I think this describes this past Saturday quite well:
I admit – I spent much of Saturday sitting on my keister working on Schumin Web’s new design (which goes live late night/early morning on September 29-30). And by the evening, I felt like I’d been sitting all day. Ever since I lost all of this weight, you see, I can’t sit like I used to. I can’t comfortably sit on hard surfaces for very long at all, because I’m more or less sitting on bone now after I’ve shed 116 pounds (and counting). Even on my desk chair, which is padded, I can’t sit for extended periods anymore. And considering that I was doing web design on Saturday (making three versions of the site for different formats), I was feeling like I’d been sitting all day.
Besides building the new production design for the website, my other goal was to get a haircut over at Hair Cuttery in Aspen Hill. I looked at the location on Google Maps, and it turned out that the distance between my house and Hair Cuttery was only 0.87 miles. I go further than that when I walk home from the Metro. So rather than walk the couple of steps to the car, sit down in the car, drive over there, park, and then walk the couple of steps from the car to the haircut place, I decided to follow Beach Bear‘s lead, and get up and move around. Seriously, I was thinking about the aforementioned Rock-afire Explosion song as I was deciding to walk it. Specifically, I was thinking of the line, “Hey, everybody, Rolfe DeWolfe here, taking you for a walk!” So I put on my walking shoes (vs. the flip flops I would have worn if I had driven), grabbed my headphones and iPod, and walked over there. Not bad. I was pretty satisfied with myself for walking over there.
However, I didn’t really feel anything from walking. That was disappointing. I guess it must have been too easy of a walk. Let’s admit – for those familiar with Aspen Hill, all the slopes are pretty gradual. It’s a downward slope from my house to Georgia Avenue. Then it’s a very gradual upward slope on Georgia Avenue. Then Aspen Hill Road is more or less flat, as is the shopping center. So I was a bit disappointed. I wanted to get some exercise, and not just simply walk over there.
So after the haircut, I decided to amp it up a bit as I was going home. I knew that I could sprint the length of a Metro platform, as I had to do this to grab the lead car at Wheaton recently on my way into work. So I wondered how I might do just generally running. And, a bit to my surprise, I can do a pretty decent run now. Compare that to two years ago, where even the thought of running would leave me winded. So as soon as I got out of the shopping center, I ran from Aspen Hill Road to Georgia Avenue. Then I took about 100 feet to walk so I could catch my breath. Then I started running again. I dropped down to a walk again a few hundred feet later to catch my breath again, and then ran all the way to the bus stop. From there, I walked across Georgia Avenue (the list of things I don’t want to do include tripping and falling on my face in the middle of a six-lane highway, even if I do have the walk sign), and then ran up my street to the vacant lot (my apartment is within view of here), before walking the rest of the way in. Not bad! I felt satisfied.
And here’s how you know that the run was successful: I’m still sore from it! I apparently worked a few muscles that I don’t normally work at the pool fairly well, because it’s Monday night as I’m writing this, and a few muscles are still sore from my run.
In any case, this is something I need to explore a little bit more. After all, I discovered that running is now, in fact, within the realm of possibility, and it’s easy enough to do, with ample sidewalks all over the place. Plus the Matthew Henson Trail runs parallel to my street, and so there are certainly places that I can go with this.