Wake Up Call

I haven't done much exercising since starting this job in Jerusalem. At first I was racewalking about 5 kilometers to work every morning, but I slipped on an oil slick early on and the hills were just too much to racewalk. Then I was walking to work but when things got too busy for a deadline I got the company to rent me a car and that was the end of my walking routine. That was about 4-months ago and while the stress at work continued to mount, my exercise routine came to a complete stop. That is until last month when I decided to start training in order to run the Jerusalem half-marathon. However, I haven't done much training so far.

This blog has been sort of a self-imposed way of checking up on myself--yeah, that sounds sort of weird but it did get me through two marathons and a half-marathon last year and I was in great health. What has happened since I stopped blogging and exercising? Maybe it was most apparent when I went home after 6-months of inactivity and got a physical exam.

Blood Test results:
Cholesterol              289
LDL Cholesterol, Calc    214
HDL Cholesterol           48

The doctor's comments were - YOU HAVE VERY HIGH CHOLESTEROL. YOU NEED TO BE ON CHOLESTEROL LOWERING MEDICATION. CALL TO DISCUSS. Great. I've been a little high on previous exams and my mom was on medication for it so I could say that it is in my genes, but last year's results weren't this bad and I suspect that exercise had a big impact on keeping my cholesterol level in check. Likewise the stress of work, less than ideal diet and lack of exercise has had a devastating effect.

This morning I was feeling a bit depressed at my situation. I slept in, sat on the couch most of the afternoon and was generally rueing my lot. My biggest concern was trying to get the sound working again on a Compaq C500 computer I brought back from home and installed xubuntu Linux on it, but I spent the whole weekend without success.

So--just as the sun went down I decided to go out for a run. It was cold, wet and dark and my Polar RS800sd, which I just got back from getting repaired, wasn't reading the foot pod properly--but I did it. Just a quick workout but maybe this will be the start of a healthy habit.