What goes down, must come up, part two!

This past Thursday, Marc and I headed out for a walk on the first day of sukkot afternoon.  We headed up to Caleb's Walk and the Ravine Road behind the Aviary in Westdale and back again.  I am not 100% sure how long this walk was because I did not use my GPS watch as it was Yom Tov.

The last time I did this trail, Max was like 5 years old and I was thinking  - so how hard could it be?  Of course, what I did not think about was that in fact, I was walking with a group of five year olds and Moms and dogs the last time I did this walk , so it was, of course, no big deal. I kept thinking 'so how hard could it be?' 

Anyways, the hill down at the beginning of the trail is quite steep.  As soon as I saw it, I was like 'oy, what goes down, must come up again!' This time, though, it was not quite as frightening as Earl Bales Park a few weeks ago.  So we continued walking and there are some off trail parts, again, nothing a 5 year old can't handle with some guidance, but I kept thinking about how on earth you could even do this with a 5 year old and then realized when I did it with little people, I did not do it at the pace we walk at to train for this half marathon!

At one point, I said to Marc 'when we get done this trail, we are just going to head home- it's enough for today' and then, I don't know what possessed me, but when we got up to the other side of that part of the trail, I was like, lets turn around and go back and do it again, and so we did.

As near as I can tell, from our house to the trail, around the trail (which is not on google maps in it's entirety because the off trail stuff is not on Maps) and back to our house is around 4.7 km.  I am not sure exactly how long the off road loop is but we did that part twice, so I think it was a pretty good walk.  We were gone for about 75 minutes altogether.

And, I walked up that grade we came down to get into the trail.  I don't know where the lack of fear to do it again came from.  All the sudden, I just knew I could do it.  Even though it was off road.  Even though the hills were sort of intense.  Even though I weigh a lot and a couple of months ago, would never have dreamed that this was actually going to be fun and exciting and something i would actually look forward to doing.

We did not get out to walk again, since Friday we needed to get our Shabbat food taken care of and we ran out of time, but I am looking forward to tomorrow and whatever adventure it holds.  On the physical side of things, this more intense walk did not make me particularly sore and I have noticed that in fact, my being out of breath is lasting far less time when the activity ceases than it used to.  It's really pretty awesome how quickly i am seeing improvements!

I really want to get back out to that trail tomorrow so that I can wear my GPS watch and see exactly how far it was  and what the elevation changes actually were.