in installments

That's what my running was like today. It was too cold in the morning to take the dog, so I jogged 25 min (approx 2.5 miles equivalent) on the FitWalk machine, then in the evening, I jogged 2ish miles with the dog, then dropped him off at home and jogged another 2ish miles, then picked him up again and jogged another 2ish miles. I feel kind of stupid when jogging with him in this manner because all we do is go up and down the streets in our neighbourhood. I don't want to go too far from home in case he suddenly needs to get inside, plus downtown we have arterial streets which are more regularly salted, whereas the streets/blocks in between are less so; by jogging up and down these smaller streets, we avoid salt and traffic lights! woohoo!

It's amazing how we can get 2-3 miles in without traffic lights like that, and it makes the run a lot more relaxing. I hadn't realized that before it got too cold to take the dog far, and I'm really glad I did because the traffic/lights are ticking me off more and more. The bus strike has put about 20% more cars on the road, and so a lot of them wind up in my neighbourhood, even on the smaller streets, and with the snow, drivers have become a lot sloppier with stop signs and lights. During my run without the dog, I had to yell at a lady driving at me while I was crossing a street. It was a red light for her, but it wasn't like she had been stuck in the box and then trying to clear it--the slag honestly crossed on the stalest yellow in the universe. I try to let cars stuck in the intersection go by, but she had been on the other side of the intersection when I looked as the light changed, and then then she was suddenly a few feet away. I yelled and got out of the way. She didn't look up. I keep forgetting to run with a wad of snow on my hand. j/k, but I've heard of people doing this. It's too tempting. LOL

So, phew! (glad to get that off my chest), just jogging up and down the streets between larger ones, maybe a 3-4 block radius, as boring as it might be, is a lot less stressful than dealing with commuter traffic. This is like finding a missing piece of a puzzle: sometimes, I want to jog only a few miles, but going straight out to a bike path eats up at least .75 of a mile and umpteen traffic lights/stops so my 2-3 miles becomes 5 or 6. The fitwalk machine eliminates this problem, but unfortunately, my dog misses out on exercise. Now I can get my relaxing, non-stop 2-3miles, and with the dog too.

Total: 8.5ish miles. Dog: 4 miles. Not bad for a cold as heck day.

Oh, and I went to the nurse practitioner because stress is still eating me alive. it's been about a week and a half since the split shift ended (yay!) but I'm still having general stress issues, guts, hormones, sleep, heartbeat, etc. We talked for a bit, she did a general exam, and I have a follow-up in 2 weeks...she's going to dig up info, mainly about managing IBS, and we'll go from there. It took me a while to get up the nerve to go to the doctor because I feel like I'm still healthier than most people, and I have made improvements with diet and exercise these past few years, but I still need a bit of help to get me onto a better track, at least until this deployment is over. No getting around that until it ends. LOL
incidentally, my blood pressure is pretty low, 90/60. It usually is low, but that's the lowest it's been, I think. It's not too low, just on the edge of 'normal'. I thought that was kind of interesting.

Meanwhile, more yoga--will go to a yin class this evening. :)