Sunday, July 12

I went to bed at 8:30 pm last night instead of going out for my 18 mile walk. The alarm set for 4 am. The coffee pot was ready, I just had to turn it on when I got up. I did not have too much difficulty getting up, eating breakfast (3 small blueberry pancakes and a pre-cooked turkey sausage patty) and getting dressed to go out for the walk this morning. I walked out the door at 5:13. I wanted to be on the road by 5am, but this is about as good as it gets for me early in the morning, unless I'm traveling or racing. I have been known to get in the car at 3 am to drive 100 miles to a race.

My main concern with getting out so early in the morning are spider webs. There is a type of spider that lives in the oak trees. Every evening, they descend from the trees and build new webs. No one gets out that early in the morning in my neighborhood, so I am constantly dodging spider webs. If there is anything I really loathe, it is the thought of a spider crawling on me.

I usually start my long walk with a large loop outside of town, but since it was dark, I walked up and down all the streets in my neighborhood first until about 6 miles, then headed out of town for a 4 mile loop. I stopped at my house for a quick restroom break, then back out the door. I did a good job of pacing between 13:30 and 14:30 and in that range, the HR also stayed where it was supposed to. I always like to put in a quick mile at the end of a LSD walk if I am feeling up to it, so mile 17 was the fastest one. It helped a lot that a crazy Butthole Surfer song came up on the play list. It was fun walking to the beat. I haven't gotten so obsessive with the music play list that I plan it for the distance. I have a huge library of music, and I let it play in alphabetical order of song titles. The list includes everything from Johnny Cash to The Kinks, to Opeth, Korn and Metallica. Anyway, I finished up the walk, stretched and headed right to the shower.

Once finished showering and getting dressed, I headed over to my Mom's house. She was having company. Aunt Cathy, cousins Lynn and her daughter Gracie, Dana, and Jonathan and his girlfriend Megan. My niece Charlotte, her dh Jeff and ds Joshua, and nephew Tim, his dw Channing and dd Kailei, and my dd Emily and ds Jonathan also came along. We had a really nice visit! Jonathan has been living in Katy for a while now, and Lynn, Gracie and Dana are moving to either Spring or Tomball. It will be so nice to have family in the area so that we can get together once in a while. As usual, Mom had a huge spread... homemade black bean salsa, cold cut tray, pasta salad, veggie tray, and best of all; homemade peach and blackberry cobblers with Blue Bell ice cream.

What a great way to spend a Sunday. Walking 18 miles... and not feeling any guilt about the cobbler I ate.