Catching a wake-up

First wake up

For about the last 6 months I have had really bad pain in my hip and/or back when I take my daily walk.

My walk is 5km and usually around the 30 minute mark the pain starts with a little niggle and by the time I finish I want to roll on the ground in agony. It goes after about half an hour. Like it never happened.

After one 8km walk it took a lot more than ½ hour to recover and gave me quite a fright and I scuttled off to the orthopod who did my hip replacement 8 years ago; the x-rays were perfect – nothing had moved. He blithely suggested I just walk 3 kms then which irritated the hell out of me having just shelled out a small fortune and anyway, there a few expedition walks I still want to do.

I decided to have a rest from walking. When I started up again the first day was fine but by the end of the first week the same pain returned. Persist I did and carried on walking but I was feeling quite distressed.

Yesterday I went to see Stephan, a biokineticist. I did the tests for strength, flexibility, balance and failed just about everything. I have always been physically strong and was horrified that there were things I just couldn't do or really battled to do. Muscle weakness may very well be the problem with my hip/back.

So now I have been grounded from my daily walk for 2 weeks and have to stick to hectic strengthening regimen and then, very slowly over 7 weeks, build up to 5kms.  9 weeks to achieve this…quite a long time!

The one bit of brightness was Stephan saying I have get back to being an athlete –just like I was when I did the Camino!

Can’t say how much happier I feel today albeit a bit stiff in strange places. There is no guarantee that this is going to sort out my problem but I certainly need the strengthening exercises and wouldn't have known how weak I have got in the last few years if I hadn't seen Stephan.

Moral of this story: If you feel pain have it seen to straight away. It is not a bad idea to have yourself checked out and to make sure you are doing the correct exercises for the activities you are doing. Keep fit and keep strong.

Second wake up

Since January Lisa and I have been doing online university courses. They are interesting and fascinating I have just signed up for another 2, one starting next week and the other in few months time.

So what is the wake up about this?

Do you know how much you just don’t know? Do you know how much amazing stuff is out there? I have had so much fun listening to awesome people from really great universities teach and share what they know; following links for reading assignments and related lectures, finding new information, ideas and expanding my world which somehow got quite small over the past years.

Moral of this story: like keeping your body fit and strong do the same thing with your brain.