I'm So Stiff and Out of Shape

I can't get over how stiff and out of shape (flexibility-wise) I am. Up to 2 years ago, two mornings a month I delivered our monthly newsletter in our park to 200 of our 400+ homes. Even when I didn't walk much other than that, I had no trouble with me and my quad cane, and I could do a decent pace.

Yesterday and today I began trying to walk a bit each day. My new Tamoxifen Rx can worsen my existing osteoporosis. I really did not walk far. Just down my driveway, across the front of my home, 3 more down to the corner, 2 across, across the little street, and over the 4-car parking lot into our "mailroom," and back... so that's about 6 homes over and 6 back, about 12 lots, or a bit less than a block on a normal street.

I was stiff as a board walking and slow as molasses in January. My legs were like wooden sticks and I walked like Herman Munster - but I did it.

Up to the end of Feb. 2019, I was doing fine. Then we stopped delivering and I stopped walking. At first I thought that was why I was having such a hard time. Then I also realized that in 2019 and 2020, this area, so used to a "monsoon season" in the summer, went through a real dry spell. Last year I think we went 249 days without rain. But THIS year, we had a monsoon season for the first time in a while.

So I think part of my stiffness is my arthritis reacting to the return of the rainy season this summer.

Anyhow, I will continue to try to loosen up. I don't have pain per se, just stiffness. Yet I can walk a medical hallway better than out on our mobile home park's streets. Of course, I'm on a street that is a downhill grade so that adds to the difficulty. I never did do well walking downhill but never had trouble going up a grade.

So I'm going to add a brief session daily on the recumbent exercise bike, too - that always makes me feel so good and erect afterwards, even after just 10 minutes.