Cassie and I took a 2.88 km walk at lunchtime today, which turned out to be the longest walk we've taken since January 11th (6.28 km). Why? Because for the first time in over a week, the temperature got above -6°C. No kidding: it hasn't been this warm since 2:16 am last Thursday.
In fairness, we took the same route as a walk on January 13th, which was 60 meters and 4 seconds shorter only because of where I started the workout on my Garmin. Of course, that walk was 14 degrees warmer than today's.
After two weeks of below-freezing weather, I'm done. The National Weather Service doesn't have above-freezing temperatures in the 5-day forecast, but Weather Underground has us above freezing a week from today.
Cassie has a full double coat, which has thickened considerably in the last few weeks (woe to my vacuum cleaner in February). So my rule of thumb is that above -8°C (18°F) we can stay outside for 30-35 minutes, and above -5°C (23°F) until one of us gets cold. Above freezing there's no limit; her fur is that thick. Which is why I really, really want a thaw. It's supposed to be -4°C tomorrow, which is warm enough to walk to the dog park, as long as we pop into Burning Bush Brewing to warm up after.
Also, because we haven't been able to walk very much, I just had seven days in a row without making my 10,000 step goal. I got only 58,132 steps last Friday through yesterday. Today I'm already over 8,000, so I am pretty sure I'll get there, just as I'm pretty sure I'll be over 310,000 for January as I have 300,847 so far. But this will be my worst month for steps ever. (I got 305,385 steps in February 2021, but that's still 10,906 per day.)
Lack of exercise has made me irritable and made Cassie barky. (She may be irritable too, but she's such a sweet dog it's hard to tell.) The mild warm-up over the next week will, I hope, help.
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