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Miles Walked This Week: 7.5
(These miles are those walked intentionally...when I actually left the house to go walking.)
Things I learned
*Buying a pedometer can be confusing...there's a big range of features and costs available. I'm not sure the one I bought is totally accurate, and now I wish I would have gotten one that would measure distance when I bicycle. I'm sure if I got an I-phone, I could get an app that would do this; which would be money better spent. Nonetheless, the pedometer gives me a pretty good idea of how far I've travelled.
*Before the pedometer I thought I was walking much further than I actually was. There was a walk I used to take that I estimated to be 1.5 miles. It's just under a mile. Isn't that the just human nature; we overestimate our efforts so often!
*Walking at night is wonderful. It's peaceful, the air is cool, and you aren't distracted by lots of traffic or human activity. A great time to reflect, pray, and meditate. That said, I'm making an effort not to get lost in my thoughts/prayers when I walk. Instead I'm trying to be 'in' the walk; feeling the air on my skin, taking in the scents of the flowers as I pass by, noticing the people, barking dog, etc.
*It's only after 30 minutes of walking that I begin to really feel the effect on my body, ie sweating, increased heart rate, tension in quads. It's also at that time that doubts begin to creep in. Thoughts like, 'you're overdoing it', 'your feet hurt', 'your heart's beating too fast', 'don't go so far you can't make it home' start to malign me. And while I am very aware that I need to pace myself; for the most part I view these thoughts as demonic attempts to keep me from my goal. So I've been checking my heart rate; which has always been just fine; then I cast those thoughts down and keep going.
My weight--oh dear, I promised to report about weight losses/gains. Welllllll...I weighed myself last Sunday morning. By Tuesday I was down 2 lb. I tried not to be too encouraged by that because naturally my weight fluctuates a lot. The swing can be as much as 4 lb on any given day. On Thursday my weight was up 1 lb from the Sunday benchmark. And today...1 week later...oh my goodness...I'm up 5 pounds from the benchmark!!! Holy hamburgers and french fries! What's that all about? Muscle weight? I hope so. But, as promised, I'm not going to let the bathroom scales dictate my attitudes or erode my resolve.
Strategies
Since the Camino de Santiago will be about 20 miles a day for 20 days, I've been thinking that my short term goal should be to walk 20 miles per week. That means stepping it up. I'll work my way up to this by getting up earlier (arghhh), and walking a lot farther on weekends. We have scads of hiking trails here in the PNW (pacific northwest), so we'll just have to take advantage of them. I'm trying banish the thoughts that I'll have to give up some reading/crafting time to do this. Just need to trust that it'll all work out!
Encouragement
I'm reading this:
Exploring these sites
Imagining myself here
3 comments:
Oh now those last photos are very inspiring for sure. Good job on getting out there. I haven't yet. I'm hoping to meet some gals at our new church this fall that might be interested in a walking group...
How wonderful, Debora! Walking is my favorite exercise...when I do it! What a great thing to be doing for yourself.
Inspiring, Debora. I was in such a "good place" a couple of years ago. How subtly and easily I fell back into lazy habits. (There's a great spiritual lesson to learn here!)
My current excuse is the extreme heat and humidity.
I'm going to try to catch up with you reading old posts to figure out the significance of "the Camino de Santiago".
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