Stepping Away from My Computer

     Anyone who reads my blogs knows I spend a lot of time in front of a computer, but I actually make a point to get outside every single day too! I usually don't write about it because I walk the exact same loop almost every day, and there is only so much you can say about walking past the same trees. Right now, though, the fall leaves are really making the forest stand out, so I thought it would be fun to go back through a few photos from my recent walks. A couple of weeks ago, I went out for a walk in the woods with one of my daughters, and we spent the whole time hunting for all the different mushrooms popping up along the trail. There were tons of them everywhere; I have no idea if any of them were actually edible, and since my mycology skills are pretty much nonexistent, I was definitely not about to find out the hard way :). Still, they looked pretty cool, so I put together a little collage from our walk.

     Honestly, going for this walk is often one of the highlights of my day. I stick to the same three-mile loop pretty consistently; if my schedule gets tight, I might split it up into a one-mile loop in the morning and a two-mile loop in the afternoon, but most days I just do the whole thing at once. A big reason I like this particular route is that it combines three solid hill climbs with a long stretch through the forest, which is the part I always look forward to - because let's face it, walking past a bunch of houses and parked cars is not exactly spectacular.

     The forest section cuts through Big Finn Hill Park, right between the middle school and the elementary school. I always call the water in there a lake, even though it is really more of a swamp or wetland drainage basin. Either way, it is a great spot to walk through, with miles of trails for both walking and mountain biking. Lately, I have been using these trails to teach our girls how to mountain bike. A lot of the paths through the trees are covered in exposed roots, which turns out to be a great training ground for teaching them stability on a bike; it gets them comfortable with the idea that their wheels will roll right over big bumps as long as they keep their momentum up and keep their feet on the pedals. Right behind this loop, there are another five miles of trails that I don't usually have time for on a normal weekday. In the summer, though, when the weather is nice and I have a little extra time, I like to tack on a section I call climbing the mountain up to the top of Finn Hill (even though I know for a fact there are higher elevations around here, since the park mostly runs down along the river valley).

     More than anything, this loop is my main way of blowing off steam, enjoying the day, and having an hour where I don't have to worry about anything on my to-do list. I don't have to worry about work, getting the kids to school, or taking care of anybody but me for a little while. At this point in my life, I am squarely middle-aged... right in that prime window where people go through a midlife crisis (and I am pretty sure I am right in the middle of mine in a few ways). Especially lately, every time I talk to a doctor I walk away feeling old... so half the point of getting out on the trail every day is just working through all of that and trying to feel better.

     If you look at the pace map of my walk, the colors show how the terrain naturally mixes up the workout: blue sections are a slower pace (there are none of those!), orange is an average pace, and the brighter yellow-orange spots are a faster pace. Up at the very top of the map is a steep uphill climb, and that little loop jutting off to the left on the west side is the forest trail where all the rolling hills and tree roots are (so it is constant uphill, downhill, uphill, downhill over roots the whole way). Since the woods sit down in the basin between two hills, coming out of the trees at the very bottom of the map means tackling a second steep climb. Then over on the east side, there is a gentle downhill before one last uphill shelf right before I get back to my house. Having those three big climbs spread across the loop means that if I just hold a steady, brisk pace, my heart rate naturally rises and drops like built-in interval training. On the straightaways, I also like to alternate one minute of walking fast with one minute of walking slow, which explains a lot of the light and dark orange stripes along the street sections. According to AI, keeping your heart rate moving like that and improving heart rate variability is supposed to be great for managing cholesterol and triglycerides - or at least that is what the bots tell me ;).

     The nice part is that I don't actually have to stare at my watch or think about timing those intervals while I walk. I use the Google Health app on my phone, and it just plays a quiet little click and a tone in my headphones whenever it is time to pick up the pace or slow back down to relax. That leaves my brain free to listen to music or an audiobook and actually enjoy looking at whatever is around me.

     Now that the fall rain is rolling back in, it is getting a lot harder to catch days that look like this last photo. Having all the yellow and orange trees lining the path, leaves falling everywhere, and a little clearing in the clouds with blue sky and sunlight filtering down through the branches was a pretty great perk for a weekday walk.

Later,
     SteveO