I originally had grand plans for picking my life right back up where I left it after my six week program, but my body had plans of its own. Instead of getting a little more work in before taking 2 full days off, I spent a week being sick. I don’t get sick very often, but I think my body was pretty damn pissed at the 6 weeks without a break deal and it was going to get some rest, come hell or high water. That week was also the first full week without walking or biking since late April. This matters because it totally threw off my exercise routine snd I am having a very hard time getting back into it.
There are actually several factors at play here. The most significant one is light. I suffer from pretty severe Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I need to sit in front of a crazy-bright light for an hour every morning. This means that my cat, Dancer, has a full hour to comfortably settle on me before I can even contemplate going for a walk. That makes him pretty darn unthrilled when I try to kick him off my lap after he has put up with an hour of the bright light, which he absolutely hates. And then there is the fact that it is still dark at 7am these days. While I don’t mind walking in the dark, I do worry about not being adequately visible to drivers who are still waking up. I have a couple of lights on my rain jacket, but I intend to get something that makes me a little more visible in the dark so that I can still get my morning walks in. I just haven’t gotten around to getting anything yet.
Then there is the rain. I am a good Portlander and don’t mind walking in the rain. But I do mind walking in downpours. Back in the olden days when I first moved to Portland (and before we were really seeing the effects of climate change), Fall/Winter rain was almost always a drizzly mist. Call me crazy, but I like walking in the drizzly, misty rain. I just take off my glasses and enjoy. But getting drenched does nothing for me. So in addition to coordinating my walks around light and cats, I now need to factor in the amount of rain we are getting. I have this lovely app (forecast.io) that does a great job of telling me when it is going to rain, how heavy it will be raining and how long it will last.
Now my walks are as likely to be mid-day as they are to be early-ish in the morning, which does horrible things for maintaining routines. I end up with days like Monday where I truly had the best of intentions for walking in the afternoon. All I needed to do was spend some time with a client on the west side and then I could walk in Hoyt Arboretum (which would honestly have been a nice change of pace from my regular neighborhood walk). But I got so focussed on solving her issues that I let too much time go by and suddenly I was pushing against sunset.
But, I am not giving up. I have decided that I am going to aim for a minimum of 4 walks a week until Spring. My intention to walk daily remains intact. But now I have a realistic goal that factors in the challenges I face with lack of light and too much rain.