So in this conversation with this friend who said that anyone can lose weight, she also said something I
thought was absurd.
She said that next year when Nat goes to school, I'll be able to walk him there and back. And because I will be pushing a double stroller, it would be excellent exercise up the hills there are in both directions.
I thought she was mad.
But she isn't. She is just a Mum who happens to run half-marathons, and has never experienced grinding sacro-iliac dysfunction pain upon walking down to the corner and back again. Or occasional blacking out due to blood pressure medication. Or Lazy Wretch Syndrome, which I seem to suffer from most of the time.
So I told my husband and he thought it was a great idea and went about proving that a
man who has never
given birth and who gets
as much uninterrupted sleep as he pleases every night and who doesn't have to
push his body through 12 hours of
non-stop servanthood under the rule of some
tyrannical dear sweet children can indeed do the walk.
But I started thinking. He told me about a short-cut that eliminated the long grinding hill I was worried about. And I did some calculations and worked out it is only about 1.2 km (unfortunately without any 'loading' for the hills) making it sound EASY.
Let me cut and paste from
my blog entry today, telling you about my progress on this walk:
First Walk: Nat was asleep one afternoon and I took Anna-Lucia and Joseph in the double stroller. I walked down the hill, through the forest, down the next hill and across to the roundabout. I could see the school from there, and found that immensely encouraging. But the children were beginning to cry and I was concerned I wouldn't make it home if I bit off more than I could chew, so we turned around and came home. Uuuuuup the hill! I lived. Great work, Me!
Second Walk: We didn't go further, but it included more challenges. Nat was with us and didn't want to ride his bike (a) down the hills, in case he went too fast and got out of control, or (b) up the hills because they were too steep. So it was quite pointless him even having his bike, but he flatly refused to go without it. Joseph wasn't dressed warmly enough and when the breeze turned into a wind, he got quite cold and grizzled a lot of the way home. And Anna-Lucia saw Nat on his bike and moaned 75% of the way, "I neeed my biiike!" Those words must have been said over a hundred times. When I replied that it was a bad idea because she couldn't even push the pedals, she said, "
You can push me with a broom!"
Then she demanded to get out and walk, tripped over the stroller wheels, scraped her knee and OH! the DRAMA! A
bleddercut on the knee!
And although she sat down and would not budge two houses from home and Nat decided he couldn't possibly push his bike up the last little bit, I did make it back, alive, with three children, one bike AND my dignity, which is an important factor in the longevity of this Mad Walking Idea.
Third Walk: This morning I was awake early and once Joseph and Anna-Lucia were awake too, I decided to try the walk again, this time unencumbered by a 4-year-old and his bike. I dressed the children warmly and took off. This time we made it
all the way to school and back. Oh my! The hills! But I made it, I made it! Alive! It only took me 25 minutes (
do remember that this is sans Nat).
I can do this. We have five more weeks to practice before school starts. By then, I hope to be pushing the double stroller up those hills a little easier, and I hope to have Nat a little more independent on his bike.
