Day of Suffering Night

 

It's hot today, easily the hottest day so far this year although unfortunately probably not the hottest day we'll see this year. The high temperature crested at 96° F and with the humidity, the heat index made it feel like 100°.  

The pretty lady on the local weather advised not to go outside today if you could avoid it, but today I was supposed to do my every-other-day five-mile walk. Since I started, my blood pressure had dropped by 40 points and I've lost 20 pounds. I worry that if I give in and skip a day, I'll skip another, and then another, and before you know it, the pounds will be back and I'll be all hypertensive again. 

There have been plenty of days since I started my walks last March that offered me alibis not to go out - chilly temperatures, rainy forecasts, late sleeping, other things to do and appointments to keep. So far, I've managed to bat away all of those excuses and have not yet missed one of my every-other-day walks.  Forty days so far. I even walked the same day after an in-office surgical procedure to remove a stricture in my urethra. No excuses.

To top it all off, the Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued a Code Orange air-quality alert for today due to ozone levels. According to the EPD, the outdoor air quality is likely to be unhealthy for children, people sensitive to ozone, and people with heart and lung disease. I don't qualify for any of those groups, but between the heat and the ozone, should I really be out walking?

I started at 11:30, earlier than I usually do, and the temperature was already 90°. I brought a bottle of water along with me to stay hydrated. I walked along my nearby Beltline trail instead of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area because it's better shaded - there's a long, almost one-mile stretch of the Chattahoochee trail that's completely shadeless, and I'd have to walk that stretch  twice to cover my route. By the time I was finished at 1:30, the heat still hadn't reached its daily peak and the Air Quality Index was still in the "moderate" range (Code Yellow). Daily ozone levels are generally highest in the late afternoon or early evening.

It was hot, but it didn't feel Death Valley Days/Mad Max hot. But I proved to myself that I can handle high 90s temperatures and Code Orange ozone, and the next 10 days are forecast to be slightly cooler so if I was able to do it today, there's no reason I can't continue for the next couple of weeks. 

But anyway, damn, it's hot out.