I intend to continue my blogs on "Becoming a Freelance Writer" but my life was interrupted last week when my son's wife died suddenly and unexpectedly.  She took a nap nine days ago after shopping and failed to awake.  We suspect her weak heart gave out.

 

I was commenting on someone's comments on another website and started a note about exercise and conditioning, and will use it as the base of this blog on exercise.

 

I started running for exercise in high school.  In college (1970-1974) I found I could get into good physical shape in about six weeks.  If I quit running for a while, I could start again and within six weeks comfortably run a mile in eight minutes. If I worked at it, I could run that far in six and a half minutes.

 

I got lazy in the last few years and slacked off my physical exercise program.  Now, I'm paying for it, having to work harder to get back into shape.  I just turned 60, so I can't just run for a few weeks and get into great shape.  At age 39 I was out of shape and had to start running for six month before I could run an eight minute mile (1.6km).  But at age 44 I had to quit running after I had a ruptured disk in my back.  It is harder to stay in shape. I was walking 15-23 miles a week from age 52-56.  I'm trying to get back to that pace!  But the staremaster machine (Stairmaster brand) is a killer these days!  I used to get it up to speed level 12 and push to 13-14.  Level 20 is like running up stairs or sprinting.  Most people cannot do that for long.  Now, at level 6 I reach my maximum heart rate (160) and level 4 is my training level! 

 

Now, I know it will take me 6-12 months to get back into shape.  If I tried to run fast, I'd have a heart attack!  How do I know?  When I was young, I could work hard all day.  Indeed, I used to carry 18 foot long 3x10 lumber by myself.  That's a piece of lumber 7.5 cm thick, 25 cm wide, and 5.5 meters long.  But I'm not a young man anymore!  Was a forest service fire fighter in my 40s I learned "forest fire fighting is a young man's job."  I fought my last fire in 1999-2000 or so around age 47-48. 

 

After that, I continued to work fire and hurricane incidents and even worked at the World Trade Center disaster in Oct. 2001 handing out supplies to the fire fighters and policemen.  My last fire?  2006 near the Salmon River in Idaho, 50 miles south of Grangeville in the middle of nowhere.  The roadsign there warned "Warning: no services for the next 156 miles!  Rough requires four-wheel drive."  That's my kind of road!  I'd love to drive down it sometime.  But instead I camped there for two weeks and worked in the firecamp ordering supplies to support 1,500 people working to fight the fire.

 

In January 2009, we had an ice storm here that stripped many branches off our trees.  After dragging brush for three hours and piling it to burn, my heart rate would get up to 160 and stay there.  I could sit down and it took 10 minutes to recover instead of 1 minute like it did when I was young.  At age 20, I thought I'd continue running into my 60s.  But at age 60, reality has sunk into my brain.  I'm just not 20 years old any more!