See, what had happened was...

I had a weird thing happen with my hip, for one thing. I've always had hip problems. From birth. As I have pale red hair I usually joke that it's a sign I'm part golden retriever (they're known for having hip dysplasia) but whatever the case, it rarely flares up and mainly consists of something just feeling wrong--out of place. I stretch a little this way or that and it improves.

I also caught a cold.

About the hip my wife joked that she just called that "getting old" and, well, she had a point. The cold was another animal. It hit as my hip was improving and was kind of bad. I was faced with a conundrum: go ahead and do something exercise-wise or just ride the damned thing out?

If you do as much noodling around reading about fitness on the Internet as I do, you will read advice like (paraphrasing) 'If whatever you have isn't affecting you below the waist (diarrhea, etc), just go ahead and do something.'

It's true, professional athletes might take that approach. I've run with a case of sniffles myself in the past, on many occasions.

Then it hit me, "Dude, I'm 45 and I've been kicking my own ass to get in shape and stop being fat for 2 years solid now. Fuck the gung-ho shit, sit on the couch, drink tea, whine about feeling gross and ride it out."

Basically I decided to take the opportunity of having the cold and getting over the hip issue as a kind of privilege, where my age is concerned. As antsy as I got, when I finally did a workout again last Thursday (kettlebells, weighted dips and weighted pushups) I knew I'd done the right thing by taking a 5 day break. I was still coughing up stuff but my body felt good and it felt like a worthwhile workout. Today I feel about 99.9% and am looking forward to exercising tomorrow.

Not sure what point I'm making, though it's probably this--if you're older like me and not a career athlete, there are definitely times when the smart thing to do is to take a little break. At this point exercise is such a habit I find not doing something frustrating, but I'm also oddly proud I didn't impulsively try to push on and maybe make myself sicker, or become inattentive and do something to aggravate the hip problem. Felt almost like growing up. Go figure.