Blogpost: Windy Walking

Three-o and I walked mostly today. Trying to avoid the trap of faster faster faster and take a step back.  We watched a little white dog from a distance that was not too stressful and called it a success. Sophie took over at the 2.6 mile mark and we did run 30 second stretches just to keep the ankle loose.  My next ultra, The Cruel Jewel, has about 15,000 feet of climbing so I decided to test the ankle on a 15% grade for one mile on the treadmill to finish todays walk. I was encouraged to be able to nose breath and pain free at a 20 minute pace for the mile up. 

  The challenge of walking outside is the weather.  People tell me that they don’t walk outside because it is too hot, too cold, to windy, to buggy, too snowy, to icy and to rainy.  Today it is windy walking in SW Florida.  Good, the bugs will not be a factor.  Neither will the heat.  The temperature is nice as well.  The sunrise will be nice.  The air is fresh. There are more good things about the weather than bad. The wind provides resistance as well allowing us to use more stabilizing muscles which improves balance.  It is a great day for walking in the wind.  

We cannot control the weather, but we can control our attitude towards it.  When I first started running marathons, I worried about the weather mainly because of temperature and rain.  Blisters come from heat, friction and moisture.  Rain and 26.2 miles is a set up for those things even without rain.  So I would watch the forecast starting 2 weeks before the event.  No surprise that it changed a lot.  All the way up until race day the weather forecast would change. Not a darn thing I could do but watch.  I was really lucky the first 10 or so marathons.  No rain.  Then it happened during the Hatfield and McCoy Marathon in West Virginia/Kentucky (it follows the feud route). Going up blackberry mountain, a downpour came out of no where.  Water running down the hill as we crested the top.  Soaked head to toe.  I did not get blisters and my fear of marathon rain went away.  During the Paris marathon, the temperature was damp and cold.  I dressed to run fast and an injury slowed me down significantly at mile 10.  I became really cold.  I found a shirt on the side of the road and wore it over my arms.  It saved me from freezing to death.  Alright, no one has ever frozen to death at 40 degrees F.  But I was worried about it.  Now I layer and don’t dress like a professional Kenyan runner at cold races.  

The weather is well, the weather.  We cannot change it.  An hour walking in just about any kind of weather is safe and often fun when you look back on it.  Of course do not walk in lightening, hurricanes, tornados, or blinding blizzards.  That would be a day to walk somewhere enclosed.  Have a good windy walk today.