A New Fiscal Physical Year

If you hunt back through some of my posts from early last year -- and heck, from years’ past, too -- you’ll see me occasionally talking about physical fitness and making mostly vague promises here to try to remain active, usually according to some imagined schedule.

It was during last summer (or so) that I once again lapsed as far as regular exercise was concerned. That said, maintaining the farm has required a fairly steady pace of physical exertion from your humble scribbler (he said defensively while raising a plastic pitchfork).

I mean, I’ve lifted more 50-lb. bags of feed, similarly-weighted bales of hay, and full muck buckets than I care to count, and that’s not even getting into other daily, weekly, and monthly chores and repairs that are constantly needing to be done.

All of which is to say, I haven’t been feeling especially slothful, although for some reason when July 1 came around this year I was strangely inspired to put on my running shoes and hit the road again. It’s a week later and I’ve managed to string together seven days’ worth of runs in a row -- nothing too outrageous (just a couple of miles), but enough to feel like I’m doing something.

You should have seen my sad waddling around after the third day, when the soreness was at its greatest. Things got much better soon after, though, and Vera has even joined me these last couple of days, which has provided some additional encouragement.

Like I say, I’m not sure what inspired me to get out there again. I would say it was all of the players at the WSOP discussing the importance of being fit in order to play so many marathon days of poker one after another, but to be honest it was more the otherwise meaningless milestone of the half-year starting.

Whatever the cause, I’m going to try to stick with it a little longer this time. Have a trip coming up later in the month (to Peru) which might provide a challenge, but I’ll nonetheless see if I can keep up the pace here at the start of my new “year.”