20km Race Walk - 5/8/15

The race walk.  It's an interesting thing.  It's one of the oldest sports in the Olympics and used to be wildly popular to watch and bet on.  It sounds simple enough - walking as fast as possible, but such that one foot is always in contact with the ground.  It is crazy hard to actually put into practice.  The human body just isn't made to move that way!  We all gathered with a couple of extra folks who thought it sounded like a fun way to spend a morning (no, really!).  We had plotted out an out-and-back course along a local trail way to equal the 20km (12.43 miles) and then parked our cars at strategic places along the course, as emergency and bail-out options.  No one really knew what to expect from this event.  We had comfortable walking shoes, snacks, sunscreen and first aid kits for the trek.

When we started off, we all made some attempt to try the actual motion.  The body actually begs to just jog.  Admittedly, most of us gave up very quickly and decided we'd just walk it as quick as we could instead.  At different intervals, some of us did try to throw in the motion, but it was futile.

We made it to our turnaround point in pretty good time.  A few people broke out the first aid kit to tend to blisters and change socks and/or shoes.  We took a few minutes to use the restroom and refill our water bottles, then headed back.  It was at about the 10 mile mark when our bodies started to ask what the heck we were doing.  J had to drop out but she encouraged us to go on - luckily her husband was able to come pick her up at one of our predetermined bail-out points.

We made it back in just under 4 1/2 hours (the Olympic record is just under 2 hours!) and were already feeling like we needed help just getting to our cars.  A few of us took a couple of days to recover, but we were all proud of actually completing this distance!

At the start/finish line after a long morning - 20km race walk complete!