Soreness

Natalie came out for lunch yesterday, and before feasting we went for a bit of an exercise walk to "justify our love" for the delicious food we were about to inhale. Natalie has been playing club ultimate frisbee at Yale, meaning she is exercising more and more consistently than she did in high school, where she nominally did frisbee but was really too busy doing mock trial, debate etc. to go to practice much.

I had discussed with her a few times how much doing sports was integral to a good life for me, to the enjoyment of life, and how some baseline level of physical fitness was too. So I asked her if she was enjoying the fitness part of it more, and she said not really, and specifically cited being sore all the time as part of the problem.

I had never really reflected much on the issue of continual soreness, but I will say that it has been with me so long that I think of the mild discomfort as itself just part of life. A little muscle or joint ache tells me that I have done something recently. And if it is not there, I feel slack. Particularly on vacation, I actively want to get to the end of most if not all days having pushed myself hard. I would rather walk seven miles than three miles. And for sure, part of it is that it lets me eat more. No doubt.

Which isn't to say that I don't wrestle with laziness and actually getting out there and doing something. Even as I write this, I'm realizing that I need to hustle to pack my bags for work, including a gym bag so I can stop in to Planet Fitness end of day and put in my statutory 3 miles or so on the treadmill. I don't do it every day, but I need to do it enough days so that I don't have to go out and buy new jeans, which are always uncomfortable at first. And so we can check out Don Chicken on Elliot tonight!