Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

Yesterday:

Distance: 3.01 miles - Time: 41:50 - Avg Pace: 13:53/mi.
Calories: 350
Soundtrack: Food of Love

Today:
Distance: 0.9 miles - Time: 12:04 - Avg Pace: 13:24/mi.
Calories: 105
Distance: 2.1 miles - Time: 28:31 - Avg Pace: 13:33/mi.
Calories: 245
Soundtrack: The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Tough walking today! An older woman I passed on the sidewalk murmured to me how brave I was as I walked by. Yesterday was my first walk for a specific mileage rather than a specific time. The pace looks as though it's finally about right, calibration-wise. I don't love that the length of the walks is under my control, and that I don't get to stop after x amount of time no matter what. But I suppose I could use that as motivation to up my speed.

Today's walk ended up divided into two because of an unavoidable stop at the window of a doggie daycare. The little dudes were so cute! A couple pups walked toward the window when I showed up, but only one jumped up on the sill-ledge: a Cavalier! This happens to be the very breed of our own Winnie and Graham--what are the odds? Maybe the vibe is palpable; they're smart dogs. This one was a pretty tricolor--like this fella right here. We looked at each other for a while, me smiling like an idiot, the pup eyeing me patiently, soulfully. Give animals human qualities much?

In other news, I decided to check out some options for keeping my Nike+ sensor in place, for fear that it was sliding around under my laces and affecting my readings. Not to mention the fact that I have to keep half an eye on it during walks, on the off chance it slips out. So I tried out a couple options, the one on the right, which is made by RunAway (I named her Crystal; you like? Okay, maybe I didn't.), and the one on the left, which is made by Marware. The Marware one has become a permanent fixture on my walking shoes; it's a little subtler than having a red and white oval in view bopping atop my laces.

I feel I should speak to the abrupt change of soundtrack. I gave Food of Love a shot, but it just wasn't good. I'm not going to go so far as to say the book itself is a dud, but the audio version just wasn't cutting it. So far, The All-True Travels... is great. Plus, it's three volumes--about 18 hours in all--and so it should hold me for a while. Happy New Year!

Sigh...

Saturday:
Time: 1:40:06 - Distance: 6.46 miles - Avg Pace: 15:28/mi.

Calories: 753
Soundtrack: Heat

It's almost enough to make a girl want to stop blogging. See that pace up above? Compared to what I've been doing, that's hopping-on-one-foot speed. But I went to a track in Red Hook on Saturday to calibrate my Nike+ sensor, and what the track said was a mile (four times around lane 5 out of 8) was what my sensor had been calling 1.2. Yikes. And post-calibration, what appears above is what it gave me for my 100-minute walk. Barf. It seems unfair that I should experience a marked drop in self-esteem at having suddenly become a s-l-o-w walker when nothing has actually changed. I wanted to be absolutely sure, since I never changed lanes as I went around the track and previous tests showed more like 1.1:1 rather than 1.2:1, and so I decided to re-calibrate yesterday on our treadmill. I'm going to stick with this one, which said that one treadmill mile was equal to .89 miles as measured on the track. So I'm somewhere in the middle of my two extremes. Either way, my marathon is going to be a good bit longer than I had been thinking. Even if the outcome is temporarily disappointing, I'm glad to have it settled now, because tomorrow is my first day walking specific distances, rather than specific amounts of time. So not having calibrated the sensor would have started affecting how much I was actually walking--not just how I feel about it afterward.

Today:
Time: 50:05 - Distance: 3.06 miles - Avg Pace: 16.19/mi.
Calories: 357
Soundtrack: Food of Love

Today I went up to Rockland County for a walk in Harriman State Park on my way up to the outlets at Woodbury Common. It's snowier in those parts than it is here in Brooklyn, which made for a wetter, puddlier time than I had been anticipating. I also ended up teetering along some rather narrow, precipitous footpaths above rushing water, which kept things interesting. Didn't walk all that far, but it was pretty and different, and that's certainly worth something.

Holly, Jolly

Monday:

Time: 50:05 - Distance: 3.96 (0r 3.56) miles - Avg Pace: 12:38/mi. (or 13:54/mi.)

