The joy of winter walking

Time for an ode to the joy of walking without sweating and the pleasure of hot shower after a frigid walk.

After years of running then walking in hot, humid summers, it has been a significant relief and even a pleasant surprise to explore the virtues of dry winter walking in Wisconsin. In Kansas, Arkansas and Maryland, humidity was a real burden for three or four months of the year. In Kansas, I also learned the difficulty of keeping one's pace and footing under snow, ice and wind. In Wisconsin, this winter has been late arriving and mild, meaning little snow (perhaps ten inches since Halloween), light winds, and clear, dry roads. The next 4-6 weeks could be another story but to date, I have done plenty of walking in winter, in below freezing temperatures, and in shorts! Today I wore jeans for a four-mile walk. There was a bit of a sting to the light wind at the start but something took the sting out of the walk for the last two miles.

It is nice not to feel it necessary too head straight for a shower to cool off, and once I get back inside the house from my walk I can defer a shower until later. And I don't have to throw sweaty, soaked clothes in the wash!

Truth said, I look back with envy at the times when the heat or ice mattered little and when I could run six, nine, even thirteen miles at a good pace across the flat roads of Kansas or the foothills of the mountains in Wyoming, or the fields and forests of Pennsylvania. Those days are long gone. I ate added fifty pounds to my frame since my best shape in Laramie in May 1983. I can't really run, let alone jog, for more than perhaps a hundred years. Yet I can walk miles without feeling tired, at least not until I get home and feel drained for the rest of the day.

When I was in my glory running time with the Mad Dogs in Lawrence, the runners' lament was that eventually even the best, fastest, strongest runners would suffer a skeletal, cartilage or muscular calamity, one that would certainly slow you down if not take you out of running for a long time, or even forever. Shin splints, stress fractures, torn meniscuses, bunions, ankle sprains, and a plethora of pains would eventually do in a runner.

My first calamity seemed minor at the time, a stress fracture diagnosed in Laramie in May 1983 just as I peaked in my running. Then my administrative career moves limited much of the flexibility and many of the hours in my week, putting me off a strong regimen. Then in fall 1997 I tripped in a hotel room in New York and only latter relaxed it was a torn meniscus. I was never able to fully recover from that injury and my the time of a bunionectomy and two hip replacements, in 2001, 2006 and 2012, respectively, walking would be the best I can do for the rest of my life.

The sad irony was that 2001 should have a been a great year to ramp up my running. I retired from the dean's role at Loyola in June and immediately agreed to participate in a Hopkins study for bunion surgery post-op pain relief. The surgery and pain were fine, but I failed to keep to the post-op regiment of wearing wooden-soled sandal and the bone had to be re-set. And after 9/11, the national anxiety and malaise probably hindered my mental and emotional commitment to running. And Jane and Gaby replaced much of my exercise time with daddy time as they grew older, more social and more mobile.

The happy irony is that the ongoing Covid quasi-lockdown has provided the perfect venue and rationale for long daily walks -- socially distant, immunity building, cheap, unpriced, medically endorsed, preventive -- that probably keep me out of the high-risk category that afflicts many people my age.