Runagogo! Round 1 Wrap-up.
Week thirteen: [25/3/07-31/3/07]
6.5 miles walke; 7.0 miles biked.
01/4/07 - Week 14, Round 2 begins with: 10k (6.3 miles) in one day!

NO this is not an April Fool's gag. That's my longest one-day walk ever since high school and it beats some of my weekly totals from the winter! I walked and walked and walked.

Yesterday a couple of local creative crafters and I went on our own self-directed training-walk/yarn-crawl. We started by forifying ourselves with brunch at a cute little LYS/cafe, then hauled ourselves and two 8-9 year olds (one boy, one girl, both knitters/crocheters!) on a 5 mile trek through downtown Toronto in search of stringy sustenance for the hands and soul.

Each leg of the journey was between 1-2 miles, then we paused to knit, browse, chat and shop, then we took off for the next purveyor of fibre goodness. I will post later this week about a couple of delicious yarn acquisitions I accidentally made on the way. They just followed me home. Really.

All in all I had a wonderful time. Having no children of my own (that’s if you don’t count the DH), I had a ball living vicariously through other people’s kids. When it was all done, and including the trip to our starting point and the trip home, I had put 5.15 miles under my feet through the day.

Then I came home and despite the blisters and sore feet, I dragged the DH out for another 1.15 mile in the middle of the night. So all told it comes to 6.3 miles which is just over 10 kilometres!

Wow. I am beginning to believe that come September I actually will be able to walk 60 kilometres in two days after all.

I finally had my bike tuned, picked it up last week and so far I’ve already biked 10 miles! I love my bike! I love to ride! It’s so empowering to pedal around the city and get where I need to go under my own steam. Literally. And it burns the best fuel possible - me! But - Owww! I forgot how many hills we have in this town. I live in a freakin’ roller-coaster! Aaaargh…. Well, as I build up the strength and stamina to tackle them, I'll be building the stamina to walk longer distances.

Thanks in large part to RUNAGOGO I have walked 74.80 miles (120 km) since the new year and I am ready to begin training for this event in earnest. That's not quite the hoped for 100 miles by April 1st, but still a very significant total for me, since I started from nearly five years of full-stop sedentary sloth. I should have the rest of my first 100 miles done by the end of next week, and I decided that I will not start counting mileage towards round 2 until after these first 100 are done.

So here I say "Thanks" to Rachael, Scout, Adam and Stephen for organizing this brilliant move-your-a##-along, and "Thanks" to everyone for the daily motivation I get reading your posts and comments. I am looking forward to pushing my personal limits in round 2 - perhaps I will start running. And this time I WILL earn that cool medal!