#oneaday Day 995: Back into the swing of things

Made it to the gym yesterday, and to the pool today. Slowly getting there, though two weeks of almost complete inactivity has left me extremely achey. Remind me not to sprain my ankle again. I'm now super-paranoid about the corner of my drive where I did it; with any luck, that paranoia will ensure it won't happen again.

I'd only been building up a "routine" for a little while before the accident, but I was still a bit concerned I'd have lost any of the progress I might have made in that brief period. Thankfully I still appear to be roughly where I was in terms of what I can handle reasonably comfortably — and I tend to find the achiness goes away when I'm actually using the bits in question. Going up and particularly down stairs is still a bit painful, though.

Anyway, onwards we go I guess. Not been doing too great mental health-wise of late, but I suspect a lot of that is due to frustration over my physical condition. Perhaps I'll start feeling a bit better with some more regular activity — I know swimming tonight certainly felt like it was releasing some stress.

Exercise is funny like that. It can actually physically manifest mental health matters. I've had it happen on a couple of occasions; a while back when I'd had to temporarily move back in with my parents after the breakdown of my first marriage, I took to going running a bit. I was never particularly good at it — and I certainly doubt I would be now — but I successfully made it through the Couch to 5K programme and even ran a 10K in London at one point.

One evening I was running the route I'd established for myself around my home village, and I was coming towards the "cooldown" period. As I stopped running and slowed to a walk, I just started crying. Not about anything in particular; I just felt a weird "release" and suddenly my body decided that now was the time to let out the physical symptoms of all the things that had been weighing on my mind.

I felt something similar in the pool this evening. It wasn't as strong — I didn't start crying or anything — but I definitely felt a distinct sense of "stress relief". Followed by new stress and depressive triggers to take its place. Oh well. It's a start, at least.