"They're all gonna laugh at you"

Hello again.

Today Brian and I made the hour plus drive out of the flatlands to get to some hills to train on. Say what you will about San Antonio but their parks and Greenway trails are amazing and accessible and I miss them.

. Brian is training for another excursion and I, well I'm just happy to be there.

When we were on our honeymoon and I had my epic fail fall it was a reminder of many things. The main one was, damn I lost all my strength I worked hard to acquire.

When ever I have a set back (happens too often) I try to access the situation and find a solution. When I ended up with plantar fascitis I sought medical attention and also spent more money on trying to find shoes that work for me than I care to remember. I also ended up buying the most expensive pair of orthotics that gave me sticker shock but I dished out the cash in payments and I haven't had an issue with my feet since. When my left knee finally gave out I ended up having a knee replacement. After the sprain at the beginning of August, I'm still feeling it. I've been doing the stretching and massaging and exercising but I really messed it up. I keep getting told to "Get high ankle boots". To which I respond in my head "Dude, I don't wanna start all over finding shoes that work for me." I just politely nod.

So to try and find a solution for this I found an ankle brace with a hinge that's supposed to mold to your ankle to be customized for you. I have had it for a few weeks but my ankle has still been swollen and I didn't want to have it form wrong.

Two weeks ago Brian and I went for a simple walk where I tried wearing it but it hurt too much and I ended up carrying while my ankle randomly felt like it was popping.

Last night Brian asked me if I wanted to try a good hike in San Antonio to start training and while my ankle still hurts it's improved enough to give it a try.

Laid all my clothes out last night before bed. I spent 45 minutes tracking everything down because I have a habit of putting stuff away and then not remembering how I organized things.

Brian woke me up at 5:45 ....on a Saturday. I growled out of bed and did the whole coffee thing without spilling on myself so the day was off to a good start. I remembered to eat breakfast. I usually forget and around noon I have no energy.

I successfully ate, again without wearing my granola, and the day got better. Had all my gear and a travel mug of coffee and extra water for the trail and made the drive in.

Side conversation, I have fibromyalgia and Sjogrens disease and other connective tissue disorders. I also have osteoarthritis and osteopenia. I hurt somewhere most of the time like most other Gen X peeps who managed to live through the latch key, unsupervised, doing things that shall be not mentioned to mom years. I also grew up around smokers. As a kid we used to roll cigarettes for my stepmom and my cousin would steal some and at three, four years old I had my first drag. I smoked in my early 20's I smoked in my late 30's and have been abstinent since 2017. My lungs are shot. They never had a chance. I am have exercise induced asthma so I get to use a spiffy inhaler that opened up the world to me. I swear if I had an inhaler in high school and known the life changing impact it had I would not have bailed on basketball after the first practice. My lungs always gave out before my legs did. All the comments to control my breathing did SQUAT.

I also want to side discuss genetics here. I submitted my DNA, like many curios people, and on of the places told me some things deeper about myself that explained years of feeling like everyone around me must be a witch to have energy without caffeine.

My body does not process three really important vitamins well, C, E and D. I have spent many many hours researching vitamins and how they interact with my other maintenance meds to keep my immune system repressed and to keep my pain under control and to keep my ADHD in check so I can do average human things .

So why oh why does any of this have to do with today? It's all apart of learning every day what helps and making sure to do the things that help to keep pain and fatigue and all the other good benefits of aging and still wanting to do things with my messed up bouncy house of a body with my husband who is active and athletic.

So...

When we got to the park we agreed we'd do our own hikes since he had a time crunch for training and I'm starting slightly above zero again. We start together up one of the steepest hills and about a quarter of the way up I had to stop. The Texas humidity was over taking my lazy lungs. I encouraged Brian to go ahead and do his thing.

We both went up and down the hill twice but at our own places. He was up and down twice by my first lap.

I had to keep reminding myself that it's ok to breathe hard, it's ok to be slow, it's ok to hike my own hike. The park is popular with 10+ miles of trails. People of all levels are there. Having my knee ankle brace helped with people going around. I kept feeling inadequate watching all the super fit people trail running and powering up the hills and back down. Then, I remembered what my physical therapist had me do when I was recovering from knee surgery. She had me step up and down slowly to retrain my muscles. So that boys and girls is what I did on my hike today. I took slow wide deliberate steps going up and down the hill. It took be an hour to go up and down twice. When I finished that I found all the rocks I could and stepped on or up as slow and deliberately as possible. I'm sure people thought I was having some special issues but I was there for me and had to pretend no one was looking at me funny when they passed for the third time.

I did not use my trekking poles but had them out in case, which I did end up using a lot. I'm unsteady and weaker from not being as active as I should have been living in the flat lands after surgery. It was a good experience and a great work out. Holy man my legs were trembling!

So if you see a weird plumpish lady walking like she was in a Monty Python sketch, I assure you it was deliberate, useful, and I'm fine.

Also, shout out to the lady who yelled encouragement to me as she ran past me on her way down the hill on my second time up. YOU ROCK!