conserve energy. Then when I actually went up to bat, I swung at nothing and took the free pass because then I could walk to first base instead of putting the ball in play and having to run. I spent my time in the field praying that nobody would hit the ball to me so I wouldn't have to move. It was real sobering. If I was just fat, I could be on one of those maudlin Weight Watchers commercials.
Even worse, I actually do run on the treadmill occasionally, and I walk about 1.5 miles a day to and from the Metro. I thought that would be enough, but it's not even close. Everything takes so much longer now that I'm old. I really wonder if it's better to bust your ass every day trying to stay healthy, or enjoy life and high fructose corn syrup and accept that you'll only have 40 years of that. Me, I haven't decided yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment