Stride

Twice this week, I've taken Pace (and Jasper) on a hike up at Lake Chabot. The first half mile or so is pure up hill; I've used it as a training run when I wanted to work on speed. Its grueling. I love it.

The purpose of the hikes is to wear Pace out. He's had some behavior issues lately (increased anxiousness, aggression towards the cats - okay, towards Pax, barking in the middle of the night) that I'm pretty sure are related to not getting enough exercise. Before Jasper was born, he regularly got two walks a day; I would get up half an hour early to walk him before leaving for work, and then he'd get a longer walk after dinner. Since Jasper was born, he's just been getting one shorter walk in the evening. My bad.

All my life, my most foolproof exercise has been walking. In high school, I dropped a chunk of baby fat by walking the mile plus home from school everyday. I went to a college with a wonderfully sprawling forested campus; I walked everywhere. I didn't start driving until I was 24. Within a year, I had acquired a car, a desk job and moved in with Morgan. And started gaining weight. Over the years, I lost and regained that weight through diets or through running, but I've never had a consistent walking schedule since then.

Walking is still one of my favorite things. Today, with Jasper strapped to my chest and Pace being his goofy self, I felt strong. We powered up hills and dawdled in the shade. Even on the hills, even with 13 plus pounds of baby attached, even with the extra weight I'm still carrying, my breathing remained level. This made me happy.

I haven't talked about my weight here, but by the time Jasper was born, I had gained about 45 pounds. This is on top of the 20 pounds I put on during my hiatus from long distance running. By the time Jasper was five weeks old, I had dropped almost 30 pounds (water retention, anyone?), and I've lost a few more since then. Which is great. But I'm still about 30 pounds heavier than I was when I crossed my last marathon finish line. I don't know that walking will get me back where I was, but it seems like a good start.

So this is an unofficial sort of resolution, regarding my desire to get moving again, hopefully with the result of dropping a few pounds. But really I just want to continue feeling strong. That's all.