This is the Padua Podcast Network. This is how we celebrate. This is how we socialize around food. It’s always around food.

So, try to be careful. How would you like to die? You know, death comes to us all eventually. Running a Fever, Episode 461.

Healed? Heels. Welcome to Running a Fever. This is Michael Davis speaking.

Running a Fever is a show about fitness, diet, and medicine. And my goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. It’s all about living long and loving life. It’s raining today.

It is a beautiful day at Lake Fayetteville, but it’s raining. And it was raining pretty heavily early this morning, and now it’s, I guess you could call this light rain. But it’s still steadily coming down. Call this light rain, it’s not, eh, maybe not light, certainly not heavy, somewhere in between.

But I didn’t use it as an excuse today. I wanted to go out today. And I didn’t think to check the weather, but last night, I guess I got a notice that it’s going to rain from midnight until late tonight. And so I decided to just go and, you know, not use it as an excuse.

So I’m out here. Yeah, so Passion Report got the old I’m wearing my hiking jeans today, but they feel pretty comfortable, very loose. These are my 380-pound jeans, or 280-pound jeans. So, very roomy.

A lot more leaves on the trail, and there are parts of the trail where it’s just like solid. You can see along the side here. I think most of the leaves have gone from the trees, and that happened pretty recently in the last week or so. That tide has turned, and most of them are on the ground. And I’ve heard astonishing stories of people who live in neighborhoods with trees about how many bags of leaves they take to the curb.

Not me, no trees. Even though my neighborhood is 20 years old. There are very few trees. My backdoor neighbor has a couple, but they don’t seem to produce that many leaves.

Don’t know that I’d rake them anyway. I mean, it doesn’t hurt anything here. Nobody’s raking here. at Lake Fayetteville.

So although there’s, you know, there’s the sides of the trail where they probably mow, obviously mow at some point, mulch those leaves up, I guess. But in the forest, there’s actually green grass growing in there, and it’s beautiful. Reminds me of the state parks I go to. And you can’t see this normally because it’s just a lot of leaves.

Without the leaves, you get a better view further in. And parts of this side, I can actually see the water when I normally wouldn’t be able to. Well, the show’s title is Healed Heels. I injured my…

I’ve talked about this in the last couple of episodes. uh not the last couple of episodes but the last couple of live episodes i did with going along the trail with tears talked about how I went and another hike at yellow rock trail at devil’s den state park which is probably the first time i’ve been there in at least a couple years maybe three I don’t know it’s been a while And I was walking in my Doc Martin boots that I’ve successfully hiked in before, but this time they kind of rubbed my heels raw, at least one of them. I think the other one just had a blister.

So, but, you know, I did a couple of Trail of Tears episodes where I was walking and in my Stan Smith Adidas. There was one car in the parking lot, and I hadn’t seen anybody yet on the trail. There’s always somebody who comes out, though. I mean, rain doesn’t stop everybody.

It didn’t stop me today. I think I’ve been out here in a really bad rain, and there was a guy on a bike, probably the only guy I saw that day. Anyway, I don’t know what’s going to happen. The rain could get heavy.

But yeah, beautiful day. Leaves, rain, forest. Even though I can see through, I don’t see any highways or cars. I can just hear them off in the distance.

That’s why I kind of like to go along this southern part of the trail. It’s quieter. My heels felt better during those trips. And then it’s been a few days since then.

Actually, that was last weekend. Yep, there’s the water. You can see the water from the trail on the south side of the lake. Anyway, it felt pretty good on that last Trail of Tears one that I went up to Pea Ridge National Park.

It’s a Civil War battlefield. Battle area with many small battlefields. Huge, huge park. Anyway, felt fine on that, and that was Saturday, and now it’s Thursday, so I had a little time.

Now I feel pretty much completely healed in my heels. My heels have healed. And so I have healed the heels at this point. Just takes time, and I’m kind of glad that I didn’t just sit around for two months waiting for those injuries to heal, that I actually went out, and it wasn’t that bad, you know.

And you just have to trudge through. It’s a very small amount of pain, but while I was walking the Trail of Tears, I thought it was appropriate to have some feeling of that sort. Anyway, diet report. I suppose weight has been going up.

Went up to almost, well, went up to 227. That was a couple of days ago. It’s been going down the last couple of days, so. But I’m in the 20s, and that’s something that hasn’t happened for many months.

So, not very good. I’m trying to scale back, not eat any snacks, and try to keep my one meal a day more reasonable and not oversized. I’ll try to make up for the rest of the day by eating it all in one meal. And I’m sure I’ll get back down there.

But I’ve learned I can’t just say, oh, it doesn’t matter. You know, it’s just a pound or two. Because how easily that pound or two turns into five, then 10, and so forth. And I’ve gotten down as low as 209 this time around, so uh I’m very much above that, more than 10 pounds. Oh, there’s a deer; they usually come in threes. Oh, I see one there, two more probably around here somewhere. Oh, this one’s got horns.

It’s a boy, but he’s young. Hello. I don’t know, this feels more strenuous than it usually does for me. Only here for 16 minutes, but it’s definitely warm in this hoodie.

Wasn’t supposed to get above 70 today. But once you get out here, even in 68-degree weather or whatever it is, you kind of get warmed up pretty quickly. Quickly. Why can’t I have good grammar when I’m, you know, speaking?

Because when I get this transcribed and Grammarly says I can’t use “quick,” I have to use “quickly.” So why can’t I just speak with perfect grammar? I had a potluck at work today, which I narrowly avoided. I had a pretty good excuse for having to eat my mother for something.

