My dull little project: Getting outside every day for a run, bike ride or anything other self-propelled activity
My #OutsideEveryday project started six years ago. Now it’s just part of my dull-guys lifestyle.
Henry and I had a terrific little three-mile run this morning.
According my Garmin metrics, the jaunt took 47 minutes, 22 seconds. My heart beat at an average of 122 beats per minute. It peaked at a high of 165 bpm. This particular workout scored a 3.0 on the “Impacting Aerobic Fitness” scale.
The app on my phone informed me “You improved your cardiovascular fitness during this activity. Well done!”
While I certainly appreciate the affirmation, and general health and fitness is a goal of mine, all that stuff is ancillary to the main mission of the run.
The main objective of this run, and really all my runs, bike rides, walks, paddles, skiing outings, skating sessions or anything else I do move around outside is to simply, to be outside, be alive, and move across the landscape.
Six years ago today I made it a “project” to go outside every day and move across the landscape somehow on my own power. I think I may have missed one day in the 2,100+ opportunities I have had. And that happened because I just got busy and forgot to go for a walk until it was 9 at night and I was simply too tired. I regret the lapse.
I wish I could tell you that this had some dramatic change in my life, that its spurred some sort of physical, spiritual or emotional epiphany. It really hasn’t. Don’t do this if you are looking to go viral, make an online splash or make some cash on Tic Toc. Or if you do, you’ll need to be a lot more creative than me.
Because really, taken all together, the project is a little dull. What it does do, however, is make each day a little better, and now after six years, my life would not be complete if I didn’t get out into the outdoor world in some way or another.
Henry is a golden doodle, and he is a kind of rescue. His first person got sick with cancer and couldn’t take care of him any more. Kris and I agreed to take him in. We had another dog at the time, a Vizsla named Bertie. Bertie was sick with cancer, too, so there seemed to be some sort of karma at work, mixing joy and sadness, underscoring the complexities of life and death.
Cancer is a key part of this story. The first inkling of the idea for #OutsideEveryday came early in 2016 (I think?) when I was in the room when my mother, who had the disease in her lungs and brain, was speaking to a palliative care nurse.
This nurse asked Mom if there was anything she wanted to in her life, with the implication that time was short. (It was.) Not really, Mom said, she had a pretty good life.
What did she like to do, the nurse asked.
Oh, simple things. Going for drives and looking at wildlife. Mom added that she found it funny that often she and Dad would drive for hours across the state, “and then we’d get home and see a bear cross our back yard.”
I was struck by a few things from this conversation. One, how Mom felt she had a good life, even though there never was any money, she lost a young toddler (my brother, Ken) and for many years, dealt with a series of serious health issues. Two, how she found deep pleasure in simple things. And three, wasn’t it kind of late to ask if you had things you wanted to do in life when there were only a few months left?
So I asked myself the question, What do you want to do with your life? And I found that, while I wanted to travel, read books, write, etc., the things I really wanted to do was spend time with my wife and other loved ones, and go outside more.
So I just started to go outside more. I’ve been a runner and a cyclist since I was a boy (cycling first, always crazy about that; runner at age 15, started because I was obese, or close to it. Took a very long time for me to even like it) so it was natural that I would incorporate these sports, and other closely related activities, into getting out and about.
It took some more thinking to get to the “go outside every day” thing. That basically came from the question, What do I need to do to make the most out of each day? Again, the number one answer was, “get out of the house and wander around.”
There are other answers too, including, write more, draw more, try learning a musical instrument. I figure those may come as I progress down life’s path. Or not. Those things aren’t near as important as going outside.
For the most part, these outside efforts over the course of the last six years have been “NATO” — or “Not Attached To Outcome.” I haven’t really cared about distances, or speed or really anything else. Be Zen about it, I told myself. Go with flow, and don’t make any goals.
But now, for a variety reasons I’ll get into another time, I hope, I feel like ramping things up. Just a bit. Incorporate a bit more discipline, a bit more competitiveness into the formula.
This morning’s run reflect this subtle change in thinking. I ran pretty hard, at least for me, around the Memorial Park Island for three laps. A kind of mediocre speed workout if you will.
Henry, my affable dog partner in many, many of these outings, encouraged me by happily doing wind sprints of his own.
Here’s to many more years of #OutsideEveryday.
