First…I managed over 25,000 steps on Friday because, well, because I can and then Saturday it was over to Mimi’s to see what needed to be done. I knew that the landscaping crew had cut the acre of grass in front of her house, but she calls it ‘the field’ and doesn’t have anything else done to it. This time, though, the grass had been too tall and the clumps were laying heavily on the lawn.
“I don’t want you to kill yourself out there. I know how hard raking that damp grass is,” she said.
Well…it is a bitch, but rather than drag it the length of the Yellow Brick Road, I decided instead to wheelbarrow it to the tree line to the sides of the property. Excellent decision. By the time I’d raked the leaves and grass and gathered it all for deposit, I’d managed 23,000 steps. Twenty-five would be a snap since I had the rest of the afternoon, but I was thinking thirty – something I’d only done two other times since Christmas when I’d received my Fitbit.
Miggie was supposed to meet me at Horseshoe Pond, but she was tired from cleaning a house all morning with her mom so Dakota and I plowed on to 30,000 steps alone. Between that and the heavy raking, I was ready to collapse for the evening when I arrived home.
I ate the Paleo Salad I’d made on Friday for dinner with thoughts of the fat I must have lost from a good, hard day.
Sunday was not quite as productive. I did get up and paint first thing, but after a sausage omelet, I went to Home Depot to pick out supplies I would need for three building projects I was doing. Once home, I got the notion that some dead pine trees in the yard needed to come down. As I began cutting with no plan for where the pieces would end up, it dawned on me that I was surrounded by a national park full of dead trees that had fallen and were decomposing for the good of the earth and that my trees should join this circle of life. Problem was, I needed to drag them the length of a football field to the tree line beyond…and they were heavy. I grabbed a long strap normally used to attach a kayak to my roof, looped it around the base of each tree and one-by-one pulled them like a draft horse across the field. My legs and lungs were screaming by the time I completed the fourth and final pull, but my Fitbit said only 9,000 steps.
Sweating, exhausted and filthy, I made my way to the porch where I announced to Miggie that I wanted to go for a hike.
“But you’ve been working pretty hard. Don’t you want to take it easy?”
Fair question…and yes, I did want to take it easy. But that wouldn’t be the ‘cowboy’ way and besides, I’d just read an article about an 82-year old man, the oldest ever, who had completed the Appalachian Trail in one year. I had a lot of conditioning to do over the next two years and pushing my body when it was pleading for rest was one of the best ways to get ready. I headed out with an umbrella in hand for a 4-mile hike.
So…thunder, lightning and rain accompanied me. My Fitbit was acting up and not recording steps, but I did manage to push it over 20,000 by the end of the hike. I plopped at the kitchen table for dinner after a shower to eat and write up construction plans for shelving and a closet before collapsing in my chair to read more about the Pacific Crest Trail. God help me on that trip…
Hike: 90 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 75 bpm.
Calories burned: 550.
Bonus: 20,000 steps.
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