Orange Street Loop/Ghetto Cat Loop

I walked a 12:58 mile this morning. Crazy. For some reason I decided after about two miles to see if I could walk the Orange Street Loop under 43 minutes. With a little more than a half mile to go, I changed my target to a sub-42. I got it in 41:51, with splits of 14:40, 14:13, and 12:58. No kidding, I think I started to look a little like a race walker toward the finish. Maybe I'll run a bit next week.

I spent about thirty minutes this afternoon reading an Internet entry on race-walk technique, and then ten minutes practicing. I'm not sure I could ever get it down. This evening, I race-walked the Ghetto Cat Loop in 25:44, with splits of 12:55 and 12:49. Whenever I passed anyone, or saw or heard a car, I just walked kind of fast.

SENTENCE OF THE DAY from A Different Closet
He sensed camaraderie so strongly he was certain of its presence; it was something he had first recognized as an eight-year-old playing touch football, and thereafter at dozens of gyms and golf courses and on brown, dusty fields, where men—and a rare, perfect woman or two—gathered to play, where acceptance was based on a willingness to embrace the game and its participants, where the stakes were low, where the differences between success and failure were separated by such a fine, thin line that emotional responses were nearly identical either way, where the only thing that truly mattered was being there, like being here mattered to him and these eight men.