Friday Night

Linda and I planned on a four mile walk. The weather was nice but a bit breezy. Fortunately, the two mile loop at the lake is fairly protected so we expected it to be good… but… Linda read my earlier entry and wasn’t too happy with the part about me walking slower when I’m with her than when I’m alone. I’d like to publicly provide clarity to my remark. It’s not that Linda walks slowly; she doesn’t. It’s that I don’t have the conditioning to walk fifteen-minute miles AND carry on a conversation. I can do one or I can do the other. Right now, I’m not able to do both at the same time. (I did get to demonstrate that I could do either and chew gum.)

It was a bit amusing getting started. Linda was ready to race and I was ready to walk as if she wasn’t there. For me, that meant fifteen-minute miles and not talking any more than necessary. She talked about things that I could simply give one-syllable responses to so it seemed she was on board with my program. Then she asked, “So… how was your day?” I laughed out loud. After getting on the same page, I got to walk and listen while Linda walked and talked… but not too much. She talked just the right amount.

The first two miles clicked off in the expected fifteen minutes each. I was pleasantly surprised that I’d been able to recognize early enough when my shins were about to ignite and modify my step to prevent it from taking hold.

Having completed our circuit, Linda wondered about taking a different course for the remainder of our walk. I suggested looping the library and we were on our way. The walk was nice and we sustained a good pace where we could. There were times where we had to cross streets and traffic would not allow us to pass.

Back at the lake, we cooled down and Linda pulled out her new little digital camera. As she was showing me some of its features, one of my poker friends, Jeff, showed up and chatted for a while. Earlier in the evening Linda had asked how often I saw people I knew at the lake. I’d said it was pretty rare but had happened a time or two… then she got to see it actually happen.

As I was leaving the lake, I got stopped at the light and decided to drive the downtown section of the course we’d just walked. It turned out to be three miles almost on the dot. The road does go a little outside the course we walked but I didn’t drive back into the park. I’m guessing that we walked VERY close to five miles at VERY close to fifteen-minute mile pace.