Well, I was going to start out at the old stomping grounds today, but I decided, well, I didn’t decide, the gate was locked.

There was no parking. The parking lot was closed. So I came on down to the other end of where I would have been walking, which is the marina, and started there. Plenty of parking.

And I’ll just go back to the old stomping grounds instead of starting there. It’ll be my destination rather than my origin. If you’re listening to the podcast, there will be a video of this episode on http://YouTube.com/@runningafever. You know, I just, uh, you know, I know I kind of want to present a view of the different seasons here.

Now this side of the lake doesn’t look as much like fall. Some colors are coming up, but not as many leaves are coming off as on the other side. But I also think we’ll get a better view of the lake, maybe, on this side. That’s why I called it the beauty of the lake, even though we’d already seen a little bit of it.

But it looks like you see a little bit of it now through the trees, but the trees are not quite bare yet. It is technically late October, so we are into autumn, I believe. As winter starts on December 21st, I guess. Traditionally.

Not sure what the criteria are for that. I think it’d be something natural, you know, instead of just a date. But it seems like they always use the date. So I haven’t been on this part of the trail for quite a while.

I have been using the botanical gardens because it’s a little slightly more convenient for me. It’s not really that much farther. It’s just you have to go down that one road, and then. So maybe a tad more traffic and a couple of lights getting to this part of the trail, but I’m back now, at least for today.

Yep, person. Took her a while to pass me. She’s got a faster pace. Mile 12 of the Razorback Greenway. So we are definitely on the Razorback Greenway at this point.

And mile 11, mile 11, I remember mile 10, we hit it on that part of it where we started at the Carol Eve and Sayoc drill hit. And mile 11 must be somewhere in between. I don’t know. So I don’t know how it connects, but maybe it’s Veterans Park somewhere.

I’m not seeing much of the lake, so I guess I was wrong about that. But you know, it’s nice. Got a nice breeze and some shade here. I did put on sunscreen today because I knew I wouldn’t have as much shade on this trip as I did on the south side of the trail heading out from the Botanical Gardens.

A little incline here. Nine minutes in. Four tenths of a mile. That’s pretty good.

The lake is beautiful year-round. I think I’ve got, I don’t know how many pictures I’ve got of the lake. I’ve got sunset, sunrise, full moon. I have all kinds of pictures of the lake, and they’re all beautiful.

I thought about, you know, self-publishing a book of those photographs because, I mean, they’re beautiful photographs, despite the fact that I took them. I have no training whatsoever. But it’s just nature coming through, showing its power and beauty, regardless of the means used to do so. A lot of those have appeared in featured images.

Howdy. The featured image is what you see next to the blog post title on the main page, and you also see it if you’re in your app when you look at the podcast. Or on YouTube. YouTube, you’re going to get a landscape version, which will show you more.

So plenty of those. I guess I could do one of those today, actually. Except I didn’t take one. Maybe when I get back, I can take a photo.

Anyway, yeah, I’m going to try to walk as far as I did last time, which was three and a half miles, which means I have to walk a mile and three-quarters and then back to the marina to get my car. Almost nobody is friendly anymore. I mean, I should be positive about this and just be thankful for those along the trail that are friendly, and there are plenty, I suppose. It seems like they’re outnumbered by people who are isolating in public, let’s call it that.

I’ve been known to isolate myself, but I mean, it’s kind of part of our Southern culture to greet each other. So you definitely don’t see that in Austin. I know that for sure, because I used to live in that area. So when I’m out walking in public, I kind of like to be a little more friendly.

You can see a little bit of the lake beyond whatever that is. Probably, maybe something having to do with the disc golf course. Anyway, what do you think? Put something in the comments.

Comment on the blog or YouTube video. There may be other places you can comment, but those are the ones that I have access to and know about, so I may not benefit from your… Yeah, it’s a nice hole. It’s a long one.

may not benefit from your comments if you put them somewhere else. RunningFever.com is where the blog is. This particular episode, of course, is at RunningFever.com slash 445. Oh, look, a deer.

Word of nature’s beauty right in front of me. I remember one episode I had on, it must have been raining, I had on my rain suit with my yellow, yellow or green, you know, partially colored lines, subtle differences kind of sometimes get by me. Anyway, let’s just say I was quite visible in that bright color. And I walked right by a couple of deer, at least one, I don’t know how many there were.

