Every Day Is Leg Day

As I deal with the realities of being middle-aged, I've had to confront the fact that I don't eat as well as I should, and I am not nearly as active as I should be.

For the majority of my adult life, I've been rather sedentary and rather lazy (those tend to go together). Of course, living in an urban environment and being a non-driver means I've always done a reasonable amount of walking, but as I grew older and got used to doing errands with the Mrs. in the car, even the amount of walking I do has decreased.

Now that I'm back in an office, I am a little more active throughout my day, walking to and from bus stops, going outside to get lunch, etc. After we moved to our new office space a few weeks ago, I used the elevator to get to our floor (4) for the first couple of weeks, until I figured out where I could enter a stairway would bring me to our floor. Then I started using it when I arrived each day, to go downstairs to get coffee after arriving, to go get lunch, and to leave at the end of the day.

Additionally, several of my coworkers are quite a bit younger, from mid-twenties to early thirties. I noticed that every afternoon around 3, they all left their desks to engage in some sort of group activity that lasted only a few minutes. It turned out they were climbing the stairs to the top floor (10). So I decided it was in my interest to join them.

I've climbed the stairs with them every day this week, including one day alone because they were all otherwise engaged. And they had an extra little surprise for me: after climbing from the fourth floor to the tenth and coming back down, then continued down to the first floor, then came back up to 4. Due to the design of the building, two of the flights are longer, so it's essentially like climbing and descending ten flights. My knees are more unhappy than my leg muscles, but I'm managing. I'm hoping that it will get a little easier after a few weeks.

Also, the building was constructed with an elevated first floor, so it's 20 steps up from street level, for a little extra bit of work when entering and leaving each day.