Going on a walk with my surprisingly fit mother

I started telling my mother recently about how I have transitioned to doing more cardio in the past 2 years and she is one of the people that I know that has always gone for walks frequently. She is a good benchmark of how you don't need to be doing something that is really intense in order to maintain reasonably good health as well as good muscle and cardio fitness.

I was visiting and was talking about how proud I was of myself in doing 5-10 km runs on a regular basis and it was her idea to head out to the countryside and go on a walk with her dogs.

there was a little bit of a cloud on this parade though and that was that she told me that her walk that she normally does with the dogs is about 4 miles. I didn't tell her this, but I measured it and it isn't even 2 miles. I will just let her keep believing what she wants because it makes her happy to know that she is doing so much more than other people that are near 80 years old.

The thing is, I let her set the pace and I was actually very impressed with how spry she is. She claims that it is the dogs that are setting the pace but they wouldn't be able to do that if she wasn't willing to go along. She has very obedient dogs and they would listen to her if she told them to slow down.

We aint exactly breaking any land speed records here but considering her age I was very pleased that at no point did she seem out of breath or needing to take a break. She set he pace and I just sat back with a smile on my face. My mom is physically fit!

This only took 35 minutes but still, she does this every day and it is a testament to what I have been saying all along and that is that daily exercise, even if it isn't very much, is a key to good health. She is proof of this.

For me personally this was a nice break from the punishment that I would normally put myself though as I only ever left zone 1 when we were jumping over some rocks to join a trail on the other side.

How many people out there have near 80-year old moms who are jumping over rocks on a rather intense trail walk?

She has been pretty dedicated to daily walks her whole life after I moved out of her house and she said that part of the reason why is because she no longer really had anything to do once all the kids were gone. This is a great way to fill up your downtime and she says she mostly looks forward to it because the dogs get so excited when it looks like it might be time for walkies.

It's never too late to start some sort of exercise routine like this one. She doesn't over-exert herself and she isn't risking injury either. She just gets out there and does something for 30 minutes to an hour. She is reaping the benefits from this as well. A lot of her friends are mobility limited, some have walkers or a cane or something like that. She has none of these issues because she never gave her legs a chance to think that it was time to give up.

I am definitely going to follow in her footsteps. I think this is a good way to go.

My mom is not now, nor has she ever been overweight either, and she drinks beer and doesn't really pay a great deal of attention to what she eats for the most part either. She isn't a drunk or anything like that but this is a good case of doing fun things in moderation and finding a sort of exercise that you don't loathe doing. She looks forward to her walks every day, especially when her son is visiting.

We are going on another one today where I will congratulate her on her walking of 4 miles every single day.