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Wednesday, August 01, 2012

The Nightly Death Walk

This is Steven Petrick posting.

I have of late taken up walking once more. I cannot run (my left leg would collapse under me were I to try, and I do not want to think about the damage a bad subsequent landing could cause). I walk pretty much the same distance (actually, I have added some distance since I started, but I cover the same basic ground) every time. The major variety, such as it is, is the dress and the load. Sometimes I walk clean (just basic shorts, socks, shoes, hat, shirt, and an identity wallet with an ID card and the key to my apartment), other times I add 10 pound leg weights (20 total pounds), sometimes a 40 pound vest, sometimes I wear what I will call a "sauna suit." I will sometimes combine the sauna suit and the 40 pound vest.

The walks typically take less than a half hour, although when I am particularly drained before I start and I am wearing the 40 pound vest there are a couple of times I have exceeded a half hour.

I have, however, noticed that when I am feeling good, whether I am "stripped down" (i.e, not carrying any extra weight) or carrying the heaviest load (the 40 pound vest) the usual variation in time for the distance is just 17 seconds. When I am feeling good and relatively full of energy, the vest only slows my time for the distance (somewhat less than two miles) by 17 seconds.

I cannot tell what that says (surely I should be faster than 17 seconds unladen than laden).

I have, to be truthful, never actually measured the distance. I assume it is less than two miles simply because in my younger days my normal walking pace was faster than four miles an hour, and I know (because of the drag of my left leg) that I am slower than that now, and if I am walking the course I am walking in less than a half hour, it must be less than two miles. I started a couple of months ago just going around the block, extended that to two or three times around the block, then extended that the full length of the neighborhood, over one block, and back, then added another block, then two more blocks.

I do wear a bit more than the above. I always wear my glasses with a cricket strap (so that if I fall, my glasses will not fly off), some wrist bands to contain the sweat, and a pair of weight finger gloves. The gloves are because, if I fall I will likely try to catch myself and the pavement will likely rip the heels of my palms to bits. If that happens, typing and working a mouse would become more difficult. So the padding in the gloves is a precaution. I can afford additional damage to my legs (I am no longer, sadly, in the infantry), but I need my hands to work, so I have to protect them. Oh, yes, I also wear a stop watch to time the walk. I always stop and start at the same point.

As you might imagine, the walk is boring. So my mind wanders, and I have taken to counting cars (number that actually pass my person, number that I just see driving somewhere in my line of sight, and the number that are police cars are the three categories I try to keep track of . . . last night for example was: three, six, and two.

There are also, of course, the unusual events. The car full of, I would guess local college girls, who thought it was amusing to drive alongside of me calling out "beat that a**! (I still have no idea what that was about, I was wearing the 40 pound vest at the time), and recently a number of gamboling animals that when I first saw them I thought I was seeing a couple of cats possibly contesting terrain or a male chasing a female, but eventually resolved into a pack of six-eight roughly large size cats in size, but I only saw one of them in enough light to make out detail and I am almost ready to swear it was a pack of Coyote Pups running around inside town.

Well, I try to walk every night, but I do not seem to be losing any weight (there seems to have been some weight loss to start, i.e., the belt I usually wear has to buckle to its last setting, but it has not since become "loose").

Still, I think the walking is good for me, so I am going to try to keep it up.

Although I would rather be swimming.