Walked right by it, didn’t move. It was probably within, I don’t know, 10 yards of me, maybe 15 feet, I don’t know. It was pretty close. It did not move.

I walked all the way through there. So here they feel pretty safe, I think. Got the Lake Fayetteville mileage and the Razorback Greenway mileage. And we’re 0.8 miles in.

20 minutes though. Slowing down a little bit from when we first started. I don’t know why the parking lot is closed up here. I thought it was called the Aquatic Center, but it’s got a different name.

Maybe we’ll see that when we come upon it. But I don’t know, maybe they’re rebuilding the parking lot? I don’t know. Rebuilding, repaving, restriping?

We’re going to find out pretty soon. Kind of a new adventure, even though we’ve been here hundreds of times. Because there’s an unknown factor. There’s a mystery.

Oh, and I forgot about this big hill. All right, well, school is in session. Parking lot closed. I’m not sure why.

I don’t really see the logic there. Science Center. Yep, something Science Center. Definitely be able to see it when the trees are bare.

And there are some nice pine needles here. Anyway, we still get to walk through the old stomping grounds. Kind of a flashback to the beginning back in November, December, when we started this podcast eight years ago.

Eight years. Well, this should get my heart rate going. 23 minutes 27 seconds per mile duration 23 minutes 38 seconds you’ve completed one mile heart rate 96 beats per minute. Yeah, so this should help my heart rate. It’s got up to 96 beats per minute in the first mile.

So, got my little audio report there. Verbal report. And the watch and my newfound program on it. I wonder what else I could do with this watch.

Oh, it’s going to be fun walking down. The problem is I’ll have to walk down the other side and bump back up in as well. Howdy. Hi.

On your left. Well, after I mentioned the e-bike interstate last episode, when I was trying to be positive, but I’m not perfect. I’m human. Anyway, I said that I was going to try to find some places where you can walk but not ride.

And I believe that the Yellow Rock Trail at Devil’s Den State Park is one of those. It’s kind of planned or hoped for to go this week, but the weather isn’t going to be very favorable. We’ve got possibly some severe weather on Friday, and then more rain on Saturday and Sunday. Well, less than a mile to go before it turns around.

This easy walk downhill is going to be reversed shortly, but at least my last inclines of the day will be downhill, so that’s good. Squirrels have been very active. Rodent department. Let’s see what other departments we have today?

Can’t think of any. Nothing has really changed recently. Well, we’ve been going for almost an hour. So now I’m making at least two miles an hour, but not three.

2.6, two and a half miles per hour, that’s not bad. It keeps fluctuating, keeps changing. I don’t think that’s an average over the entire walk. I think it may be momentary.

Maybe turning my watch to look at it as something messes it up, I don’t know. It’ll go back to like .7 or even zero. Big field. Big field, God’s green earth.

Oh, it’s kind of starting to turn brown. Still plenty of green, but just like my yard. Feels good in the shade here. So I expect this to be almost four miles by the time we’re done.

Definitely the high threes. It was almost two miles when I turned around. So, you know, I guess it’s progress. It’s more than I intended to do today.

My body or my mind had other ideas. My feet had other ideas. I just kept on walking. Mile marker 13, getting close to the big hill. And it might feel a little more difficult because I’ve been walking for over an hour.

And I’m more tired than I was when I scaled it the first time. There’s kind of a creek. Last time we saw the spillway in between, I don’t know, in between the marina and Veterans Park. And on that bridge over on that side of the trail.

It was flowing very fast. A lot of water is coming over that spillway. So I think it may be rather wet in the area. And then, of course, this weekend we’ve got more rain coming.

So last Saturday we had over an inch. over an inch of rain last weekend. Not too bad, going back up. Maybe I’m getting more endorphins now.

I don’t know. I think I mentioned brain chemicals a bit during the screen time series. And they mentioned something other than endorphins. A different brain chemical, they said, may be the source of what they call runner’s high.

Check that out if you haven’t already. All the screens we have in our lives these days could be unhealthy if we don’t use them properly. all safely. Bet my heart rate is a little higher right now.

Let’s see here. 199. Yep. We hit triple digits today on the heart rate by going up a hill.

So we’ll probably hit that on the way out here. And we headed on our way back. Good for the heart. All right.

Last big hill of the day. It’s over with. Done. On our way down.

