Dogs Are Barking

"Let's go walk to McDonald's and get sundaes." Thus did The Wife proposition me early this afternoon. You can address the cognitive dissonance of a walk to McDonald's to get ice cream as a form of exercise at your leisure. We're hardly the first to get to that place.

Yesterday we'd walked to the Almond Blossom Festival, which was a nice little neighborhood event for springtime. A few midway rides and carnival games, some fundraising food booths, arts and crafts vendors, and some live music -- a good time and a very cool thing for a small neighborhood to have. I'd found the weather surprisingly pleasant, if a bit windy, and left my sweatshirt at home. (The Wife, perpetually cold, wore at least three layers of clothing and never took any off.) So the prospect of a longer walk in the nice weekend weather -- it was much less windy today than yesterday -- won me over.

We brought the dogs along, too. They wanted to go for a walk, but they didn't know what they were in for. I mapped it out on Google Earth. As it turns out, our route to the McDonald's was just under 2.5 miles and our route home was just over 2.5 miles; our total trip is close enough to five miles that the tens-of-feet margin of error inherent in using a tool like that won't really matter.

So was this a net gain or loss of calories? This resource says that a slow walk -- and we were pretty slow, with the doggies and all -- one burns .027 calories per pound, per minute of walking. Since we know we walked 5 miles, we can know the amount of time that took. At 3 miles an hour, it would take one hour and forty minutes to walk five miles. So that would be 2.7 calories per pound of body weight. This resource says that a McDonald's hot fudge sundae has 330 calories. Since both of these resources are on the internet, I know they're true and accurate. Therefore, if you weigh 123 pounds or less, a five-mile walk to get a hot fudge sundae at McDonald's is a net calorie gain; if you weigh more, it's a net calorie loss. I decline to publish exactly how overweight I am, but suffice to say that yes, I burned more calories than I consumed with this version of lunch.

My feet are certainly feeling it -- five miles is longer than I'm used to walking. And the doggies are sacked out. They didn't fight very much when I trimmed their claws after the walk -- they just didn't have the energy.

But hey, it was a glorious day. I even sat outside after we got back to read my book on our back porch while there was still daylight (which is now a little while longer, thanks to Daylight Savings Time). And I think I'll sleep very well tonight myself. This counts as a good idea from The Wife, even if I am a bit sore.