...and with that, I just hit my step goal for 29 consecutive days. Accordingly, I picked up another Rise and Grind badge for my 4-7 AM efforts in the last seven days.

I did NOT want to walk today. Long have I leaped over the mental hurdle of waking at 2:30 AM. But to be sick and face 23℉?

Nevertheless, I went through my prep. I looked at the mirror and appeared as I always did beneath the moon. I didn't know what the path ahead would be. I headed out.

I felt underdressed in my 3 layers of clothing on my torso. And for the day, again, my heart rate moving was lower than my sleeping, so I wasn't radiating nuclear heat.

After 30 minutes into my 1h30m walk, Garmin registered my skin temperature to have fallen from 80℉ to 42° with the last 35 minutes leveling at 39 ℉. As a point of comparison, yesterday's 2+ hour walk with the 19℉ windchill leveled out at 60.8℉ for the duration. I turned back homeward as my qi just felt off.

And thus, I came away with adding 4 miles to this past week, with some mop-up work on my map from almost to the soccer park to St. Elmo as I'll need a final walking activity that will edge it over 30 miles for the week.

These past few days haven't been physically hard. But, I have been pumping the mental iron. Remember back when it was easy just to lose weight? Just eat the bacon and smile. But my 2024 goals are set for more than that. I've been focused on the Golden Ratio, specifically shoulders to natural waist. But, I like Dr. Ken Berry's focus on waist:height proportions:

YouTube Link

It's not a bad approach: the ideal measurement is for your widest waist to be half your height. So, someone like me who's 69.75 inches tall comes in at 34.87 around the midsection. It's not likely anyone has buffed up abs and obliques to give poor data like BMI does—it's gonna be belly fat. BMI doesn't say ANYTHING about someone's fitness. Might as well be an eye color to hand size measurement.

The zombie horde has milled around our house for two weeks now. Last night, I myself finally congested up but woke up at 3:30 AM the next morning ready to put my miles in. Yes, today is a Zombie Outbreak Response Team belt buckle kind of day!

When I checked the weather, I saw a 19℉ windchill. That's colder than any other of my walks, though I have had colder temp days. I had that bad experience yesterday with my feet and I just didn't know what kind of energy levels I had access to until I got into the groove. I checked My Maps and considered some low-key segments that I missed in my passes through. I thought maybe if I was ambitious, I could reach Sleepy Hollow.

So, I hit the night air and was taken aback by that Christmas chill. As I began to move, I considered how this might be a short walk—who could blame me? I was coming off the heels of a sickly 22:51 3.7-mile walk...

"It's cold!"

"I'm sick!"

...there's always all those internal detractors, aren't there? We can make all sorts of excuses. But, those don't hold up in front of the mirror, do they?

And thus, I walked. And walked. And walked. Along the way, I did glide through Sleepy Hollow Park, but I also swung by the old Fred's, the old O'Charley's, and the old Zondervan's. I walked past the once-24-hr-now-6-AM Kroger's that I had sacked groceries some 30 years ago in 1994. I saw all of the old 16-year-old faces...the 45-year-old reflection reminds me that nothing but memories remain.

I passed In the Cellar (a favorite tabletop store), inhaled the making of donuts of a shop's pre-open hour, hurriedly walked through a desolate segment of Freeman Park, and entered a neighborhood to make it by my sister's old house. There I was posing again with her and my parents for a Thanksgiving 2000:

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I continued down Elmore, hit Hwy 70, and ran out of Bartlett.

On my way back up, I took my wife's offer of a pickup on the non-sidewalk, blind curves side midpoint of Alturia. I had it within me to push on and maybe I should have but it became light out.

All-in-all, it was a 6.34-mile journey at a 20:30 with the time spent in the 7th mile at a 18:57 pace. When I came home, I felt like I had more in the tank as I pulled the nostalgia out of the trunk.

Fatigue

I may have been bit by a zombie. I haven't been this sick since March 2020. The thing is, I remain not congested at all! I don't cough excessively, either. I just know I'm not right. Extreme fatigue has slapped me silly this morning.

I did my Arms workout, the last one I'll do this year as I'm reconfiguring everything. I did everything else like normal too, though in an absent-minded manner. There was none of that Eye of the Tiger focus. I slid a pair of overly tight socks onto my BioFreezed, swollen feet and headed out for my 4:15 AM walk. I tallied 3.7 miles at the slowest pace since things kicked off in December. Even at its end, I was dragging my feet; it took willpower just to stand in the shower (and I felt nauseated).

27

You'd think I'd feel defeated, but no, today is important. You see, I've adopted as goals a couple of Garmin badges, a 30-day streak of hitting my daily step goal and a 60 one. At 26 days, I nearly had the first leg earlier this year before dinging my little toe on my weight bench. Today is...Day 27.

YouTube Premium

While I thought I was gonna run with it all year, I've dismissed my Spotify account. It just wasn't the right fit. Its song suggestions have become increasingly lazy for when I look for a generated playlist based on a theme, it suggests music that is already in my rotation! "Dude, I suggested that song to you!" And its attention to detail in its curated playlists has always bugged me, whether music in the wrong decade for a decade playlist or like the other day, finding John Michael Montgomery's I Swear in the country covers playlist.

The biggest factor in my decision was the expiration of my YouTube Premium membership. Who knew I'd be swayed that much by the sudden emergence of ads? YouTube is the main source of entertainment in my family. Long gone are those magic numbers from my childhood of 3, 5, 10, 13, 24, and 30.

An annual subscription of YouTube Premium is the same as a year's worth of Spotify. Thus, I get the music just the same and I don't get the ads. Plus, they unbreak playing videos with my phone's screen turned off, so I can listen to content where the picture isn't as important, like this morning "watching" these guys that I love:

YouTube Link

Gotta admit, I was ecstatic that Greg the garlic merchant used Ryan George's catch phrase, "Super easy. Barely an inconvenience."