100 Miles?

The week began with a commitment to walking every day and getting closer to my goal of 100 miles for the month of February. Of course I know it is a shorter month so it was obvious that I was going to have to up my game with three fewer days in the month. As of the 24th I am at 79% of my goal. To reach it by March 1st, I need to walk 20.69 miles. Doable but also a challenge as I have been averaging between 4 and 5 miles a day but with a concerted effort I will get there. First day out this week was incredibly foggy and humid. Then we had lots of wind to deal with and then back to humid and very warm towards the end of the week. John has had a sore heel most of the week so it has been up to me to do the dog walk as well as my own walk each day. We did try a walk with him driving the golf cart and holding onto Wyke’s leash but that was less than successful. Bean and I ended up having to run after them to keep up and Wyke couldn’t quite get the direction thing going or maybe John couldn’t. Easier just to do it myself.

I did discover something interesting about walking. Speed can be a lot easier if you have a longer gait. It appears that I do not have a long gait and therefore I have to work harder at getting distance/speed. So another goal is to try and lengthen my gait to cover more ground in less time.

Marina after Matthew

A couple of years ago we had a bad hurricane here and among other things the hurricane, Matthew, wiped out our marina which was absolutely devastating to the island and especially to the boaters. Over the last 2 1/2 years the fate of the marina has been unknown. Our island was given an opportunity to buy the marina from the company that had owned it for a few years and we did just that a couple of weeks ago. Immediately a call went out to volunteers to come and help cleanup what was a real mess. During my walks on Thursday and Friday, the dogs and I stopped by to check on the progress of the cleanup. The coordination was incredible and in the space of two days the marina emerged from the overgrown tangle of weeds and vines to be itself once again. Many groups came together to make this happen including the management of our island who worked extremely hard along side the members to get it cleaned up. Prior to this cleanup you could not see this building at all from the drive.

February Vacation

Since it is February then it must be winter break in New Hampshire. John and I invited our grand daughter, Libby, to come and visit us for her week of vacation. Thoroughly sick of the cold weather and exhausted from working hard at school, she happily agreed to come. This was her first trip, on her own, with a plane change in Baltimore and she handled it like a pro. Had absolutely no trouble. She and her brother have both flown quite a bit with their mum and with us so they know the ropes but prior to this Libby had only flown on a direct flight to visit us. I had no doubt she would handle it with aplomb and by all accounts she did. She found a place to eat in BWI and found her gate without incident. So happy to have her here and now we want some sunshine to up her Vitamin D.

An App for That

Am trying out a new app that works with my Apple Watch. It is called Heart Watch and works with the watch to record your heart rate when you are resting, exercising, sleeping being sedentary etc. Not sure if it is a good thing or not. It seems to work with the Health app on the iPhone but am not sure about that either. I used to use a FitBit and I liked it because it was pretty simple. This seems to be more in depth but am not sure how accurate it can be especially since I don’t always wear the watch and I don’t wear it when I sleep because the battery doesn’t last more than two days. However, it does seem to keep track of my heart rate when I am resting and when I am working out and it appears to be pretty good at it. So far I see my “waking heart rate” averages at 76, my “regular” which is when I am not working out, moving or sleeping has a 94% of the time at 68 (52-78) and only 6% at a high resting which was 88. Sedentary heartbeat is a subset of regular and is taking when you have been still for at least 5 minutes (I never am because I am always doing something) it seems to be at 69. Wonder if sitting and working on the computer is figured into this. The workout section is actually pretty cool. Today’s workout summary was 9% high intensity, 71% build fitness, 18% fat burn (need to up that!!!) and 2% warmup. I am guessing it looks pretty good and as I go along I’ll probably figure out more of what I am looking at.

A Recipe for You to Try

Do you like chocolate? Do you like pudding? What if you could have both and have it be something healthy without guilt? Give this a try. It is from a blog that I follow and every once in awhile there is a recipe that sounds yummy that I have to try. Enjoy!