Category Archives: walking

Walking and Woodpeckers

I’m trying to get back into walking this year.  Last year was a walking dud.  About six months after the emergency surgery… so about June or July, I was winded just walking 1.5 miles.  This year I’m not sure I’m going to set a firm SMART goal, but I’m going to try to get back into it.  This week has been excellent so far, with three days in a row.

A highlight was coming upon one of my favorite animals….. a woodpecker! This is exactly what it looked like (I didn’t take the picture), and I was probably four or five feet away from it for a while as it pecked the tree to death for about five or ten minutes.  It was really cool, especially considering most of the animals haven’t been coming out for a while 🙂

10 Marathons

Today I hit 262 miles.

That is the distance of 10 marathons… 26.2 miles * 10.

I won’t even pretend to be a marathoner, but I think it’s cool that I’ve gone that distance.

I have about 240 miles left before the end of the year – and I’m feeling pretty good!

140 Miles. Encouragement.

Today was an interesting walk. I walked 6.3 miles, which is the most I can stand to do since my boss doesn’t like me to take 2 hour lunch breaks :p

About 3 miles into it a neighbor who knows what my goal is honked like a crazy woman and then pulled up beside me and yelled encouragement… thumbs up and everything.  That was pretty cool (thank you :)).

Then, about a half mile up the road I was at an intersection waiting to cross when an older guy (about 60), pushing a stroller with a baby, came up to me and said “I walked every day for an hour, cut 1/2 of what I ate and cut out the soda and I lost 23 pounds!  Don’t give up!”

That was really nice of him to share.  Of course it reminded me that even though I feel 100 times better, I still look like I need to lose 23 pounds :p

Here’s my favorite story, though.  This happened 8 days ago. I was with my 9 year old son (the romantic one LOL).  He is a very active kid but this winter he hasn’t been so active… so he would ride his bike ahead of me just so he could take a lot of rests.

When we were about 3.5 miles into the walk, which was about .5 miles from our house, I told him I was going to pass our house and walk another 2.3 miles.  I knew he was exhausted and really just wanted to get a reaction out of him.

He said, with a really calm face, “that’s okay.” — no discouragement at all.

I said “really?”

He replied, and this was the BEST part: “sure Dad, I don’t care.  I just want to make sure you hit your goal.”

He was thinking of ME hitting MY goal.  What an awesome 9 year old!

It was a very tender moment – I sure love my kids!