Day 1
During this pandemic I have tried to stay active. With regret, I’ve done something wrong in the pursuit of this.
Although I wouldn’t say I’ve been pounding away and amassing many miles, I did try to do at least my ten thousand steps per day, and some times far in excess of this. However, my legs did start to hurt more and more. At first I wrote this off just to being Southport and its highly uneven pavements…but I did a google around and some of the descriptions of symptoms sounded a bit like mine and to be honest, our diet has been lousy with way too many chips and take-outs….and way too much alcohol on my behalf.
Anyhoo I contacted our Doctors – an event in itself that could turn one to drink, and was given an over-the-phone-diagnosis of “Iliotibial Band Syndrome”. Essentially this is inflammation of a tendon around the side of my right knee. A ‘sports’ injury’ no less, I was almost proud. However, given the GP didn’t even see me in my new found, portly++ status I think the diagnosis might be a bit off, we tend to assume people are relatively fit unless information to the contra is available. The GP has advised me to make an appointment to see the Physiotherapist at the Hospital and I do intend on following through with this…once I find out where I stand with this at work, as I need to be able to get to the hospital during the working day and currently I can’t build up any flexi-time in order to do this.
The above will be sorted as I believe there is a case to say that if I am not afforded the time off; they (my works), will be instrumental in delaying my recovery (and who’s to say that being sat indoors all day every day has not been a causal effect? But, let’s not pretend that I’m free from blame here, I’m not. Now, more than ever, I simply have to take better care of myself. With regards to exercise, for now, baby steps will have to be taken, but taken consistently. I’m hoping to keep to my 10,000 steps per day, there is no scientific evidence available to say that this figure is at all key, in any way. What this figure does do though is to set a target, 10K steps per day still has to be better than none! For my implementation of my recovery I believe that a morning, noon and night regime of around 3-4 thousand steps gained by walking either around Hesketh Park or by walking around the near-neighbourhood should aid without causing any further damage. This has not been possible lately, but only because of really feeble excuses and I think now it is vital to just get things done…in order to stay alive and not lose any limbs, it’s that important.
Also, I think keeping some sort of journal may help “Tad-ah!” I know that I do struggle to keep to routines for blog / diary type entries, but I have to give it a try, we don’t change without changing, and I really want to change.
Enjoy the header picture, two Willows at Hesketh Park.
Breakfast was: A conference pear with Blueberries covered in Tesco Greek Yogurt with Honey.
Morning walk was: from 07:45 to 08:15, around 3,200 steps.
Lunch was: a can of Sardines with a handful of olives, a large cup of spinach, some Aldi sun-dried tomatoes and three teaspoons of Tesco Chill and Tomato Pesto .
Lunch walk was: a circuit of Leyland Road, Roe Lane and Park Road returning via Queen’s Road at 1800 steps (The latter half of which were very painful). Then I had a chance to add to the total by going to McColls for a can of kidney beans – they had none, then back home and out again to the Spar for said kidney beans and some milk and some chopped tomatoes.
Evening meal will be a stew of red kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, a chopped pepper, onion, Worcester Sauce (1 tbsp) 250Gm of lean minced beef (5% fat), chestnut mushrooms, a clove of garlic…essentially it’s Chilli con carne but without the Chilli as Chris is a Chilli wimp!
Evening walk didn’t need to happen as I’d got most of my steps in during the day and cleaning the hallway got the rest.