Second Winter

I’m doing Live Healthy Iowa with a few of my coworkers here at WHO-TV. You write down your activity each day in the “daily journal” and then on Fridays you weigh in and enter your total activity for the week.

Here’s how my weekly activity has gone:

Week 1: 7:10

Week 2: 4:40

Week 3: 5:30

Week 4: 4:40

Week 5: 2:30

This week: 0:00

I’d like you to imagine a bar graph indicating workout time each of these weeks. Notice a trend? With the exception of a valiant effort in week 3 that I think included an hour of housework and 20 minutes of walking up my steps because I forgot something, there has been a steady decline in my activity. This trend is synonymous with, what I like to call, Second Winter.

Each February or early March in Iowa, it gets up to 50 or even 60 degrees, you go out for a walk, you get excited and fold up the long johns and think, for just a moment, about the swimming suit section of Target.

And then… Second Winter. Second Winter hits hard, with 20 degree temperatures that seemed warm a month ago, compared to that -20 windchill… but seem to suck the air out of you now. Second Winter includes a 4 inch snowfall overnight when you’re not expecting it and you don’t leave enough time to scoop the drive and scrape the windows. Second Winter comes and you know, for certain, without a doubt, that winter will never end. Iowa will be white for the rest of your life.

Well, Second Winter came, and I’m mad. I refuse to remove my bike rack from the back of my jeep. I’m not putting away my light jackets… I’m just wearing them under my winter coat. And I bought some $7 blueberries from the grocery store because I’m ready for spring. And Second Winter can buzz off.