January 20, 2013 |
One notable thing that happened in January was my mother's 92nd birthday on the 20th (followed by Dorine's dad Lynn Wilson's 92nd birthday on the 21st). The 18th was the 16th anniversary of my father's death in 1997; it's funny how time slips away. Dorine and I did spend the night of January 4 in Santa Fe at the Old Santa Fe Inn, and we went to the cabin in Colorado again on January 25-27, this time with Kristy and Chris and their family.
I have continued to run on treadmills at the gym, running even more now than in the old days. I remember one year, about 10-11 years ago, when I set a goal of running 600 miles at the gym, which of course entailed logging an average of 50 miles a month on the treadmill. I met my goal that year, but it was so taxing that I decided to shoot for a "mere" 500 miles the following year. Well, counting the vigorous walks Dorine and I have taken on Sundays, I put in a 69-mile month in January. The reasons? One, both Dorine and my brother-in-law Mike like to go to the gym, and when I don't go with one (or both) of them, I go with the other; consequently, I tend to go to the gym more often than either of them does. Two, I'm still so jazzed about being able to run again on treadmills that I actually crave the exertion, however unpleasant it may be in the moment. And, three, weirdly, it motivates me to have a wide selection of gym clothes, in varying colors, to choose from. (On the other hand, it's true that I'm not running as fast as I used to do; three miles at 6.0 mph doesn't pound the body in quite the same way as three miles at 6.7-7.1 mph, which was my standard workout for years.)