The Training Walk: First Hurdle

I’d been so good! Overshot my target mileage last week, was on track to do it again this week. Then Tuesday night, the cough started. I still did my walk Wednesday morning. Thursday was way harder. I had some extended errands to run, put in a four-mile (non-consecutive) work out and racked up over 17,000 steps on my pedometer, but it wasn’t easy. I was coughing a lot and hard, but not quite feeling crappy.

That happened on Friday. I barely put in a half mile workout-wise, did errands minimizing the walking and still racked up almost 7400 steps. Saturday, the best I could do was walk from the car to the Urgent Care clinic. Yep. It’s a cold, triggered by my allergies. Got the heavy-duty drugs, but am .2 miles shy of my goal of 9 miles for the week. Nor do I know how this is going to impact my mileage for this coming week. Plus, I have two very driving intense errands to run on Monday, which may possibly also happen on Tuesday. I am worried.

See, the thing is, I come up with these great plans to exercise more, then inevitably something happens. I get a foot injury. I get sick. The weather gets unbearably hot or rainy. I skip days to rest or wait out the weather, then a week goes by and two weeks and I’m back not doing what I want to be doing. I don’t want to do that this time. But I am legitimately sick and I don’t want to stay sick, and doing too much will not help me get well.

My current plan, as drawn up by my coach and friend Sharon McNary (@ironcharo), is to increase my mileage every week by 10 percent, then take an easy week, then three weeks of increases, then an easy week. We’ve got a couple easy weeks ahead to account for Thanksgiving and Christmas. And I’ve been dared to walk the Rose Parade, which is going to be really interesting, since presumably I will be attending Sharon’s party the night before – and it’s a really good party.

The mileage is divided up with one really long walk (about 40 percent of the weekly goal), one rather long walk (25 percent of the weekly goal) and the rest divided up for the other four days and one day off.

I’m torn between just taking an easy week and starting up with the three increasing and one easy after that. Or just shooting for my admittedly rather modest goal of 10 miles for the week, with one-mile walks on the four short days, 2 miles on the rather long day and four miles on the really long day. Just how to spread it out is the question, since I need a short day between longer walks. And I need to get well. Oy.

I can’t let this stupid cold hold me back. Well, I’ll figure it out. Sigh.