It Was Only a Little Over a Mile..

This is another one of those What Was I Thinking?! type of posts.

A couple days ago, the sky was blue and the temps in the '50s. So I put Lulu, her leash, a water bottle, and myself into the car and drove down the hill to one of my favorite parks. We headed out on a well groomed trail. What fun.

I love Lulu's shadow in this picture. It creates the illusion that she's a well behaved dog.

What a beautiful day. I strolled along, mentally congratulating myself on getting out in the sunshine. When we came to a fork in the trail and had stopped to examine the sign that marked one trail as being 1.3 miles, and the other as 5 miles, I heard another couple of hikers come up behind me. One of them said, "Which way should we go?" to which the other replied, "Oh, the 5 mile hike, definitely. It's longer but lots easier."

Easier? I thought. Five miles doesn't sound easy to me at all. One point three is a zillion times less than five miles. I'm taking the shorter hike. Pffft. How bad could a quick little hike like that be?

So Lulu and I set off. At first, the going was flat and quite delightful. Like this:

I love the way I look in this picture. It creates the illusion that I'm an active, fit person.

So it didn't take too long before the going became much harder. Like this:

See Lulu's tail wagging like mad? She loved this trail. See me sweating like crazy? I wasn't liking this trail at all. 

Actually, the trail FELT like it went up at a 45 degree angle. I would suppose it was much more gradual in reality. See?

It couldn't have gained much altitude, really. I know this because even though I was huffing and puffing and stopping to catch my breath, hikers were RUNNING past me. One young lady jogged past me, stopped, ran down the hill, then ran BACK UP. Like just one jaunt up the incline wasn't enough exercise. 

Good grief. I am so out of shape. But I persisted. 

Lulu pranced and I wobbled my way on the completion of the trail. The terrain leveled off, then thankfully descended downward. As I carefully stepped my way back to the car, I was certain that Lulu and my adventure must have taken the entire morning and so was shocked to see that we had only been gone 45 minutes. I marveled at how my rubbery legs were still holding me upright. And that I hadn't tumbled down the slope and hadn't landed head-first into the lake below. 

Our adventure left Lulu bouncing happily around the house for the rest of the day. She's always energized by a walk. Me? I was done. With everything. Until the next time......

Maybe we can shave our time down to 44 minutes.