Day 51

Okay - so this is an accountability moment. Allow me to explain.

On the 16th, I got the flu. Fortunately, it was not COVID - the test was negative. But unfortunately, it was the day before our long-anticipated (and unrefundable) vacation to Colorado.

So I masked up and went to Colorado. After I slept for about twenty hours, we had a great time skiing, snowmobiling, and eating.

Machine Gun Ridge, 12,500 feet

I didn’t do any serious exercise besides the skiing. I was still kind of raw and did not want a relapse. And Vail is not really a walking environment at this time of year.

Case in point: as I was standing on Machine Gun Ridge, I decided to walk over to the edge of the summit to look down.

“Hey!” our guide said. “Stand still!”

“What?” I said.

“That’s a cornice. Take a step back towards me.”

I thought a cornice was one of those things on a wall, like crown molding. It turns out it’s a term of art for an extremely dangerous snow drift at the top of a mountain that I had almost stepped on. Had I taken the extra step, I would have experienced an avalanche from the top down.

So trust me when I tell you that walking in Colorado is fraught with danger. After Machine Gun Ridge, I was afraid to walk to the Starbucks.

We eventually made it back to Houston, traveling through Denver on the worst travel day of the year. You really can’t fully appreciate how privileged your life is until you look out your airplane window, sipping Buffalo Trace on ice, watching a guy loading your luggage in sub-zero weather. I paid my dues as a kid cleaning grease traps, working as a garbage man, and mowing lawns, but man, I didn’t do anything that tough. Respect.

When we got back, I worked out with Art and Sam (no Avina - on vacation), but I wasn’t motivated to walk yet. I’m not sure why - I was still a little congested, and the weather wasn’t great, but I think it was that I was in vacation mode and not interested in getting back to work.

So on Wednesday, I was at my workout with Art and Sam and feeling punky. We were doing sets of twenty 40 pound chest flies, and stair climbs with 30 pound kettlebells and I was done with that. Just done.

So I made a bet with Art. 

“Let’s do a weigh in, right now, and if I’ve lost more than 5 pounds since my last weigh-in, I get to end this workout,” I said.

“Nope,” he said. “That’s not good for you. Plus anyone can lose 5 pounds in three weeks.”

“Okay,” I said. “Ten pounds.”

Art arched an eyebrow. “If you’ve lost ten pounds, I’ll give you a free session. But there’s no way you’ve lost that much weight.”

What he didn’t know is that I’d weighed in when I returned from Colorado and discovered, to my shock, that my bout with the flu had burned off twelve pounds. I’d been strength training and walking and playing basketball for months and not getting anywhere with my weight, but a week of flu carved a whole brisket off of me.

So we weighed in and Art thought there was something wrong with the scale. Eventually Sam laughed and told Art that I had been sick. Art smiled and told me I’d won the bet, but that I had to use the free session by the end of the year. It being Wednesday, December 28, there was a pretty good chance the offer was going to expire before I could claim it.

But Art was just creating an incentive for me to exercise on Thursday. He offered a gym visit at 5:00 a.m. (nope) or a workout at his house at 3:15 p.m. I was feeling bad about scamming him, so I offered to let him off the hook.

And of course, as the uncommonly decent man he is, here’s how he responded:

So at 3:15, I was at his house to walk. We walked a mile

with his daughter Everly, who showed great musical talent, singing along with this hilarious song from the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special:

We then dropped her off at home and did another four miles in drizzling weather. It was a nice walk, and after we traded stories about terrible jobs we’d had, I asked him, “Do you ever feel amazed with how great your life turned out?”

Art, usually taciturn, surprised me with the passion of his answer. 

“Yes!” he said. “Every day!”

Me too. Happy New Year!

Day 36

I took a short break from walking this week.

I was going to try nine miles on Sunday, but it was my daughter’s boyfriend Devon’s birthday, so by the time I got back from jamming with the blues guys (side note: it is so much fun playing with those guys, but sometimes I feel a little out of my depth, like I do when I have my recurring dream about playing piano with the Stones, which always starts out great and ends badly, usually with Keith Richards hitting me with his Strat, and Mick calling me a wanker), and we’d had pizza and birthday cake, I just didn’t feel up to a long walk, especially while still recovering from Saturday’s basketball game (side note: I had the most backhanded compliment of all time on Saturday morning, when the Commissioner said to me after the fourth game, “You move better on the court than anyone I’ve ever seen at your weight.” Um, thanks?)

Then Monday night … I don’t know. Just didn’t feel like leaving the house, plus it had rained earlier and I didn’t want to get rained on. But mostly, I just didn’t feel like it.

