Miles to go
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The uptick on my miles walked and ran in my fitness tracker app spikes every May. Right around Memorial Day weekend, the number of minutes for exercise jumps accordingly too and stays high straight through the balance of summer and into fall. While lamenting the purchase of a new pair of running shoes with the salesman at the local sporting goods store last week after having bought some just five weeks earlier, and how these recent sets seem to just be less durable than those from years past; I got to thinking about my mileage and realized after looking at the digital compilations of the time on my feet, that I run longer, walk more, and am generally on my moving more often than ever before.
And that's just in summer.
I know that in place of some of the asphalt and pavement that have been my mobile home for cardio these past few months, the breaks and buttes and hills of the prairie will soon host a majority of my miles as I pursue my upland quarries like sharptails and pheasants. So too will be the winding logging trails converted to hunter walking paths in the northern woods of Minnesota, which harbor plentiful ruffed grouse. Thanks to the summer's sprints around the lake at the cabin and through the gritty streets of the ongoing housing developments around my home -- totaling 440 miles run and since May alone -- the hikes through the hills will be all the easier.
Autumn's miles are the reward for the summer's work, and while the pace generally isn't anywhere near that eight-minute mile goal for each run or even the 17-minute miles my wife and I try to log in our walk each evening, they are often more exciting. That holds especially true when I do have to pick up the pace in the field after my bounding lab, who has often accompanied me on those summer walks. While he remains a bumbling, big-boned brute of a companion, though still capable of a solid pull here and there, at 9 years old, he has shown some of his age this season. However, I have no doubt that the scent of a set of September sharpies carried down the hillside by the breeze, or the panicked odor of a fleeing rooster before us on an October afternoon will likely increase his gait, and as a result, my own.
With the first run of nine miles on the new soles of my latest set of running shoes recorded this past Saturday, I couldn't help but check out the bottoms of my hunting boots upon my arrival back home. Still in good shape after being purchased a couple of seasons back, and relatively even in sole material from toe to heel, I reckoned that they likely had a good hundred miles left on them as well and would most likely make it through this season and possibly next. It's a good thing too, as with better numbers of pheasants, grouse and other upland opportunities showing up in recent reports from around the region, there's likely many more miles on my upcoming calendar to log ... in our outdoors.