Walked Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

In recent days I've been embarking on a more strenuous training regimen for walking, as my schedule permits.  To this end I decided to use the free Depot Parkrun 5K event, held (almost) every Saturday morning at 7:30, to try at least once a month walking an entire race.  Today was my first complete walk, but the temptation just before race time was to go ahead and run it, the weather being an unseasonably cool and pleasant 58 degrees with 84% humidity.  But no, I had made up my mind and decided to hike that distance.  I do feel the need to mention that for the previous couple of weeks I had periodically been walking at incrementally faster paces on my gym's treadmill after work late at night, stepping off each time after one mile: yesterday I got my sustained walking speed up to 4.5 mph.  Today's race involved lots of runners naturally passing me...you need a certain degree of humility to speed-walk races.  Of course, I was also trying to go fast while maintaining foot contact with the path.  My goal was to break 50 minutes, but I was surprised not only to finish the 5K without breaking a sweat, but that my finishing time was 45:14, a pace just faster than 4.2 mph.  You can see today's results by clicking HERE.  I'm becoming more convinced that the treadmill, used wisely, can help to automatically improve the user's walking form by progressively increasing their speed at a manageable distance from workout to workout.  I'm thinking of expanding this principle to running, which in retrospect is what I did back in 2007 when I began training for races after a more than thirty-year hiatus.  Depot Park, site of this event, is about eight blocks south of downtown Gainesville...