Walk… don’t run!

Sorry for my leave of absence last week, I was in the recovery position for most of it….

 

I was roped into doing a charity walk for Breast Cancer – which is fine, I’m fit enough to walk 20 kilometres – and several of my friends were doing it – ‘so why not!’ I thought.

 

Now you may have read in one of my past blog entries (What’s the story – mornin’ glory, April 2) I’m no athlete, in fact my fifteen minute hike up and down our ridiculous incline of a road can barely be counted as an exercise routine – but I am getting slightly fitter and at least I feel like I’m doing something.

 

What I hadn’t banked on was that the friends I chose to ‘walk’ with were actually capable of running the 20k’s without breaking out in a sweat… and they were extremely competitive and took the ‘leisurely walk on the boardwalk along the coastal fringes’ as an excuse to elbow past the 600 other participants in a bid to get to the finish line first.

 

The first kilometre wasn’t too bad, I managed to jog behind them in their slipstream – apologising to the normal people who were walking at a sensible pace. But when the crowd was out of sight and we had made some headway… and we were still running, I started to seriously doubt why I had agreed to this madness.

 

10 kilometres later I finally sucked up enough oxygen into my poor withered lungs to shout ‘OK, have we got enough of a lead to slow down a little now??’

By the look on their faces, this wasn’t an option – and I was too weak to try and convince them otherwise. So I saw a golden opportunity to loose them – a toilet block was up ahead.

 

‘I’ll catch you up’ I shouted as I veered into one of the cubicles….. and there I stayed for at least 10 minutes while the blisters on my heels had a chance to fill with synovial fluid.

 

I cautiously crept out, and to my joy they were nowhere in sight. Instead what greeted me in the mirror was someone who had had their head amputed and had it  replaced by an oversized radish.

 

I took this as a warning – that I may have overdone it somewhat and carried on the next couple of kilometres at the speed of a three legged tortoise.  It was only when I found I couldn’t hold my water bottle anymore as my hands had swollen up the size of those comedy Mickey Mouse gloves, that I thought maybe I wasn’t feeling quite the full ticket.

 

I lay down and took a moment to recover, while the people who I had overtaken hours before walked casually past me, uttering tortoise and hare scenarios… then one lady crouched down over me and said ‘you better go and get those hands checked out – the paramedics are over there’

 

Paramedics??… I thought this was meant to be a fun way of raising some money for charity… not life-threatening!

 

Anyway, I dragged myself over to them and they informed me that I was dangerously dehydrated and hyperventilating – and to stop the walk immediately.  They then offered me a lift to the finish line… you can see where this is going? 

 

Yes, there I was – all re-hydrated and bandaged up when my friends arrived at the end of the race.  It was quite obvious that I hadn’t beaten them – but it made for a great laugh when they saw me.

 

We all sat and drank icy cold lemonade and they decided that they would dress up in fancy dress for the walk next year.

 

…..NEXT YEAR???

 

 

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