Double Zero

My last couple days on the trail were pretty tough on my body for some reason.  Maybe it is because all my training trips were only a couple days long.  Even though I did quite a few miles on those trips, I have never hiked for this long before.  My legs, ankles, and feet were all painfully swollen. On the first day of my double zero I went to the gym to swim/use the hot tub, and rested.  By the end of that day I only had some swelling remaining in my feet.  On my second zero day I ended up doing some walking.

I attended the March for Science in downtown Los Angeles.  As someone with a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biology, I would have felt guilty missing it.  It was kind of bizarre that there was a need for an event to defend the importance, integrity, and neutrality of science to begin with.  I have never been to a protest or march before, so it was definitely a new experience for me.  There were some anti-Trump protesters with matching signs infiltrating the group, trying to drown out the pro-science chants with their own chants, a group claiming they were "socialists" screaming about how we need to do away with both the Democratic and Republican parties, and a pro-Trump group with a loud siren screaming their own ideologies at people as they passed by. However, most of the people there were passionate about science. Many were scientists themselves working on very interesting research.  There were also a lot of fun, creative signs about the importance of various scientific fields and issues. I ended up leaving just after lunchtime, giving me at least half a day to rest my feet.

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