Obstacles to Exercise

For me, there are many including laziness, family commitments, sloth, work commitments, indolence, soreness, lethargy, an inability/disinterest in finding my shoes, languor, my toenails requiring a clipping, a proclivity toward inactivity, and laziness. Yes, I did use a thesaurus for that sentence. But I ran into a couple new obstacles recently.

I have enjoyed starting my day by walking in a fen on my way home from dropping my daughter at school. The fen has a long boardwalk over its general marshiness (I think I served under him in Iraq) that makes for a fentastic walk to usher in a new day. However, blocking the path on one walk was this.

I’m told that is a sandhill crane which can grow to just under 4 foot tall and has a big pecker. I mean its beak. And it had friends.

No one was happy with the situation.

The cranes and I wisely decided not to throw hands/beaks, and I amicably passed them by. But I wasn’t so sure about this illegal immigrant from Canada.

My middle daughter tells the tale of her high school track days when her coach had to kill a Canadian goose with his bare hands after it attacked his daughter and him. Maybe “had to” is a bit much. Couldn’t they have run faster than a goose? He was the track coach.

Anyway, those Canadian geese can be real pissers. They don’t erect signs like this for no reason.

Bloody Canadians. Build a wall? Well, I’ve never been one to have danger deter me. I continued by on the boardwalk without incident. Huh, that turned out to be a terribly uninteresting story. But I buried the lead.

I was running at the time. Yep, after vowing over 3 years ago to never run again, I was back at it in the fen. I ran there because I was the only person in the fen who could see me hobble. That’s my running style now. And I made all of half a mile before deciding I’d had enough. Maybe if I work at it, I can increase my distance from 0.50 miles to 0.60 miles and run in a 1K race this year. By Halloween, I might be able to run in the Hobgoblin 1K Hobble. If not by then, perhaps there’s a 1K Gobble Hobble at Thanksgiving.

The real sad thing is the next day I swam 0.62 miles (1K) with less difficulty than running the half mile. Fortunately, I ran faster than I swam. And not just faster, but I estimate 4 times faster, which isn’t fast at all, because I also swim very slowly. But at least my knee hasn’t blown up like a painful balloon which is what made me decide to never run again. I hate when I break promises to myself. This can only end badly.