A human being makes decisions on daily basis, what to wear, what to eat, where to shop at and so on. Sometimes our decisions are based on previous experience such as shopping at Spar Westville for long life milk, they are the cheapest in Durban.
When it comes to athletics we make many of the decisions based on our previous performance and Saturday 26 April 2008 was one of those days. I initially ignored the adverts for the KZN race walk champs but two things resulted in me changing my mind.
Firstly Andre from Run Walk for Life was going to attempt his first 30 km walk and secondly since achieving my goal of pacesetting Two Oceans I have been a bit at a loose end without direction. So in order to put my mind straight, am I going to return to walking or not, I entered the event.
The event went off in typical KZNA style total bugger up at the start but we have all come to expect that now. Up to 22 km in this race I was side by side with Andre and we covered a variety of topics. However at 23 km the wheels came off, not for Andre, for me. At 26 km I was now ready to bail this race as I was in a very bad way. Charmaine Rowe got me to continue and I did manage to finish this race.
Right there at the finish line I took off my shoes and hobbled in my socks, which reminded me of my days when I was a road leader at Westville RWFL. One of the ladies who walked there regularly pulled her shoes off and walked in her socks, which earned her the nickname “Socks”.
Well what went wrong? Who knows it is obviously nine months of running training that has taken away my ability to walk.
The list is long and very sore:-
- Very tender shoulder blades
- Chaffing under my arms (never happened before)
- Lower back pain
- Both sides hip ball joint pains.
- Chaffing on inside of legs around the groin area
- Right hamstring pulling
- Both claves constantly threatening to cramp
- Blisters on both feet at the ball of the feet.
I ask you with tears in my eyes what the hell?
It is quite obvious that the transformation from walker to runner is complete and sadly I take leave of walking to become full time runner.
Andre ? well he went right ahead and finished that 30 km like a seasoned professional walker in actual fact the whole thing made me think of the Animal Batista from WWE, when he comes into the ring the announcers say “The beast has been unleashed” and that was Andre on this race. Well done lad.
I am not one for drugs on a race but I tell you I have never been so happy to see Sharon’s little packet of assorted pills at the finish. Thanks Sharon you always seem to rescue me when I am in bad way. So yes the very next time you see me I am the one without the walker tags, enjoying my run.
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