Against the Grain

I've been substituting mall walks for neighborhood walks for several summers. After I started using a fitness tracker, I determined that three complete loops at the mall was within 0.2 miles of the 3.0 miles I typically walk at home. In July and August, the temperature in the mall is a lot cooler than it is outdoors, and the A/C keeps the humidity under control. The main drawback to mall walking is that I'm always on a level surface, unlike the slopes I walk up and down on the sidewalks at home.

Last summer, I learned to my surprise that the mall opens before 8:00 AM every day, although the stores never open before 10:00 AM (noon on Sunday). I began to start my day with morning walks to take advantage of having the mall pretty much to myself. On most days, there may be a dozen or so people of retirement age walking for exercise, maybe two dozen after 9:30 AM. Still, nowhere near the foot traffic seen during peak shopping hours.

Since I began mall-walking for exercise, I've always followed a counter-clockwise pattern, meaning that the store entrances are always to my right side. Doing the same thing repeatedly eventually gets boring, so yesterday I decided for the first time to be a wild and crazy guy and make three loops walking clockwise (store entrances to my left). I was pleased to find that walking in the opposite direction made the whole mall seem like a different place. I also realized that every other person in the mall (roughly 20-25) was walking in the counterclockwise direction, making it easier to navigate past people who were moving faster or slower than I was.

Apparently, it comes naturally to people to walk mall circuits in a counterclockwise direction, which may be related to the fact that most people are right-handed. Hell if I know. I just know I've been in a rut, and it energized me to break out of a dull routine, even in a small way. I'm keeping that in mind for future reference.

The Challenge

The last few years, we've started walking at the mall on days when the weather is cold and wet, or hot and windy. I can usually do one complete loop in about 15:20, and four complete laps is roughly equivalent to 3.75 miles in one hour. That's close enough for government work.

On days when we mall-walk, there usually aren't too many customers since it's normally a chilly, drizzly weekday afternoon. Today, though, we decided to try it at 5:00 PM on a Saturday afternoon when the parking lot was full of cars.

I have to admit, I enjoyed the experience today. Generally, mall-walking is as interesting as watching your toenails grow, particularly if you're recording measurements (time, speed, and distance). Walking past the same boutiques, salons, shoe stores, and jewelers three or four times can become monotonous. The exception: Victoria's Secret, which is never boring -- at least for me.

When the mall is crowded with people of all ages and sizes, moving at different speeds or just standing around chatting on their phones, things get challenging when you're trying to maintain a constant pace and stride. I realized that I was actually concentrating. I normally put it on automatic pilot, but today I was fully focused on my plan to weave around and through clusters of people, avoiding collisions without ever slowing down. It was like my version of the Gene Hackman chase scene in The French Connection.

Jocks

Michelle Jenneke of Australia. What an athlete!

Super Bowl and high water

One reason I lost interest in professional football was the inability of the Dallas Cowboys to regularly beat their division rivals, the New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins. I've hated the damned Giants since Tom Landry was the coach in Dallas.

With the demise of the Cowboys as an elite NFL franchise, I started looking for other teams to support, and settled on the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. Tonight the Patriots, a team I like, played the Giants, a team I don't like, in the latest Super Bowl. I was pulling for New England all the way, but the fucking Giants came from behind to win 21-17.

This has been a bad weekend. Friday night, we had torrential rainfall and three rooms in my house were flooded. I spent most of the night mopping and vacuuming water, moving stuff to avoid water damage, etc. I got two hours of sleep Friday night, and spent so much time bending and lifting that both of my legs ache when I try to walk. I would have felt better if the Patriots had held on to win, but this hasn't been my day.

Cold weather and legs

I try to walk three miles every day, but when the temperature drops into the twenties with wind chill factors in the teens it's too damned cold to walk 45 minutes outdoors. That's why I've been at the mall the past three afternoons, and as boring as outdoor walks are, they're action-packed compared to three or four loops through the mall. I got a Sony Walkman for Christmas, so I've started downloading MP3 music files and listening through earphones while I'm chugging along. It makes the time pass more enjoyably, especially at the mall.

Late in the afternoon on weekdays, it seems like most of the people in malls are females between the ages of eighteen and thirty. I've noticed that among young women, the current fashion trend is denim jeans that are skin-tight from the hips to the ankles. It doesn't matter if they're seriously overweight or look anorexic, most of the 18-30 year-old ladies I've seen in the mall are wearing those stovepipe jeans. Often, I'm caused to wonder how they managed to slide into them and if they can possibly be comfortable. Maybe one woman in four has the physical structure to appear attractive in skin-tight jeans; the others need to try a different look.

