Altering The Course Of A High Afternoon With A Good Walk

Afternoons. The cyclical portion of day’s own calendar that most resembles summer. Summer, not my favorite season, but can’t say that I hold any disdain. Same goes for the afternoon. It’s the drawn-out gap between the morning’s potentiality and the evening’s evanescence. Outside of the symbolism, the afternoon happens to hold the bulk of my high blood sugars. Perhaps my carb-fiend lifestyle during breakfast and lunch finally catches up. Maybe I need to change up my basal rates. Maybe if I exercised more in the mornings it would alleviate. Whatever, I sometimes end up high in the afternoons.

Walking found its way into my afternoons. To say that walking has a certain, implied disdain amongst athletes, former athletes, and the weekend warriors, is fact. How many people in CrossFit t-shirts do you see strolling the neighborhood? “Why walk when I can do dips off the curb and burpees in the grass, bro?” The casual walk is mostly reserved to the following people: dog owners, couples who actually enjoy conversation together, and those without Netflix.

I have joined the group–to be clear, not in one of the standard categories–for a couple of reasons:

1. Honestly, I pulled a hammy about a year ago and walking provided sanity during a rehab without running.
2. Walking chopped the top of the high blood sugar mountain right off.

Just the movement, a pure connection to place, feeling the pulse of where you live, it’s a meditation–one that has immediate results. One of the worst parts (hard to pick from the choices) of being high is how long the stunted, dreary, sometimes angry mood can last. Studying in that mind-state is near impossible. Insert a walk, plus on-board insulin, and the needle turns south. After a walk, even with a blood sugar that’s still high (say 210), I feel so much better because it’s trending down. In that place, I can now hit the books (or PowerPoints) again. Plus, because walking isn’t a demanding cardio event, the dramatic, dive-off-the-cliff blood sugar descent is rare, but more the speed of that really long burlap sack slide at the fair.

So, I’m a walker. That dude, who just walks in the neighborhood. Sometimes, I even walk with a normal blood sugar.

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