I have been keeping track of my exercise every Friday for over a year, and plan to continue doing so.
I started the Friday Firsts sections as a way of keeping track of some of my “firsts” as I dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Things seem to be settling down, but I will keep it for now–more as a way to be aware and thankful of what is happening in my life.
Friday Firsts
When I was trying to finish off this post, at first I thought I had run out of firsts. Perhaps, I thought, I should stop this weekly update? After mulling over the week’s events, I realized that actually there were quite a few firsts, though not all of them were good. For now, I decided to keep this update, and push myself to pay better attention to what is going on.
This week’s firsts:
- One of my parents’ friends–a mom of one of the kids I played with as a toddler–passed away. She wasn’t the first person I have known to pass away, but she was really the first in that circle of my parents’ friends. I think this is a harbinger of unpleasant changes over the next few years.
- One of my doctor friends who has been extremely careful about minimizing risk of infection with COVID went away for a few days with her husband. This has me rethinking the possibility of travel, though I still don’t see me going away for pleasure anytime soon.
- Mr. PiN went for a minor elective procedure this week since, having hit his yearly out of pocket maximum, his health care for the rest of the year is “free.”
- On my non-clinical day, I ran errands around town, just as though there weren’t a pandemic going on. (Not quite: I wore my mask and used the hand sanitizer at each stop liberally. But still, I haven’t done that for ages).
Fitness Log
As a reminder, my prior goal was to make sure that I get at least 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise with 60 minutes of strength training. I recently decided to relax my goal when I work in the hospital to 90 minutes a week, and to push the goal in non-hospital weeks to 210 minutes.
How did I do?
- Saturday: I went on a mid-afternoon walk, 38 minutes.
- Sunday: Though I was on-call (phone only), I decided I was going for a walk today. I managed a 38 minute walk without being paged; it was lovely.
- Monday: My on-call luck failed with a middle-of-the-night call. I was too tired to do much after work today.
- Tuesday: Zoom yoga after work, 80 minutes.
- Wednesday: Walked after work, it was a perfect fall afternoon. 35 minutes.
- Thursday: Training session via FaceTime after work, 30 minutes.
- Friday: I worked from home today, and took a 21 minute walk during my lunch hour. It wasn’t really long enough, and I planned (hoped?) to walk again at the end of the day. However, I didn’t close up the computer until after 7 pm, and by then I didn’t feel like walking again.
Total: 132 minutes walking, 30 minutes weight training and 80 yoga this week, for a total of 242 minutes of exercise. I am definitely hitting my goals. Even with my minor aches and pains , I feel so much better getting the increased exercise. I am glad I increased my target numbers.