Yesterday was a mix-some good, some bad. I did learn a valuable lesson, though. Never take a 2 hour walk on a virtually empty stomach. Let’s go to the instant replay, and then we’ll discuss it.
As I posted yesterday, I’d only had a can of chili beans, two apples, and about four ounces of juice when I headed into town to go walking at 7:15 last night. It’s too dark to walk out here on my country roads, and I had other things to do earlier, which prevented me from getting my walk in. Last night, it was about 38 degrees when I left the house, and not raining. Perfect weather for an outside walk! Instead of a hot, loud, crowded gym where I’m walking around a room 18 times to make a mile, I can go down to the park with the half mile loop, be out in the fresh air, and have the place all to myself. It’s a no brainer. So I grabbed my parka, my mp3 player, and headed there.
The good news is that I got an hour and 45 minutes in. And man, did it feel good to be out in the brisk air, working up a vigorous sweat. (Of course, in my parka, I look like the Abominable Snowman and the Unabomber had a baby.) Art Bell was sitting in for George Noory, and I listened to the second half of an interview with some UFO weirdos. It was OK, but I don’t put a whole lot of stock in the UFO stuff. But on the next show, Art had a guest who says that sometime around 2011 or 2012, the cycle of solar flares is going to be at an all time high and cause all kinds of catastrophes, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, frying of electrical grids and satellites in space, famine, pestilence, etc. He mentioned a scientist named Hathaway here at a space center in Huntsville who’s predicting that it will be the worst solar flare activity in 400 years (although Hathaway isn’t predicting all that really bad stuff). I’m going to listen to the second half of the show next time I walk. But it’s pretty interesting.
Well, as I mentioned, I hadn’t eaten much all day, although I wasn’t hungry at all when I began my walk. But the longer I walked, the more aware I became of my hunger. I was shooting for two solid hours with the great weather and the interesting show, but after an hour had gone by I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it that long. After an hour and 45 minutes of brisk walking, I was famished. And I wanted something hot and filling. A salad wasn’t going to do it, nor was a baked potato. So I stopped at a pizza place and got a couple sandwiches. Yes, with meat and cheese. So I’ll have to watch my meat intake for the rest of the week. But I don’t feel too guilty about it. I should’ve eaten more before I left the house. When you’re almost three hundred pounds, a two hour walk at 3.5 mph is quite a workout, and I’m sure I burned off even more calories with the parka. In the future, I’ll make it a point next time I have to go to town to walk, to make sure I’ve eaten fairly recently.
