Tag: Fitness Journey

Posted on

Controlling Your Yard in the Rainy Season

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

The forecast had spoken, and as I lay in bed that morning, I had to admit: it had a point. Rain was already falling, which meant mowing was looking about as likely as a snowstorm in July. This is Nashville, though, so rain and thunderstorms come with the territory. Tornadoes, too, if you want to get really dramatic about it. Having grown up in the Midwest, I consider myself seasoned. Tornadoes and I have something of an understanding.

Here’s the thing about owning a house: it doesn’t care how busy you are. The weeds will grow with or without your blessing. My wife and I learned this the hard way one year when life got especially hectic, and she wasn’t feeling well. When she finally made it back outside after a few weeks, the yard had quietly turned into a small jungle. Not her finest gardening moment, and she will be the first to say so. Since then, she has been firm about the one rule that makes all the difference: catch weeds early, when they’re young and still apologetic about existing. A quick weekly pass takes almost no time at all. Let them settle in, and suddenly you’ve got yourself a whole Saturday project.

I try to do my part too, sneaking in weed patrol whenever I can, even around doctor’s appointments. Every little bit helps.

So there I was that morning, eyeing the sky. It looked gray and thoroughly committed to staying that way. But when I actually peered outside, the rain was barely a sprinkle. Just a gentle mist, really, the kind that barely counts. I thought, “I can work with this.” A little drizzle never hurt anyone. I pulled on my shoes, went outside, and got started on the front yard.

I lasted a few minutes before I heard it. Thunder. Not close, but close enough to make the point. There’s a line I’m willing to cross, and getting lightly rained on is one thing. Standing in a thunderstorm while pushing a metal mower is quite another. I went back inside just in time for the skies to properly open up, as if the rain had been holding back just to prove it could.

Thursday is my next hope. The forecast isn’t exactly promising, but then, neither was this morning. You just never know until you look outside. Sometimes you get lucky.

Until then, may your skies be clear and your weeds be few. Or at least short.

Back
Posted on

Dressed Wrong for Every Appointment: A Day of Humidity, Air Conditioning, and Medical Checkups

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Today turned out to be one of those days when my wardrobe seemed determined to disagree with my schedule. I dressed Wrong for Every Appointment.

My first mission was a trip to the dentist to have an old filling redone. When I left the house, I was pleased to see clear skies. The forecast suggested rain might arrive later. So I decided to play it safe and headed out wearing a cape and hoodie.

This was an excellent plan, provided I had been traveling through a cool mountain village rather than a Tennessee humidity chamber.

Although the temperature was not especially high, the air felt thick enough to swim through. By the time I arrived at the dentist’s office, I was thoroughly overheated. I made a strategic retreat to the restroom, where I attempted to remove at least some evidence of my battle with the atmosphere. Thankfully, the dental procedure itself went smoothly, and I escaped without incident. The walk home remained rain-free, but the humidity showed no intention of taking the day off.

Once home, I had about an hour before my hematology appointment. During that time, I brewed a fresh batch of kombucha tea and decided to correct my earlier wardrobe mistake by changing into shorts.

As it turns out, I had simply traded one problem for another.

The hematology clinic and laboratory appeared to be operating under the assumption that patients might spontaneously combust if the indoor temperature rose above refrigerator levels. The air conditioning was running at full strength, and I spent most of the appointment wondering whether I should have brought a winter coat.

The good news was that my red blood cell count remained high enough that I did not need an injection. I briefly entertained the hope that this might mean fewer appointments in the future. Unfortunately, the medical team had other ideas. Instead of graduating from follow-up visits. I was informed that they would like to see me again in three weeks rather than two.

Lesson Learned for today

By the end of the day, I had learned an important lesson: apparently, I am capable of dressing incorrectly for both a humid summer day and an aggressively air-conditioned medical office within a few hours.

Back
Posted on

When You Skip Your Run for Waffles (Again)

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Welcome back to another thrilling episode of “What Did I Do Instead of Running?” Answer: I made waffles. I skipped a run for waffles.

My wife had to head into the office that morning, and my visiting friend… was not a waffle enthusiast. Which I respect. It takes a certain kind of person to look at a warm, golden, perfectly crisp waffle and say “no thanks.” Anyway, I skipped my run (you saw that coming), but I did knock out my other exercises first before firing up the griddle. So really, I’m still winning. Mostly.

After everyone was fed (waffle-resistant guests included), we played more games until my wife returned home. Then my friend and his wife headed off to visit yet another mutual friend who, conveniently, lives remarkably close to us. Our neighborhood is apparently very popular. I seized the quiet moment to start cooking supper. My wife was quite hungry by the time she got back and had to wait a bit longer for the food to be ready. She was patient. The food was worth it. I’m choosing to believe both things.

