Running vs Walking: The Great Debate

My parents and I had an interesting discussion this morning. About a year and a half ago they "bought each other" a treadmill as a way to encourage a healthier lifestyle. If you've ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos describes her family as "loud, breeding, Greek eaters". That pretty much sums up my family. My dad has experience in the restaurant business, he's a great cook and we all enjoy sampling his food (in large portions). As it turns out, my brother is the only person in the family who appears to be immune to the vast amount of calories we've been consuming. Long story short, we're fat and we're all trying to do something about it.

With friends at the Making Strides Walk  in October 2010

Back to the discussion of this morning, my mom had just finished her workout and I was about to begin mine, when the three of us began to compare our workout routines. When I first started running, I decided that the best way to do things was to warm-up for about 5-7 minutes, run for as long as I could without stopping (about 5 minutes), walk for about 5 more minutes, then run at gradually decreasing intervals (5 mins straight, 2 minutes straight, a minute straight...etc). I don't know where I came up with this strategy, it just sort of happened. I was able to put in a pretty good workout this way, but I wanted a little more structure to figure out exactly how much running I was doing vs how much walking. Now warm-up for 5 minutes, and then alternate running 1.5 minutes, walking 1 minute for about 25-30 minutes. My mom says she walks the entire time, and somehow she seems to be getting in a greater workout than I am, adding that her doctor said that her 30 min walk in the morning should be coupled with a 30 min walk at night. At this point, my dad chimed in that his doctor admitted he would have preferred my dad to walk briskly rather than run.

So...the question, do you prefer walking or running? Which is "better for you" when you're a beginner? There are people who say that you can burn the same amount of calories running the same amount of time as you would walking it, but I'm not quite sure that's true. Any insight? I think it makes more sense that a doctor would recommend for my parents to run because....well, they're kind of getting old and the risk of developing arthritis and other joint damage is certainly increased for them. At my age, I think that the damage of carrying extra weight on my body could be comparable to the stress of running. For now I'm going to stick with my running, because I like the way it feels to run and I want to build up my endurance.

Getting Fresh Air...and Getting Lost!

Ahhh...back when the path was well-defined.

In an attempt to cure boredom, the boyfriend-guy and I decided to go for a hike on Saturday! We went to Morton arboretum in the suburbs, which has a total of about 9 miles of trail. In the morning we bought some key trail mix ingredients (ie: peanuts, M&Ms, and Craisins), mixed it all together, and headed out on our way. We drove by a couple of garage sales before getting to the park, all of which were pretty disappointing. We're both moving into new places this year, so we have lots of things we need for our apartments, but most of the stuff at these sales was for little kids. (Items which we DO NOT NEED.) We got to the park around 11:30, ate some of our trail mix and watched families run around, then we took the nice little path around the children's part of the park before trekking out on our own.

We got lost.

Of the 9 miles of trail in the arboretum, I'd say we hiked about 11 of them. This being due to the fact that I, completely useless at reading maps, handed it to the boyfriend-guy, who apparently is also completely useless at reading maps. To his credit, eventually he did get us to a place where he could look at the map and say "See? We're right at this part!", but it took a lot of back tracking to get there. Part of the problem is simply because the parks have a not-so-great signage system. There are signs pointing in the right direction, but it would be helpful if there wasn't both a "visitor center" AND a "visitor station". We parked at the visitor center. After about an hour our mosquito repellent was wearing off (but it was heavy so I didn't want to carry it in my backpack) so we decided to walk back to the car and get some more before heading out again on a different trail. Well, as luck would have it, we ended up walking to the visitor station. Which is...of course...the other side of the park. So we back-tracked there, and a few other times, before finally getting back to the visitor center. We bought some sno-cones and collapsed on a bench. Boyfriend-guy's neck seems to have taken the majority of mosquito attacks, which is lucky for me. Not so much for him. I'm still scratching my legs, back, face, and arms, but I think the outing was a success. We met working at a summer camp, so as much as both of us squeal at the sight of bugs, we're pretty excited when we get to be outside for prolonged periods of time. (Except there was this one part with a really gross marshy pile of mud swarming with bugs that we had to cross twice due to back-tracking. That part was not so nice.)

The arboretum itself is a nice setup. It's kind of expensive, $11/adult to get in, with free parking. I just made it $5/person in my head and $12/parking and it made me feel a little better, but it was still pretty pricey. I mean, we brought our own food (minus the sno-cones), and all we were doing was walking around outside. We pretty much found ways to entertain ourselves. On Wednesdays they have discounted admission, so if you want an afternoon of fun or something then it's only about $7/adult I think. Overall, it was a great outing!

Back on the trail!

Just a short blog post to say that I've started running again. I figure if I blog about it I'll actually have to commit to it because like...well, somebody might read this blog anyway. Since it's summer vacation I should be able to squeeze in 45 mins-1 hour at the gym every day. I mean, I'm still working until Friday, but then I'll be done! (Aww, sad. I really like my job and the people I work with)