Our year (movement-wise) in review

We are blessed that we had childhoods that enabled us to be outside playing.  And playing outside we did--Vicky on her horse, swimming in the neighborhood pool, being a lifeguard, and playing in the undeveloped areas in her town.  I had miles of fields next to my home where I hunted bullfrogs with my bow and arrow, played "cowboys and Indians," played badminton almost every evening, and pulled my father's golf club cart when he played golf.

Now, as "seniors" we have had the opportunity to return to our childhoods in this way, and in the past  7 1/2 years have taken full advantage of that opportunity.

For the first few years we kept records of two of our activities--hiking miles and cycling miles.  Three years ago, after I found out I needed heart surgery, we started recording everything.  We believe we made a small increase at that time in how much we tried to move our bodies.  As the psychological research shows, measuring something creates changes (for example, just having people record how much smoking they do tends to reduce their amount of smoking).

Implication:  one way of increasing one's moving time is to record it every day.

And in the past year, thanks to buying our home in Arizona and living here for a few months of it, we have added an activity--swimming.

We don't do anything monster-like.  We don't train for decathlons or races or marathons, or anything like that.  The "biggest" event we do is the 210-mile two-day Seattle to Portland bike ride that we have now done seven times together, and with Jules.

Our goal is not to break any records.  Our goal is consistency.

And three years ago we added another goal:  to get my heart as healthy as we could to give me the best shot at recovering from the heart surgery.

We looked at our activities as being in training for heart surgery.

And that was successful.  Because of our joint commitment, I blasted through the recovery--recovering more quickly than any other person my cardiologist had seen.

We were told we should participate in something called Cardiac Rehab after my surgery.  But by the time I was "eligible" for it, we were so far ahead of the game that two places we called to set up appointments reacted in horror to what we were already doing.  We talked with my doctors about this, and realized that most Cardiac Rehab patients are people who had not been "in training" for their surgery, so they were starting at point zero not only after their heart surgery but in their life.

In the three months since my open heart surgery, even with having to take several days off for two "procedures" I needed during the recovery (Cardioversion and Ablation), we have done the following:

Cycled 47 hours (565 miles)
Walked 81 hours (210 miles)
Swam, danced, hiked in the desert with a backpack & rode an exercise bike  27 hours

That comes to about 50 hours/month of exercise in the past three months--95%+ of which was mild outdoor exercise. 

If anybody who is going to have open heart surgery is reading this, I can't stress enough the importance of getting in a lot of moving of your body.  Most important, I believe, is moving your body a lot before you undergo surgery.   In other words, looking at exercise/moving as training for surgery.  It will be, in almost all important dimensions, your "marathon"-like endurance run.   Train for it.

Training for it, by exercising, creates the conditions where you recover faster.  And believe me, you will want to recover as quickly as you can because it really assaults your body.

Our totals for 2018:

Swimming                  45 hours
Cycling                     250 hours
Exercise bike              46 hours
Ping pong                   28 hours
Dancing                      26 hours
Walking/yard work   174 hours
Backpack hiking         73 hours

This works out to be an hour and 45 minutes a day.

The only activity that we would say we don't terribly enjoy is doing exercise bikes.  We have to be stuck inside is why.  In future years, because we will be living in Arizona, we will not need to do as much of this activity because we can be outside instead.  In fact, we may never do it again.

Informative to us was looking at the totals for the past three years, since we realized I would someday require open heart surgery.  Here they are:

Swimming                   45 hours
Cycling                      585 hours
Exercise bike               90 hours
Walking/yard work    212 hours
Dancing                       60 hours
Ping pong                  114 hours
Hiking                        630 hours

We averaged an hour and 35 minutes a day in these activities over the past three years.  Looking at these numbers makes us realize that we didn't do as much dancing as we would have liked.  That is because of my foot problems.  Oh well.  If it's not one thing at our age it's another.

