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Overdoing…the first time


My walking time in PT went from 5 min. to 10 min. when we decided to start training for the marathon. My walking at home took the 10 min. up to nearly 20 min., a third of that uphill.

That was nearly a mile. In a burst of what I thought was genius, on Friday I decided to walk down to town (0.8 miles), run a couple of errands, sit down on a sunny bench if need be, and walk back (0.8 miles, all gently but steadily uphill.)

Then, I thought bouyantly, I’d throw necessaries in the car and take off for my two week vacation.

Well, I got as far as making it back to the house. I knew, as I started back from town, that this had been a bad idea, and that there were three outstanding questions: would I have to find a place to sit down en route, exactly how hard would it hit me, and how long would it take to recover.

Saturday was a dead loss.

Sunday, I packed in small loads, resting for an hour or two between each trip to the car. No kidding: an hour or two. By Sunday around 4pm I was beginning to recoup a little. I left at 5.

I had forgotten what a mitochondrial shriek-fest felt like. An almost devastating feeling that my flesh turns to rot when I try to get up. I don’t recommend it.

Mitochondria are the wonderful little hitchhikers that house our bodies’ energy factories, in return for a warm place to live. They are most thickly concentrated in nerve cells and muscle cells. I knew all along that rebuilding my mitochondria was going to be perhaps the most essential part of training, but after my stellar success on the Hill, I thought I had more to draw on than that.

A delightful piece of training advice I got years ago was, “You can do all the cardiovascular you want.” Perhaps that was true at the time, although I noticed I did better when training four days per week than five or six. Perhaps I should’ve remembered that last week.

I think I should’ve rested for a day after my Hill expedition, for one thing. More importantly, I should’ve had a backup plan on my “adventure”, so I wasn’t stuck with the hike back. And I probably shouldn’t have done this around the excitement of going to see my sweetie.

My kitten just typed $. I have no idea…

Perhaps he’s telling me that overdoing doesn’t pay.

3 thoughts on “Overdoing…the first time”

  1. “mitochondrial shriek-fest”! As always, Isy, your way with words is most wonderfully enjoyable! Love those mystic kitty messages; maybe he means silver will be crossing your palm soon… heaven knows you deserve some remuneration! (Do you know, I only discovered to my extreme shock that it was “remuneration” rather than “renumeration” a decade or so ago…being a bit of a word junky, it amazed me that that one had slipped under my radar… and the wrong way seemed so right!) But I digress… wonderful post as always! Hope you recover quickly from your over-do… My athletic researcher daughter tells me that the best muscle building comes with breaks between pushes for the muscle to do the necessary repairs. Check in with her for the data; it might be of help. xo!

    1. Yeah, that has to do with the muscle fibers repairing and building themselves. Mitochondrial regen is a slightly different beast. TONS of antioxidants and water 🙂

  2. I was a bit daffy when I wrote this (no really?) and had blocked out a crucial fact…

    I was on the phone for over an hour while I was in town. Where there was a bench to sit on, there was no phone signal, and we were having a riveting conversation. I wound up pacing for most of that hour. I have no idea what the mileage was, but an hour is too damn long to be pacing when I have the best part of a mile to walk home.

    There was nowhere to lie down without alarming the normos, so I staggered back and paid the price.

    I’m not sure that working up to 2 miles will be a problem. But staying off the phone when I can’t sit down properly might be.

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