Saw a man sitting in his hot tub with a beannie on this morning. Thought it was kind-of a strange thing to be doing at 7:30 a.m. on a Monday. Looked relaxing though.
Aaron went running today for the second time in three weeks. His lower back has been injured and his right knee is tempermental too. He returned in a very humble, sheepish state confessing that he stooped to a new level today. He tried to get me to guess what happened, and after three guesses I still had no idea. He tried to prompt me by reminding me that he always makes fun of these people. Its an olympic sport. Thats right, he race walked. After running a few miles, his right knee siezed up on him (probably due to the cold air and lack of training.) After his knee stopped working he was just going to walk home but then realized that it would take him a long, boring time if he just walked slowly home, so he started walking FAST. And the next thing he knew he was swinging his arms and swiveling his hips as his heart rate shot up to 170 and he was pushing and pushing to get that mile pace down to a 10 minute mile. The good thing is that he gained a whole new appreciation for race walkers. And he gained a new sense of hope and optimism at the fact that he can still get an extremely good workout in even if his knee is refusing to run. He can race walk.
I first witnessed race walking and met some pro race walkers when I went to the Jr. Olympic Training Camp at the San Diego Olympic Training Center my Senior year in High School. Ever since then I have greatly respected race walkers. I think it an extremely challenging sport because not only are you maxing out your lungs and aerobic muscles, you also have to have perfect form. Race walkers are seriously TOUGH and very fine-tuned athletes. I would be happy for Aaron if he decided to pursue a race walking hobby. He would actually probaby be very good at it because he is tall and has long legs.
Here's a nice fluid race walking video:
Totally unrelated, but equally interesting, I also found this video and had to post it since it gave me all sorts of warm fuzzie nostalgic feelings from my former steeplechasing days:
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