exercise_every_day | Intro & daily exercise

Hello everyone! I'm Cody, I'm a 58-year-old woman trying to get back into the habit of doing some sort of daily exercise.

I've done various things over the years to stay in shape: walking, jogging, weight training, yoga. When I was 49, I got into running/walking marathons, and had done three (very slow) marathons by the end of 2002.

My health took a big hit in 2004 when I got breast cancer, and I spent most of the year having surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Developed lymphedema in my left arm along the way, which I am still dealing with, along with nerve damage and fatigue left over from the chemo.

I was determined to get back into exercising as soon as I could, and did two more marathons and a half-marathon in 2006, 2007, and 2008. But they were hard and even slower than usual, and not a whole lot of fun, and I kind of ran out of steam after that. I haven't done much of anything beyond some yard work until this summer, when I decided it was time to get back into shape.

For now, I'm just trying to walk two miles a day, six days a week. I live in the high desert on a dirt road on the side of a mountain, so I either walk up the road past my house for a mile and back, or down the road towards town for a mile and back. It takes me about 35 - 40 minutes, partly because I'm slow and partly because half my walk is uphill no matter which direction I go.

I don't have that much problem motivating myself to walk -- I like walking, and I have pretty mountain scenery to walk in. The problem is getting up early enough to get out there before the sun becomes unbearable. I am *not* a morning person, but I've been trying to hit the road by 8:30 am. Even then the sun is beating down pretty hard. It's been in the 90s every day for weeks now, and the hottest part of summer is still ahead.

Still, I did my two miles today. Yay!

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muck_a_luck

Great to meet you! When do temperatures get back to something tolerable where you live? We've been having heat indexes of 104-110 here, and it is just *suffocating* on those days, so you have my sympathy, trying to do outdoor exercise in that kind of heat! Definitely time to become a forced morning person!

codyne

It should start cooling down by the middle of September or so. Still, it's not so much the heat that's the problem, it's the blazing sun with no clouds and no shade. I wish I could get up early enough to walk/run before the sun comes up, but I haven't been able to manage that yet!

Thanks for the welcome!