So I was glad to get out of that. You know, it’s really good, and the food is always really good. My boss’s boss always makes a really good brisket, and he’s famous for that. But you know, this time of year, there’s always a lot of meals going on, a lot of eating.

This is how we celebrate. This is how we socialize around food. It’s always around food. So, I try to be careful, you know, especially now when I can’t really afford to gain anything.

I can’t get, you know, an extra 10 or 20 pounds at this time of year, just because it is. I thought my mother was going to a potluck tonight. This is an extended diet department report. She’s taking deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs, pretty much the only, I mean, it’s a classic potluck food. And pretty much the only time I see them is in situations like that. It’s rare to just have them for a meal. Although a friend of mine has chickens and is harvesting eggs now.

So, you know, I have my egg episode. You can refer back to that. Not sure which episode it was. I didn’t know that I was going to talk about eggs today, but check that out.

So many different things you can do with eggs. And I’m sure that he and his family are going to be doing a lot of those things. Now that they’ve got free, in quotes, eggs, chickens are not free. Their food is not free.

Their house is not free. But the eggs, you could say, are kind of free. Well, I just heard some news today. I can’t remember the name of the company, but one of the pharmaceutical companies is doing some ongoing research into GLP-1 drugs.

And they have found that it’s a beneficial treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which is another huge topic and huge research area. I did the episode on GLP-1 drugs, so you can also refer back to that. Just search for it. Runny nose and fever, GLP-1.

Hopefully you’ll find that. There goes something. It went so fast, I couldn’t tell if it was a squirrel or a bird or what. Anyway, it’s gone now.

Mile 4.84. I’ve gone, I think, over a mile, but only 0.8 miles according to the watch. 0.8, 22 minutes. It’s not too bad.

Not in my top form for sure. Heart rate’s pretty high. It’s not enough for a sustained workout for sure in terms of my cardiac health. 91 I think it said, and I’m walking a 26-minute mile, which is better than a 30-minute mile and not quite as good as a 20-minute mile.

Progress is the key. Trudging the road. 27 minutes per mile, I’m going to go ahead and turn around and head back the other way. We’ll see what it looks like going the other direction. See if we see any of those squirrels or deer again.

Of course, I enjoyed the Pea Ridge trip. It was much quieter up there because it was more… First of all, Pea Ridge is not as congested as this area. Another thing, you know, I’m in the middle of a huge national park. And so even, even those people driving through the parking lot of the visitor center, I didn’t hear them because I’m, you know, way out there.

There was a parking area. I think I was the only one there. There were a couple of people there. They didn’t go where I was going. There was a trail, and there were even plaques along the trail, but I didn’t see anybody going down that route except me 494 well I stopped for a minute to take a call So that made me feel a little bit

better here. I feel like I got a little more energy. Slightly cooled down, still pretty warm, sweating quite a bit. That’s good.

That’s good for me. I always get plenty of hydration when I get back. Here, there’s water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. There’s a lake.

There’s rain. How would you like to die? I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about that. You know, I guess the standard thing is, you know, you die in your sleep.

Got a feeling that you wouldn’t actually die in your sleep. If you have a heart attack, that’s pretty painful. It would probably wake you up if you choked. But I don’t know.

So I don’t know if dying in your sleep is necessarily any better than dying while you’re awake. That’s a morbid topic, but death is a part of life, as I like to say. And, you know, I’ve been saying for eons that I need to make a will, and I finally did. And, you know, death comes to us all eventually.

Even though I want to live a long life, it will come to an end at some point. And hopefully, I mean, I say I want to live to and plan to live to 120. Hopefully, I’ll live to be in my 90s. That’s what I’m realistically hoping for.

1.4 miles, 38 minutes. Yeah, hopefully live a long life, and how do I want to die? I mean, you know, it would be nice not to have that be painful, but I think a lot of times it is. Maybe most times.

I should probably talk to some of the people, because I know people who, you know, have worked in hospice. I could talk to them about it. They have had more experience with death than I have, so probably more knowledge about that. Anyway, I probably won’t get the choice, but it’s just an interesting mental exercise.

Nothing can really stop me except ice. And I suppose I could get some crampons and come out and walk on the ice. Anyway, I’ll think about it. It’s more likely to be patches of ice than a thick sheet, so it might be problematic, but something to think about.

I don’t want anything to stop me. Some things should, you know, very high temperatures, very low temperatures. Just things that are harmful to my health when the environment is. Doesn’t happen a lot around here, actually.

Certainly does get below freezing in the wintertime, though. We’ll see what this winter’s like. 51 minutes. And I’ve reached my step goal, 6,000.

okay don’t tell me that i can’t see how many miles i’ve gone but uh more than one should be getting to two pretty soon squirrels everywhere down to I see a lot of nut shells not a lot of whole nuts on the ground 99 that’s pretty good two miles We’ll probably walk to, I don’t know, two and a half miles today. I’m the only car in the parking lot now. On a good day, it would be full right now.

But it’s raining, and that keeps most people away. Not yours truly, because the show must go on. Runny a Fever must continue. Until I reach that death that we’re talking about, you’re gonna keep on hearing me.

461 shows down and 1,000 to go. At least. All right, well, end of the trail department. Hope you’ve enjoyed my meandering thoughts here today about heels and death and leaves and trees and water and rain, all these sorts of things all come together helping us reach our goal, okay, thank you very much for listening today, and uh remember if you got the fever keep

it burning if you don’t catch the fever, and I will see you next time on http://RunningAFEVER