Since I ragged against speed hiking last week I feel compelled to confess I’ve been some racing the clock myself of late. Not in our Sacred Cathedral of the Backcountry, mind you, but still: it’s walking (somewhat) fast and is about as close as I get to doing anything athletic.

Last Friday I jogged for a mile non-stop for the first time ever and this morning I did a combination of jogging & walking that covered five miles in a sliver under 60 minutes, another personal best.

People accustomed to regular fitness regimens know these times are a joke, but they are also a start. Main reason I’m flogging it today is help anybody who sees this post overcome the notion they’re too old, too infirm, too fat, too lazy, too depressed, or whatever other obstacles stand between them and becoming more physically fit. My mom used to work in industrial medicine and used to always tell us that even people in their 80s and older could show improvements with regular workouts.

Almost everybody who’s hiked with me has heard this story: When I was younger, my excuse for never getting off my dead butt was that I was saving my joints for my old age. After 40 that excuse didn’t fly anymore, but all those years on the couch had one payoff: when I started hiking a few years ago I had none of the knee troubles afflicting lots of people my age. Downside was it takes much, much longer to build strength, speed and agility with old, unused muscle mass, but you get no yin without the yang.

My rationale is that building strength and speed during the week will take more of the drudgery out of weekend hikes, but I’m also doing it because it just feels better to do something better today than I did yesterday. Most things in life are way too complicated to be able to quantify improvement, but with fitness, you can count today’s reps or clock today’s miles and compare directly to yesterday’s and last week’s. Even if your performance gets worse, you’ll have a pretty good idea why.

Just another way of saying yeah, you have to sweat and suffer to get in shape, but you own all the rewards.