Walking Princeton Plaza Loop

It was raining for much of the day, but I snuck in a quick walk anyway. This time out to KFC for lunch (you read right!) and back, and I threw a loop in there to give me a little more distance.

I walked down Blossom Hill to the McDonalds at Kooser & Blossom Hill which is 0.6 miles in 10:30 giving me an average of 3.4 mph. I then did a loop around Princeton Plaza which, incidentally, is 0.64 miles. I covered this in ten minutes but because it’s a mall and there are no times I really needed to stop for traffic, it was a solid walk at 3.7 mph. Once I got to the McDonalds again I continued down to the KFC and did my best to keep my pace up. I slipped back down to 3.4mph over the .2 miles. I ate lunch there (more in a second) then it started raining on the way back, so I booked it back home, but I walked up Kooser and turned in on Meridian rather than going back to Blossom Hill. That made the walk be about 0.6 miles from there but my average speed was 3.8mph, and I had to stop for a stoplight. After the stoplight, I was consistently over 4 mph (woooosh).

The HRM numbers were good also. During the first leg to the McDonalds, my average was 117 bpm. The loop around Princeton Plaza was almost a straight line with the average of 141 bpm. After lunch the average was 139 though I was accelerating as the rain came down more and when I ended I had a heart rate of 153 bpm. Yesterday I said my resting heart rate was 69bpm… well turns out I’m dumb. I measured my resting heart rate this morning as soon as I woke up and it was more like 59. This means that my Karvonen fitness zone calculations were all shifted down some. I’m still not sure if this is good or bad, I need to do more research.

OK, why KFC? Because they have the Roasted BLT salad. The nutritional numbers for that salad are easily the best thing on the menu there. In Weight Watchers Points parlance, it’s a mere 4 points! This was confirmed when I saw the book “Eat This, Not That” which was written in conjunction with folks from GQ magazine. I’d point you to the “Eat This, Not That” website but they make you pay to see the numbers. In any case, I had that (4 points), the potato wedges (6 points, but SOOOO tasty) and a small root beer (2 points). This KFC is a combo KFC + A&W so they have the good root beer. If you have it there, they give you a glass mug! Just don’t fill it all the way up if you’re trying to stick down to 12 points.

For reference, you get about a point back for every mile you walk (you’d get more if it were jogging or running, but it’s a good estimate). So the root beer was free for me.

Walking in the rain isn’t so bad… if it’s not raining actively. I had my sunglasses with me because it was actually sunny when I left the house, and that helped a lot in keeping the rain out of my eyes on the way back. I could see the little accessibility ramps they carved into curbs becoming dangerous with more rain, though — the plastic nubs get pretty slick. Some of the sidewalk panels have a macadam cobblestoney thing going on which also gets slippery. I made it back safely just as the skies opened up for real.

I still have shin soreness; I’m going to look that up. I hadn’t been getting shin splints in a while; this was a constant problem in high school when they’d force us to run… I hate running. My hamstrings aren’t as tight as yesterday, it’s good I took a bit of a break, though, as they’re still not 100%

All told, a good walk. I didn’t get hit with any pens, and I was able to keep a good average heart rate almost through the whole walk.