Tomorrow, our guests head home right after breakfast. I’d love to send them off with more waffles, but we’ve run out of maple syrup. Tragically. I’ll figure out something else, because two mornings of waffles is probably enough waffles for any friendship. Depending on when they get back tonight, we might squeeze in our traditional Monday online gaming session with another friend. Time will tell.

As for me, I’ll be a little sad to see them go. Our cat, however, will not be. She has been in full witness-protection mode since their arrival, appearing only occasionally to confirm that yes, she still lives here, and no, she does not approve of guests. She’d probably warm up to them eventually. Probably. But it turns out two days isn’t quite long enough for a cat to reconsider her introversion.

Until next time, may your maple syrup never run out at the worst possible moment.

Back
Posted on

When the Air Feels Heavier Than the Workout

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Let me tell you just how humid it has been outside lately.

We had a relatively mild spring this year, but Nashville has finally decided to remind everyone where they live. The weather is settling into its familiar pattern of heat, humidity, and the constant possibility that the sky might suddenly become dramatic.

The humidity has reached the point where stepping outdoors feels less like entering the atmosphere and more like walking into a warm, damp sponge. The air seems to push against you from every direction. It is almost as if the weather is trying to give you a hug that you never asked for.

Of course, humidity is not an acceptable excuse for skipping a run. At least not in my book.

So I headed out as usual.

One pleasant surprise was that I managed to avoid getting rained on. That may not sound like much, but after several consecutive days of rain, it felt like a small victory. The recent weather had kept me indoors more than I would have liked, limiting many of my usual outdoor activities.

To be fair, this is not unusual for Nashville. Rain, thunderstorms, and tornado warnings are all part of the local experience. Summer here often feels like living inside a weather forecast.

Unfortunately, the absence of rain did not mean pleasant running conditions. The air remained thick and heavy, making every step feel slightly more difficult than it should have. I suspect the humidity played a significant role in my less-than-impressive performance. Sometimes the weather reminds you that it has a vote in your workout results.

Thankfully, my other morning exercises went much better.

I had also been concerned about our lawn. With so many rainy days, I had not been able to mow for a while, and the grass was beginning to look a little too enthusiastic about growing. Even after the rain stopped, the lawn remained damp because the humidity hovered above 90 percent. The grass seemed determined to hold onto every drop of moisture it could find.

My wife had her own concerns. She was worried she would not be able to use the weeding machine effectively. She usually takes care of the areas that the lawn mower cannot reach, but the ground and vegetation were still too wet to cooperate. According to her, the weather has simply refused to participate in our landscaping plans.

For now, all we can do is wait and hope for a few days of drier weather. The lawn, the weeds, and perhaps even the runners of Nashville would all appreciate a break from the humidity.

Back
Posted on

How a Self-Care App Saved My Doctor Appointment Streak

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Some mornings, the universe conspires to test you. This particular morning, it handed me a chilly dawn, a nephrology appointment, and the quiet threat of a broken streak. Challenge accepted. A self-care app was the key for me.

Despite the brisk weather, I laced up my running shoes and hit the road before the appointment. My plan was ambitious but reasonable: finish my morning run, shower, knock out my usual exercises, and arrive at the doctor’s office feeling like a functional human being.

It almost worked.

I did finish the run and the shower, and I squeezed in most of my morning tasks before it was time to head out. But “most” isn’t “all,” and I had to make peace with leaving a few items on the to-do list for later. The early morning hour simply had other plans.

When I got home, I settled back in, fully intending to pick up where I’d left off. You can probably guess what happened next. The routine? Completely forgotten. The intentions? Excellent. The follow-through? Less so.

This is exactly why I have the Finch App.

I’ll be honest. I’m the person who once missed the same doctor’s appointment twice in one month. I was busy, yes, but busy isn’t a medical excuse. My nephrologist would not be amused. So I turned to the same app my wife and friends swear by: Finch. We use the free version, which turns out to be plenty. It’s got everything I need to keep my daily habits on track.

With the app sending reminders straight to my phone, I can actually maintain my streaks, even on appointment days.

Now, the part my wife was really waiting for: the lab results. I tend to get rougher numbers in the summer, so she was watching this one closely. The verdict? My red blood cell count is back in the right range, the rest of my numbers look good, and my nephrologist’s official medical advice was: keep doing what you’re doing.

That’s the kind of doctor’s visit I can get behind.

Until next time, run your miles, keep your appointments, and let the app handle the rest.

Back
Posted on

Morning vs Evening Stretching: Why the Difference?

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Let me tell you about my complicated relationship with Morning vs. evening stretching.