Tuesday night was poker night. I finished 5th out of 30 in our annual championship, and then had fun in the cash game afterwards. For a hot minute, I considered walking off my adrenaline at 1:30 a.m., but remembered that I am not a vampire and went to bed instead.

Today, we had people coming over to the house at 9:00, so I got up early and attacked the day. I got some legal stuff done, picked up some cream of tartar at the store to finish my holiday sugar cookie dough, and checked my work mail and found a nice check waiting for me. Then I went in for my last workout with Art before our family winter vacation trip.

While doing sets of rows, I told Art that I’d been to the doctor on Tuesday morning and that the doctor had told me the same thing Art had been saying all along: no running yet at my weight.

My doctor was encouraging, however, saying that I was already doing the hard part by regularly exercising.

“Now, you just need to do one more exercise,” he said. “When you’re eating, do a push-away.” He then mimed pushing his dinner plate away, about as subtle as brick through a window. “You know, like when you’re eating pie, stop at one piece instead of three.”

Art agreed with my doctor, although he did observe that there was a fatal flaw to the “one piece of pie” advice.

“How big is that first piece?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

Both of them said that my knees would not hold up to four hours of running. I’ve been dismissive of this, not having ever had knee troubles, but then, right on cue, my left knee started feeling wonky as I was bustling in the kitchen making Christmas cookies. The feeling passed the next day, but this was a kind of reality check, so after the holidays, I am going to try the “push-away” technique in earnest.

Tonight, however, I did get a couple of miles in on a beautiful cool evening (60 degrees with a breeze). I had not been planning to walk, but this was one of those evenings where getting out of the house keeps you from saying something you regret to someone you love.

And for the first time in this training effort, I took my beloved dogs, Penny and Sam. Exercising with the dogs has its pros and cons.

PRO: They have WAY more energy than you do and they pull you faster than you think you would walk by yourself.

CON:  You think the dogs are making you move faster, but paradoxically, you just feel like you’re going fast. In reality, you’re moving inefficiently and slower than you do walking by yourself.

PRO: This is because your dogs run like maniacs for a hundred yards, then they stop on a dime and sniff a clump of interesting grass. This gives me inexplicable joy, because I know they are luxuriating in 10,000 different scents, like a wine enthusiast basking in a glass of Chateau Lafite Rothschild, except without all of the pretensions. I am happy to wait for them to drink it all in until they remember that they are on a walk and dash away at 400 miles per hour.

And despite Art and my doctor’s warnings, I couldn’t help myself. I ran with these dogs for stretches, letting them open up their strides and feeling myself opening up as well. For a few happy moments, I wasn’t a newly minted 59-year-old, I was back in my prime, swallowing up the road, feeling fast again. So nice.

So maybe tomorrow, I’ll try the nine miles in the morning. 

Maybe.

Day 31

Man, these Fresh Foams are GREAT.

I got my walk in today at about 3:30. I took a different route than usual, going four and a half miles in some nice weather. I had no foot pain at all, walking in my Temperpedic-adjacent shoes.

It was also a productive walk. About a mile in, I took the earbuds out and started practicing answering media questions. Why? There’s a very small chance - very small - that I could be on one or more basic cable national news shows next week, discussing a case I’m working on, and the way I prepare for that kind of thing is to interview myself, over and over and over, until the answers are second-nature and bulletproof.

I used to do this back in the Nineties when I was a trial lawyer, practicing my cross-examination questions, my jury arguments, and my appeals, honing the advocacy by repetition, testing out lines of attack, editing my themes and cutting out phrases that I thought were clever until I actually heard them.

“You know, ladies and gentlemen,” I would say while running at Memorial Park, “prosecuting a case is like cooking a soufflé - no, building a criminal case is like throwing a dinner party - no, ladies and gentlemen, your deliberations are like following a recipe, and while we might have left out the dried basil, if it looks and tastes like spaghetti sauce, you must convict!  No, that’s terrible … and I must be hungry.”

“Yeah, Scott. Those pretty much suck,” my running buddy would say. “Let’s get something to eat.”

Today, I was by myself and looked like that guy you see talking to himself on the sidewalk, because I was. Fortunately, the guys in the white coats didn’t come get me, and I finished a sub-16 walk to boot.

And when I came home, a chicken soup I was making for my friend Mitch was about done. It had a nice aroma and will make a great chicken noodle soup after I skim the schmaltz tomorrow morning.

 

Tomorrow, granola! (If you know me, you are probably getting excited.)

