Pentagenarians & Beyond: April 27, 2025

[FitGran]

Today I did ICE Chiseled Upper Body, 43 minutes, 99 calories burned, average heart rate was 100 and maximum heart rate was 136.

Valerie, nice job with the mountain biking. Taking a full week off from working out wouldn’t work for me. I will try to do lighter workouts for recovery days. I was using Ellen Barrett and some of Jessica Smith’s workouts for that purpose, but I like the Lift Move and Restore series and the recovery workouts in STS 2.0.

Diane Sue, great job with LMR Functional Barre with the bonus upper foam rolling.

Shannon, nice job with LMR Functional Mobility Fusion and cardio bonus.

Judy, I’m glad that carpet installation and other projects are coming to an end.

Hello to Cathy.

 

[Traildoggie]

tee hee..... bamboo is invasive!. we planted some once in a garden( this house) that was not supposed to be invasive. well, it was. we worried it would come up thru the concrete floors in the basement. we finally got rid of it but it was a mistake. day lilies are nowhere near that bad but here with mild winters they are still trouble. because of that mild climate many plants here don't stay within the borders you think will contain them. it can be both good and bad. nice to cover the dirt with a somewhat desirable plant because bare dirt invites weeds but sometimes the plant runs a bit wild.

plan is to ride this morning, a lovely warm day in the 70's. probably walk tomorrow at the park if our camping trip works out ok.

judy that is so accurate.... projects beget more projects. good to do it now before supplies start to run short due to tariffs.

did you know you can get cheap knock off 'air tags"? i got one for Puss along with an inexpensive collar for the air tag. tag weighs nothing. pairs to your iPhone easily.. i don't have the collar on him yet but if I want to know where to look for him, this should be a big help. about $25 for 4 air tags. amazon, made in china of course. not apple brand, those are more pricey. . if it were my luggage , I would get brand name. i already lost one collar somewhere in our yard. at least i would be able to locate the collar. breakaway collar. I swore this would be an indoor cat but he is way too feisty to be inside all the time and stays close, in our yard. cathy i remember you saying something about" not leaving things on countertops". now I understand. he slides everything off everywhere.

 

[WD]

I didn't sleep wall because my hip and low back hurt all night and I could not find a comfortable sleep position. I just did CDorner Morning wake up mobility 12 minutes and STS 2 Total Body Stretch, 24 minutes.

Shannon, I like watching lightening in the distance and the rumble of thunder. I don't like the winds and downpours that come later. We had a pleasant day today, but somewhere in the wee hours of the morning they are showing thunderstorms and rain. Our yard is so soaked that walking on the lawn leaves sunken footprints. Nice work on Functional Mobility Fusion with the cardio bonus. I like that cardio bonus. Harvey did sleep okay last night.

Judy, I hope things go smoothly for you with the projects and carpet.

 

[SRP]

Happy Friday! Yesterday I did STS 2.0 Giant Sets Total Body and the Core Plus Floor abs. Today's scheduled workout is Low Impact Sweat.

Did anybody listen to the podcast by Chalene Johnson that Debimini posted in the Open Forum? I find it interesting that there are two such vastly different concepts of exercise for older women - one represented by Chalene's podcast, advocating lower intensity cardio, and one that says we have to work a lot harder, as in SIT cardio, like what Stacy Sims writes in her book, "Next Level." But as others posted in that thread, the common denominator is heavy lifting.

Judy - good to "see" you. I hope you can take a little time to rest from all your projects this weekend.

Carolyn - nice work on Chiseled Upper Body. Yes, LMR has a bunch of great recovery day workouts.

Valerie - I like daylilies. We have a bunch of naturalized ones around here that just grow on the roadside. I dug some up years ago and planted them out in my yard, but not in flower beds. I figure if they grow in our crappy dirt (not soil - DIRT), then they're worth keeping, LOL. Puss sounds like quite a character. I guess he is really making your life lively!

Diane - I'm sorry you had a bad night and hope your back and hip feel better today. I'm glad you got a little break from all the rain, at least long enough to let some of the water drain off maybe. We got a pretty decent sized thunderstorm this morning. One big crack of thunder made me jump while I was eating breakfast.

Hello to Cathy.

I guess I'll see everybody on Monday. Have a great day and a nice weekend!

 

[FitGran]

Today I did Jessica Smith’s WS3 Boogie I.T. (Interval training). That was 30 minutes, 203 calories burned, average heart rate 129, and maximum heart rate 157.

Diane Sue, great job with CDorner morning wake up mobility and STS 2 Total Body Stretch. I’m sorry about your hip and low back pain. I had forgotten Jessica’s Boogie I.T. until you did it a few days ago. Thanks for the reminder.

Valerie, my daughter and her husband have a bamboo problem at their house. The previous owner planted it as a barrier between the house and a street and it is totally out of control. It’s an older home and there is no telling how long ago that was.

Shannon, great job with STS 2.0 Total Body and Core plus Floor. Enjoy your weekend.

Hello to Judy and Cathy.