Calories: 461
Soundtrack: Heat

Wednesday:
Time: 40:05 - Distance: 3.34 (you get the idea) miles - Avg Pace: 11:59/mi.
Calories: 389
Soundtrack: Heat

Christmas in Columbia, Maryland. Yes, it was almost a week ago, but these above are the walks that flanked it. The second one was actually back in New York, and while I managed to avoid Holland Tunnel traffic, it took me so long to wind around it that I only had a few minutes along the Hudson. The Monday walk was on a bike path near my parents' house. Picture something like this on the right, only less green. More cold grey trunks against a lovely blue sky. It was a hilly walk, but picturesque and utterly without the bane of the city stroll: traffic! And Nike+ just shot me this. Good stuff.

A Damp and Drizzly Day

From my dad, the Mother-Goose origin of "misty, moisty morning":

One misty, moisty morning,
When cloudy was the weather,
I chanced to meet an old man
Clothed all in leather.
He began to compliment,
And I began to grin,
How do you do?
And how do you do?
And how do you do, again?

Catch-Up

Thursday:
Time: 40:07 - Distance: 3.35 miles - Avg Pace: 11:57/mi.

Calories: 390
Soundtrack: Heat

Saturday:

Time: 45:03 - Distance: 3.69 miles - Avg Pace: 12:12/mi.

Calories: 430
Soundtrack: Heat

Today:

Time: 40:37 - Distance: 3.36 miles - Avg Pace: 12:04/mi.

Calories: 392

Time: 18:59 - Distance: 1.53 miles - Avg Pace: 12:22/mi.

Calories: 178

Time: 16:02 - Distance: 1.31 miles - Avg Pace: 12:12/mi.

Calories: 153
Soundtrack: Heat

I didn't actually go on three separate walks today. It was intended to be one 75-minute jaunt, but I had to stop and divide it up when I got to the end of the first volume of Heat, and then accidentally ended the workout rather than resuming it when I stopped for a moment. The first mile was inside with my dad, on the track at Supreme Sports Club in Columbia, Maryland, where we're visiting my parents for the holiday. And after that, it was out into the misty, moisty morning, as my dad likes to say...I think that comes from some book we read as little ones. But it was indeed alternately foggy-drizzly-rainy.

But the biggest deal of the whole thing is this: my dad and I walked a mile around the track, and then he had me stop and look at how far my iPod said I'd gone. And it said 1.1 miles. So if it is, in fact, always wrong by 10%, then what I think are 12:00 miles are actually 13:12 miles. So not cool. I'm going to calibrate it and have ordered something to hold it more tightly in place atop my laces, but I am not pleased. At least my walks are still for a certain amount of time, rather than a certain number of miles, and so I haven't been inadvertently under-walking. But I thought I was pretty fast. Hrmph. Gonna get this thing figured out.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY LEGS?!?!

As I mentioned in "What Not to Do with Your Feet," I got me some sensitive skin. And while she has a great many delightful qualities, this is one I wish my mom would have kept to herself. Over the course of several cold-weather walks, I have been developing blotchy pinkness on my legs. It's become sort of rashy-looking, and when I tried to moisturize it tonight, my thighs screamed in displeasure. Not cool. Just wanted to share. This is not, by the way, a picture of my legs, but one I found that sort of approximates (sans electrodes) what the angry parts of mine look like. I think this person actually had the measles.

Hudson Views

Time: 40:11 - Distance: 3.25 miles - Avg Pace: 12:20/mi.

Calories: 379
Soundtrack: Heat

Tuesday seems to have become Manhattan walkin' afternoon. Hoboken by sunset is really lovely, and I only wish the walkway right next to the water were open the whole way down to Canal Street and beyond. Unfortunately, construction has it closed down partway through the Village, and so there are fences between the pedestrian/bike road and the water. You can see through them, of course, but it's not as picture-perfect as it might be. Ah, well. I timed the walk even a little better than last week, with the ultimate goal of getting back to school just as my 40 minutes were up. Darting in and out of Holland Tunnel traffic was tricky and slowed me down a bit, but overall, a good walk.