Speed-Walked the Depot Park 5K This Morning

On this hot and humid first full day into the official summer season, I once again moseyed on down to Depot Park, a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville, to participate in their weekly Saturday morning Parkrun 5K.  The temperature was a warm 73 at the 7:30 race time with muggy conditions...although my insane phone app had the humidity only at 55%: no way! I had already decided a while back that I would...conditions permitting...devote one Parkrun per month to doing a speed-walk, and today that's what I did.  I've written before that I seem to have hit a wall regarding how fast I can walk.  My thinking is that were I to fully adopt the race-walking guidelines and commit them to habit, then I could once again start walking for personal bests.  But so far my race-walking form has never been evaluated by an expert and I'm guessing that I have some work to do in that regard.  So when the director started today's run/walk, I shot out of there...walking at (my) top speed.  Which, it turns out, was slower than last month's Parkrun walk...I finished at 41:05, more than a minute slower than May's time and considerably slower than my personal best 5K walk (38:19).  The field this morning was crowded, both with runners, walkers...and runners who were forced to go into walking mode after a lap or two.  I admire all these good people...in spite of our different personal reasons for doing Parkruns, we're still in a sense kindred spirits for getting up early in the morning and doing this thing.  For the whole race, a little boy who may just grow up into a track star, was serving as a Parkrun Walker volunteer and easily kept pace with me. In the final lap he casually walked on ahead...he seemed to have the race-walking form right!  I have a lot in my life to be grateful for, and being in a predicament about increasing my race-walking speed at my age with two recent major surgeries is indeed a blessed level to be concerned about.  Next week I'm signed up to run at Albert Ray Massey (Westside) Park in yet another 10K race organized by US Road Running.  Wonder what the weather will be like then. Click HERE to view today's posted results...