Day 68

When I was a kid, I was an avid reader. My 84-year-old mother will tell you, whether you ask or not, that I was reading at 3, and that I had read (and comprehended) a chapter book at 5.  (The book was called Richthofen and it was about the legendary World War I ace known as the Red Baron. What this particular book was doing in an elementary school library, given that it was about a guy whose claim to fame was shooting down English and American pilots, I have no idea.)

But I was one of those kids who had a book in his hands all the time, including when I was walking to and from school. (Consider that for a moment as well: a kid who read and walked to school - no wonder I was skinny and smart!) People driving by would see me, head down, absorbed in the book I was reading, and wait for me to walk into traffic or walk into a light pole or tree. (I knew this because these drivers would then see my dad at the hardware store and say, “Durf, your idiot son almost got run over by a panel van on Valley Parkway.”)

But I never ran into the pole, tree, or traffic. I had some kind of weird radar that alerted me when I was approaching one of those hazards and I would unconsciously move aside to miss it. 

In short, I was a distracted walker, an early precursor of the current generation of phone heads who walk (and drive) obliviously while surfing social media.

Why tell you this? Tonight, I dusted off the old skills and updated the distraction: I played online poker while walking.

There were upsides to this: the walk felt like it went by much faster and it turns out I won the tournament!

The downsides: I gave up situational awareness, which you kind of want when walking in the dark after 9:00. Also, although I felt like I was going as fast as I usually do, I actually wasn’t. It was weird - I’d look down at the Apple Watch, breathing hard, and expect a sub-16 minute pace, but find out instead that my pace was over 17 minutes.  I’d noticed this phenomenon about a month ago when I was talking on the phone while walking - something slows me down when the phone is out and in use. Go figure.

Anyway, a nice nearly five miler today. No ailments, except for sore pinky toes. See you tomorrow!