I was running at the park I go to close to my apartment. It’s a huge recreational park with a few baseball fields, a newly built soccer field, a rec center, swimming pool and big tree’s surrounding picnic tables. It’s usually a pretty busy park especially around little league season. I love going there to work out. I can’t afford the gym membership like I use to so jogging around on the dirt path track that loops around the baseball and soccer fields is a good challenge for me. The paths are long and windy, which can make the trek peaceful as you jog past fresh sprinkler drenched grass. It’s the sure smell of summer and it always reminds me of my childhood.
I don’t consider myself an avid runner or jogger for that matter. I do what I call joggy walks. Some moments I will be in a nice pace of jogging to get the heart rate going and then I will cool down with a good fast paced walk. This just works for me. I have an irregular heart beat, so exercise is very important but so is not killing myself to get that heart rate up. I’m always striving to stay in shape and keep the legs toned. There’s always room for improvement on the ole ham hocks! Sometimes I don’t get to my work out as much as I would like to. I get busy but whenever I can carve the time in I do. I also do things at home pilates tapes, leg lifts with ankle weights, 100-200 sit ups, calve raises, ten pound arm weights and stretching. It really wasn’t my intention of this blog to explain my work out routine but I guess it was partially necessary.
I like to come to this park to think, to jog out my thoughts as I am getting a work out as well. It is such a nice stress relief. Right next to visiting the ocean. Although it has way more physical demands but healthy ones. The other day as I was jogging past the little league field and the man made gymnasium with the out door work out machines. I wonder if those actually work for people with no weights? Anyways I was finishing up my four lap joggy walks when I looked up at the trees. They formed together a nice canopy like arch that gave the path a beautiful look of serenity. It looked like it should have been a picture from one of those inspirational posters. I paused in my jog and stood on the path looking up at the beautiful display of nature. How did I not ever notice how beautiful this path was? Sometimes I think we have become such a cell phone and technology based society. We focus too much on posting a status update and taking that perfect picture for instagram that we forget to take the time to look away from that glowing screen and just appreciate the beauty around us. The things nature created and was not built by a website. I had without planning that day left my cell phone in my car. I’m glad I did. It was a nice reminder that sometimes we need to put that cell phone down, take a social media break and just enjoy life. Real life.
A Mute Whispers 