Losing a part of me

Category: Walking

  • Day 155

    My walk this morning hit a lot of firsts. It was, firstly, my first post-Covid walk. I know I am not yet 100%, but I did want to give it a try. It was my first walk in Dallas, and my first walk in 36°c heat (that is about 96° Fahrenheit). All good starts. I took it easy, so it is also the first time I am posting my stats here where they are worse than the previous attempt.

    • Distance: 4.00 km (7.00 km)
    • Duration: 46:17 minutes (1:15:57 minutes)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 11:33 (10:51)
    • Steps: 5k (8.7k)
    • Calories burned: 226 (402)
    • Elevation gain: 22m (22.1m)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 108 (114)

    All in all, I am extremely happy that I did it. I will try to do it tomorrow, but I have to remember to bring a bottle of water with me. Yes, it is bloody hot out there!

    Breakfast was good… I had an omelet with onions, broccoli, and cheese. After I came home from my walk, Leslie and I decided to be bad… we ordered pizza. We do not cheat often, and I have been jonesing for a pizza for months. It was delicious indeed! For dinner, I will make chicken wings and a salad. Leslie is still new to the air fryer, and I want to introduce her to new ways to make food for her son. We bought the wings the other day, and I defrosted them overnight. She has a great sauce that we will use, but air fried is so much healthier than regular fried!

    My downward trend on the bathroom scale continues, and I hit another low this morning. I am thrilled by it! Leslie said that every time my weight hits a plateau, I just have to come to Dallas to see her. Maybe she is right? I doubt that Covid is having a real effect on it, but who knows? I am now three pounds down from my last weigh-in at home. To make things even sweeter, after my walk I stepped on the scale and was another two pounds down… I know that I lost a lot of water during the walk so it does not count… but it is still cool. If I were to have gotten weighed by my doctor at the same weight as I weighed in this morning, I would be 3.5 kg down from my weigh-in just over two weeks ago. Woohoo!

    I did enjoy my first cigar last night, and I was able to taste it, although I am not sure that I got the full effects. I got a strong note of cinnamon from the very first puff to the very last, which is not what this particular cigar should taste like. I will stick to a cheaper cigar for tonight if I decide to have one.

    It does get hot down here in Texas, that is for sure. A few people warned me about it, and I knew… but I forgot. Yessir, summer in Texas is not like summer in California. I will absolutely get used to it, I just forgot that the heat can be oppressive here.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Walk #4

    I do not understand how the GPS app on my phone can tell me within 90 seconds how long it will take me to drive from Burlington to Montreal, yet it was off by nearly six hundred metres with how far it is from here to the bank. If you look at my previous article, as I was writing it I checked, and the distance from here to there was 2.4km. Yeah, try exactly three kilometres from here to there. Okay, no problem. My planned 5km walk was all of a sudden a minimum of 6km… and I decided to have a little fun and extended it to a seven-kilometre jaunt. With the stop at the bank of course, so if we go by the logic I put forth in a previous article, this was either a single 7km walk, or two walks of 3km and 4km respectively. Either way, I am extremely proud of the walk, because not only was the distance a full 2km longer than my previous bests, but my pace was also better than I have done as well… by a long shot!

    • Distance: 7.00 km (5.00 km)
    • Duration: 1:15:57 minutes (55:59 minutes)
    • Average Pace (Min/km): 10:51 (11.11)
    • Steps: 8.7k (6.4k)
    • Calories burned: 402 (285)
    • Elevation gain: 22.1m (19m)
    • Average cadence (steps per minute): 114 (114)

    By the way, my pace for the first 5km was 10:41, which makes it a full 30 seconds better than my pace for my previous 5km walks! The only kilometre which measured over eleven minutes was the last one, and there are several reasons for that… Aside from the fact that it was the tail, I took a phone call, and spent most of that last kilometre chatting with Leslie. No, that is not a complaint! I am happy she called, but the timing worked out perfect too, as I suspect that talking would have slowed my pace at any point in the walk.

    I started getting hungry around the 5km mark, which had more to do with the time of day than the walking. When I arrived home, I put my lunch into the air fryer and prepared my salad. As soon as the ding signals that the meal is ready, I am chowing down!

    I don’t know about you, but I think I have truly earned my afternoon cigar today!

  • Day 106

    Isn’t that the way that it always goes? Yesterday morning, I weighed myself on my bathroom scale before going into the doctor to get weighed for my ‘official weigh-in.’ Based on that number, I was not at all surprised to find that I was less than one kilogram down from my previous official weigh-in. It was lower, and that is great… it just was not a significant loss. This morning when I stepped onto the scale, I was a full two pounds down from yesterday! Had my doctor’s visit been today instead of yesterday I could have been a full 2.5kg down. Okay, I take these things in stride. Weight loss is a marathon, not a sprint. The interim check-ins matter less than the final result. On the other hand, those interim check-ins are the encouragements that push you forward on those difficult days; it feels great to be able to punch your fist into the air proclaiming ‘Look what I did this time!’ I will have to save the air-punching for my next weigh-in.