The hail of it all

It was cloudy at 5:00 today, and only 69 degrees. Perfect walking weather, I thought. I was about 2.4 miles through a 3.1 mile route when it started to sprinkle rain. I've walked in that before, so it didn't particularly bother me. Then something thumped me on top of my head, then again and again, and I realized it had started to hail. It wasn't mega-hail, each stone being about the size of a pea, but they were really coming down.

I ended up jogging most of the last half-mile, and consequently broke the 4.0 average mph barrier for the first time in 2010. It felt good, and my left knee held up better than I expected. I don't remember ever being outside in a hailstorm before, so I guess there's a first time for everything. I'm especially glad nature decided to pelt me with peas and not golf balls.

Life's Mysteries, Part One

The closest thing I have to the routine of a job is my psychological commitment to getting a certain amount of physical exercise every single day. Usually, it comes in the form of trying to walk three miles in 45 minutes, with occasional variations. Some days, I'll substitute 100 minutes of yard work or car washing -- but usually it's the walk.

Depending on the time of day I'm walking, I find myself sharing the sidewalks and trails with other people. In the early part of the day, the other folks are geezers my age or older. In the middle of the day, I have the road to myself. In the late afternoon and early evening, though, there are lots of young women out running or jogging. They'll pass me like I'm standing still, which is okay since I'm long past the stage where masculine ego determines my thinking.

Here's the mystery: These young (20-something) female runners appear to be approximately as sweaty as I am -- but when they pass me I get a whiff of their fragrance, and it's usually sweet like the aroma in a bakery or candy store. I always wonder, "How do they do that ?"

I can't smell myself when I'm dripping sweat, but I don't think it would be pleasing to the senses. So how can a sweaty young woman smell so sweet, huh ? Well, nobody ever said life would be easy to figure out.

Precipitation

According to scientists from the Rush Limbaugh school of meteorology, our planet has entered a new period of global cooling, and we may be at the dawn of another Ice Age. In Texas, this means the summer months of June and July will be characterized by week after week of heat index temperatures in the 102-104 degree range, and no rainfall at all.

Sunday night, the "parched earth" spell we've been in was broken temporarily by roughly thirty minutes of driving rainfall, followed last night by approximately 80 minutes of steady downpour, enough to form small ponds in my back yard.

This morning, I walked a new three-mile route and many parts of the paths and trails were covered by an inch or two of water. I splashed through every puddle for the pure joy of doing it.

H.I.I.T. me, baby...

Hot Water Sandwich is the place where I sometimes write autobiographically, and I'm approaching an anniversary that's fairly significant in my life. I also wanted to write a little bit about an article I read recently. So I decided to combine both objectives into one post.

Speaking of significant dates, 08-26-2004 was one of mine -- the day I was officially diagnosed with Type II diabetes. On that day, I had my annual physical exam and was rolling along at 256 pounds. My HMO doctor told me losing 50 of the 256 would be beneficial to my blood sugar levels, so I said WTF and decided to give it a shot.

It took 102 days of eating right and exercising, but on 12-17-04 I weighed less than 200 pounds for the first time in many, many years. I was amazed by how easy losing weight had been, relatively speaking, once I was accustomed to the idea, so I decided to try losing a little more. By early February 2005 I was down to 180 lb, and feeling healthier than at any time since I finished college. By May I weighed 165 and had replaced virtually every article of clothing I owned (other than shoes and socks), some twice. Over the next year, my weight was fairly stable, fluctuating between 160-165 pounds.

For reasons too complicated to rehash here, the memorable date I mentioned in the first paragraph arrived not quite three years ago, on Monday, May 22nd, 2006. That afternoon, I was admitted to the hospital to have my brain overhauled and steam-cleaned. I still have interesting ridges where they taped my skull back together, and big numb patches in my scalp.

I was wheeled out of the rehab center on 06-23-2006, the 33rd day after admission, weighing a slim 143 pounds. The month I spent in the institution broke my smoking habit, but I'd picked up the habit of eating doughnuts, candy, and ice cream and lying on my ass for long periods of time. By September I had gained back the 20 pounds I lost in the hospital and an extra ten to spare, and it was mid-October before I could exercise at anything near the level I had easily managed in May.

The bottom line is I'm carrying around 12 pounds more than I need, and I know exactly where they are: right at my beltline. My overall health is better without tobacco, but I still miss smoking and I know it'd be easier to shave the 12 pounds if I were still puffing on my pipe.

All of this leads up to some reading I've been doing about high intensity interval training, also referred to as H.I.I.T. (or HIT). I've decided to give it a try. The last time I ran sprints was a few days before Christmas last December, and that evening I ended up leaving DNA evidence on a sidewalk. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. If the results are what I'm hoping for, I'll be back here with an endorsement. The first two days, yesterday and today, went well, so I'm optimistic.