January activity - 173 miles or an average of 5.3 walking miles a day. I closed all three activity rings on my Apple Watch 19 days (which I'm a bit confused about - I thought I'd closed them at least 25 days, but...). Some gardening and about 20 minutes of snow-shoveling. I was hoping to get back up to 6 miles of walking a day, but I wound up having a few days of flu.
The main good news of the month - the chronic tendonitis I had most of the time for 4 years is mostly gone. Using heat on my legs and wearing thick, hard soled shoes (not sneakers) seems to have made all the difference. The stretching exercises I started doing back in April helped some, but I was never painfree, especially on stairs. Now, I'm painfree probably 98% of the time when I'm walking. I look forward to the weather being less winter-like next week so I can start hiking the hills in my neighborhood.
The lesson I've learned about dealing with pain is to keep trying new things and keep reading. As you get older you tend to think you're stuck with pain...and that's not necessarily true. Four years ago, I thought the leg pain was from arthritis and started taking more aspirin. That helped a little. When it got worse last spring, I tried physical therapy which helped some. But I wound up wearing thick soled shoes during a day of a lot of walking in November and had almost no leg pain that day. I started reading more about leg pain and thought I probably had tendonitis (which was a word no one said to me last spring). I took nearly a week off of walking in December, started using heat on my legs and always wore thick-soled shoes. Bought a pair of Doc Martens last month after trying on probably 15 pairs of shoes (and I hate shoe shopping). Stopped taking daily aspirin & found I didn't need to take it for leg pain anymore!! I had a similar experience about 7 years ago when I upped my walking - my back got much better.
So my lesson learned is - if you get advice from the medical profession that doesn't seem to work, keep looking online at the science-based sites like WebMD - you can sometimes get better advice there than you get from your doctor. Even after you turn 60, not all pain is chronic and permanent.
