Wednesday, January 12, 2011

To Jog, or Not to Jog: That is the Question:

In which our Heroine engages in wishful Thinking. 


There are some things that I miss being able to do.  Today I wish I could strap on my running shoes and go jogging, or maybe even do some serious working-out.  Normally I hate sweating, and I don’t usually have urges to get my blood pumping.  In fact, for years it hasn’t actually felt good when I worked out.  It was like torture to run around the track a few times.  It felt bad while I was doing it, and not so great afterward either.  My joints would hurt and I would feel light-headed, and generally tired and achy.  But, usually about an hour afterward, when I’d had time to really cool down, I would begin to feel energized.  And the next day, during the times when I was just living life as normal, I would feel so good and healthy.  These were moments of torture, but well worth it in the end if I could force myself to work through those awful two hours of workout-torment. 
There are all sorts of New Year’s Resolutions out there that grandly state that a person will eat healthier, will work out regularly, lose weight, etc…  I think I’m feeling this same urge.  And today, I miss the delusion that I can set a goal and go get my heart rate up and that it will be healthy for me to do so.  I also miss the possibility of losing a few pounds around the middle by working it off.  My feeble attempts at walking quickly wear me out and, trust me there is no weight-loss involved. 
When I matriculated from Physical Therapy, my therapist was still keeping my heart-rate below 120.  I asked my doc and he said I could probably go above that and do almost anything I wanted.  Well, I’ve tried a few times, and I’ve started to go back to trying to keep my heart-rate down.  It’s just not comfortable to have my head start pounding in time with my heart-beat.  It’s also not a constructive way to keep me interested in trying every day.  And laying on the couch wishing for an immediate 3 hour nap is also impractical. 
I think many of us take these sorts of things for granted.  Health in general, but being able to run off 10 pounds in the course of few months, specifically.  As I’ve stated in other posts, sometimes it’s about not having the choice, or the possibilities that cancer has stolen that kills me.  Either that, or it will literally be excess weight and poor health habits that kill me, according to the literature I’ve been reading lately.  What would I give for the ability to jog around a track without feeling faint? 
Ho hum… Such dreary resolutions must needs poetry.  In an effort to make myself feel better about not being able to go jogging on cold, icy roads, I’ve decided to do just this and write a poem.  I think it’s a winner. 
To jog, or not to jog: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous cancer,
Or to put on running shoes against a sea of fat cells,
And by opposing end them? To run: to die;
No more; and by a jog to say we end
The heart-attacks and the thousand diabetic shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To run, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that three-hour -nap what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this extra weight,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the waddles and wrinkles of time,
The cancer's wrong, the proud man's words of scorn,
The pangs of despised body-image, health's delay,
The insolence of the media and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When she herself might her quietus make
With a sports bra? who would high heart rates bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after jogging,
The undiscover'd country from whose burn
No jogger returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus a headache does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of New Year’s Resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

No comments:

Post a Comment