My August 2025 Running, Walking, Swimming and Health Report

In August I continued to walk, run, and swim regularly, not really growing in fitness or athletic ability but instead practicing the discipline of showing up, often under stress to do other things and under adverse weather conditions.  It was a typically hot and muggy month in summer, and it wasn't at all fun.  No, it's still August as I write this and I am not having fun.  Sometimes I feel that I am acting in defiance of my loved ones when I carve out time in my supposed "retirement" to actively pay attention to my own fitness instead of being a limp, passive excuse for a being.  I'm frankly fed up with the frustration of feeling that I am being set up to be a kind of scapegoat.  Still, I think I did reasonably well getting through this past month.  I walk and run around my neighborhood regularly and I do exercises mimicking running in the house.  I do push-ups and calisthenics as well daily.  My swimming didn't happen as often as I would have liked...maybe this coming month will see an improvement in that activity.  In August I participated in three posted races...all Parkrun 5K's.  My finishing times have declined, and it's frustrating.  I wish I didn't feel pressured to stuff myself with food...that's not a healthful habit at all.   My weight has been creeping upward into the low 160's, and I'd much rather be twenty pounds lighter.   Along with my fitness routines I find myself deep into the medical rotations of tests and doctor visits following my March prostatectomy, with subsequent blood tests and pet-scan held to ascertain whether the cancer diagnosed last December is returning on any discernible level.  Maybe next month I'll have to undergo radiation treatment since my PSA level has crept up a bit. Am I healthy? Who knows, but I do know that I am continuing to be physically active.  I suppose that an element of health is having a social network of friends and family who express an interest in me and what I'm up to, and who want to hear what I think about things.  Unfortunately, although many seem to be benevolently inclined toward me, I don't see any of that extended into a level of interest.  So philosophically I guess I'm in a funk of social pessimism, with diminishing expectations of others and, if anything, a desire to be left alone without surrounding drama.  And the POS occupying the White House isn't helping anything with his antics, nor are those people who put him back into power...