 

[Traildoggie]

we are back from our camping adventure. it went pretty well ! Puss rode in his carrier in the camper so if he was loud, we didn't hear it. this is a 45 minute drive to the state park. its on the water so we were a little concerned thinking it might be busy. it was quiet, pristine, peaceful and private. just a standard camp site, no hook ups. we have a truck camper, one of the tall hard sided ones that fits on the tailgate of a pickup truck. like arctic fox or Lance. when we got into the camper he was quiet and wandered around inside while I made dinner. the inside space is not huge. even with 2 people, someone needs to sit while the other works. he hopped in bed and slept next to us something weve never allowed before. he purred a lot but overall we got some sleep and this would be workable if we wanted to take him to montana with us. we walked him outside on a leash. so funny how all the birds started flitting around warning each other about the predator. we walked for an hour and 15 this morning, our usual park hike. it wasnt perfect but it was decent.

my air tag works ok!. i dont think itwill lead me to him but it will show the approximate area he is so instead of looking "outside" i know if hes in which section of the yard.

carolyn best of luck to your daughter and the bamboo. it is a job! we realized out mistake before it got out of hand. we dug out the plant as much as possible, every shoot, and took to the dump. we painted roundup or something stronger on the remaining shoots before they had a chance to leaf out. it still took years to kill all of it because sometimes a shoot would pop up after years. I would never ever plant it again. it was a cultivar that wasnt supposed to be invasive but it reverted to a previous form. we have a mild climate that allows things to establish where you might not expect.

 

[Peaceful Rainbow]

Zoo visit went really well. Sent updates to Derek along the way. How many of each species was out, things that they had actually fixed, and I chatted with the woman at the giraffe feeding area that I talked to regularly last year. Got some updates from her to pass along to Derek. Yesterday I shopped. Today I did Low Max step combos. Was going to do lower body, but I called to see about a tire rotation, and they said I could come in today, so I ended up doing that and getting one more thing off my pre-trip list.

Shannon members only opening is a soft opening for members. Some things were available that would be the next day for Public opening like the zip line and face painting. And it gives new staff a day to figure things out, and get some on the job training. Lots of zoos now have areas of bamboo, especially if they have red pandas or other animals that eat it. They actually use quite a bit of cuttings from various plants for the animals. Part of keepers job to cut browse.

Valerie it's fascinating how everyone is different. I'd never choose to live anywhere with a regular fire risk, because that type of fire terrifies me. Then hurricanes and earth quakes. We have had some baby earth quakes here. OTOH the tornado risk we have here, I can live with. The worst tornado ever here hit the Flint area in 1953 and killed 116 people, the next highest was 14, and the rest of the fatalities were almost all 1 person per tornado. Since that time, warning systems and preparedness have gotten so much better, though of course now warnings for weather events will become hit and miss.

Judy sounds like you are making progress.

Caroline Parkinson's is so hard on everyone, it sounds like you are your husband are doing everything possible to manage things, but it's a difficult disease to deal with.

Diane Sue I can't imagine anyone voluntarily planting bamboo in their yard. Zoos generally have the land and maintenance people to keep their in check, but that stuff has crazy ability to grow and spread.

 

[WD]

Today I did CDorner Arms: Sculpted with dumbbells, 29 minutes, 103 calories followed by L.ITE extended stretch #1, 14 minutes, 24 calories.

Shannon, good job on STS 2.0 Giant Sets Total Body and the Core Plus Floor abs. I will have to check out that post. I have not heard anything about what Chalene has been doing. I have a lot of her workouts. I have dvd holders packed with hundreds of workouts grouped by instructors. I tend to not want to dig out the dvd holders and just do what is on my shelves. Enjoy Low Impact Sweat. I walked out in the yard today and was trying to play fetch with a ball with Harvey. My shoe literally sunk into the grass with mud oozing over it. That cut the idea of playtime short. It was thundering and raining last night. So far no rain today and hopefully it stays that way for a while. My white roses with red dots are all droopy buds because it is standing in water. It has not been this bad in the 4 years we have lived here.

Carolyn, I tend to forget those Jessica Smith workouts and they are good ones. I am glad I reminded you of that one. Nice work on Boogie IT  It was a job getting rid of the Bamboo for me. I had to dig down to roots and cut the roots and I put stuff for killing off tree stumps on the roots. It took a while, but I got rid of it. That yard was small, and shoots would pop up all over it.

Valerie, I am glad Puss did well on your trip. It sounds like he was comfortable. Good job on 1 hr and 15 min walk. I did not use Round up on the bamboo because I had a landscaper at one of our homes that told me the plants that were established would not die, they would just look bad for a while. He was right.

Cathy, nice job on Low Max Step Combos today. They have a lot of bamboo at our zoo here. I gathered it was an elderly man that lived in the house and he liked to plant things. It was a very odd arrangement of plants. He had a bird bath in a huge round stone planted with morning glories that would climb out of the planter and look terrible in winter, cannas lining the driveway so you couldn't see when you backed out, and passion vines next to the air unit that I was constantly cutting because they climbed into the air unit and attracted unpleasant worms and bugs. There was no plan there. Hibiscus right on the curb hanging. Not sure what he was thinking. It was a two-story townhome detached from neighbor.