I exceeded my Fitbit step goal today….and made my stairs goal.  First time in a very long time.  I have gone through periods in my life that I felt compelled to walk…before fitbit or the other convenient electronics…I had to plan out my route by driving the route to figure out what kind of mileage I would be putting in.  We lived in the country and I walked gravel roads…3.5 miles if I was feeling lazy and 4 miles if I was energized.  At the time, I had a love hate relationship with gravel roads…I ate a lot of dust from passing cars and trucks, I cursed a lot of cars and trucks who made no attempt to slow down when passing a walker, I never felt safe listening to music on my “Walkman” “MP3 player” as loud as I wanted to….but walking on country roads was the time for me to think without distractions.  I loved the evening walks when I would come upon a hollow (a small valley for you city folk) and the temperature would drop and it would just smell different.  Evening with the sun going down always felt and smelled different than walking under a blazing sun.   I stopped walking for some reason.  life changed.  Not good or bad…just changed…I lost my groove.

When we moved to Missouri, I started walking again…not 4 miles but at least a mile and sometimes 2.  Its different walking in a neighborhood….more distractions, more people.  I am not a social walker.  I prefer to walk alone and I prefer not having to fake friendliness with the neighbors.  I just wanted to walk….and then I lost my groove again.  

Today, I felt like walking.  I was diagnosed a couple weeks ago with some “iron poor tired blood” ……in case you remember the phrase from geritol commercials.  The doctor has me taking a significant amount of daily iron to build me back up.  When I took Frannie on her late night walk, I realized that I wanted to walk me too…we walked down to the end of the street tonight instead of just 3 houses down.  Maybe I didn’t really just lose my groove…maybe I was just running my iron tank too low.  I have hope!

Until next time….