A Walker in the Suburbs

Walk as much as you like, the doctor said. Since he was a podiatrist, I took him at his word and did long loops through the neighborhood the last three days.

Turns out that the rowing I thought would be OK for plantar fasciitis actually is not, and the walking I thought would aggravate the condition actually doesn’t. Or at least it doesn’t while taking high doses of ibuprofen with a taped-up foot shot up with cortisone.

But 76 hours later, I’m walking better and in less pain. When you’re a walker in the suburbs, the temptation is to keep walking, even when it hurts. And when you’re me, the temptation is to try and remedy things on your own. Even when weeks turn into months.

What I learned on Thursday is … give the professionals a chance. They can do it in hours.


(Fun photo I took in Dublin that has absolutely nothing to do with podiatrists or walking.)

I’m back on the Pentagon bus for a couple weeks, cruising into Crystal City on the early side, hopping off before my stop, hoofing it through south Arlington before 7 a.m. It’s pleasantly cool this morning, and already a hustle-bustle on the streets.

Joggers, yoga-goers with mats slung across their backs, the caffeine-starved piling in to Starbucks and, of course, the dog walkers.

I notice a new restaurant, a crane where there wasn’t one before, an empty lot with an abandoned grocery cart. The smell of croissants or French bread baking. Traffic noise, especially on East-West Highway.

It’s a 15-minute stroll to the office from the first bus stop, and I listen to the same piece all the way, Sleepers Awake, Bach’s cantata, times five. By the time I got here, I was floating.

(Photo from another city walk, in Philadelphia)

Yesterday, a walk through Arlington. A walk while talking, which is one of the best kind of walks, though you wouldn’t know it by the kind of solo walks I often describe here.

The walk talk is wonderful when it’s done with someone with whom one is simpatico — even if that someone is on the other end of a phone line, which was the case yesterday.

The walk talk makes the miles vanish and the heat dwindle. It’s not until you find yourself in a cool Metro station that you realize that yes, it was a warm afternoon for a charge up Clarendon Boulevard.

But by then it’s too late. The walk is over and the talk is too and though you are indeed rather wilted you are also super-charged by the movement and the conversation.

(Scenes from an Arlington walk, in another season.)

This morning’s walk was more an amble than a trot. I was afraid it would be boring; it wasn’t. Thoughts flowed much as they do when I walk fast. But they were deeper, had pooled longer in the mind before bubbling to the surface.

When I was a little girl, I remember Mom explaining the five gaits of saddlebred horses. There’s the walk, trot and canter, the natural gaits, she said. But saddlebreds have two additional, special gaits — slow gait and rack.

At the Junior League Horse Show, which was held every summer at the Red Mile Trotting Track in Lexington, prim matrons with smooth blond chignons sat ramrod-straight in the saddle as their mounts pranced their way around the track. When it was time for the fifth and final gait, the announcer said, “Rack on.”

I’ll “rack on” another day. For me, today, it was slow gait.