28 March 2010

a little sore

not unsurprisingly, my walking tends to decrease during the winter months in Chicago. i really try, year round, to avoid driving/being-in-a-car on weekends, much preferring to run errands by walking, shopping locally, etc.

yesterday i had to be in Uptown and decided to walk. combined with the rest of the walking i did yesterday, i logged about 5 1/2 miles. sadly, much higher than i'd been doing since last fall. and i did the bulk of that on a smallish breakfast of bacon and eggs.

my energy was really good, no fatigue at all. my only complaint, near the end, was the inevitable lower back pains i get when doing that much walking. by this morning, that has pretty much cleared up, and i'm left with some soreness in my thighs and a niggly little pain in my left foot.

but overall i'm really pleased and hope to log many more miles until the next winter.

4 comments:

JustJoeP said...

was the hike done with a backpack, or items held in hands? Or mainly free of additional loads? From a FBD (free body diagram) perspective, lower back pain is often caused by shoulder loads, torquing the lumbar region.

I am curious, in your weekend urban hiking endeavours, are the paths you take "low risk" in terms of pedestrian safety & through low crime areas?

zim said...

very light backpack, along for the ride in case i needed to peel some layers. i suspect my back pain is caused by my abs not being in good enough shape.

my paths are in mine and surrounding neighborhoods, which tend to be low crime. the greatest danger is motorists, who mostly correctly know that when it comes to it, a pedestrian will jump out of the way.

JustJoeP said...

India has some advantages over the US, for pedestrians, at least.

JustJoeP said...

...and, I think you may be right about the abs perspective. Since I began doing massive numbers of crunches last year, the intermittent lower back pain I used to get - that began when Christopher was an infant and I attributed to bending over the tub to bathe him (he is now 22) - has not returned. I'm not a well defined six pack, but, every bit of core toning helps the entire structure maintain stability without pain.