Exercise, the silent menace

I found myself in the Syncrude Sport & Wellness Centre with my running shoes and workout gear yesterday, the first time since I lost all this weight.  I had taken up the offer to play some badminton with a couple of colleagues, and as I stood there at the front counter waiting for them to arrive I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had been there for the purpose of exercise.

During my original battle of the bulge, in the infancy stage of this blog, I would walk over to the Centre every day at lunch for a series of stretches, a run on the treadmill and some core exercises.  I kept at it for months and months, losing weight ever so slowly and feeling much better about myself.  After what I'm guessing was 7 or 8 months I had dropped from 210 to about 190 pounds.  I was thrilled!

And much like the last time when I had been knocked off my fitness routine, around the time of the Arctic Winter Games, summer vacation came along and my routine flew out the window.

So I played badminton, a sport that I have always enjoyed and was very competitive in back in the early 1980s (my goodness that sound like so long ago).  I stretched my arm high trying to drive that birdie back over the net.  I lunged left, right and forward.  I swung my arm this way and that way trying not to let that pesky little shuttlecock touch the ground.

I could feel my left knee wobbling about, trying to figure out what I was doing to it.  During one particular lunge, I thought the cap was going to give way and go for a spin.  I saw that happen once a long time ago with one of my basketball teammates in 1984, a fellow that has gone on to become a successful opthamologist back in Saskatchewan.  It was almost 30 years ago, but I remember the peculiar sight like it was yesterday, and the grimace of pain that followed as someone grabbed the knee cap and slapped it back into position.

Sitting down for a dose of Storage Wars, I could feel the environs surrounding my knee complaining bitterly for the activity it had endured just a few hours earlier.  But it is the collection of muscles connected to my hand that was connected to the badminton racket that are suffering the most pronounced post traumatic stress symptoms.

I was having a helluva time bringing a full glass of water to my lips last night, as the muscles in my forearm started to tremble, forcing my other hand to come to the rescue to help bear the untenable weight.  Even now, more than 18 hours later, it takes everything I have to successfully get that cup of coffee from where it sits on top of my radio to my appreciative gullet.