It started last Christmas, when my father gifted me a stretching machine. Very thoughtful. Very assembly-required. I finally got around to building it in early January, and I do mean finally, because the manual was less a guide and more an abstract art piece. After a heroic battle with diagrams and ambiguous bolts, I prevailed. And since then, I’ve been stretching every single morning.

Here’s the thing: I used to be flexible. I did gymnastics when I was young, and my body was the kind of effortlessly bendy that people either admire or find slightly unsettling. Then I had a brain stroke, and the long recovery that followed left me stiff in ways I was determined to undo. I started running in 2016. Added resistance training over the past few years. And now, stretching,  because what good is a strong body if it snaps the first time you reach for something on a high shelf?

So I’ve been making real progress. And by “real progress,” I mean: every morning, I hit 180 degrees on the machine and feel like an absolute champion.

And every evening, I fall about 10 degrees short, and the machine silently judges me.

This is deeply puzzling. I am the same person. I have the same legs. The laws of physics have not changed between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. And yet,  morning me is practically a contortionist, while evening me is more of a… determined rectangle.

The only meaningful difference I can spot is this: in the morning, I stretch after my planking session and a round of floor stretches. In the evening, I skip straight to the machine. Could a minute of floor work and a plank really account for a full 10 degrees? It sounds almost too simple. But sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one.

So tonight, I’m running the experiment. Floor stretches first, then the machine, and we’ll see if I can finally crack the case of the mysteriously stiff evenings.

Science waits for no one. Neither does my stretching machine.

Until next time,
Still searching for my 180,  one plank at a time

Back

Posted on

Running on Empty: Life with Anemia and a 10K

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

I’ll be honest with you: this evening, I am utterly, magnificently exhausted. I attempted my weekly 10K, and my running app, with all the tact of a traffic cone, informed me that I did not, in fact, complete the full distance. My body already knew. My body had filed the paperwork on that one halfway through.

Here’s the backstory, if you’re new here: I was born with Thalassemia, a hereditary blood disorder that in my case has traveled in some very unwelcome company. My kidneys no longer work the way a healthy adult’s do, which means I’ve been dealing with severe anemia on top of everything else. To manage it, I’ve been receiving treatment, booster shots to give my blood the iron backbone it’s currently refusing to grow on its own.

The treatment has genuinely helped. I’m better than I was. But “better” is a relative word, and on days like today, sweaty, stubborn summer days, I’m reminded that my tank fills more slowly than most people’s. Summer is the hardest season because the yard doesn’t care that I have a blood disorder. It still grows. The weeds still insist on living their best lives.

Since my wife is flat-out busy with work, the yard work falls to me. And since I’m apparently constitutionally incapable of doing just one physically demanding thing at a time, I also fit in workouts on top of it. Sometimes, mid-task, I get this very specific feeling, a quiet signal from my body that says, “We have not fully recovered from the last thing. Please advise.” I try to advise accordingly.

Back
Posted on

Curling Heavier: Small Wins in Adaptive Strength Training

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

My Adaptive Bicep Curl Progress

Two years in, and my arms are finally starting to cooperate. After four months of sticking to my new bicep curl strategy, I hit a milestone this week: I added five pounds to my previous session’s weight. Five pounds! It may not sound like much, but when you’ve been coaxing your body along the long road of adaptive training, those five pounds feel like a standing ovation.

My Exercise Routine

Here’s the thing about my exercise routine: I don’t work every muscle group every day. Instead, I’ve assigned specific body parts to specific days, a little scheduling system that keeps me on track without overwhelming my system. For resistance training in particular, consistency is the magic word. Show up, do the work, repeat. The gains come (eventually, grudgingly, like a cat that finally decides your lap is acceptable).

Now, the catch, and there’s always a catch, is that my body doesn’t process protein the way a typical healthy adult can. So I have to be extra tuned in to how I’m feeling during every session. I fatigue more easily, my muscles recover more slowly, and some days, after a particularly active stretch, I arrive at my workout already running on fumes. On those days, improving my numbers is simply off the table.

I’d actually tried bumping up this weight a couple of times before and had to dial it back both times. So I won’t be celebrating too hard just yet. Instead, it’ll be a few more weeks before I know if this heavier weight is going to stick. But the new approach seems to be working: slower progress, maybe, but more consistent. And consistent beats heroic every time.

One small bonus this week

It’s a skip week for kombucha bottling. No tea brewing, no bottle rinsing, no navigating a kitchen that smells like a fermentation lab. Given that I’ve got two lab and doctor appointments on the calendar today, the lighter chore list is a genuine gift. I still have nearly three hours before my first appointment, and I plan to use every one of them wrapping up my exercise and stretching routine, unbothered, unhurried, and hopefully a little stronger than last week.

Until next time, keep showing up, even (especially) when the weights are heavy, and the protein is sparse.

