Nine Miles In One Day

Big Man. Walking. Cold Rainy Day. New Daily RECORD. 9.25 miles.

For the most part I waited until the rain subsided. Definitely feels good - a good kind of tired.

Below is a table of the first four weeks of walking in 2008. The numbers are minutes and 20 minutes translates to a mile on Lime.com.


01/01/08 72 53 70 27 40 126 123
01/08/08 100 82 108 101 100 70 142
01/15/08 105 125 111 145 124 67 116
01/22/08 177 73 145 104 108 124 185

The chart starts on Tuesday and ends on Monday. Looks like Wednesday is the most challenging day to get my walking in and that makes sense given my schedule. I volunteer with Reality Changers on Wednesday nights in addition to picking our son up from soccer, so I probably don't walk much after 5 pm. Monday is the most prolific day. Two new records on Mondays and all four Mondays are in triple digits. My weekly totals are 511, 703, 793, and 916, so I have increased my total every week.

Keeping track allows me to see my progress and make comparison as well as gain insights into how or why, just like my realization about Wednesdays. If I choose, I can make sure I get up early Wednesday to get a good start so that I have lots of walking in before I pick up Stuart from soccer. I was able to keep track because I have a pedometer. It's not perfect, but I do think my pedometer is consistent. I have a friend who said he tried using a pedometer once and it was wildly inaccurate and he found that frustrating. My suggestion is to get a different pedometer. You can do it just like I am doing it. Keep reading and tell a friend who can use the encouragement.

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

8 Miles Before 5

I am reminded of some song lyrics and I can't quite remember the whole song or the title, but here they are:

Oh yes, I am wise
But it's wisdom born of pain
Yes, I've paid the price
But look how much I gained
If I have to
I can do anything
I am strong (strong)
I am invincible (invincible)
I am...wait a minute, NOW I remember. OK, so I'm not WOMAN, but I did walk eight miles before five in the evening and it feels great. Still, they're inspirational and motivational lyrics and they were sung decades before (Was it before she was born?) that hot country gal sang that other song they have in that truck commercial. But, I digress...

I laid the foundation for a big day by getting a three mile walk in with the dog before I picked up our son, Stuart, from calculus class. What I have found helpful for me is by getting several miles in early, I can add to that a little at a time. Once I get beyond about three and a half miles total, I just want to keep going a little more even if it means walking while I wait for the Pick Up Stix order. That's what I did a little while ago. Instead of sitting there NOT TALKING to the other person waiting (Thank you, George Carlin...) for their order, I got up and told the kid who waited on me that I would be going for a walk and I would definitely be back. Little "bits" of walking here and there add up.

I want to remind you that I'm walking as a long term strategy to lose weight and feel better. My goals for the year are to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle. I will probably move on to bigger stuff later, but for now I'm simply walking to show that you can do it and that it produces results. However, I KNOW that billions and billions (Thank you, Carl Sagan...) of people can walk and so I'm here to encourage you and show you all the ways [strategies] you can walk short and long distances. There's nothing wrong with walking on a treadmill, but if you confine yourself to that, you might be missing out on some good exercise time in places you didn't expect.

I ran (walked?) into a neighbor and while our dogs were playing, I told him about my progress for the year and the Big Man Walking blog. He thought that was great and said that he used to run. And that is the point, really. Lots of people USED TO run. Walking is for just about everybody and as long as you don't try to prove how incredible you are through incredible feats of walking when you're not ready, walking is less likely to injure you, in my opinion. If you're not injured, you can walk and if you CAN walk, you're much less likely to say that you USED TO walk as many former runners say. (I have nothing against running, IF your body is ready for it.) I strongly suggest that you will get more exercise or at least create more long-lasting exercise habits if you do something that won't put you on the injured list. Recovery time? What if you don't have to recover in the first place? Walk. Just put one foot in front of the other. And keep track because it's motivating to see what you were doing and what you're doing now.

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

(Oh, and...use a pedometer.)

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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.