But I'm Not Old

Since I started this blog about being 30 and taking on a new perspective of my life and what I want out of it, it never really occurred to me that 30 is that age where you start to become "old." I mean, 40 is the new 30, right? I didn't have a crisis and I embraced turning 30, feeling young and vibrant, and not at all mourning the loss of my youth.

And then I went to my annual physical.

Let me start of by saying in the past 8 years or so, I've increased my frequency and enjoyment of physical activity. Growing up I hated gym class and sports. Sweating was for losers and unless someone was chasing me, I wasn't interested in running. I did like to swim and was on the team throughout middle school, getting sidelined by an injury in high school. And frankly, I wasn't athletic enough to want to come back from the injury.



Throughout college I would work out some; going to the gym on an infrequent basis to torture myself on the elliptical, never quite figuring out what I was to do with the free weights. But after college, I joined Curves and something clicked. I started enjoying my workouts, looking forward to them, and was very happy with the physical results. Eventually my schedule made it difficult for me to get to a gym to work out, so Dave and I bought an elliptical machine for the basement and a piece by piece we've created a pretty fantastic home gym. We have a weight bench, free weights and bar bells, medicine balls, a Bosu ball, resistance bands, a full stereo and Dave even hung the TV on the wall so I can catch up on my TV shows from Netflix. I'm a few seasons behind on Grey's Anatomy, Lost and 24, but learned if I do 30-45 minutes of cardio, I can catch up pretty quickly. And the stereo allows me to indulge my secret hip-hop/gangsta rap fetish during strength training.

For those of you still wondering what a Bosu ball is.

Since the basement floor is concrete, we even bought the foam gym flooring to put down and I've got several yoga mats that I work on. But prior to the wedding, when I was in complete buff bride mode, I bought Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred and started going all out with the intense workouts, which includes a lot of plyometric (jumping) training. The result was exactly what I wanted (I was in, fact, a buff bride). So this past year, when I put on a few extra pounds, I went back to what I knew worked.

Hmm, I don't remember my knee hurting like that last year. How come it only hurts the day after I jump around on the basement floor?

Crap.

I'm old. And possibly busted.

I just wanted to be the new hotness!

(10 points to anyone who gets that reference.)

The good news is that I didn't break myself. My doctor say my knee is fine and that I certainly didn't do any damage. But if I continued to jump around on a concrete floor, it could be bad news. Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone.

So I haven't jumped around in the basement for about two months. And guess what? My knee doesn't bother me anymore. Imagine that.

While I'm a little disappointed that I literally can't do the things I was doing a little more than a year ago, I definitely don't want to injure myself and am glad I paid attention to what my body was saying. So it's back to the elliptical and static strength training for me.

So lessons learned. 1) I'm old, whether I like it or not. 2) If it hurts, don't do that. 3)Relish what I can do, so I don't have to mourn the loss of my youth when I'm 40.


You get extra LOLcats today since I skimped on the photos. And I thought these were funny.