WEBSTER COUNTY, KY (1/18/12) – With the temperatures up in the 50’s last weekend, I made a somewhat questionable decision to go for a long walk that Saturday. I started out thinking I would just take a quick jaunt through the neighborhood, but ended up walking further and further from the house until I ended up more than three miles away before I realized how far I had walked.
Part of the issue for me is that I use the opportunity when walking to think through things I am dealing with. It is amazing how a 15 to 30 minute exercise session can really open up an opportunity to sort stuff out in my head, too. The downside to that is that sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in the thinking part of exercising that I stop paying attention to the physical component, meaning I lose track of how far I’m walking.
So when I realized I had walked at least three miles away from home, I immediately turned around and began the long walk back. This was the first time I had really put that much effort into walking since probably September and when I did finally get back to the house, I felt okay. I cleaned up and stretched some, and figured if there wasn’t any pain that I was still in good enough shape I would probably be okay.
The next morning was a different story, however, as I woke up with a tense feeling in my right leg. It wasn’t so much pain as it was just tightness. I had trouble bending my leg back when I got up, and then I knew I had really overdone it when I put my left leg on the floor. It tensed up, and for a moment I thought I was about to have a cramp. Fortunately, the muscle relaxed and I managed to hobble through the house without too much difficulty.
It took me a little longer to get ready than usual as a result, but I managed to get to church before the sermon started. Normally, I would sit in the balcony with my friends, but when I got there and walked in the door, I couldn’t bring myself to do more than look at the stairs for a second and then just walk on past into the downstairs area. A voice in my head screamed the word, “no” for what seemed like an eternity as I considered climbing the stairs to the balcony.
After the service, I headed downstairs to find my friends’ Sunday School class, but because I had never gone from that direction before, I took a wrong turn at the bottom of the stairs. I only realized it after I hit a dead end, and there were about 10 people behind me all walking in my direction. The hallway was too narrow for traffic to go both directions, so all I could do was inch up against the wall and try to wait out the crowd of people passing. That was working fine, until an older man looked at me and said, “Stop blocking the hallway, boy!”
Those were his exact words.
I just looked at him, and for a split second considered making a proportionate response through a retort of my own, but decided it wasn’t worth it. First of all, I wouldn’t be standing there if I had more muscle movement in my legs that I could have used to slip through the crowd. The last thing I wanted was to accidentally trip someone if my leg “whiplashed”, or worse, risk tripping and falling myself. More importantly, we were in church and I can’t think of anywhere where it’s more important to be polite. So I just looked past him, inched up closer to the wall, and tried to work my way past as slowly and carefully as possible.
I finally cleared it, and then found my way through the halls to the classroom, where I very happily took a seat and tried to look as relaxed as possible. I certainly didn’t want anyone to know I had pushed myself beyond my physical limit.
It took a few days, but I am finally got back to a point where I felt I was ready to go for a walk again. I won’t be going for a six-mile round trip walk, of course, but I think I could do two to four miles without feeling the way I did last Sunday. Now all I need is another 50-to-60 degree weather day and I am good to go — as long as it’s not on a Tuesday, that is.
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