We've Found Our Incline Hike

One of the walks we are supposed to do on our own twice a week is an incline walk. When you live on the flat and any mountains are a half hour's drive away, that makes accomplishing this task somewhat more difficult. But.... there is a rather large hill a few blocks away from our house, so this afternoon we drove over to investigate. The hill in question is Communications Hill, the central high point in the City of San Jose. It gets it's name from all of the antennas on various towers at high points on the hill. (I wonder if all of those people with expensive custom homes on the top of the hill realize that the first thing that gets destroyed in any kind of attack is the communications systems? But I digress....)

We parked at the bottom of the hill and found a quite lengthy staircase going nearly to the top. Duane tells me that the elevation is around 50-60 feet, but that seems much lower than it looked. (For those of you who went to school at the University of San Francisco, think Lone Mountain.) Our son came with us and he bounded up to the top, no problem. We followed behind, stopping only once, but by the time we reached the top, our legs were burning. The view at the top was, however, quite panoramic. We rested at the top while our son went up and down one more time. When we can do what he did, I'll know we're closer to being ready for Half Dome!

After the stairs, the incline was more modest as we approached the main antenna tower. Shortly after that, we came to a playground and, of course, had to stop while our son played for a few minutes. We then found a bicycle path that wound it's way back to the staircase, and we then descended. All in all, a good one hour incline walk. And decline. What goes up must come down!

Today was supposed to be our easy walk, but I guess we'll just switch today for tomorrow. You can see what my exercise regimen is going to be on the Workout Schedule to the right.

My diet is so far successful. I'm down eight pounds. I'm both feeling better and I'm into my "thin" jeans! I'm using The Daily Plate to track my calorie intake, my calorie expenditure (exercise), my weight and my BMI. This is a really great website. As long as you have internet access, you can track your intake anywhere. The database of food is substantial and there's rarely anything I eat, that isn't already in the database. Tracking my food like this keeps me honest.