Milkshakes

During my entire walk yesterday, my thoughts kept turning to milkshakes. No matter what other stuff I was thinking about, every mile or so, the image of a cool, vanilla milkshake came into my head. This was not the first time food had filled my head while walking; regular readers of this blog may remember the daydreams of oranges and potato chips that have occupied my thoughts on previous walks. None of this makes sense to me, because it's not as if I'm hungry while I'm walking. On the contrary, I usually have to force myself to eat. I know that I need to refuel when I'm covering these long distances, but more often than not, eating makes me feel nauseated, which is, of course, no fun. I'm trying to get better about eating small things more often, but it's a struggle. The good thing about food daydreams: They don't make me feel sick to my stomach!

For the first time yesterday, I went to the bike path rather than walking along sidewalks. I had avoided this for some time, because the bikers on those paths go REALLY fast and often come by with no warning, which scares me. But since the destination of my walk yesterday was a lunch date with my friend, Shelley, in Vienna, the bike path seemed the most efficient way to get there. One added benefit was the mileage markings along the path. Although I'm always aware of the final mileage of my walks by measuring them out on the Gmap Pedometer website, this was the first time I'd seen mile markers along the way as I walked.

For the first seven miles or so, I kept up a pace of one mile every 12 minutes, or 5 miles per hour. Even by the end of the walk, when I was really becoming tired (and I was getting bored!), I was walking one mile every 14 minutes. I'm not saying that it's all about pace, because the important thing is actually walking the miles, rather than completing them in record time. That being said, when there are tons of other things I want to accomplish on the weekends, it's nice to be able to keep up a decent speed when I'm walking.

So, after all of this was said and done, guess what? I went to get a milkshake. It seemed the perfect way to celebrate the successful completion of 21 MILES! Mom walked 18 miles up in New Jersey yesterday, so with a grand total for Saturday of 39 miles, I'd say it was a good Saturday for the McCord ladies! I hope you all are having a great weekend!