Some Running, Walking...and Weather...Talk

I skipped the Depot Parkrun 5K again this morning...just wasn't feeling all that well, and to tell the truth, getting off from work at 10 pm the night before doesn't exactly predispose me to getting up early the next morning!  But since I don't run in order to race...it's the other way around...the rest of today is open for me to do just that.  On a related note, I've been noticing the excruciatingly hot temperatures elsewhere in the United States over the past week, and I just have to chuckle to myself at the notion I had once entertained of bypassing Florida's summer heat by signing up for a July or August long distance race somewhere up north...I remember one held in scenic western Wyoming.  Well, that place...among others...is currently deep into a severe heat wave that would make us down south feel like we're in air conditioning by contrast.  Weather does what it wants to do, and where and when it wants to do it.  Of course, human-caused climate change isn't helping any.  But returning to running, I was planning to walk that race earlier today, and would like to get in some practice with that as well.  I'm starting a new daily regimen...weather be damned...of walking the .7 mile loop around the block my house is on and recording the time.  I speed-walked (for me) the first one yesterday at a time of 8 minutes 47 seconds, and plan to try it again today, rain, snow, sleet, hurricane, heat wave, torrential flood notwithstanding.  The idea behind this is to continue to gradually improve my walking form to make the motions more efficiently and to accustom myself to the kind of exertion I experience while running...