We had plans of walking a couple miles maybe. We were there to just explore, but after a few feet onto the trail, I half-jokingly said, "let's do 10 miles!" Whenever I see those mile markers I must turn the walk into a competition. We laughed it off, but by the time we got 2 miles in, we felt pretty good and decided to go longer. We knew that whatever point we stopped at is actually only half the total distance we would have to walk, since our car was back in a trail head parking lot.
As we walked more, we were more intrigued by this trail. We went from the middle of the city to a very rural location. Every now and then, the heavily wooded trail would open up to a small intersection and you could see neighboring homes, barns, and pastures. There were many cyclists on this trail. We only saw other walkers about a mile into the trail, but never saw any others as we continued. When we were 4 miles in, I knew that would be a total of 8 miles. Well, that's almost 10, so why not just continue another mile?? It was at about mile 5 that my legs started getting tired. They were already sore from a long walk yesterday when we first started, but now they just felt tired--all soreness was gone.
I reflected about why I like this kind of physical challenge: once you get a certain distance out on the trail, you MUST return, there's no other option if your car was parked at the trail head. It is much easier to just step off a treadmill when you think you feel tired, not really pushing you to your limit. At mile 7 I finally started to HURT. My hips, knees, feet... all of them hurt. But, I knew I had to be mentally strong and push through it. It helped having my best friend by my side so we could get caught up in conversation. At one point, in an attempt to stop thinking about how many miles we had left, I came up with an idea: "let's take turns counting off 100 steps until we reach 1,000!" I doubt any of you know this, but I have an obsessive compulsive habit of counting my steps inside my head from time to time. I used to constantly count my steps, in different patterns (1,2,3,4... 2,4,6,8... 1e+a 2e+a 3e+a) the last pattern comes from being a band geek I suppose. Anyway, by the time I was done explaining how we would count, he had already counted up to 34, so we continued with our little game of distraction. Unfortunately, we reached 1,000 steps and our walk still wasn't over. Fortunately, we had managed to forget about the pain for a few minutes.
We did get to see some cute baby chipmunks and bunnies along the way, which made the walk even more worth it. When we finally got to the car we were SOOOOOOOOO happy but exhausted. I had never been more happy to see my car! We decided to treat ourselves for dinner. We only go out to dinner about once a month; we hate spending excess money on food... well, really, excess money on anything. So, it was a big decision to finally go to Olive Garden for dinner. I was so very excited to order my favorite meal on the menu- garlic herb chicken con broccoli... Much to my dismay, this is no longer on their menu!! I had to settle for Chicken Parmesan... I don't think we will be going back to the OG anytime soon.
We have had to remind ourselves already 5 times that we SHOULDN'T go on another walk tonight. We keep forgetting that our legs are tired and one of us will say, "hey, we should go on a walk tonight!" I guess it's a good thing that our lives are so active, and that we are entertained by something that is physical, free, and strengthens our relationship by allowing us time to talk.
Here's to a healthy lifestyle and treks on a whim!
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