Walked the Tom Walker Half-Marathon This Morning

When I signed up to enter Gainesville's top November running race, the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, I decided to try something new: speed-walk the entire 13.1-mile distance along the Hawthorne Trail southeast of town.  I wanted to see how my endurance would handle walking all-out for this distance as well as whether I could do it in less than 3 hours.  As it turned out, the answers were both a resounding "yes".  Although this course is pretty hilly and the weather was unseasonably warm and muggy, I stuck to my standard race-walking pace that I used for 5K races and extended it more than fourfold, finishing in 2 hours 54 minutes 40 seconds.  There were quite a few people in this race...206 finished.  I placed at #176 overall but that was of course due to me walking the whole course.  The Florida Track Club organizes this event and in their email not only warned participants to not necessarily attempt to set personal time records due to the warm and humid conditions, but also pointed to not having enough volunteers to run it as well as in previous years.  And that's true on both counts, especially regarding the fact that for most of the course there were no mile markers.  But for those who did volunteer, they were all very friendly and helpful.  For the first time in a distance race I used energy gels (three times) and they seemed to help.  I also had a playlist of favorite songs I listened to throughout this long, long walk.  How did I physically feel during the race?  While maintaining pretty much the same pace throughout...as well as up and down hills...I never felt winded or tired.  But my legs and feet began to ache early on and this intensified as the miles piled up, although it never got to the point where I felt like slowing down or stopping.  This was my 18th overall half-marathon finish (I began them in 2010) and my 6th with the Tom Walker Half-Marathon, tying my total with the now-defunct LifeSouth Five Points of Life event.  If you want to view the results, click HERE. I'm writing this later in the afternoon and, other than some expected leg aches, feel totally okay.  Oh, one other thing: deliberately walking in a race like this does demand a bit of humility on the part of the one doing it, because you know up front that most everyone will pass you and you'll be listed near the bottom of finishers without recognition that you chose to speed-walk it.  Since I'm beyond those concerns, I also enjoyed being not only more aware of the beautiful surrounding scenery in such a race, but also found that it made absolutely no difference to me whether I was walking on a flat surface or going up and down hills, no matter how steep.  I think that with today's results I might just try a full 26.2 mile marathon and see whether I can't walk the whole thing in less than 6 hours. But then maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself...