Now I'm feeling it

Ok, so second day out with the new walking poles and I can't feel their effect. The back of my arms, my shoulders and back are all feeling sore today.

I did 4km this morning in 40 minutes, which is a little slower than if I was just walking, but I am still feeling the effects of my recent 10km walk in my lower legs. A couple days off should fix that up.

Numbers of interest: I have approximately 120 km on my new runners now. I'm also at 323km total with my Nike+ unit.

Of note with my poles, I learned that when the roads and side walks are wet from rain I need to be more conscious of planting my poles properly so they don't slip.

Ok, so later on meant later yesterday

So I went and bought my own pair of walking poles yesterday at the Running Room. They are made by Excel and are of a mid to upper level of construction amongst their poles. I picked a length of 125 cm as 130 felt to tall and 120 was a little too short. The 125 cm length is also what the manufacturer recommends based on my height.

I can say now that without a doubt proper sizing of the poles are very important. Right away I noticed a huge difference when using these new poles over the ones Marla has. It was working my arms much more effectively and I had an easier time planting the poles to get the proper bite into the road and sidewalk.

I only did my regular 3k walk this morning but I can't give times or pace as I forgot to start my Ipod's Nike+ program. I'm fairly certain I did it a little faster than normal, but for the next little while I'm going to concentrate on getting my technique down before trying to go faster.

Nordic Walking

I have a small new pasttime now. Nordic Walking. What is Nordic Walking? Well, it's walking with poles. I guess you could call them hiking poles, except they have rubber tips for hard surfaces. It's been quite fun and gives a good workout as it uses both your upper and lower body. As of right now I've been using poles that I found for Marla and to be honest they are a little short for me. I'll be picking up some propertly sized ones soon.

All in all it's a great work out and takes pressure off of lower joints. I'm not quite in the demographic in North America that uses them however, that goes to women over 30. Nordic walking is huge in Europe though and is the biggest growing physical activity there. I haven't actually seen anyone else using them around here, but that's not a big deal to me.

Anyway, I'll keep my training with the poles updated here.

Yeah, yeah, ok, I haven't updated this in a while. I've been busy at work and it's been far too nice outside to be doing a blog;)

Anywho, not much happening. My duties at work have changed a bit. I'm now doing the mid month, monthly and quarterly credit reports along with user administration for our credit system. It's been a somewhat steep learning curve and I'm still not 100% on a lot of things, but I'll get there soon enough... not that I really have a choice as my coworker who is training me leaves on friday for a month.

Such is the work life;)

Our fence is being installed tomorrow. We didn't go with the cheapest contractor, but with one who recently installed another fence here in town. I erred on the side of caution when marking out our property line just so we don't have any issues with neighbors crying foul about encroaching on their property. I was disappointed to find that our builder dug up both steel rods that mark the back corners of our property. Luckily Marla's cousin Jeff - who lives next door - has the same size lot as us. So I measured from his marker over to where ours should be. I'll see about getting some pictures up tomorrow after it's done.

On other news, Chrysler has been sold. I'm a little iffy on what Cerebus will do with it, but they do have controlling shares in a number of other large corps. The fact that Chrysler will be a private company is both exciting and unnerving. Exciting in that they can tell the union to F-off, unnerving in the sense that they don't have to make anything public anymore about business transactions. I am leaning towards feeling that the sale will actually be a huge positive for Chrysler - which by the way is bringing back the pentastar logo=)