A Scaffold, Fitness, and a Reminder

Over the past couple of weeks, my wife and I have been painting the main floor of our house. Like many mid-2010s colonial-style houses, ours has a “great room” — basically a family room with no second-floor room above it so the ceiling essentially goes up to the roof line. This translates to a section of 18-foot ceiling. Our foyer is the same, but with a second-floor catwalk in between.

Given the height of ceiling, I had to use a scaffold to paint the walls where they joined the ceiling. Given the catwalk, I had to partially disassemble the scaffold to move it to the foyer area.

The scaffold platform was 6 feet wide. At 12 feet high, the scaffold was quite wobbly (it had guardrails), so I could comfortably lean out 6 inches each way, allowing me to paint 7 feet of wall before I needed to move the scaffold. This means I climbed up and down the scaffold a lot over the course of the weekend.

So how does this interesting home improvement story related to fitness and my war on cubicle body? I have repeatedly said that I didn’t start this journey to run marathons or bench press a couple hundred pounds. Those are nice side effects, but I’m doing all of this to live my life better.

Five years ago, I would not have really been able to do the job described above — certainly not in a single weekend. The longer I’ve been on this journey, the more I realize in relief how much I had let my health and fitness slide. Climbing a scaffold for a weekend is probably unremarkable, but it represents a personal milestone that reminds me why I do all of this in the first place.

I’m training for a marathon in October. I’m a little behind where I’d like to be, I’m feeling a few more nagging aches and pains, and the dog days of summer are making it slightly less than fun. I’ll be thrilled when I accomplish it, but getting a glimpse a the real reason for all of this has helped my motivation.