We cycled 7384 miles, hiked with backpacks 1357 miles (with a total elevation gain of just under 29 miles), and walked about 530 miles.

This kind of sustained, daily effort (exercise, I guess, although we don't think of it as such) is much more doable if one is retired, because the hours needed are much more than are reflected in these totals.  Take hiking, for example.  We drive thousands of miles every year, set up camps, deal with backpacks, etc., in order to do the hiking.  Who can do that who isn't retired?  Cycling requires clothes, equipment, maintenance of the bikes, and frequently a good deal of travel. And those "prep" activities require movement.

Before we were retired, we both were as active as time allowed.  Vicky had animals that required a lot of work, and she could get in an hour run quite easily because she lived so close to running trails.  I had to go to the gym to swim, play racquetball, or workout on the equipment.  I would get up at 5:00 a.m. to be able to do this before work.  It's hard, and even harder when children are young.

Now that we are retired, we also, at times, view our activities as our "job."  We had to show up for work every day, and now we have to show up and move (in some way) every day.  It is the same mental set--show up every day so you can have a better future.  It's a helpful perspective for us.  Some days it gets us moving when we might not otherwise (especially when the weather isn't good).  

It is our firm belief that I gave myself the best chance of surviving the heart operation and getting back to normal because of this life-time of moving.  My heart problem was not preventable.  It was not life-style related.  Instead, it was a congenital defect.

Both of us wanted more years together, to be with our families, and to be grandparents.

It doesn't matter too much what you do.  At least that's what the research says.  What does matter is moving as much as you can.  Get a dog and walk it.  Research shows that helps the heart.

One thing we did to increase our moving was change our residence.  We loved our Whidbey Island home, but, for example, to get to a doctor's appointment from there meant almost a full day trip.  We had to get up early, wait in the ferry line, take the ferry, and drive 20-30 miles, sometimes to downtown Seattle, drive back, waiting in another ferry line, take another ferry, etc.  It was exhausting, much more exhausting than a two-hour bike ride, but all we were doing was sitting.

We "saved" our dental, vision, etc., appointments for when we moved to Arizona.  We also had a large number of heart-related appointments, including the Ablation "procedure," and followups to that.  In the first six weeks we were in Arizona we had 20 office visits (including yearly physicals and lab work).  We walked to every one of these appointments (or sometimes rode our bike).  From our home we can walk to the grocery store and, unless it is our bi-weekly large trip, we do that.

We now have a lovely 3 mile walk around several ponds--a walk that begins a block from our home.  And it is a 10 minute walk to the pool--no need to even take our golf cart. 

We have set up our life to facilitate moving our bodies.  And we see a lot of people from our front and back patios who are doing the same.  From the back patio we see people golfing, including people who sometimes have difficulty, because of age, getting into and out of their golf carts.  You wouldn't think of them as doing anything major.  Yet, over the course of 18 holes they have done a lot of moving.  That's all it takes.

We are also much closer to our precious and isolated deserts that we love to hike in.  But instead of spending 3-4 days driving to them, we now can drive 1-4 hours to wonderful camping spots that having glorious hiking right from that spot.

Set up your life, as much as you can, so that it requires moving.  Doctors are recommending such things as parking on the far side of a parking lot.  Anything.  And get yourself an activity tracker--they are cheap and motivate you.

Our grandson, Sebastian (age 7) was just here.  One evening we watched him walk in a circle around the inside of our home.  Reason?  He was close to 10,000 steps for the day and wanted to get to that.  Measuring his steps changed his behavior for the good just as monitoring smoking changes smokers' behavior. 

And if your doctor tells you that you have risk factors for open heart surgery, do whatever you need to do to reduce those risk factors and avoid that.  Stop smoking and move move move move.

I am also blessed to have a partner in life, my wife, who enjoys the outdoors as much as I do.  Every minute of movement (i.e., exercise) in the past 7 1/2 years has been with her.  Every minute!