For whatever reason, last week I didn’t get out walking as often as I wanted.
So on Saturday, I decided to make up for it (kind of). Went for about a 30-minute walk quite early, then about 50 minutes a little later in the morning.
First thing to note: For almost the end of April, it was quite chilly. I mean, it was only a few degrees above zero, but there was also a breeze from the north, so it was distinctly chilly, especially when I was walking north.
That made me want to walk a little quicker, so I decided to do some fast-walking, especially the second time out. Fast-walking, for me, is not the same as speed-walking. What I do is walk at a pretty good pace and keep pushing it until I find myself wanting or needing to breathe through my mouth.
Then I slow it down a touch so I’m breathing through my nose. I find that helps me set a good pace, but also one I can maintain fairly well.
The early walk, I don’t think I passed a single person. A fair bit of it was on the side streets near my apartment building, so that wasn’t much of a surprise, and it was, as mentioned, fairly chilly, which may have convinced a few people to wait until a little later to go out.
On the second, longer, walk, I was on Tabor, 15th, Ospika and Fifth, so more major roads. I passed about a half-dozen people, including one pair twice. As I went by with a smile, the man smiled and said, “Hello, again”.
I also saw a couple of crows out picking at stuff in the road. As I went by on the sidewalk, they didn’t even look up. A car came toward one of them, and the bird just hopped over a few feet, across the white line into the other lane, and then stopped again.
I remember thinking, “Wow, the bird seems to know what the white lines on the road are for, which puts it ahead of a fair number of drivers in the city.”
About half the people I passed were walking dogs, which seems to be about the usual ratio. All of them were quite good about moving the leash to their other hand so the dog was on the far side of the sidewalk from me, which I appreciated.
I’m not sure it really did anything, though, since most of the dogs just kept trotting along and didn’t even seem to notice me, let alone show any inclination to leap up and rip my throat out. (No, I don’t have an overactive imagination. Why do you ask?)
When I got home from the second walk, my legs let me know in no uncertain terms that while they were OK with the idea of going out again on Sunday, if I was going for another walk on Saturday, they weren’t going.