How to think your way

For six days in a row I have been walking for at least one hour each day. It was prompted by my heart doctor that I should be more commited to my health and fitness. I started reading a book, Let Your Mind Run, A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory by an American long distance runner and Olympic medalist, Deena Kastor, co-written with Michele Hamilton.

It’s an honest, frank ,and inspiring story of how Deena Kastor started running, baring the essentials of her training and personal insights in what winning and losing mean. Her training helps her tremendously not just to be the best athlete but also how to be a better person.

I find that I can apply her training as a runner to me for my fitness and health. She wrote about how she inspires herself to enjoy the rigors of training. She says: “As an athlete I’ve found aside from hard work, the greatest tools for success are optimism and gratitude.These practices have led to happiness and the routine pause to realize I’m living the life I love and dreamed of.”

Her:blog

Today was warmer than yesterday.I walked for 75 minutes in the neighborhood.

To walk another day

To the river, along the river and over the river. That’s what I did in my walk to fitness today.

Today I drove to library to return a book, After Alice by Gregory Maguire, a book I joyously finished reading. A return to Wonderland of Alice. A return to childhood lightened my heart.

And I got a new book, Ordinary Light, A memoir, by Tracy K. Smith, the Poet Laureate of the United States. I also just finished Life on Mars, one of her book of poems.

From the libaray, I walked on the Riverfront , over a bridge then to the Vine Trail which connect to Kennedy Park.

The weather today was similar to yesterday, sunny with a cool breeze. I had to walk with a warmup top on.

today: 76 minutes.9,000 steps.
Yesterday: 11,000 steps.

I have to alternate in a certain way long and short distances.

Books

They read a book while walking
stumbling over gnarled roots and dislocated stones
They are like somnambulists who fell asleep in a library
They are friends with different temperaments
Books are their common bond.

the detail is divine

“Sit there and describe. And because the detail is divine, if you caress it into life, the world lost or ignored, the world ruined or devalued, comes to life. The little world you alone can bring into being, bit by broken bit, angles into the great world. It’s voice, your style. Or, call it what it is—your integrity.”
~ Patricia Hampl, The Art of the Wasted Day

note: I’m currently reading The Art of the Wasted Day by Patricia Hampl. I just finished re-reading the Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.