Back

Posted on

My Post-Stroke Fitness Comeback

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

This morning, I hit what I can only describe as a personal triumph, the kind that makes you feel smugly satisfied in the best possible way. I completed two full sets of 10 pull-ups, back-to-back, with only a few seconds of rest between sets. For most people, that might sound modest. For me, it’s a mountain crossed.

Let me give you some context. A few years back, my wife, a thoughtful woman that she is, bought me a pull-up tower. She purchased it about a year before I had a brain stroke. The machine sat in the corner for quite a while after that, patiently gathering dust while I did the rather unglamorous work of recovering. When a stroke takes you out of commission for three to four months in bed, your muscles don’t exactly hold a farewell party. They just leave. Quietly. Without notice.

But the tower waited. And eventually, I came back to it.

After hitting my 10-kilometer running goal, I decided resistance training needed to be part of the picture too. I rebuilt the pull-up tower, dusted off a set of weights I bought about fifteen years ago (they’ve aged better than I have), and my wife kindly agreed to get us a “Stealth,” a planking platform that doubles as a gaming platform. Yes, you read that right: you plank while playing a game on-screen. It’s either the best invention of the modern age or a sign that we’ve all lost the plot. Possibly both. Either way, my core is not complaining.

Consistency, as it turns out, is the real workout. In the early days, I was constantly juggling training sessions, appointments, and house chores. My wife handled nearly all the housework until 2020, when I gradually started taking over. These days, she handles lighter tasks while I tackle the most physically demanding one: mowing our very steep hill. If you’ve never mowed a steep hill, allow me to inform you that it is its own cardio program, and it does not care about your schedule.

For a while, the hill was winning. Fitting in full-body workouts and lawn mowing during summer without something slipping off the schedule was a puzzle, and it was always the resistance training that got dropped. Then, a few years ago, I cracked the code: spread the workout menu throughout the week so no single day feels overwhelming. Simple idea. Took me a while to get there.

And today, the plan paid off. Two full sets of ten. Clean. Done.

My run, on the other hand, had a bit less glory. I finished 45 seconds behind my target pace, which means that skipping my Saturday 10K did not, as I had perhaps secretly hoped, gift my legs with mysterious renewed speed. Wednesday looks promising: warm enough to head out immediately after waking up, though rain may have other ideas. The weather and I have a complicated relationship.

Still, today belonged to the pull-up bar. And I’m taking it.

Keep moving, one rep at a time.

Back

Posted on

Appointments Galore: Living with Thalassemia and Kidney Disease

Brian’s fitness journal after a brain stroke

Mother Nature, apparently not done with her little games, has turned the thermostat down again. Because of the weather, my morning runs will once more be pushed to the post-breakfast slot next week. As if cold weather weren’t enough of an ambush, my calendar is also staging its own kind of coup. Next week brings a dentist visit on Wednesday, and then on Thursday? Thursday is what I’m generously calling “a double-stick special”: a hematology appointment that may be my last (fingers firmly crossed). Then, I have a nephrology lab visit. Two blood draws in one day. C’est la vie, or, as I like to call it, c’est ma vie.

Now, for those just joining this blog, here’s some context. When your kidneys decide to retire early, as mine did, anemia tends to show up as an uninvited houseguest. Add thalassemia into the mix (which I’ve carried since childhood), and you’ve got yourself a blood situation that’s, let’s say, medically interesting. I’ve been receiving treatment at the hematology center every two weeks, which isn’t exactly what you’d call convenient when there’s a lawn to tend and a life to live. But here’s the good news: it’s working. I’ve been running at a noticeably better pace lately, and I genuinely hadn’t appreciated just how much my blood condition had been quietly dragging me down until now. Turns out, healthy red blood cells are a bit of a performance enhancer. Who knew?

Living with Thalassemia and Kidney Disease

Meanwhile, my wife,  the unofficial research director of our household, has been diving into medical journals on thalassemia and its relationship to organ failure. She’s found some sobering material, particularly about how sickle cell traits can contribute to vascular blockages. As for why my own kidneys failed in the first place, that mystery remains stubbornly unsolved. I don’t smoke, I’m not a heavy drinker, we ate well before any of this began, and when the doctors ruled out cancer, we were left with a medical shrug. My wife keeps digging anyway. I think it’s her way of trying to make sense of something that doesn’t quite add up. I find it equal parts touching and impressive.

On a lighter note:

The intersection near the dentist’s office is finally repaired, which means the walk there will no longer require navigating a small construction labyrinth. Small victories, friends. And logistically, the routes to the hematologist and back from the nephrologist on Thursday should be a little less of an ordeal this time around.

Until next time,  may your week have fewer needle sticks than mine.

Back