In the shade, with a breeze. I don’t really feel capable of picking up the pace right now. I’m pretty sure I’m going slow, but you know. Okay, Ozark Natural Science Center.

That’s what it is, where the parking lot’s closed at the old stopping routes. Ozark Natural Science Center. So anyway, maybe it used to be an aquatic center. I don’t know.

You know, we’ve been coming here for… All right. Three miles and an hour and 15 minutes, basically. That’s not bad.

It’s like a 25-26-minute pace. And my heart rate is still over 100, 115, or something like that. Just trying to keep an even pace here. I’m not trying to set any speed records or anything.

Keep trudging along, that’s what you’ve got to do. Keep trudging along, and you’ll eventually get there. I just want to say I’m really grateful that I’m able to do this, and I don’t want to take it for granted. I’ve seen people who look like they’re so overweight that they probably can’t do much exercise.

And you know, in that situation, it may be a condition where they just can’t lose weight. But I’m not in that condition, at least not now. Not that I could never be. Definitely not had a terribly good track record over the years.

Yo-yo diets have taken advantage of me. Now, let’s see, 7, 8, 9, 10. So I’ve gone like 15 months on this diet. I have kept the weight off, even though I’ve been stagnant between 210 and 220 for many months now.

I haven’t gone above that. So I’m grateful for that. And I’m just going to keep on trudging. Hopefully, we’ll get to the goal at some point.

I need to talk more about goals. We set goals at work. I hear the word goal and I’m thinking, I don’t want to set a goal. I just want to do my thing.

Now that I’m at the point in my life where I’m going to be thinking about a so-called retirement. I hate the word retirement because it’s sort of an image of, you know, sitting in your easy chair at home watching TV, sitting on the porch in the rocking chair. Definitely not what I intend to do at this point in my life. But, you know, I guess it’s the easiest word to use to kind of talk about this type of thing.

Contemplating a change where I’m focused less on financial survival and more on, you know, whatever I want to do in my life. And, you know, that kind of entails having a goal, you know, what, you know, an impact and change like I was talking about before is one of the things you can do, but how are you going to do it? Can you find a way to do it that is enjoyable and rewarding? Not just good.

You can do well in a job that’s very unpleasant. And we need those jobs. We need those people to do those jobs. But can you do it in a way that’s rewarding?

I have a couple of ideas. But I haven’t really sat down and said, OK, this is my goal. This is what I’m going to do to achieve it. And I may need more training and education.

I may need to do some work to build up the thing that may be a very much a part-time part of my life now, that’s going to be, I hope, a full-time part. I’ll have to do some work to build that up into something. So, you know, I have a goal weight. I keep saying I don’t know how realistic or even healthy it is, but according to the BMI charts, my goal weight would be 175, which means I have to lose another 30-35 pounds, something like that, which is a lot.

Again, that would be just barely getting me into the non-overweight status. And I’m still obese. I believe I have to get down to 200 pounds in order to be merely overweight. So…

So that’s one of my fitness goals, to be at a healthy weight. Probably should have other fitness goals, but that’s the one that’s foremost on my mind these days. But what are my other goals? What are my life goals?

I talked about how, if you want to have a long life, research indicates that having a purpose is an important part of that. People who live long have some sort of purpose, something that they’re dedicated to at some level. I remember even Sarah Knauss, whom I published an update on a couple of months ago. She is now the third-oldest person ever, 119 and change when she died.

But even in her final years, when she was in a nursing home, the one thing she looked forward to was interacting with children. And I guess they had visits often enough to make that possible for her, but she loved children. So that was kind of probably her passion. at that point.

And of course, she had a big family as well. I mean, not terribly big, but just big because of the generations that have gone by. I think she may have only had one offspring, but there were six generations in her family. So goals are becoming more important than I had previously imagined.

Do you have a purpose in life? What’s your purpose? Do you have goals? What are your goals?

There’s a 12-mile marker, and we’re at an hour and a half and 3.6 miles at this point in our journey today. A long, straight, and level path here. I wonder if a bunch of Yankees have moved in here and taken over the place. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little collection of tangents and various subjects today.

There’s nothing strategic about my planning for the episode, as usual. I am just out walking and taking you with me on the trail. So until next time, you got the fever, keep it burning. You don’t catch the fever.

And I will see you next time on Rynning: A FEVER.