Two Light Days

Tuesday was a very busy day at work.  Rather than skip my walk, I decided to do a shorter-duration walk, but still get some exercise.  So I took the same route I normally take to go downtown, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs next to Engineering, I turned around and came back up.  Time:  8 minutes downhill, 11 minutes uphill.  That's a smaller differential than usual, perhaps due to the fact that I didn't have an additional 14 minutes to downtown and back.

Today I walked to Dairy Rd. and back, trying to keep up a brisk pace.  I did the round-trip in 22'10".  According to my revised Google maps route, that's 1.6 miles, or about 4.36 miles per hour.  Dr. Cooper's aerobic chart suggests that's about 3.8 aerobic points. Cooper Institute recommends 15 points per week for "health and longevity":   "With just 15 points a week, research shows a 58 percent reduction in death from all causes, and an increase in longevity of six years. "  So even four days a week of this walk or better is a pretty good deal -- and that doesn't even touch quality-of-life benefits.