Last week I mentioned that I was going to start working out. I even asked for suggestions of songs to help motivate me and a few of you had some great ideas for me. I haven’t finalized the playlist yet (or even really started on it) due to lack of time, but I do have intentions of doing so in the near future.
My goal was to start on Monday and at least get myself on the treadmill 3 days a week for 30 minutes. The bad news is that I didn’t get my playlist ready and I didn’t get on the treadmill. The good news is that I walked for an hour and a half Monday night.
When I was picking Zach up from day care, my friend A asked if I wanted to take the kids in their strollers and go walk at a local park. It was such a beautiful day out that I couldn’t decline the invitation. I knew that Hubby had dinner ready at home, so Zach and I went home to eat dinner, then changed clothes and headed off to the park with A and her son.
I had been to this park before, but very briefly because I was in search of baby swings for Zach and there were none to be found. What kind of park has a toddler sized playground and no baby swings? This one, apparently. What I didn’t notice when I was there before is that they have some very nice biking/walking/running trails.
A and I headed off onto the trails at a pretty quick pace. When we started walking I told her the story about how I got all motivated one Saturday morning and decided to go for a walk. I also told her how I walked for way too long without bothering to turn around and my short walk ended up being about a three hour walk that resulted in much soreness and several blisters. Then I told her how I wanted to make sure never to do that again. It was such a stupid thing to do, right?
Um, I kind of did it again, except this time it was only an hour an a half instead of three hours. A and I were so busy walking and talking that we kind of quit paying attention to where we were going. Before we knew it, it was getting very dark and we had absolutely no idea how far we were from our cars. We also just happened to be walking along a very dark portion of the path that was wooded on both sides. That’s when we both started to freak out just a little bit. Two women pushing babies (excuse me, a baby and a toddler) in a dark wooded area? Probably not the safest thing I’ve ever done.
We could see that there was a main road not too far away, so we found a little pathway and cut across a soccer field to get to the road where there was at least a little bit of light. Zach was giggling and enjoying the bumpy ride, but at that point I just wanted to get back to my car. There was no sidewalk near the road so we huffed it through the grass. Zach’s stroller was most definitely not made for off-roading. I was kind of dreaming of self-propelled strollers at that point. Do they make those? I think they would sell.
Eventually, a sidewalk started on the opposite side of the road so we crossed over to the nice smooth pavement. By that point Zach was getting extremely bored and kept trying to turn around to get my attention. My legs were starting to ache and I could feel blisters forming on my feet. But! We were almost back to the park!
The last ten minutes or so of that walk felt like an hour. I’m pretty sure I have never, ever been so happy to see my car. I was tired, but at the same time I felt great physically. Even though we were only walking, we kept it at a fairly quick pace the entire time. It has been a while since I have pushed myself like that. It felt so good that I rewarded myself with not one, but two, scoops of cookie dough when I got home.
I’m still feeling the effects of the walk today. I feel muscles that I didn’t know I was even using while I was walking. I guess that goes to show just how out of shape I am! It feels really good though. The blisters on my feet aren’t feeling so good, but I’m hoping that will go away soon.
A and I plan to do this again, hopefully at least once or twice a week while the weather is nice. The best part of it is that it actually was fun and didn’t feel so much like exercise. I think next time I’ll make sure and set the alarm on my phone for 30 minutes into the walk and actually turn around when it goes off.