Today’s training schedule called for cross-training, so I rode my bike for one cold, wet hour. I want a bumper sticker for my bike that says, I’d rather be kayaking.
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Today is Day 5 of the half marathon training schedule, which calls for rest. I’m choosing to interpret “rest” as a leisurely 3-1/2-mile walk. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I’d love to hear your comments. Just follow these 43 easy steps!
The July Project: Number 30Yeah, I know it’s not July any more. The month ended in a flurry of activity during which I was too busy to complete any posts, so my first job for August is to wrap up July. Bear with me!  A few years ago, I started thinking of my daily walk as a crude analog to the wandering of our African savannah ancestors in pursuit of game and other food stuffs. They probably spent several hours every day chasing after or rooting around for their next meal, and the one after that, and the one after that. There are three grocery stores within a half a mile of where I pitch my tent, so I don’t have to wander in search of food. But evolution optimized my body and my mind for this movement …[MORE] The July Project: Day 29
About a year ago, a business development client and good friend said to me, “I love my job, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing, my whole life is perfectly on track except for this one thing: I’m fat, and it makes me miserable.’ My answer was, “Well, I guess we know what to work on next.’ She picked a bad time to get me fired up about a new project—the second week of August. She’s not a big fan of Houston summer heat. But she somehow pushed through her reluctance …[MORE] The July Project: Day 28At the end of last November, in an effort to jump-start a weight-loss regimen that had stalled, I made up my mind to walk twice around the loop at Memorial Park every day for the month of December. November 30 was a Monday, so I started one day early for good measure. The next day, just in time for my “official†December Project kickoff, the weather turned nasty for two solid weeks. December 1, it was raining and 45 degrees by evening. Then a cooling trend set in. By Thursday, there was talk of snow. I woke up Friday morning to moderate flurries …[MORE] The July Project: Day 25
Today was my first full, on‑the‑water rowing class. As I mentioned a few days ago, a friend (Mark) and I are taking a Learn to Row class offered by a club in Sugar Land, Texas. I was feeling apprehensive in the last few days because my first attempt at taking a few strokes tethered to the dock on Thursday night felt clumsy and awkward. We’d spent some time on machines and listening to the instructor in the classroom, but there was a part of the mechanics that I couldn’t make any sense of …[MORE] The July Project: Day 24Once in a while, everything comes together to create the perfect walk. There was an afternoon in Los Angeles in January of last year. I’d spent the day in a conference listening to brilliant people talk about their hopes for the future of human progress. I was high on contagious optimism and altruism. One of my new friends offered to show me the way to Griffith Park. I followed her through rush-hour traffic up into the hills, then she showed me where to park and where the running trail started. As I walked and jogged, the sun went down over the hills on one side and the San Gabriel Mountains faded to deep purple on the other. James Taylor sang “That’s Why I’m Here†on my iPod. I break into a grin from ear to ear / and suddenly it’s perfectly clear. It was an ecstatic moment. I’m sure that my feet never touched the ground. 
And I recall an early spring day at Memorial Park in some recent year. Dappled sunlight was coming through the deciduous trees, just beginning to fill in with tender yellow-green leaves. The breeze was warm, and I knew it would only be a few weeks until it was too hot to walk at midday. But on this day, the sun felt great on my pasty-white skin. The soundtrack: Indigo Girls, “The Wood Song.†No one gets to miss the storm of what will be …[MORE] The July Project: Number 23I’m thrilled when people comment on my exercise regimen—or my blog—and say that I’ve inspired them, or that I make it look easy. But I wonder sometimes if “making it look easy†is doing a disservice to people who are working hard on their own projects for self-improvement. So tonight I want to come clean—it ain’t always easy. I spent an hour last night trying to come up with a blog post. It was the end of a very long week with mountains of work, many hours of writing, two rowing classes, and a workshop to finish preparing …[MORE] The July Project: Day 21I headed to the park for my walk early today because my first Learn to Row class was tonight. I arrived there around 3:30, the hottest part of the day. I didn’t have to wait long for relief from the heat, though. The sky clouded over, and then about halfway through the first lap, it started to sprinkle. It didn’t rain for very long—maybe about 10 minutes—just enough to get me miserably wet. Then the sun came back out and turned all the fresh rain into a layer of hot steam that hovered over the trail. It was too humid to dry out from the wetting, but it didn’t matter, because another one was coming anyway. As I got to the last half-mile leg of the 6½‑mile walk, the sky opened up. This time, it was more than a sprinkle. The torrential rain continued until about the time I arrived back at my car …[MORE] |
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