My friend Becky asked me if I was interested in doing an August challenge where we would each run or run/walk or walk a minimum of a mile every day in August. Sure, I said, that sounds great.
So I got up and ran on the first four days of August, and on day 5 I said, bleh, this humidity is such a drag. I'm going to the gym this afternoon when it's quiet there. I will do a treadmill mile and then lift.
Except! I showed up at the gym and realized I had walked out of the house in sandals. NO SANDALS, say the signs at the gym. It is possible that I could have slipped in and used the treadmill without alerting the sandal police, but I wasn't very enthusiastic about trying. And there are way too many heavy things banging around in the weight room for me to attempt to lift weights in sandals.
That's okay, I said to my rule-follower self, here's what we'll do instead. We'll go to the park across the street, and we'll walk a zippity-fast mile in these sandals. We'll get it done in under 15 minutes.
I am finding, you guys, that my natural walking pace at age 52 is *not* 4mph, and I had to move briskly to get that mile done in less than 15 minutes. I actually ran the last minute because I didn't think I'd make it and I didn't want to feel defeated by the activity that was supposed to keep me from feeling defeated.
14:54, my watch said when it buzzed at the end of the mile. Hurray, I said when it buzzed at the end of the mile.
But, sad to say, between the brisk walking and the brief running in my inappropriate footwear, I managed to open up a blister on the sole of my left foot. That seems like a pretty short timeline in which to create a blister the size of a quarter and then rip off most of its top, but that appears to be what happened. It is a sizable raw spot on the ball of my foot. Even covered up with a bandaid, it's pretty tender.
Back in my backpacking days I dealt with a lot of blisters. I probably have some moleskin somewhere. Moleskin always works better than bandaids, in my recollection. Tomorrow morning I should probably trim down that quarter-sized flap of dead skin and make myself a little moleskin parapet.
I'm having a don't-know-what-you've-got-till-it's-gone moment about the skin on the sole of my foot, which is not a thing I pay attention to except in its absence. Reflecting on a weight-bearing raw spot is kind of a weird gratitude exercise, but here we are.
I feel like bodies are usually pretty good at adapting to small and tender islands of open skin. Like, maybe tomorrow my brain will say to my foot, "Hush, now, we don't actually need all that emergency messaging from down there. It's not an emergency; we're working on it." Maybe? If not, it probably doesn't bode well for my August streak.
Could I hop on one foot for a mile, do you figure? And would it fulfill the terms of the challenge?
(Probably this post should not go in the fitness category, but I do not have a folly category. OR a moleskin parapet category, go figure.)
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