Morning Walking

Checking in.

I've been waking up early and walking for about a week.

Max has continued to perform flawlessly as my alarm clock dog. (: This morning there was a problem with the alarm on my phone, so rather than prompting Max to jump around and get excited, it played something else. It still woke me up - thank goodness - and so I asked Max, 'Do you want to go on a walk?' and he jumped up, which made it impossible for me to go back to sleep.

If I could trust myself to say that every time I wake up to an alarm, I wouldn't have to record myself saying it. But it would be way too easy to just turn off the alarm, roll over, and never ask the question. So until this habit is really deeply ingrained, I'll have to keep waking up to my recorded voice asking my dog if he wants to go on a walk.

There are worse things to wake up to.

Anyway, when I go walking, it's dark. DARK. I carry a little flashlight around with me and keep it wrapped around my wrist and pointed at the ground so that my feet and the dogs are at least partly illuminated.

This morning I went a different route altogether. It was a meandering, didn't-make-any-kind-of-sense type of route. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday last week I left the house at the same time, and did the exact same route. For safety reasons, I decided that probably wasn't the best idea (even though I really like that route) and this morning when I left, I had no idea exactly where I was going to go, except that I was going to go three miles. It worked, but I didn't love it. I'll have to plan a few alternative three mile routes that I can rotate through - in no particular order of course.

So this morning, being a new route (not entirely new, but one never before done in the dark early morning), I found myself a little bit on edge since I was hearing new sounds, etc. All of that ended when at one point on the walking trail, before I could see or hear him, this man started singing, 'Here we come a'wandering' in order to give me a heads-up that he was there. I laughed. And relaxed. And from then on I stayed relaxed.

I'm enjoying this early morning thing. It's been good for me - and the dogs - to start the day with a long walk, because no matter how much I might want it to, it just doesn't always happen in the evening. And I like the cool of the early morning better than the cool of the evening when it comes to exercising. Although I still enjoy being out in the evening hours, and that's why the dogs end up getting two walks most days - one much shorter and a bit slower than the other.

Kind of a boring post. Sorry to all who read it... (: