I Walked The Whole Thing!

Several years ago we noticed that a grade school friend of my son's lived waaayy down Unicornio street. I held on to that concept of their house being far away and never really measured it. If the distance to their house was a long way, then the distance all the way to the end of Unicornio MUST be a really long walk and the round trip, by extension, must be in the neighborhood of 4-6 miles, or so I thought. Their house is near the bottom of the hill and the walk is pleasant enough, but the walk back is not as fun uphill. When you add the steep uphill grade past their house, you've got a real walk.

When I started out a few weeks ago I drove to the area near their house and walked to the end of the street and back to the area near my car, proud of myself for overshooting and having to circle back to the Buick. I mentally declared my intention that day to walk from our house to the end of Unicornio and back "a couple months from now". I figured that I could come back every Sunday or so and park a little closer to our house and gradually make the walk longer. I thought I would do the whole walk sometime between late February and early April. Since then I have walked up to 4 miles or so in a single "walk" and my perception of what's possible has changed.

First, I realized that the walk down Unicornio might not be as long as I thought because of several walks I took in the area. I wasn't exactly sure how long it was, but I was confident I could do it. Second, I have done some of my walking up and down hills instead of just walking in relatively flat areas. After walking Mellow about half a mile for his daily constitutional, I decided to drop my jacket off at home along with the dog and went right back out alone in the cool air and bright sunshine. The first part was the easiest as I went from flat to downhill and then it changed pretty quickly to the steep uphill grade and that was taxing. I tend to walk at a pretty steady pace, so the uphill walk really made me work and I remember thinking "I'm not even halfway there yet!" My son was at church and my honey was in Florida. I had no cell phone. My car was at home. I knew as I kept walking that I was creating more work for my body as long as I had not yet reached the end of the street. I want to be clear that I was confident I could do this because of my experience walking over the past weeks. I know some people urge you to really go for it and that does work in many contexts, but knowing what you have been achieving recently or previously is a big help in deciding how big a bite you can chew.

My first priority is minimizing the possibility for injuring my body. That doesn't mean I can take all the risk out of the exercise. I am large and living that way is a risk in itself. The reason I want to minimize the possibility of injury is simple:
I want to keep walking and walking and walking. I don't want to put my body out of commission for a couple days or even a week or more. I'm not saying that my way is the only way. I value the ability to keep going and going and going day after day.

So now you know that this walk was a realistic goal on this day and not completely beyond what I had done previously. My biggest victory besides being able to honestly say that I had done it was the mental challenges I overcame. After I made it past the halfway point I knew that every step was literally bringing me closer to home, closer to my goal. Once I was past the steepest portion, the way home was uphill but at a more gradual pace. Along the way I had peeked at my pedometer and realized that the whole trek was not as long as my most conservative estimate. Upon reaching home I saw the this trip down Unicornio and the little streets to get there was only 2.6 miles! This had been a LONG street in my mind for years. Even starting out weeks ago when I realized my intention was to conquer it, I had no idea that I would do it before the end of January! I slayed the dragon. You can slay your dragons, too. Now I need to find bigger dragons to slay.

I am walking. You can walk. Please walk today. No matter what.