Day 29

On Monday. I decided it was time for a change.

The Hokas were not working, my Yeezys were falling apart (and had become so politically toxic I couldn’t wear them in public no matter how amazingly comfortable they were), and my Saucony and Brooks runners were just worn out.

Mindful that, as a heavy runner, one of my major vulnerabilities was putting too much stress on my feet, I decided to go to Fleet Feet for some expert advice.

I like specialty shops over the big box stores because the salespeople are more knowledgeable about what they’re selling, whether cookware or books or shoes, and I’d been to Fleet Feet many times during my running years.

I went to the store on Greenbriar, where an older guy with a serious beard took care of me. He explained that my problem with the Hokas was a design flaw - my foot was too far down in the shoe, causing an irritating contact with my arch. He suggested a new insole might help.

We looked at three pairs of shoes, and I settled on the New Balance Fresh Foam X v4 in size 14. These are HUGE shoes:

When I showed them to Art and my friend B, they gasped at how big they were.

“The sole alone is as thick as my entire shoe,” Art said. 

B told him to be nice. “If his feet were my size, he would fall over. He needs a broad base.”

She was right. I’m like an SUV that needs wide performance tires to support a ridiculously wide chassis.

Art has been dictating whole body exercises for us lately. Today’s exercises included medicine ball squats, push-ups, sled sprints, weighted stair climbs and chest flies. I don’t feel much like doing a second round of exercise after an hour of that.

But once again, Josh came to the rescue. When he got home, we had the dinner discussion and, out of the blue, he said he wanted a salad.  A salad!  From the boy who loves steak.

So I put one together - fresh romaine, green pepper, tomato, croutons and Parmesan cheese with a light balsamic dressing and rotisserie chicken. And I felt so virtuous that I had to walk.

On went the Fresh Foam X shoes and away I went. And the experience was sublime. Pure cushion, like walking on marshmallows.

The five miles were not easy, but my feet were fine, and I did a sub-16 mile average. When I got home, I had a smoothie and watched the Georgia returns come in. An all-around good night.

Day 27

As I mentioned yesterday, my last walk was on Wednesday, November 30. 

On Thursday, I’d spent most of the day preparing for my presentation at the legal conference, so it wasn’t until about 4:30 that I hit the road for Horseshoe Bay. I pretty much drove through, only stopping once at Hruska’s Bakery in Ellinger for their world-class cheeseburger, but it was still very late when I got to the hotel.

After I unpacked, I had an impulse to exercise, but I’d forgotten to pack workout gear and it just seemed too outre to do hotel room calisthenics in my underwear.

The next day, I gave the speech, had lunch with my friend Dave, and headed home. Lisa and I had gotten a reservation at a nice place in Pearland for dinner with the kids and I just made it home in time for the meal.  Literally thousands of calories later, I was in no condition to exercise (or do anything else).

Another fine meal with the family

The next morning was basketball for two hours with my buddies. Not full court, but still a pretty good workout, especially when I’m chasing our maniac shooter Brock or having to box out the relentless Jim, the only guy on the floor my size.

But still no walk. Too pooped.

Which brings us to today. I’d mentioned yesterday my intention to walk 8 miles, and that semi-commitment was hanging over me all day. I did all of the usual procrastinating (laundry, house cleaning, catching up on work, making crab cakes, watching football) and it was approaching 5:00. Do or die time.

I didn’t want to die, so I did. 

The walk was kind of a slog. I was wearing my Saucony runners and my left pinky toe was having none of it, getting more and more irritated with me as the distance grew. Both of my feet were getting just generally sore as well. It could be my weight, plus yesterday’s basketball, that was wearing out my feet, but I really think it was these old shoes that were the problem.  And since my Hokas seem to be a bust, I think I’m just going to have to try to find some new walkers.

Anyway, instead of obsessing over the throbbing pain, I tried to focus on the audiobook I was listening to, but the book hit a natural stopping point at about seven miles, so I switched to a music playlist I put together many years ago when I ran the half-marathon, and it was just what I needed.

First, I had Mick Jagger and Peter Tosh singing “(You Gotta Walk) Don’t Look Back,” which is my favorite Mick solo song - he really nails his part of the vocal and seems to be a fanboy about singing with one of the original Wailers - and the lyric was on point for me at seven miles:

So if you just put your hand in mine,

We're gonna leave all our troubles behind.

Keep on walking and don't look back.

Forget about the past now.

Don't look back, baby.

So I did - I kept on walking and didn’t look back.

