Slice of Chaotic Life

Yesterday: Stress-tested my heart on an exercise bike, then tried out a new pair of running shoes.  (OK, I did not really run in them. I walked mostly and jogged now and then. But still, it’s a step up.)

This morning: Struck “super-fast regeneration” from list of suspected superpowers. Ouch!

This afternoon:  Why is my pulse back down to vacation levels? Where did the stiffness and soreness go?

So I put on the new shoes again and went on my half-hour circuit. Once I was out of the town proper and had warmed up by walking, I started jogging part of the time. It is not really that much faster than walking, compared to the energy used it actually seems ineffective. It is probably something artificial, I have never seen children jogging. When they don’t walk, they run, not this half-hearted and inefficient movement. On the other hand, it is less draining than an actual run, yet more than a walk. So as an invention for the purpose of exercise, it is actually useful. For people who are out of shape, I mean. For fat people who have walked for enough weeks to not hurt themselves by speeding up a little beyond what walking can do. And for people like me, who have held back every day and every night for over 40 years, for fear of what might happen if we exerted ourselves.

That fear was not entirely misguided since I had, and still have, exercise asthma. It did not trigger during the stress test, but then I had used the inhaler two hours or so before. The short intervals of jogging yesterday afternoon did not trigger asthma either, for some reason. But today I got pretty close. I guess I did jog longer at a time today. And my pulse got up to 140. Normally I have kept it below 125 except very briefly uphill. Anyway, I could feel my chest tightening a bit, and slowed down. On my way home I coughed a bit, but did not go into a full asthma attack with wheezing and stuff.  But if I try this again – and I probably will, unless something very untimely should befall me – I may use the inhaler before I start.

I hate the idea of depending on a drug when it is not absolutely necessary to survive. And I can survive without jogging. On the other hand, the asthma drug is supposedly not habit-forming. Perhaps the opposite: By exercising harder than I otherwise could, my lung capacity should actually expand a bit, so that I would be able to be more active without drug in the future, if any.

Despite the joke from the cardiologist, I am not planning to become some sort of athlete. The purpose of my exercise is to show my body that it is still inhabited, not to impress people. And beside everything else, I would probably lose ridiculous amounts of weight if I could run as much as I walk. I’m already down to approximately 84 kg (185 lb), and the trend is still downward. That is not dangerously low, of course, unless I for some reason have to starve for weeks. But based on my experience in 2005, it is only a kg or two above the level where my body panics and goes into “always hungry” mode, where I am starving even after meals and in the middle of the night. This is unpleasant and probably unnecessary, as my BMI is already now 23.5, pretty much in the middle of the recommended range. And with my inability to digest fat, there is no way I can add another 1000 calories to my day without making my blood sugar even much higher from all the carbs I would eat day and night.