Well I had my exercise echocardiogram yesterday. I only lasted 14 mins on the treadmill which was increasing with speed and gradient every three mins. My heart rate got up to 190 by the end and my blood pressure was 165/80. I then watched while they did an ultrasound of my heart. To use a cliché it was awesome to see, similar to seeing an ultrasound of an unborn baby. The brief report from the cardiologist was that my heart was looking good, but he will send a full report to my local doctor. What wasn't looking so good afterwards was my front. The technician made patterns by shaving some hairs for the electrodes to connect properly. I had to do some manscaping when I got home to make myself respectable, although I did a rough job of it. .........but I digress!

So I now feel more motivated to go ahead and start my exercising with intensity. Today I went for a run before work and I only worked half a day so had a swim on the way home!

So I've done some research and I reckon I need to exercise while maintaining a HR of about 150-160. This is just what I got off the internet so who knows how accurate it is, but it makes sense. It sounds like it is my resting heart rate that tells me how fit I am. I need to try and remember to take that when I wake up tomorrow. They say the most accurate time of obtaining a resting HR is just after you've woken and while still in bed. Son gave me a heart rate monitor for Christmas, so I'll be able to check my HR whilst exercising.

I feel like I've begun and i'm also feeling very positive about it. It's a project which hopefully will become a habit before I lose interest!

Stay tuned.

A Change of Tack

I'm sure I'll be writing this post just for myself as my one or two loyal readers will have long gone by now, and in a way that's all I need to be doing.

Back in December son's team finally won a tennis grandfinal. We were having a celebratory BBQ at the club and your's truly went on to the tennis court for about 5 mins. At the end of that brief period my heart was pounding. To be expected - I'm not the fittest person on the face of the earth. What I did find surprising and a little scary was that 20 mins later, my heart was still pounding! This was a bit of a wake up call to do something about my lack of fitness. I've never been big into fitness. I'm not a sporty kinda guy and I have an aversion to gyms, so don't have an outlet for fitness. This hasn't been particularly concerning for me over the years, although I've always known myself to be unfit. I've been fortunate that I don't have a problem with my weight, so that's never been a trigger to do something about my fitness. My leanness is purely due to my genes, not due to my 'watching' it. I do however have cardiovascular issues in my genes, so this is another reason to attend to my fitness.

All this is a backdrop to saying that 2010 is this year of getting fit. I've decided to use this blog as a bit of a motivator. By putting it out there into cyberspace, even if it is not read by a single soul, I have committed myself to something and the hope is that that will provide some motivation for me.

If possible I want to do this without the use of a gym, so am planning on using a combination of cycling, walking and swimming.

Being a man who can now no longer say he is in his early 40's but has to admit to being in his mid 40s, I thought I should get a medical check, so I went to my local doctor last week. He took my BP which was 'perfect' and took blood for a cholesterol test. He has also sent me to have a stress exercise cardiogram test which I am having tomorrow.

To maintain motivation, I need to see improvement. Not having a weight goal to assist me, this is somewhat harder. I want something more objective than 'feeling' better. I'm not sure if this test tomorrow might give me some data as a benchmark. I may have to go to a gym and see if they will give me an assessment without having to join.

So if anyone does happen to stumble upon this blog once more, if you have any comments/ideas/stories, please share them and join me on my journey from fallow to fit!

OMG.....

..... a return to yoga and blogging....both in the same night!!
Will it last??

Hope for the Future

I realise that title is a tautology……but….



I went to my first Deb Ball on Saturday night. I don’t want to go into the whole relevance and meaning of the event in contemporary society, but what I was struck by was the amount of boys dancing with each other. The first couple I saw I assumed were a couple and I thought how brave of them. It became obvious however as I saw more and more boys dancing with each other, that it was a case of mates dancing with each other (not discounting the fact that some of them may have been couples – but that is probably my romantic overlay doing some hoping!). These boys were dancing with each other the way girls have always been ‘allowed’ to dance with each other. This dancing was quite tactile, with arms around necks and waists. This gladdened my heart and gave me hope….along with an acknowledgement of loss of not having that sense of freedom when I was that age.

Beyond Memory

One thing that the recent fires here in Victoria has made me do is reflect on what I would feel the greatest sense of loss around, apart from human life of course, should I lose possessions in a fire. For me it would be old family photographs. Someone at work said it would be items such as special things her children made and photos of them. I wouldn't feel such a sense of loss over them. Because I live so internally, if I have experienced something, my memory is a large part of my life. So because I was around when photos of my son were created, or I was there when he created that Picasso-esq piece of artwork, what is as important for me is my memory of that.

Old family photos of people I never met, or of my parents before I knew them, lie outside my memory. They are therefore more important than something I was around to experience.

This made me get around to getting a lot of them scanned so they can be stored in various places.
These are some of them. The oldest would have been taken in the late 1800s. Knowing that the taking of photographs took so much more effort a hundred years than it does now, hence their relative rarity, also makes them more special.My mind then begins to create stories around these people, based on some knowledge I have of them, but largely a romantic notion of their lives in those times.

Rejuvenation

I've just returned from a lovely long weekend at the beach. It was good to have a short break before the academic year starts - and that was yesterday for me. I've been working extra over February while I was able, so I got a bit tired and cranky. I felt like I was turning into a bitter, grumpy old man. It's not a good look!

I'm surprised how much I'm looking forward to this semester. The subjects I'm doing this year are more clinical in nature, so will be more of a challenge for me and partly a reconnection to why I'm doing this mid-life career change. The last year or so the subjects I've done have been more psycho-social in nature, which is what I do in my day to day work anyway, so was less of a challenge. Having said that, it will be a busy semester. I may have to re-evaluate how much I'm working. This is also highlighting one of the disadvantages of doing a nursing course part time. In the lecture yesterday which was focussing on pathophysiology, the lecturer said this first lecture will be largely a revision of the science you did last year. For me that was three years ago!!!!! I'm hoping some of it stayed in the deep recesses of my brain and will come forth when required!!

Full though it may be, I'm looking forward to the semester, which is a good feeling.

They Don't Make Cool Changes Like They Used To

I was still on leave last week, during Melbourne's hottest week. I would rather have been at work as I would have been more motivated and spent more time in air-conditioning. I did nothing. Even if it hadn't been as hot I probably still would have done nothing, but it would have been by choice rather than necessity. By Friday I was particularly grumpy, as I was woken up at 5.30am by neighbours who were mother and son having a conversation about son's need to be more responsible with his bankcard (I didn't think they still made bankcards!). I couldn't get back to sleep after that.
Since then I've felt flat and lethargic. The weather is better, although still into the 30's. I think the heat has exacerbated my cyclical feeling of flatness that has no particular cycle to it, it just comes and goes. Whilst this can occur frequently, I have a fear that I might remain there and while I'm there I tend to make things bigger in my mind than they are, so there tends to be more negative energy within me than I like.
I'm off to bed - hoping to wake up with more positive energy tomorrow.