Then it was Randy Newman singing “Feels Like Home,” which was a beautiful moment, because I was on my street and could see my house and I knew Lisa was inside, waiting for me:

A window breaks

Down a long dark street

And a siren wails in the night

That's alright

'Cause I have you here with me

And I can almost see

Through the dark there's a light

If you knew

How much this moment means to me

And how long I've waited for your touch

If you knew

How happy you're making me

Oh, I never thought I'd love anyone

So much

Feels like home to me

Feels like home to me

Feels like I'm all the way back where I come from

It’s a beautiful sentimental song, and I stood in the front yard, listening to the yearning vocal and feeling, for the first time in a while, really content. And when the last piano chord in the song faded out, I went inside.

8.14 miles.

Day 23

This post is a little late because I was out of town on Thursday and Friday speaking at a legal conference about legal ethics. I got to hand out my new business card, which has my firm’s motto on the back.

I think I generated some good business opportunities, and replenished my ego after a long absence from the speaking circuit - the presentation went well and my jokes mostly landed.

Anyway, I had wanted to write about Wednesday night’s adventures, but couldn’t until now.

After my workout on Wednesday afternoon, Art and I were in the gym’s parking lot walking out to our respective cars and I told him I was up for a walk in the evening if he was. He said that he was going to run a hard five miles, but could walk four more after that to complete ithe mileage he’d budgeted for that day. I was fine with that.

Around 4:30, he checked in and told me that his wife and new baby - Sweet Maizie - would be joining us for the first mile. He told me to be at his house at 6:30. That sounded great.

When I got there, Art was on his treadmill running hard downhill. And it was something to see - the hoary idiom for running is “pounding the pavement,” but it was not an exaggeration that Art was pounding this poor treadmill at a speed I could not reach even if I was being chased by a bear.

As he finished that run, I sat in his kitchen reading Nicole’s copy of Joanna Gaines’s Magnolia Table cookbook (it’s a pretty book and I’m sure the recipes have been carefully curated, but I will eat our leftover Thanksgiving flower bouquet if Joanna wrote any of those recipes). After a while, Art’s family came out of the master bedroom and we all loaded up the strollers for the walk.

Sweet Maizie had her own stroller, while Everly and Isla shared a larger one. Because it was cool outside, the girls were tucked in with two blankets.

And off we went. The girls entertained themselves by pretending to pick their noses (classic comedy), while the adults had a very nice conversation.  After a mile, Nicole took the baby back to their house and the rest of us pressed on.  

Because it was both dark and cold, I was wearing a knit beanie with a flashlight attachment that I had gotten at the MOMA shop in New York City. This hat fascinated the girls - how could it not? - so I shared it with them.

Mistake No. 1. For the next mile or so, Everly would flash the LED light in my eyes or Art’s, temporarily blinding us while she laughed and laughed. The only way it could have been funnier was if I had stepped into an open manhole or off a cliff, like a Warner Brothers cartoon character. Fortunately neither hazard was on our route.

Then the girls started getting bored. We tried to direct their attention to the Christmas decorations on the yard as we were passing, but they’d had enough of that. Isla kicked her blankets off three or four times and said, “I wanna walk!”

So, ignoring Art’s advice to let them cry it out (which was the right strategy, but I am a notorious softie), I unbelted her and picked her up.

Mistake No. 2. Isla is a wonderful little girl, but she was not easy to carry. She wriggled and squirmed and slid and slipped and it was all I could do to hold on to her. So I went to my go-to move - up she went on my shoulders.

Art laughed and told me, “Now you’re getting some weight work done on this walk.” He wasn’t kidding. Try walking for ten minutes with about forty pounds on your shoulders and you’ll feel like someone shlepping a sack of rice from Sam’s Club.

But Isla loved it - she was viewing the world from the perspective of an NBA power forward. Now that I think about it, it’s a pretty cool place up there, like being a sultana on an elephant, reviewing the masses far below.

Isla and me.

After a while, mindful of the Rolling Stones lyric, “Don’t want to be your beast of burden,” I gave up on being Isla’s elephant and put her back in the stroller. 

But now Everly wanted a ride. Sigh. So up she went for a short while. Big sister, bigger weight. I didn’t last long.

While this was going on, Art kept us moving and eventually everyone settled down and we got home. I then played the Your High Five Slap Makes Me Say Ouch and Dance Around in Pain game with the girls (another classic for the under-five crowd) and then Art sent me on my way with Joanna’s cookbook.

Not one of my best walking times (19 minute miles), but great fun.

Tomorrow: another long walk. Hope to crack eight this time!