I turned sixty a few weeks ago. There’s plenty of scary to
think about as one reaches sixty years old, but I’m not dwelling on that drivel
because worrying about the future isn’t productive unless one can actually do
something about it. I can’t stop the clock. I can’t control whether I will get
sick and die a premature death. I can’t prevent some asshole slamming his car
into mine on a highway somewhere and taking me out. There are some things that
I can control, however, and I want to talk about one of those controllable things
today.
I have a lot of control over my physical fitness. I don’t
have time to work out every day, and I am not sure if I would even if I had the
time. But I do try hard to fit in at least three or four workouts a week. My
workouts are not hugely strenuous, but they make me sweat. Basically, each
workout involves some push-ups and some pull-ups at the park by the lake, and
then I run about a mile or so in my neighborhood.
A few years ago, I began a ritual of doing as many push-ups
as years I have lived on my birthday. The older I get, obviously, the harder
that may become. Two years ago, I did fifty-eight mediocre push-ups on my
fifty-eighth birthday and then didn’t do another push-up for a month. My heart
was in the right place, but I was doing just enough to scoot by. I mean, I was determined to do whatever
amount I had to do and then call that a milestone. I was more motivated my
fifty-ninth birthday, but again my desire to maintain that level of exercise
waned following the completion of my birthday routine.
I’m approaching it differently this year and my perspective
changed after I was doing pushups out by the pool one hot July morning and my
girlfriend’s brother came out and said, “No, dude. This is how you do pushups.”
Then he got down and did twenty really nice pushups, touching his chest to the
ground each time.
Now, this guy is forty-four years old, which is sixteen
years younger than me, and he is about as skinny as a flagpole. But I just
figured that if I could do sixty half-assed pushups, I could certainly do
thirty really good pushups, and I was right. So, these days I am doing at least
two sets of twenty or twenty-five pushups each time I work out, and I hope to increase
this by a solid thirty pushups by the end of September.
I never had a place to do pull-ups (except the gym) before I
moved into this neighborhood. There are monkey bars for kids in the park and I use
them now for my pull-ups. I can only do three or four sets of five pull-ups right
now, but I just started about two weeks ago and I am focused on being able to
do three sets of ten by the end of September.
And that mile run? I have a goal of extending that distance
to three miles by the end of September.
I am not concerned about speed at this point. Instead, I am focused on increasing
my endurance on the road. The speed will
come in time.
Now, I realize that I have been blessed with some pretty
good genes and I don’t take that gift for granted at all. Though both of my
grandfathers died in their sixties, neither man was that health-conscious. My
grandmothers, on the other hand, died in their late eighties. Mom lived until
age eighty-two and Dad is still kicking at eighty-four.
Dad would tell you that the secret to living a healthy life
is to do things in moderation and to stay mentally and physically active as
long as you can. I have some big
mountains to climb in the next few weeks but I am committed to continuing my
exercise routine as I confront my challenges.
