Pushing the Envelope

Today was a long day.  I started the day with a 30 minute strength workout.  I then took my grandson to preschool.  Afterwards, I got in a 40 minute swim workout.  A trip to the supermarket on the way home and an hour to go through emails, get in a 3 mile run, and I was back to preschool to pick up my grandson.  Bringing him home and getting him ready for his nap is an hour plus process that involves patience, negotiation and patience.  I had perhaps another hour before I had a business call, run an errand and pick up my grandson to bring him over to our house for dinner.  I took a break to go to my triathlon club's monthly meeting and then came home to bring my grandson back home and put him to bed, another hour long process.  Where does the time go? Small wonder that I'm tired.

I also, right after my swim, decided to see how many pushups I could do in 1 minute.  It turns out that the average 60 year old man can do between 10 and 14 pushups.  I'm not sure if this is specifically over a minute.  It turns out that in a study of 1000 firefighters whose average age was 39, doing 40 pushups in a minute was highly predictive of low cardiac disease risk.  So, after doing a strength workout and a swim, I still did 40 pushups in a minute!  That sounds like a great start.  To join the coast guard, I'd need to be able to do 29 pushups in a minute and run 1.5 miles in under 12 minutes and 51 seconds.  Hmm.  I could qualify for the coast guard at the age of 60.

So, I return to pushing the envelope.  I have a tendency to push myself until I can't push any longer.  That's always been my modus operandi.  At the age of sixty, I still tend to default to that approach.  While trying to stay fit, I try to get in my daily workouts.  When life adds other challenges to the day, the total stress can build up.  Sometimes it's hard to balance all of these things, but that's what I've done for a long time.  I'll continue to push the envelope.  It's what I do.