Tag Archives: walk

Getting in gear to walk a marathon

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If there’s one thing I learned pretty quickly as I started to ramp up on training for the marathon, it’s that I had nothing in the way of proper gear. The Marathon Walking site (and pretty much everywhere else I looked) said that you want to be wearing only wicking materials, and socks are a key part of that equation. Unfortunately, with the exception of a few ill-fitting items, everything I had was cotton. Not wicking. Anti-wicking, as a matter of fact.

I knew that socks were the first and most important part of the equation, so I picked up some (supposedly) wicking socks at Kohl’s. They were a cotton blend that was supposed to wick, and they seemed comfy enough for the training walks I would take late in the day at the office fitness center. Still, once I took them out on to the open road, so to speak, they failed me miserably. I wore them with a new pair of shoes (exactly the same size, style, etc. as a pair I had been wearing for ages) and did a relatively short training walk – around 6mi. When I got home, I felt okay, although I remember having felt some sharp pain in my toes pretty early on. As I took off my right shoe, DH turned to me and asked me if I realized my foot was bleeding. Really?

Turns out, I’d punctured the side of one toe with the toenail of the adjacent toe. (Sigh.) Furthermore, I had built up a small blister on the bottom of my right foot, atop the balls of the foot, and that blister would grow from the size of half a dime to about the size of two half-dollars. NOT FUN. I realized that the problem was two-fold: 1) The socks were giving insufficient cushioning on the bottom of my foot, and 2) the new pair wasn’t accommodating the width of my (admittedly wide) foot. So, new socks AND new shoes were in order. Grand. And I still needed wicking CLOTHING, too!

I tried looking at Kohl’s for workout gear, but everything I found somehow didn’t work right or just turned me off completely. I decided to head to the local outlet mall instead, armed with coupons and my AAA discount. Turns out the Reebok store was having a big ole sale, and I had a coupon for 30% off regular priced-items. I grabbed a few armfuls of clothes, found several items that worked well (mostly sale or clearance) and used the coupon on two pair of regular-priced capris. My new workout outfit would be some combination of jog bra, tank-top and capris – all in wicking materials that would help me cope with all the sweating I was about to do.

The socks and shoes were still an open issue, and nothing at the Reebok store looked any different from what I already had. So, when I went to Eastern Mountain Sports to get a Camelbak backpack to tote water and stuff around in on walk-day, I got some wicking socks there. These were miles better than the others I’d bought, although they were still coming up to just about the ankle and not really going much beyond the top of the back of the sneakers. The ultimate solution came from some ankle-high wicking socks found at REI when DH went there to get some for himself two weeks before the walk. These went up by at least another inch over the other socks, providing an added amount of protection.

Shoes are a tougher problem for me, seeing as how I have a wide foot. I tried going to a local running store near my office, but they didn’t have anything that fit me just right, and they never called to tell me when/if the other wides they were ordering for me to try on came in. Le sigh. By that time, I had made plans to be up in Cambridge for dinner and a movie, and I ventured over to Marathon Sports – a local chain of running stores for people who are serious about getting the right footwear. The nice gent who helped me observed my gait, noted the width of my foot, and came back with two boxes. The first box contained the pair I would walk out wearing: Brooks Addiction. He brought me mens shoes, which was a brilliant stroke on his part. The extra width from the mens shoe was fantastic, and they were a size up from my regular size, to accommodate the swelling that naturally accompanies strenuous events like marathons.

I tried to train as often as I could, but walking on the weekends was really tough. During the week, we upended our schedule, flip-flopping who does the daycare drop-off and pickup so that I could do training walks in the afternoons most days. I only ever got two training walks in on the weekend; it was just too hard to make it happen. Typically, I would walk about 3.5-4mi a day at the fitness center, on the days when I could go, and the two weekend walks I did were in the 4.5-6.5mi range. Both the Jimmy Fund Walk web site and the Marathon Walking site had training schedules; I just couldn’t follow them to the letter because my schedule wouldn’t always permit it.

Still, I was hoping that my prep would pay off: I would be able to go the full 26.2 because I was determined to do so. The gear puzzle was solved. I was trying to train as much as I felt I could. Now, it was just a matter of whether or not I could do it. Mind you, I’m not built like the average marathoner; I’m far more golden retriever than greyhound, and athletics have never been my strong suit. In some ways, this was a completely crazy thing to do, but decked out in my wicking garb and having put in training walks several times a week, I simply had to cross my fingers and hope for the best.

Next up: walking the walk.

So, I decided to walk a marathon…

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I’ve known for a long time that I would never be a runner. Even as a kid, I hated running with a passion. When I learned late in adolescence that my knees never really developed properly and that my knees would eventually need replacing, running became even farther from my mind. Honestly, that was okay – because I love walking. When I moved to the Boston area, and I worked in downtown Boston (and later, Cambridge, MA), you could get seemingly anywhere just by putting one foot in front of the other. Some days, it was the smarter bet to get from point A to point B, since the local public transit can be somewhat flaky at times. Or, once you discover that the distance between two stops is traversed quicker on foot than via bus or trolley, you just hoof it instead.

