My exercise routine is pretty simple.  I walk.  I try to walk a great distance each day.  Some days, I run.  I’d like to do yoga daily, but I’m lucky if I get to my PT exercises and post-run stretches.  When I run with a partner, I run faster and farther.  When I walk with a partner, well, I can’t say that I usually go further and faster.  It depends on the partner.

I convinced my daughter to join me today.  She might say that I threatened, bribed and ultimately dragged her outside.  Child abuse, I know.  It was cloudy, humid and unseasonably warm.  Look.  Even on a crappy day this view is amazing (taken yesterday, but it looked the same today, really).

I love our walks together.  She doesn’t like to walk fast.  She complains if I go too far.  She needs to stop and sit at the halfway point.  I really don’t get much of a workout in.  Yet I’d rather walk with her any day.  She tells me about her stories.  Each character has a back story that I might have forgotten from the last walk together.  A new plot unravels.  I get the spoilers.  She tells me about her studies.  Not in that monotonous, reporting to the boss sort of way, but with interest and enthusiasm.

She was holding my elbow as we neared home.  “I imagine I’m old and walking down a street in London with a friend.”  I hope that’s me.  I told her that when I get old (older) I’d like her to take me out on walks.  When I complain that my arthritis is flaring up, my knees hurt, I’m tired and please leave me alone, I want her to remember when she was twelve.  She should bribe me, threaten me, and ultimately force me to go outside for a walk with her, just like I did to her.  Because I will love it.