Getting into shape

In the past 6 days, I've hiked almost 10 miles total on three separate occasions.   Well, hiking probably isn't a very good word, more like walking on level ground, but it's a start.  I used to do a lot more hiking up into the hills and I've gotten away from that over the past year or so.  This past week, I decided that I needed to get some more exercise back into my life and I've started to go out on walks again.

Having the stamina back is a good thing.  Today was my longest walk, 4.6 miles on fairly level ground along a biking trail in Riverside - the Santa Ana River Trail.  I went out fairly early, starting at 8:35, and had put in 2.05 miles in less than an hour.  That doesn't sound like a very fast pace, but I was also geocaching at the time, so I did some stops to find the cache.  I got my heart pumping and the sweat was flowing so I felt good about it.

I do this for a couple of reasons.  With our camping trip coming up in 10 days, I wanted to build up some stamina for some of the hikes that I plan on doing with my kids.  Last year I was totally outclassed by my son at Bryce Canyon.  I expected to be.  He was 16 years old and I'm just old.  Still, I had stamina to do the same hikes he did, just at a slower pace.  This year, with all three of the kids, I figure we'll do some hiking.  Three years ago when my son and I were at Lassen there was so much snow in early July that many of the trails were still closed.  I'm hoping with the below average snowfall this year that the trails will be open so we'll get in some good hikes.

The second reason for this is I want to lose some extra poundage I've put on over the past couple of years.  This just makes sense from a health standpoint.  I'm not done with all that I want to do in the course of my lifetime and I want to be able to enjoy these activities fully.  I've seen a joke passed around the Internet recently that says, "I'm in shape.  Round is a shape."  I don't want to be that joke and so I walk and I hike.

And speaking of hiking - yeah, I know this will probably be a bad segue, but I wanted to do a shout out to an old high school friend of mine, Don Erickson.  I met Don in 7th grade.  We were in several classes together, throughout junior high and on to high school and we were both on the yearbook staff our senior year.  I can remember Don being a very free spirit, one who would climb the school's flagpole on a whim. (Yeah, I remember that).

After high school, as most of us tend to do, we lost touch. I was very disappointed when he didn't come to our 10 year class reunion as he was one of the people that I wanted to find out how he been getting on.  A couple of days ago, I discovered  that he's walking across the United States to support Organ Donor Awareness.  Right now he's somewhere in Pennsylvania.  You can follow his progress on the Facebook page that he's set up to chart his progress.  I've sent invites out to many of my friends from high school that I'm in touch with on Facebook, but I felt this might be a better way to reach a larger audience.  

My thoughts and prayers are with you Don.  Good luck and Godspeed.