Water
I exercise at bit in the morning, more like stretch, to ready my body for the day, but more importantly to ready my legs to run. There’s a story a week in the paper about the importance of exercise, how twenty minutes a day can make all the difference, the way brushing your teeth keeps your smile. Most of what I focus on revolves around the tightness of my hamstrings and calves, the two muscles in my body that best resemble piano wire strung to pitch.
A friend and I work with a trainer who pushes us in ways I’m not always comfortable with, as if he’s working with a couple of twenty five year olds. The other day, he prescribed heat on our calves morning and night because he planned to push, push, push us—to build strength, to improve explosiveness. My calves and I worry.
My biggest challenge with all this exercise doesn’t involve stretching or lunging or even my miserable attempts at sprinting. No, what’s got me all twisted up is his direction to drink more water. How much you ask? Eighty ounces a day, preferably in the first half of the day so as to get some sleep. And while I’ve tried to drink more water for about a year now, and can report utter and total failure. Maybe because of what my doctor once told me. “You’re fine. People drink when they’re thirsty. Been that way all along, and we’re still here.” Or is it the pure ridiculousness of the number of ounces. Eighty? Please! My teeth will float away.
When asked, my trainer gives a good reason for all the liquid. Something about feeding the torn tissue left floating in the wake of fifty yard sprints. He says I can count coffee, tea and my new favorite NA beer, Athletic Brew. On a good day, and with these allowances, maybe I get to fifty ounces, kind of the same way I never get to the nine hundred calories of activity my new Apple Watch prescribes. Call these both aspirational goals, though eighty ounces feels less aspirational and more like swimming in the deep end before you’re ready. Maybe my watch needs haptics set to an H2O counter of some kind. Drink, drink, drink it would tap, instead of tapping to stand. I don’t need a reminder to stand. How about that?
How have I succeeded in creating habits like writing and exercise, and yet I can’t find a way to drink more water? What’s wrong with me if this one thing could be the answer to building muscle strength and flexibility? Maybe my water bottle’s not big enough. Do I need one of those gallon sized types you occasionally see people come to Zoom meetings with? When I first saw one, I wanted to laugh out loud and say, “you gotta be kidding me. Right!?!” But it’s no joke, these people testify. People carry those things around religiously, talking about how water changed their lives. Well, so does a piece of chocolate or a glass of wine, or so they say. All these little things we’re supposed to do to live long and healthy lives.
I’ve never been a big water drinker. I’ll go all day on morning tea and coffee, with lunches most often consumed dry. In the evening, I’ll have an NA beer to replace the regular beer I drank everyday for fifty years, until the very same doctor said I had wet brain. “When you stop drinking for thirty days, you’ll feel it. You’ll also have better cognition.” So I did, stop. And I did, feel it. Will this create the same break-through?
Water. We’re made of it. The earth’s covered by oceans of it. Life’s elixir. Entire industries built on bottling and branding it Smart. Rows and rows of sparkling water tempting us to add them to our carts. And now, our newest favorite, environmentally friendly aluminum cans of Rain offered at our local indie movie theatre. It’s everywhere and everything Steve, so stop your bellyaching and drink up. It will make all the difference.