    Speaking of my next weigh-in, it is three weeks from yesterday. While we will be back from two weeks from yesterday, we are landing late the night before (and really, early that morning), and I do not see me getting into Toronto at 2:00am (which means I cannot possibly be home in bed before 3:30am), then waking up to be at the doctor’s office just a few hours later. Let’s put aside the fact that I will have been off my diet. Thus, I opted to defer my office visit by a week, choosing to maintain the regular Wednesday cadence… just pushing it out by one week.

    I just got the call from my bank that the Euros that I ordered are ready to collect. I do not think I need anything from the store, so I might decide to walk to the bank, which is a little further than the supermarket… but not by much. Actually, according to Waze, it is 2.4km from here, which means the round trip would be around the same 5km that I have walked very well a couple of times. The weather seems to be agreeable, so I just might do that.

    I made a different dinner than usual last night. I defrosted a couple of salmon filets and rubbed them with sesame oil before putting them in the air fryer. When they were ready, I put them on a plate, and put a line of Tabasco sauce down the middle. I then spooned salsa onto it. Served with a side salad, I think it came out very well! It is definitely a dish that I will be trying again. I got the idea after my breakfast out last weekend, where I really enjoyed the pico de gallo on my omelette. When I mentioned this with my beloved, she told me that she had suggested I cook with salsa, and she is right… and she was right! I will be doing more of this for sure.

    Okay, it is time to do a few things, then I will change into my track pants and head to the bank. Have a great day folks!

  • Number Three… or Number One?

    Some of us seem to go to great lengths to procrastinate. I decided that this afternoon was a good day to go for my third walk. I was not sure how I was going to feel, so I did not set out with a distance in mind. After the first two kilometres I was feeling fine, but just could not achieve the same pace that I had for my first two kilometers Monday. I was under the mistaken impression that I had done better the last time around than I had, so I was disappointed by my pace. In truth, I was hardly off at all. My first kilometer was 8 seconds slower, the second was 22 seconds slower. Considering that on Monday I had the wind at my back, and today it was in my face, I really was not doing too badly.

    If I could not match my pace from Monday, then at least I could match my distance. At the second kilometer mark, I decided that I would match the 5km that I did last time. It is funny how things work… At the end of that 5km, my stats were almost identical to Monday’s!

    · Distance: 5.00 km (5.00 km)

    · Duration: 55:59 minutes (56:00 minutes)

    · Average Pace (Min/km): 11:11 (11.11)

    · Steps: 6.4k (6.3k)

    · Calories burned: 285 (519)

    · Elevation gain: 19m (14.1m)

    · Average cadence (steps per minute): 114 (114)

    What I am having trouble understanding is this: If every other measure is nearly identical, how is it that my calories burned today is a little over half what I burned on Monday? The only explanation I can think of has to do with the fact that Monday I split the walk into two and did my grocery shopping at the halfway point. While the app is paused for that, maybe there is something going on? I don’t know.

    Speaking of which, that brings me to the title of the article. This was my third measured walk of my new regime. Following my first walk, I wrote a piece called “But Was It a Workout?” in which I questioned if going out shopping, but doing it on foot, and measured, really constitutes a workout. My second walk was the same, except that rather than split into four uneven segments, it was split into two. Today was the first time that I set out to go for a walk without any destination. I not only changed my shoes but also my pants – I took off my trousers and donned a pair of Adidas training pants (note to self: I need a new pair of training pants), I put on a hoodie instead of a jacket. So, while it was my third walk, it could be considered my first workout.

    Whether it is or not, I feel good about myself. It was a grueling pace to maintain, considering my weight. It is also the first time I did two workouts (whether or not it was that) in a week. My hope is that, going forward, I will be able to do at least two or hopefully three workout walks per week. It may take a few more weeks – and a few more kilos lost – to get there, but it is a good short-term goal.

  • Day 74

    Yesterday was my first 10,000 step day in a very long time – possibly as long as 8 months, when I moved back to Canada. I routinely hit that number when I was golfing four times per week. Since returning to Canada, I do not think I have come close.

    I followed up my walk yesterday by eating well. I stuck to the plan (although my last shake of the day was later than I normally would have liked it. I drank more water than I have been. The result… my left foot has been killing me all day today. Oh… and I am down half a pound from yesterday, which I am sure I will gain back tomorrow.

    I took my son the younger for breakfast this morning, which due to the wait turned into lunch. We arrived at the restaurant at 11:02am, and we were eating precisely one hour later. I did not mind, although I should have had a cup of coffee or at least a breakfast shake before heading out to pick him up. That’s what I get for dawdling in the morning! My breakfast: a vegetarian omelet with a dash of hot sauce, and a garden salad instead of the potatoes and toast. All in all, I don’t think I did too badly.

    I dropped him off and came home. After I finish writing this, I will pick my cigars for the day and then HRF Princess Sophie and I will drive out to Cambridge to spend the afternoon and part of the evening with Ryan and his clan. It should be a fun time. I am bringing my darts and look forward to playing a few games.

    Have a great day!