Who am I fooling?  I started out this year with the goal of walking 1,000 miles.  Today I am at mile 692 so I am on target for reaching my goal.  The problem is that I am starting to run.  This is a real dilemma for me because I do not want to injure my knees by running on pavement.  Albany does not have the great inner city trail network like Austin has.  Heck there are no big parks with trails that are free.  Albany does have a 5 mile trail located in Chehaw Parks, but this is a private zoo and you have to pay to gain access.

This past Sunday I ran a mile around the ASU track in the middle of my 8 mile walk along a paved trail next to the Flint River.  I use to run along this trail before my knees started to hurt, now I just walk it.  Today I ran almost a mile across the Doublegate Golf Course at the end of a 7 mile walk.  I have wanted to do this ever since I moved into the neighborhood over a year ago.  Today I was so bored with walking that I just said to myself what the heck start running.

It was a joy to be running in the early morning across nice soft grass and zig-zaging in and around the pine trees on the course. I am not sure if I will get caught doing this but I am sure that I’ll do it again.  I can not resist running.

Today as I walked listening to my Steely Dan radio station on Pandora I heard a song by the Eagles, Take It Easy.  When I was young  I  used to this phrase as my mantra, ”Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”.  Lately I have had to start using it again so that I can ease up on a few of my self made goals for my exercising activities.  It is OK to have golas, but you do not have to be obsessive about meeting them all of the time.  Hence the phrase “Take It Easy”.

This morning I did a typical loop around the golf course.

Lonnie Wormley

So as I reflect on turning 60 I am reminded that I have aged, but I am still enjoying the same things I enjoyed as a younger man.  I walked today listening to music on my Sony headphones connected to a Droid mobile phone that was playing music from an Internet application called Pandora.  When I was in my early 30s I had one for the first Sony Discman’s.  When I took my lunch break at work I would walk around outside and listen to music.  My first CD was by Dire Straits who had just recorded the first full digital recording, Brothers in Arms.

So as I think about what has changed in 30 years I can say that one thing has stayed the same, I love music and I can still walk.  I have decided to stop playing basketball and have given up on long distance endurance running to save my knees for the rest of my life.  I may appear as just another brick in the wall, but inside I am still shining like a crazy diamond.

Last month I surpassed my goal of 150 miles and walked 178.84 miles. So far this year I have walked 440.72 miles.  I am  measuring my walks using my Garmin 405.

I took some short videos with my phone that will show some of the areas that I walked through during my 13.1 mile walk on Saturday afternoon.

I am enjoying my early morning walks before work.  This month I am starting to use my bask pack that I used when I was trail running.  It makes drinking water easier than the small water bottle that I have been using that I carry around my waist.

This month I have walked 178 miles. I could not have run this many miles in one month when I was running back in 2008-2009.  I feel that my stamina is good and I can walk a full marathon when I have enough time to do it.

I learned a lot from my trail running coach and all of the folks that I met on the trails in Austin.  I know how to prepare my back pack for a long walk.  I live in a part of Albany that has lots of streets that have little or no traffic.  These are residential streets with lots of trees and interesting houses to look at.  It is in these neighborhoods that I walk every morning and I have let go of the mach ego that I had about not being able to run on trails and accepted the challenge of being a power walker on pavement.   As usual the biggest thing that stops me from getting to my goals is me.

Most of the time I walk and listen to the sounds of the neighborhood, but today I used my phone and listened to my Pandora station that plays Acid Jazz.  The music kept me going and prevented me from losing focus and kept me at my 13 mile per minute pace.  Overall I have a nice three hour walk.

Here is a map of the loop from my house around the Doublegate Golf Course.

Below is a summary report of my walks for this week

Last month I walked 146 miles, and this month I want to walk 150 miles.  I could not have realized that these types of goals were possible without measurement.  I have been tracking my walking using my Garmin 405 so with the knowledge of this walking data I can set effective goals. Having this knowledge about what is possible from just walking everyday I now feel empowered to set a goal that will equal the distance that I ran in 2008, only this year I may walk further.  Sustainable exercising is what is important to me now, not speed or distance.  I want to walk everyday and not get injured or burn out and not be inspired to exercise.

I do not have a tablet or touch screen computer, but I can see how nice having one will improve using Windows 8. During the past year I have used an iPad, a NetBook running ChromeOS and Windows 7.  Of all of the operating systems I feel that Windows is still the best for me.  Although the Mac OS is really nice it is only appealing for my daily work because MS Office 2011 finally works and has Outlook.  Having one Operating System (OS) for mobile devices and computers is the holy grail for users.

So maybe my next phone will be running Windows Mobile 8.  Maybe my next personal computer will be a ultra notebook with detachable display that will function as a tablet.  I am going to play close attention to see how Windows 8 improves and I hope it is released for production this year.