I Go Out Walkin', After Mid-day

Man, I was about to cry and whine this morning when I woke up and saw that it was only 38 degrees outside.  That's just a little too brisk for me.  But not to worry--it got sunny and warmed up to the north side of 70, so I took advantage and went for a walk. 

It wasn't as productive as I'd hoped it would be--I had to keep stopping to pull up my pants.  I almost lost 'em a few times, so I guess that's tangible progress.  I've got my belt cinched up to the last hole, but it's still hangs down, useless except as decoration, with an extra inch or two of leather real estate that's not helping at all.

Also, remember last week when I was at the ghetto walk-in clinic and they told me that I'd lost 28 lbs?  Well, I kinda figured that was a generous number, because I was standing on a digital scale that had balancing handles on it.  So I knew it was giving me a number that was a little too optimistic.  Anyhow, I could tell that I'd lost a bit of weight, and I had to go with what they put in my medical records, but I didn't believe it.  So this past weekend I got an expensive digital heavy-duty scale that's guaranteed to be accurate within 1%, and it measures weight in tenths of a pound, too.  So it's much more accurate than the scale they put me on at the walk-in clinic. 

I've been weighing myself every morning, since I got it, and my actual weight loss was closer to 14 lbs., which makes sense because nobody except an amputee would lose 28 lbs in two weeks.  Of course I wish I were down 28 lbs, but at least now I can measure my progress more accurately. And I'm doing pretty good.  I'm hoping to be down an accurate 25 lbs by the time we go on the cruise in three weeks.  At least that's my goal.

I figure I need to step up and walk more often, and do longer distances, too.  One of my readers clued me in to a great tool, mapmyrun.com, which lets me measure exactly how far I walk each day.  I don't have a handheld GPS, nor do I have a smartphone with an app that would measure it for me, so this is the next best thing.  I've since found out that my neighborhood walk down to the far reaches of the dead-end street and back is only .63 miles.  And the easy park walk that we did this weekend is only .87 miles.  I thought both were longer.  Of course, they seem longer when you're not up to full strength.  (Although, today's neighborhood walk seemed easier than usual, and went by fairly quickly, so I'm doing better). 

My immediate goal is to start doing a full mile in the evenings, and then maybe next Saturday or Sunday I'll try the 2 1/2 mile Harpeth Woods Trail over at Edwin Warner Park.  And then once I'm officially 'healed' I'm going to tackle the 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Nashville.  At least that's the plan.

This afternoon, however, the plan is to take a nap for a couple of hours.  I feel like I could use one.

Mikey