Workout: 10 mi., team walk

Time: 2 hr., 31 min.

I’ve been keeping my TnT coaches updated about my knee and the affect it’s having on my training, including how it’s bumming me out that I keep missing group workouts, so it cheered me up when Coach Bill told me that there would be a walker at today’s workout, so I’d have company if I showed up. Company makes all the difference, because without it, it’s just a long drive on a cold early morning to walk alone.

The walkers and runners have different coaches and generally train as separate groups, but the walker showing up today was Laura, who is the Campaign Coordinator for our TnT chapter. Besides all that coordinating, she’s also training to walk the full marathon in April. The walkers follow the same training regimen as runners as far as frequency of workouts and mileage, albeit a little slower. (Then again, maybe some of those walkers are race walkers with aerodynamic bodysuits and helmets… I haven’t seen all of them so I can’t be sure they all walk slower than most runners run.) Since I haven’t been able to keep up with the scheduled workouts lately, I wasn’t sure what mileage I was in for when I got there, but I felt ready for any mileage as long as it was just walking. As it turns out, the scheduled workout was ten miles.

Walking ten miles alone would have been booooring, but getting acquainted with Laura made the miles go a lot quicker. When we first set off, she said that if it was okay with me, she’d like to aim for about a 14 min./mi. pace. That’s a pretty brisk walk, but I thought I could maintain it. If you’ve been following my training progress, you probably saw, “…thought I could maintain it” and thought I was foreshadowing a knee problem, right? Wrong! The knee never hurt, and our pace wasn’t affected by any aches or pains. It was affected, however, by the surface we were walking on. We walked an out-and-back route on a paved park trail. For the 5-mile out leg, which we started just after 8am, we encountered a lot of ice, so we had to keep our pace in check to keep from slipping and falling. That would always be a concern in those conditions, but I was extra cautious because of my knee, and Laura was still nursing a serious shoulder injury that she suffered a while back. (Tip: When standing in knee-deep water at the beach – or “shore”, as they call it in NJ – it’s still important to keep an eye on approaching waves.)

Laura had a lot of interesting stories about how she first got involved with TnT (honoring an uncle with cancer), how she ended up working full-time for TnT (non-profit pay, but excellent job satisfaction), and how she injured her shoulder (didn’t see a wave coming). I had one of those “feeling old” moments, but it wasn’t her fault. I was walking along with that unconscious feeling that I’m hanging out with someone about my age when she mentioned her 25th birthday was coming up. Egad. That’s a dozen years younger than me (if I credit her for already being 25 since she’s so close anyway.) I don’t fret about my age much, but it’s still weird to me that someone can be that much younger than me and not be a kid. I suppose that kind of feeling only gets worse with time. That’s why I don’t fret about it. Much.

At one point, we passed what looked like a father teaching a son to ride a bicycle. That sounds like a sweet Norman Rockwell image, right? It would, except do you remember those icy conditions I mentioned? We passed them at the crest of a small foot bridge, with the son mounted on his bike pointing downhill, and a couple yards beyond where the bridge ended, the bath turned sharply to the left. Straight ahead were trees. I thought that was a pretty hardcore way to teach a kid to ride a bike. My opinion softened a little when they passed us later on a straighter stretch, so it looked like that bridge had only been a stop along the way, rather than a preferred spot to teach bike-riding “Fear Factor” style. (Tip: Learning to Ride a Bike + Icy Ground = Bicycle Phobia)

By the last mile or two of the walk, I began to feel blisters on the ball of each foot, on the area behind the big toe. If there had been many more miles to go, that probably would have developed into a problem, but it was minor enough and close enough to the end that it didn’t really bother me. That’s a lot of mileage to put on feet that aren’t use to walking that much at a decent pace without any breaks. If I keep up the long-distance walking (like if the doctor tells me I can’t run), I would expect the feet to toughen up where they need to. I’d probably also get shoes better suited to the purpose instead of walking in my running shoes like I did. Aside from the blisters, nothing hurt or bothered me. My lungs felt like they could have sustained the effort all day, and my legs, although a bit tired, felt far from maxed out. That’s all good news in case I end up walking this thing instead of running it. Whatever the pace, it was good to be covering some miles with the team again.