Fitness Test: Giant Loop

My pictures didn’t turn out at all, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Tomorrow is my annual checkup at the VA. I wasn’t too worried about the doctor yapping at me about much of anything. Still, but I was personally unhappy with how that brief period of taking beta-blockers just about killed my metabolism. My waist sized swelled just a bit and kept swelling even after I discontinued them. So finally I got tired of it and dropped all sweets. Keep in mind that I had no trouble eating them before the collision last year and right up until I had so much trouble with tachycardia that they gave me those nasty pills. Suddenly sweets were a problem, but it wasn’t obvious for a while. So I dropped them last week and started into a different exercise regimen to kick up the metabolism from wake-up throughout the day.

In the process, I discovered that my knee is better than I thought. I took a 2-mile hike, wearing a compression brace, of course. With the brace I was able to keep up a fast road-march pace. And when I got back, there was none of the usual pain down inside the joint. I was tired and had ordinary workout soreness, but none of that dull ache that nags for two or three days.

It gave me confidence to try something really big: Today I saddled up and rode the Giant Loop. That’s the Katy Trail to Persimmon Hill, up to Wilshire and all the way in to Nichols Hills. I zig-zagged back down to Grand Boulevard and rolled all the way out to Hefner Lake. I stayed on the south edge, noticing that the lake was down by at least six feet (almost 2m). Boats in the mini-docks were suspended a good bit above the water. By the time I got to the canal, I could see it was flowing into Hefner Lake, which is backward from typical. Then I followed the canal to Lake Overholser. It was quite a drag facing the stiff breeze head-on for two miles straight on the stretch alongside Wiley Post Airport. When I crossed the pump house at the gates over that end of the canals, I could hear the electric pumps just humming away. Overholser has a good water level. I also spotted a car nose down into a tree on the bank of the dam, but it was pretty well hidden from my camera by foliage. I guess whichever agency is responsible just didn’t think it was worth removing the wreck.

There was another two miles of headwinds along Overholser and a little beyond on the West River Trail. Eventually I got around to facing east and it was very quiet and solitary riding the curvy trail to Meridian Avenue. Just before I got to that point I spotted a whole flock of solid white pelicans huddling on a sandbar out in the river, at least two dozen of them. But taking that shot would mean shooting into the sun and I had the wrong camera for that. The crossover at Meridian is just about done, and already quite usable. From there I began to encounter more traffic, mostly pedestrians. I started making much better time, and was zipping pretty well all the way to the Eagle Lake Trail, but stopped at the bridge again. Then I climbed up out of the riverbed area and onto Reno, but dove into the back streets to avoid the heavier traffic. By the time I got home it was about 5.5 hours — really slow, but the fact that I made it was cause for rejoicing.

Addenda: After a quick attempt to calculate the distance, I found it comes close to 50 miles (80 km).