CARE Australia’s Walk In Her Shoes Challenge Day 6

Today was the day I’d decided to bust my 12.45 km walking record and aim for 15 km. I expected it would take less than 3 hours and be about 20,00 steps.

I left the house just after 5.30 – a full half hour after I go out on weekdays. What a luxurious sleep in I had.

I started off on my normal route – the 3.5 km one that takes about 35 minutes if I’m on a 6 km/hour pace. I didn’t expect to maintain the pace for the entire 15 km, but I at least wanted to get the first 3 or 4 km in at that pace.

I was a little bit under – at 15 minutes I’d done 1.48 km and at 30 minutes 2.96 km. 5 km took me 50 minutes 42 seconds, and at the half way point (7.5 km) I’d been walking for 1 hour 17 minutes and done 10,000 steps or thereabouts.

It was cold. It started out cold and got colder. My hands were like ice and I really wished I’d worn gloves. They hurt more than my feet, which started out hurting, but I moved them around in my shoes a bit and that seemed to relieve whatever was causing the problem. The band aids helped too.

It took me 1 hour 43 minutes to get to 10 km (14,000 steps) and I’d arrived at the Hill of Pain. This is a road called Saddle Road that goes up from the Magra Fire Station over the hill and back into the Avenues section of Fairview. I went up the easier side and down the steeper side (although I have been known to walk up this way in the past).

If it’s a nice morning you get a good view of the town. This wasn’t that day.

Two hours in and I’d done about 11.6 km, and I cracked my previous 12.45 km record in 2 hours and 9 minutes. At 2 hours 24 minutes (13.85 km) I hit 20,000 steps – my original Walk In Her Shoes daily goal.

I was on my way home when I hit the magic 15 km mark (2 hours 35 minutes, 21,000 steps), at which point I had to make it to 16 km or I wouldn’t have got home.

Competitive me made me walk just a little longer, and I ended up at 16.58 km in 2 hours and 53 minutes, with an average pace of 5.76 km/hour. It was almost 24,000 steps.

I could have continued for a few minutes more and hit the 3 hour mark and reached my step goal all in the one walk (and competitive me wanted me to do it), but I didn’t – so there’s a challenge for another day.

Then competitive me said, ‘So how are we going to top this tomorrow?’

I said, ‘We aren’t.’

I’ve achieved what I wanted to achieve outside the step goals this week: a 6 km walk in under an hour, and a 15 km walk. Even though there is a little niggling disappointment that I didn’t keep walking this morning, I did what I set out to do. And part of me deliberately didn’t go for that extra gold star because it wanted me to be satisfied that I did what I set out to do. I can imagine competitive me saying something like, ‘Hey, you’ve got this far, why not go for 20 km?’

No. I reached my goal. That’ll do. (Apologies to the writers of Babe.)

And tomorrow I have 25,000 steps more to go and one more pair of leggings to wear, so it’s not quite over yet.