I haven't posted in a while! Things have been busy. I all but wrapped up my recent project (just a few more tasks to be completed) and proposed a new job for myself to our CEO--put me in charge of employee relations, because employee satisfaction at my company is at its nadir and many people are looking for jobs (some are just waiting on an offer so they can resign). I got her approval of my ideas, but today I prepared a budget for her. As they say, Money talks. We'll see if she is still as interested after she sees the money I want to spend.
We also bought a new car, a Honda Civic for my wife. We have always been a single car family and have never had any problems, but now that our daughter is starting school (tomorrow! Weep!!) we really needed a second car. We were able to get the payments and terms we wanted, and we showed up at the dealership around 6:30 and left around 10:00, so it was a pretty quick and painless process.
As for walking, I've done quite a bit of that. My last post was August 8th after my 32 mile long walk. Last week I only walked three times because I had some major hip pain in the middle of the week. But I was still able to walk 40.6 miles in those three days.
The most interesting and challenging walk was a trail walk on the North Shore Trail of Lake Grapevine, outside Dallas. I got there at 6:00 am and hit the trail, only to find that the trails were filled with spider webs! With big spiders!! Some of the spiders were as big as my thumbnail (just their bodies, not including the legs)! I had to pick up some brush and wave it in front of me as I walked to flush out the webs. It was a little disgusting for a while, but eventually the sun came up and other hikers/runners/cyclists hit the trails and cleared up the webs.
This trail was very, very challenging. I actually ran quite a bit, running up and down the major inclines, and I jumped over rocks, up rocks, over roots, across streams, etc. When I finished my legs were killing me and they were still sore for a couple of days. I walked the entire North Shore Trail round trip, plus a couple of small "detours" (I got lost) so I walked a total of 19.13 miles at a pace of 12:32. Considering the difficulty of the trail I thought that was a good pace.
I took Monday off to recover and did an easy recovery walk Tuesday morning:
Distance: 7.16 miles
Time: 1:29:55
Pace: 12:33
Today I did a longer walk and pushed the pace a little more:
Distance: 11.11 miles
Time: 2:05:32
Pace: 11:17
Tomorrow I would like to do another 10-11 miles, then 14 on Friday, then Saturday off, then long mileage on Sunday. I haven't decided for sure, but I would like to do about 33-34 miles. We'll see how I feel Saturday/Sunday morning.
I have lots of blogs to catch up on. I hope everyone is healthy and happy and enjoying their running/walking.
