Uphill Both Ways

Yesterday Chloe and I stayed home and celebrated her first sick day in over a year. Although she lounged on the couch most of the day, I couldn't get her to take a full-fledged nap. So I decided to kill two birds with one stone and stick her in the jogging stroller- she could get some rest, and I could get some exercise.

I guess I had jogging strollers on the brain, as this weekend I had seen several new, fancy versions with a front wheel that swiveled. This led me to forget that I have an old, clunky stroller that a) is borderline too small for Chloe and b) I am an epic failure at using. Despite these shortcomings, I gave it a go anyway.

With Chloe's long legs dangling on either side of the stationary front wheel, we took off. Or should I say, began our slow crawl. I started jogging, but couldn't figure out what to do with my arms. Am I supposed to hold on with both hands? Push with one while swinging the other? I settled for some combination of the two and set out with the goal of catching up with the middle-school kid walking home on the other side of the street. It took me the better part of Quince to finally jog past him, despite the fact that his backpack looked rather heavy, but the time it took me to maneuver the stroller right onto a side street allowed him to catch back up.

The side street, Massey, contains the closest thing Memphis streets have to hills. (Picture a slightly uneven surface.) I thought maybe I could let the stroller roll in front of me while swinging both arms like a normal runner. Unfortunatley, I soon found out that the stroller pulls to the left, or into traffic. I'm sure you're wondering why I didn't just cross the street and let her drift towards the curb, but trust me when I say I wouldn't have gotten across the street at this pace, in 5:00 traffic, without getting hit.

Finally, we got to our next right turn at Massey and Shadowood. I noticed that Chloe was trying to fall asleep except that her head kept bobbing around. I took this as a sign that I should stop running, recline her seat, and start a nice steady walk in order to allow her to sleep. Thus completed both the hardest and easiest 1.3 miles I have ever jogged- hard because of pushing the extra weight, but easy because I took at least 20 minutes to get it done. I barely worked off the calories in a stick of gum, but at least Chloe got a good, long nap as we walked home.