Shin Splints, Stereotypes, and a Small World

If shin splints are just "pains in the front of the lower legs caused by exercise" which "usually appear after a period of relative inactivity," then I had them this past weekend. A mild case, but it persisted from Saturday morning until Tuesday.

I went for that 7.5 mile walk through Windsor Great Park right up to Windsor Castle and back on Friday. Only I didn't know it was a speed walk. And I didn't know all these ladies walk for an hour at breakneck speed every single morning at another location, and this was their annual extravaganza during which they celebrate their fitness by extending the breakneck pace for two hours. I don't have a habit of purposely exercising at the moment and I just jumped into this cold turkey (if that can be used for starting and not just stopping an activity), crazy woman that I am.

I enjoyed being out there in the fresh air, seeing the hundred or so deer sitting in the grass in the deer park along the way, not being rained upon, meeting and chatting with other ladies, and seeing Windsor Castle up close for the first time, but I have to admit I was not physically prepared. I think of myself as a pretty fast walker in general, but I don't typically keep it up for two hours straight. You know, as in, I can walk really fast from the bedroom to the kitchen, the kitchen to the garage, the car to the school reception area, and the store back to the car.

Apparently 7.5 miles in 2 hours is not very fast, from what I read online. I've never looked into walking speeds before. I was walking as fast as I could; I would have had to jog to catch up to people ahead. Maybe it was a lot more than 7.5 miles then. There's a reason it's called The Long Walk (just that part is about 3 miles each way, in a straight line). Nothing that could be compared, of course, with the 300-mile Long Walk of the Navajos in 1864.

Anyway, pointing and flexing my feet was killing me (no wait, that's what really happened to the Navajos; it's was only hurting me a little) on Saturday and Sunday (and each step was a new reminder of my possibly foolish expedition), and even to Tuesday I was noticing the discomfort while holding the clutch down in the car. At stoplights I shifted into neutral until the last moment. Today, Wednesday, I'm pleased to say I've completely recovered.

And I'm glad to have gotten closer to Windsor Castle than I'd been thus far. Still haven't been inside it, which would be the next step.

Enough on the shin splints, and on to the stereotypes. This week I met a woman who I thought only existed in movies. Life can be surprising like that, when you expand your social circles. I had to remind myself that God totally loves this woman and all people of her type, and values them just as much as me or anyone else. And that I know hardly anything about her, only the box I put her in. I can be so judgmental. God sees underneath. He sees her the way he sees me, a bundle of complex issues of different kinds, full of needs, most especially the need for a Redeemer. You're probably not thinking of the kind of person of which I'm speaking in this instance, but I'm not describing her in this public forum.

Now, the Small World phenomenon strikes again. This morning at choir practice here in England, I met another new person, and we discovered that not only had we both lived near San Francisco (amongst many other places), we actually lived in the very same town of Sunnyvale (there are a lot of towns in Northern California). Furthermore, we had both lived near Chicago - and both only for a short time, long enough to have a baby, a boy, at the very same hospital in Highland Park, Illinois. But two years apart. That was a first for me, to meet someone elsewhere in the world who'd delivered at the same small hospital (or even heard of it).

...Okay, this gets freakier. While I was writing this, she sent me an email. But then I guess maybe that's not so freaky - I gave her my greeting card this morning with my email address on it. And the pretty violet flower...but I didn't expect her to write (or so soon).

In final news for today: a buyer signed on the dotted line today in Southern France, committing to buy our house there by March 15th! That's a month earlier than expected, not that we were really expecting anything, having been waiting since last May for something to happen in this domain! I'm very thankful to God for answering our prayers at last (perfectly on time, I'm sure, for whatever reason, after 8 months on the market).