Blogpost: April Walk Challenge

I am so enjoying the participation of our membership in the wellness challenge. Some folks are not facebookers so I have decided to up my blog posts to share my experience.

It was a beautiful start at 6:15 with Three-o. Temperatures in the low 60s. The wind from yesterday was gone. The dirt mound over the sensor to get out of the gate was not too wet so one jump and the gate magically opened. Three-o was a little more frisky today so we had a few stop and resets to avoid pulling. I have been walking and running in the same area for over a decade so I know at least one person on each street as well as the regular walkers and dog walkers. Our first reactivity challenge is yellow lab that is quite frisky. If we are lucky, we are in front or significantly behind him on our route. We change direction if needed because Three-o is not ready to do a close pass by. Today was great. We saw him at a rather close distance then made our turn down a street. This allowed him to see the lab but not interact. He did great and ate his treats like a gentleman instead of an alligator. At mile 2 we were clipping along at 14:30 min/mile pace and came upon a rather cranky black lab mix on a retractable lead. That means by the time the owner notices, the unruly dog is well to running with the lead like a tarpon going out to sea. Too close. Three-o locked on and no amount of leave it was working. This called for making distance by walking up someones driveway and bracing myself against their work van until Three-o could grasp it was ok and sniff out his treats on the ground. Needless to say we were both a little stressed and our pace went to zero. I told him he was ruining our walk time challenge we/ I set for ourselves but he was not remorseful. We finished loop one with a little happy jog and hug. He tagged Sophie for lap 2 and we were back out the door.

Sophie wanted to make sure the treat bag was restocked in order to get her pre breakfast calories. Off we went. It was time to try a little running. This is the time I have to decide what is stiffness that needs the cobwebs blown out versus lingering injury that I do not want to exacerbate. Running is my stress relief. Walking is ok but I love running. Even a little makes me happy so we kept run/walking trying to maintain a pretty good form versus the lame one legged look. I was doing 30 second run then 4 minute walk. I decided to reverse and see how much of the 4 minutes I could run and then walk 30 seconds. My gauge is how I feel running and how I feel in transition. If it hurts and still hurts when I stop, I back off. Each little interval was a little longer. Not fast and not for 4 minutes but longer. I was encouraged. We finished a little faster for the day and made up for Three-o’s stop and regroup. Sophie cleaned out the treat bag and we went in for breakfast. I hope you had a grateful moment on your walk as well.