I was elated while recording this walking monologue. I was granted a single day where I recovered from particularly intense muscle soreness. Recognizing a bit of a lack of appreciation for the hard-won challenges, I took this as an opportunity to reflect on past, present, and upcoming changes. Things are exciting these days as my life has radically transformed, but I can really notice how much soreness keeps my mood down. Ideally, I would learn to better pace myself, but for now I’ll contend with the fact that “pushing hard is hard”.

The past and the future is very much on my mind. I really wish I had consistently taken notes prior to beginning to turn things around. I wish I could go back and talk to myself during the worst of it and interrogate my state of mind back then. I certainly remember a fair amount of it, but I am noticing that I have already begun taking many changes for granted. I was absolutely too hard on myself, but maybe I’m not so different these days. What I do know is that I’m not excited enough for what’s ahead. I don’t really think I can comprehend how good I’ll feel once I can bike as regularly as I’ve been walking lately.

I spoke to my trainer about this and he reminded me of what he remembered from when I first set foot in the gym. On my first day I told him the 45 minutes I spent on my feet that day was the longest I had in a very long time. An early victory I had was when I realized I could stand still instead of needing to constantly sway and re-balance just to stay in place. I’ve come a long way, but it feels like I’ve only really begun to ‘let it in’.

An exciting achievement lately was being able to dead hang for a few moments. Even though is around 8 seconds, I think it’s really cool that I can grip over 180lbs in each hand. It really feels like my grip strength gains are paying off, but getting 200lbs off me certainly made a difference as well. This is definitely something I want to work on improving moving forward.