I’ve been doing the Susan G. Komen National Race for the Cure (now “Global Race for the Cure“) for almost two decades now, and it’s just a 5K (3.1mi), so it’s a relatively short distance. I’ve walked it in the rain, in the heat, in the cold…I’ve walked it with friends, with family, and pushing a stroller. IT’S JUST 5K. Big deal. I’ve walked 10K races before (like AIDSWALK DC). Again, it’s just a little longer, but it’s not a taxing walk.

So, when I started to see ads for the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk, I was curious. Boston Marathon? What – you walk the marathon route? For reals??? As it turns out, that’s one of four options. I approached co-workers who had been on my “steps” team for a shape-up challenge at work earlier in the year. They were hesitant. The idea of a 5-miler was fine, and one even suggested that she’d be okay with the half-marathon, but the full marathon seemed too daunting. Even DH reminded me that you really need to train for this type of event. Train how – walking?

Well, yes.

I did some research online, both on the Jimmy Fund walk web site and on the Marathon Walking web site, and I came to the conclusion: I could train, but I didn’t have enough time to train to the extent that I really should. There was no way that I could see clear to doing 20mi training walks on a weekend, when we still had stuff to get done (grocery shopping, laundry, events, etc.). Still, I figured I’d had to give it a shot. I’d never be able to RUN a marathon, but I hoped I could walk one. How amazing would that be?

I signed up, with only eight full weeks to train before the walk. Sure, it’s a bit brave and it’s certainly crazy, but the opportunity to walk that storied route AND be able to raise money to help kids with cancer…it was just irresistible.

And thus, it began.

Next up: training and gear.

So, I did a marathon…

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I used to be the one who said – unequivocally – that there was NOTHING I wanted to do for 26.2 miles. Apparently, that’s not the case anymore. I did my first marathon on Sunday. I don’t know if it’s going to be my only marathon, but at least I can say that I earned my 26.2 sticker.

Okay, so why would any right-thinking person walk 26.2 miles? What is that, like 42 kilometers? Well, yeah, it’s a little more than eight 5K’s. And it seems to take forever. In my case, the reason was the easiest part of the whole gig: to raise money for the Jimmy Fund, a charity that funnels money to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute for the dual purposes of treatment and research. You have to raise a minimum of $250 if you want to participate as a walker, and they offer four courses (plus a “virtual walker” option, for those who can’t be there on walk day). The courses run from the minimal (3mi) to the WTF-ARE-YOU-THINKING (26.2mi). As the official name of the walk is the “Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk“, you can guess the marathon-length course: the course for the Boston Marathon.

It’s a daunting prospect – doing a marathon – regardless of whether you’re running it or walking it. On the one hand, running is a faster way to get through it, but it’s physically taxing in the extreme. On the other hand, walking lets you spread out the pain over a longer timeframe, potentially allowing more people to participate. As such, I can say that I saw a few people out there with braces on their knees or ankles; I even saw a few with canes. Now THOSE are the people with balls as big as church bells. No way no how would I ever consider doing 26.2 with a cane. That is HARDCORE.

I’m also not your typical marathoner. You look at the people who run the Boston Marathon, and they’re greyhounds. They’re skinny as rails, muscular where they’re not outright bony, and they always seem to be looking for an excuse to exercise. On the other hand, you have me. My doctor tells me that if I could lose about 50lbs I’d be in stellar health and I chase the kids more than I chase the treadmill. Still, this seemed like something that I wanted to do, a real challenge.

I’ve done loads of 5K walks/races (all walking – my knees don’t permit running). I’ve even done a few 10K’s. I love walking, and in the pre-kid days, I was perfectly content to walk all over Boston and Cambridge. Some days I’d walk from my office to wherever I was headed after work, even if it was several miles away and fairly warm out. Strap on some headphones, cue up some decent music, and I am READY TO GO. So, why not 26.2?

Well, first off, it seems really long. And, don’t get me wrong: it is. Running it, you’re probably done in about 4-4.5hrs. Walking it, you’re done in, oh, maybe 7-10hrs. It’s just a whole other scale. It’s an entire day. Second, it’s really physically taxing. You have to ramp up preparations well in advance. You need to be firing on all cylinders while you’re doing it. And, as I would discover first-hand, you need to have your act in gear afterwards so that your body doesn’t just shut down on you. (More on that in a future post.)

So, in the spirit of sharing, I’m going to open up about what it was like to do this marathon, from how I prepped, to how it went on walk day, to what recovery was like. No matter what, I can’t stress highly enough the importance of knowing your body’s limits and talking with your doctor before you engage in any kind of strenuous exercise like this. Don’t just up and attempt a couch-to-26.2 without talking with your primary care physician. They know stuff, like whether it’s safe for you to attempt it. And don’t just go: listen to them. This is not for the faint of *anything*.

OK – enough of that nagging. [Gee, can you tell I’m a mom? Go see your doctor! Eat organic vegetables! I’ll shut up now.]

More posts to come…