I haven’t done brisk walking as a workout in about three weeks since I got my bike, and the last time was with trekking poles. That lasted slightly more than an hour and a half and covered six miles. On Saturday morning, I decided to do another walk to test how my ankles would respond, but this time without the trekking poles. Since the AREC half marathon trainers were doing 7 miles, I thought I might try to do the same thing or something similar by myself. The initial aim was to go out for an hour and return an hour and see how many miles I can cover. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea do so much after not having done it in awhile but I hoped that it was worth trying.
My GPS watch was acting up last week and it wouldn’t power up. After looking on the internet for similar problems, I followed the advice of pressing three of the four buttons to reset the device. After having to try it twice, the watch started working again so I was able to use it on this attempted long walk.
I started from home and headed towards Signal Hill. The course was initially flat until I passed Wardlow Road and it became undulating. The one hour turnaround point was reached about a block past Willow Street on Cherry Avenue which was the border of Long Beach and Signal Hill, so it was time to turn around. My pace for the first mile was about 16 ½ minutes but it went steadily faster until it became an average of 15 minutes per mile when I reached 5 miles. I’m sorry to say that when I hit 7 miles my on again off again good left ankle began to hurt because it was supporting my bad right ankle so much. I managed to hang on because I didn’t have any choice but to keep on walking to get back home. When my watch hit the 2 hour mark, I had covered 8.09 miles at an average pace of 14:50.
Though my ankles were suffering, it was not a bad pace for someone who hadn’t done a walking workout in a while. You see, you have to get in shape for the specific activity you are doing and can’t just go and give it the old college try. Otherwise you would have suffered similarly as I did. By Sunday afternoon, aside from the sore ankles, I also had sore shins. I’ve overdone it again. Ya think?! It feels good to be able to walk below 15 minutes per mile but it doesn’t feel good to have sore ankles.
During the first hour of my walk I had visions of myself walking a marathon. When my ankles started hurting, reality set in and I wasn’t even sure if I could walk a half marathon. Time to give up endurance sports and just do this for fitness? You would think that being a former runner would help making walking easy. While it might feel easy cardiovascularly, it still strains already compromised joints. Yuck! Another unexciting blog, and this one was about walking, something people do every day even just from the TV to the fridge to get a beer and back. Apologies to whoever reads this. Tata…
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