This morning, calendula_witch and I walked my 60-minute loop. It's about 3.0 miles of suburban walking, along residential streets in the general neighborhood of Nuevo Rancho Lake. Up til this point post-operatively, my longest walk had been about 25 minutes to cover roughly a one mile subsegment of this loop. We made the entire loop in slightly less than 65 minutes in the frosty morning air, though I was staggering by the time we got back to the house, and went down hard for a (mercifully brief) nap.

This is huge for me. To reclaim my fitness, even nominally, is so important. Last year it took me months to get anywhere. With abdominal surgery, the wound healing was so much bigger an issue than the chest wall punctures I am now recovering from, so that's certainly a big factor. However, I also have to credit my extensive and constant walking and biking programs over the past 18 months with readying me for this recovery process.

I owned that hour, in the same way pre-op me owned that hour. (Well, almost so, certainly close enough.) There's still a million things wrong, recovery progresses apace, but damn it, my body can move.

I am terribly pleased.