What did you get up to this long weekend? (American readers, this past weekend was Victoria Day weekend here in Canada.)
In the 225 workouts in 2025 group, I logged my long dog hike (3.5 km is long with an elderly dog, long for him anyway, I’ll be blogging about that later) and my 30 km bike ride with Sarah and David.
But in a weird way that was the least of it.
When I turned up at the gym this morning, I complained about my sore lower back and what feels like an out-of-place rib. I felt like I’d been beaten up. Don’t worry we took it easy-ish at the gym. But it got me thinking about all the random, weird physical tasks I did this weekend.
Sarah did more so I feel sheepish even blogging about this! Also, my mother who is on the plus side of 80 did a ton. We’re a powerful team!
When I got to work after the gym though, half the staff were complaining. They were also talking about aches and pains from weekends of binge spring cleaning and yard work. I am not alone, it seems.
Here is some of what I did outside the house:
🌳 Lift bag of sand from upper shed and carry it to the downstairs yard.
🌳 Aerate the back lawn with a manual aerator with two holes. (And yes, we could have rented a machine, but that was $78 for 4 hours, and we’d have to find a way to get it to our house. The hand aerator was $50 to buy.) We have tough soil so that involves a lot of stomping.
🌳 Move two cloth planters full of dirt from the front of the house to the side of the house. Each planter was a two person lift.
🌳 With Sarah and a visiting friend, carry a heavy planter from the side of the house to the front of the house.
🌳 Shovel soil from giant bag of soil into the wheelbarrow.
🌳 This is a weird one and it might have been the toughest–unscrew the pipe connecting the gas tank to the BBQ. I think it had frozen/rusted in place. I had to get into a weird position to get any force on it and that was the task that hurt my ribs.
And then there’s inside the house:
🏠 Carry all the dirty laundry downstairs and all the clean laundry upstairs.
🏠 With Sarah, lift the huge wall-mounted TV (the old-fashioned heavy kind) off the wall and carry it into another room.
🏠 Re-organize the basement room to store all of my winter clothes under the stairs. Much lifting and shoving of bags and bins.
I do sometimes log this stuff in the 225 workouts in 2025 group. Workout 142 was “A morning and afternoon of emptying and reloading the upstairs and downstairs sheds with Sarah. So many bins. All the Christmas stuff is now at the back and the sailing, camping, and biking stuff is ready for easy access. A lot of lifting. Way more than I ever do in the gym.)
I’m sure I’m missing things, and we’re not done yet! Wish us luck!
Good luck!
I feel ridiculously lucky to have lived 73 years without lower back pain, in spite of having lugged around stuff about 3/4 of my weight from time to time (including this morning, when we had some do-it-yourself furniture parts delivered. I know it makes sense to be more careful, but I know that’s hard when you are getting a lot done.
I hope you recover quickly and completely.
Recovered! All good. Just short term aches and pains.