Hark, a new resolution approaches: The Walking Marathon

BLOT: (12 Jan 2014 - 08:37:52 PM)

Hark, a new resolution approaches: The Walking Marathon

I am not the type to run a marathon. You might even say I am not the type to run. If, say, I got a phone call from my boyfriend and had 30 minutes to race across Berlin to save his life, the resultant movie might be called Doug Spaziergänge. With this being said, I am interested in trying to engage myself. Sarah is of the sort to want to do a marathon, at least a half one, and so I wondered, aloud, about the prospects of doing one by walking, which we later found out is a thing.

No doubt there are those out there who scoff at such a thing, but screw them. 26.2 miles (42.2 kilometers), at a steady 3.5-4mph, for 7-7.5 hours, is not a trivial task. In fact, Stephen King wrote a novel about it. Well, assuming, you know, that Lord of the Flies is about boys on a weekend beach trip. At any rate, while it will not be a grueling test of mental stamina and force of will, it will still be a 7.5 hour continuous walk. There is that.

As of right now, we are not sure about our exact format. We could and join an official walking marathon. We could try and follow the course of a local marathon, on our own. We could see if people want to join, with an eye on the issues this might cause. We could try an add some fun element to it. I don't know.

We have two training plans to decide between: one from MarathonWalking.com and one from PBS.org [adapted from The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and Fitness]. We'll probably do some combination of both.

Our current plan is to do the walking marathon sometime around September, which gives us more weeks than either of those training plans take. If we stuck to local, and if we started at UAH, walked Holmes to downtown Huntsville, then took a slightly back-path south, we would get to Hobbs Island and then come most of the way back. That seems like a varied enough route to nearly make up for the fact that we'd be pounding pavement the whole way. The only other solution I have that wouldn't involve walking up and down elevation changes constantly might be to do South Loop and North Loop, up on Monte Sano, but that would take something like 5+ repetitions of both trails to accomplish.

Any suggestions, tips, ideas, etc? We'd love to hear them.

Life Experiments

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: January 2014