Engage legs

I'm sick of feeling like absolute crap. I was already in a right state prior to COVID hitting, and the mounting up of both mental and physical health factors over the course of the last couple of years in particular have meant that I'm pretty much in the worst shape I've ever been in my life. I get easily exhausted, I ache all over and I just generally feel awful, both physically and mentally.

I joined the gym a while back in the hope that establishing a regular routine would motivate me to at the very least get my muscles moving again, but for one reason or another I never successfully managed to establish that routine. And once I got COVID, I became understandably hesitant to spend protracted amounts of time in tight spaces with other sweaty people emitting noxious disease-fumes everywhere. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but let's just say I didn't feel as "safe" as I might have done a few years back.

So, rather than wasting forty quid a month on a membership I'm not using, I decided to start going for a walk. I started yesterday, and successfully went again today. Two in a row is definitely the start of something, and I feel like this is something I can manage and deal with right now — particularly once my anti thigh-chafing goo arrives tomorrow.

I actually rather like walking, but thigh chafing sucks, so being able to preemptively counteract that should help keep me motivated. Hopefully this stuff does a decent job — it had some good Amazon reviews but honestly that could mean anything these days. The alternative is wearing thigh bands (which I'm not against, but I worry about wasting money on the wrong size) or using anti-chafing shorts (which I own a pair of, but find quite uncomfortable at my current size and shape).

While going on my walks, I'm making a deliberate attempt to "disconnect" completely. I take my phone in case of emergencies, but it's in a backpack I carry along with my wallet and keys, so I can't easily just reach for it. I'm not logging or tracking my runs — though I have plotted the route I took for the last couple of days on Google Maps, just out of curiosity to see how far it actually was. (3km, if you were wondering.) And that allows me to just enjoy a bit of peace.

For my walks over the last couple of days, I've been heading to a nearby cemetery and just going through the middle of there, coming out the other side and then heading back up the main road that runs parallel to it. The time inside the cemetery is definitely the highlight; although it's a rather glum, melancholy place by its very nature, it's blissfully quiet and peaceful also, making it a good place to either be alone with your thoughts, or just to empty your mind a bit. I'll doubtless find some other good routes nearby in the coming days, but this is definitely a route I'll keep coming back to for the pleasurable peacefulness.

And I've actually already noticed a difference. I suspect it's mostly psychological, but today's 3km walk on the exact same route as yesterday felt significantly easier than yesterday's. I won't say it felt easy because, as previously established, I am very unfit. But when you're at rock bottom in a particular characteristic, there's nowhere to go but up, I guess.

We'll see how long I can stick with this — and if it actually helps at all!