The Walk

There was a time a few years ago that I would walk close to 60 miles per week. The effect on my body (and shoes) was quite striking. It's hard to keep up that kind of activity--it just takes too much time to walk that much--and this past year my average dropped closer to 15 miles per week. I've actually been doing better than that for the last few weeks as I've consistently tried to walk all the way to work each morning instead of completed that last half of the journey on the bus.

Yesterday I decided it was time to kick things up a notch once again. I left my apartment at about 11:30 and started walking toward the University District. That's a respectable walk in and of itself and I wouldn't have felt bad about jumping on a bus right then and returning home. Instead I decided to join the Burke-Gillman trail for a while. This was a bold move. Normally I try to walk close to major bus routes. There are more shops along the way in case I need to stop for water or use the restroom, and it's easy to end the walk early for whatever reason. Walking along the trail, however, trades these conveniences for a more enjoyable walking experience, a relatively flat path sheltered from the noise of street traffic.

When it felt like I had walked far enough I turned around. I'm not sure how far I went, because I never looked at my watch throughout the whole trip. Instead I had only vague estimates based on how far I had gotten along my iPod playlist. For example, it took about the lenght of The Wren's "The Meadowlands" for me to return from where I turned around on the trail to reach the southernmost part of the University bridge.

Instead of returning home, I continued walking to downtown and looked for an interesting movie to watch that would give my poor feet a few hours rest. Only when I reached the theater did I look at my watch. It was 4:00 and I had been walking without stopping for four and a half hours. I bought tickets for the next showing of Syriana and then headed to the drugstore to get some water. I hadn't realized just how dehydrated you can get in the cold winter air.