elevenpointtwo

So last night was Catherine’s going away happy hour, and a big crowd turned out at Serrano’s to send her off. I was lucky enough to score a seat beside the guest of honor, and across from Aimee and her husband Des, with lots of talk about blogs and writing and photography and marketing, and I was only planning to stay a half hour but was having so much fun that I stayed closer to an hour, and I was PSYCHED to do my walk after the conversations, but only had an hour and 15 minutes before Lynn called to report she was home with the pizza and that Banks and I needed to get over there with the video, so my walk last night was closer to four miles than five, but that doesn’t matter, because I JUST WALKED 11.2 MILES!

It is so weird how these things come over me. A kernel of an idea starts formulating --I need to do something drastic (like walk 10 miles) -- and it builds momentum, and I have to go with it. (It’s very much like when Lynn and I were in high school. Every night after my parents were in bed, we’d watch Johnny Carson, and sometime during his monologue, one of us would look at the other and say, I don’t feel like going to school tomorrow, do you? And that was that. Once the idea was planted, we knew we would skip the next day. We were brats.) So last night, after a margarita and, later, four pieces of pizza and quite a bit of peanut brittle (a random menu if ever there was one), I decided it was time to kick it up a notch. I was meeting Barbara for breakfast at the Kerbey Lane Cafe, which is 5.6 miles from my house, and decided to walk to AND from there, thus setting a new record for this blog.

We were scheduled to meet at 9:00AM, and I left at exactly 7:00. People are always asking me, “Surely you bring water on your walks, don’t you?” and the answer is, No, I never do. I hate being encumbered with anything – sometimes even my iphone is too much –and besides, if I have water with me, I’m likely to drink the whole bottle in the first mile. But at about the 3.5 mile mark, when it was already pretty hot and I had two miles to go, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a tall bottle of Ozarka. I realized immediately it was a mistake. It was awkward to hold it, and drinking from it only seemed to give me an uncomfortable feeling of fullness, so after about a mile, I threw it away, half-finished.

Got to the restaurant, had a blast, drank a ton of coffee and talked for two hours. I back-tracked the same route home, but walked the shadier streets parallel to Guadalupe for the bulk of the trip. Things started getting a little uncomfortable about 8 miles in, but really, the only time I hurt was when I had to stop for a two-minute red light. I could really feel things stiffen up even during that short a period of time, and getting re-started, I'd hobble for the first couple of steps. When I started out at 7:00, the main thing I was worried about was that one of the toes on my right foot ached a little, but I checked it out, and the nail was not grinding into its neighboring toe, and there were no cuts on it. On the way back, I realized I felt no pain there at all, but that was probably because the war between my left knee and my right knee absorbed the majority of my attention.

I’m back. Stretched, took three Aleve, took a hot shower, and as long as I’m sitting down, I feel great. I’ll take tomorrow off. And I’ll start Monday, renewed and invigorated. And frightfully pleased with myself.