Today I'm feeling battered and sore from yesterdays 20k walking race. It's probably unimaginable to most people that run as to how much effort and pain you can go through whilst walking for almost 2 hours. Once again I put this down to being too competitive and getting carried away early on in a race. Probably also the marathon 3 weeks ago, not having any speed in my legs due to lack of intervals, and not being at my fittest at the moment due to drinking alcohol everyday for the past month. Well this is all going to change as I have a date on The Mall in exactly 28 days time and next time round I want to feel fitter and be able to beat my rivals Diane and Steve with ease, as I was doing back at the start of this year.
I think that to get back into this sort of form over the next 3 weeks I will start back doing the Saturday morning Parkrun 5k. Not many months ago I was walking this in 26:20 but now I think I would be 27:00+.
So back to the race on Sunday. 20km on a warm day (by British standards for April MLCM :} ) but also a very gusty day. The course was a 2km lap with some gentle inclines and two stetches into the head wind which I found increasingly tougher as I tired. That's 10 laps in all.
Before the race I had planned to lap in 11:20, but before the end of the first lap I had already got into a competition with my rivals Steve and Diane, and we completed it in 11:05. That's 2.5 minutes per 10k faster than I had planned. I was walking with my friend Jo and each lap we kept pushing and pushing to try and build up a gap between us and them. Steve had started to drop back each lap and we had gained a good lead on him, but Diane was causing us problems. No matter how much we were pushing she was not dropping. At 8km I was already feeling the pace and wanting to slow down but had to keep going to keep ahead of her. My friend Jo seemed to be walking with ease. I decided to try and continue at this effort for another 3 laps and thankfully during this time Diane was starting to drop behind.
With 3.5 laps to go we had built up a good lead over Diane of about 100m so I decided to let Jo go off and I slowed down to try and conserve my energy for the last couple of laps which I know were going to hurt even more. If I had kept pushing at this effort I believed that I was sure to run into some big problems later in the race which would also probably mean these two overtaking me again. As I was feeling the pain memories of the Rotterdam Marathon kept flashing through my head. I was trying to remain positive. Only 6k, 5k, 4k to go etc. Jo was walking away from me with every step but I was still managing to hold Diane and Steve off. This helped me get through the last couple of laps. I pushed on but knew that they weren't going to catch me.
At the finish I felt exhausted from the effort and from the heat. I collapsed on to somebodies camping chair and stayed there for about 10 minutes until I felt recovered enough to stand up without falling over. This was another race with no shade, therefore no escape from the sunshine.
I was very happy with my time 1hr 55mins 51 seconds and finished in 3rd place. My friend Jo was 2nd in 1hr 53mins, Diane was about 20 seconds behind me and Steve 1hr 57mins. It was a great feeling to finish but not a good feeling to know that in 4 weeks time I have to do this all over again at The Mall in London. I wanted to say 'Never Again' but I can't miss out on this once in a life time opportunity (at my age) of racing on the Olympic Games course in my home country. 2hrs is the qualifying time so undoubtably we will all be there, along with handfuls of international race walkers who are wanting to take advantage of testing out the course before they contend for medals in 2012.
Julie
Heading for The Mall (May)
