HOUR 10<\/p>\n
THE WALK<\/p>\n
I am not a great walker,<\/p>\n
I park as close to destinations as possible.<\/p>\n
So when I heard about the<\/p>\n
39-mile Marathon Walk<\/p>\n
I laughed.<\/p>\n
But I reconsidered.<\/p>\n
It was the Avon Walk for Breast cancer \u2013worthy cause,<\/p>\n
and I was a researcher at a cancer center.<\/p>\n
I was pre-diabetic and my doctor would be pleased.<\/p>\n
The walk was two days,<\/p>\n
26 miles in the first day<\/p>\n
13 on second.<\/p>\n
There was also a half-marathon<\/p>\n
(sounds familiar?)<\/p>\n
But I decided, in for a penny<\/p>\n
in for a pound.<\/p>\n
The only BIG fly-in-the ointment?<\/p>\n
Each participant had to put in<\/p>\n
$1800 to walk!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I first inveigled a friend to join me,<\/p>\n
And against her better judgement,<\/p>\n
she did.<\/p>\n
Then I charted a plan.<\/p>\n
We visited organized clinics.<\/p>\n
For walk, feet, shoes and hydration.<\/p>\n
Then a plan to train.<\/p>\n
We started with 2 miles the first week,<\/p>\n
and increased by two more every weeks.<\/p>\n
We learnt to stretch from YouTube.<\/p>\n
And splurged on the best walking shoes,<\/p>\n
which we never regretted.<\/p>\n
We trained in our new shoes<\/p>\n
to break them in.<\/p>\n
Our walk in DC was in May.<\/p>\n
So we started training in February.<\/p>\n
It was cold, still snowing<\/p>\n
and brutal, but we persevered.<\/p>\n
We walked on the road.<\/p>\n
The park trails were filled with women<\/p>\n
with staring eyes,<\/p>\n
and men who made our blood<\/p>\n
run cold.<\/p>\n
In between, we sent begging letters<\/p>\n
to family, friends and acquaintances,<\/p>\n
no one was spared.<\/p>\n
As the training miles increased,<\/p>\n
the weather improved<\/p>\n
the winter inhabitants in the park<\/p>\n
were replaced by serious joggers,<\/p>\n
dog walkers and rude bicyclists.<\/p>\n
But we enjoyed the walks.<\/p>\n
in two months we could easily cover<\/p>\n
18 miles.<\/p>\n
But money was our constant worry.<\/p>\n
Thankfully cancer survivors and families<\/p>\n
donated generously.<\/p>\n
Some gave to get rid of us.<\/p>\n
The parks were full of bright green buds<\/p>\n
and saplings and walking became<\/p>\n
a real pleasure.<\/p>\n
Two weeks before the walk,<\/p>\n
we did the last walk of 24 miles,<\/p>\n
and rested.<\/p>\n
We had trained so well<\/p>\n
for our first marathon!<\/p>\n
The actual two-day walk<\/p>\n
was a breeze.<\/p>\n
The comradery, enthusiasm and<\/p>\n
fever-pitch excitement,<\/p>\n
at the starting point was astonishing.<\/p>\n
Every two miles was a toilet, water and snack break.<\/p>\n
Whatever else was needed, the women had.<\/p>\n
We couldn\u2019t help congratulating ourselves,<\/p>\n
when many stronger women and even men,<\/p>\n
couldn\u2019t complete the walk.<\/p>\n
We did not have a single injury<\/p>\n
or after effects.<\/p>\n
(We did a total of seven marathons)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOUR 10 THE WALK I am not a great walker, I park as close to destinations as possible. So when I heard about the 39-mile Marathon Walk I laughed. But I reconsidered. It was the Avon Walk for Breast cancer \u2013worthy cause, and I was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2873,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137548,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137521\/revisions\/137548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}