For way many more years than I like to acknowledge even to myself, even in the dark, I have been quite sedentary.  The result is a flaccid, slack and sloppy bod and a reckless disregard for the realities attendant to shifting this heap o' flesh around and about.  Oh, I haven't been completely slothish--I am a high school teacher, and so must get off me arse once or twice an hour during the school year.  And I swim--O!

I loves me the swimming pool!, but I live where summer is the pause between snow storms, so even six hours a day on the really good days of those too-short weeks doesn't do much to boost my metabolism...And, truth be told, in the "off season" I am wont to ride my stationary recumbant bike until I am worked into a lather and am nearly sliding off the bike in the pool of sweat that accumulates beneath my heaving buttocks.  O! it is a sight!  

But just now I am on spring break, and I came away from school last Wednesday afternoon thinking that I really should try to stretch my tolerance beyond the 20-23 minutes my body has been doing for , oh, 12 years or so.  Clearly, I have not been "kicking it up" enough of a notch, 'cause I just never lose any weight, and though I have always felt I would simply DIE if I couldn't peel myself off that thing after my usual third of an hour, I got to thinking maybe my bod just doesn't recognise that 20 minutes as effort of any meaningful sort...

So that afternoon, I slipped my iPod, set to shuffle, into my bra, and assumed the postition.  And I started peddling.  And I ignored the timer.  And I averted my gaze from the clock on the wall in the kitchen, visible with only the most subtle of cranes of the neck, and I kept peddling...And I peddled until my heart was thumping and the sweat was pooling in that little ridge between my nose and my mouth (what the hell IS that part called, anyway?!), and then I checked my time--38 freaking minutes! Whoa!  I mean, Holy Shit WHOA! and I knew I still had a bit in me, so I peddled some more, now watching the timer and pushing myself...I made it to 41--not just my personal-best-dry-land-calorie-expending-burst as an adult, but I seriously think it was my all time best ever...I mean, back in high school, the last time I did any other sustained-beyond-20-minutes-not-in-the-pool, we had 38 minute classes, but five minutes on each end was given over to changing in and out of suits and prettying up again for the boys...  I gotta tell you, I was pretty proud of myself Wednesday night.  Called my husband, my son and my mother to brag on myself!

But that wasn't the end of it...Thursday, I added 6 minutes for 47; Friday I had to try to meet the previous uppage, and did for 53 minutes.  Today...the real challenge.  Would I be able to hit 53 again?  Would my bod let me do the additional 6 for a total of 59?  And If I'm able to get to 59, with 60 RIGHT THERE, would I find it in me to actually go THERE, to 3 times my usual?

Well, hell yeah.  That's right!  I just did a full hour. And I feel good.

P.S. Bless you, Apple and your wonderful iPod...Oh, and bless ME, while I'm calling down the graces!