Weekend Update

This isn't going to be the smartest thing that you'll read that I've done, but I did it and now - ouch! - I'm paying for it.

I was up late Friday night working on my Sunday column for the Conroe Courier. When the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. Pacific to get showered, and start the drive down to the Seattle area to do a 10K, I decided to scrap it.

Primarily because I didn't want to hassle myself with coming back north across the Border.

The Canadian dollar is its strongest against the U.S. dollar since July 1977. That means, with the beautiful weather, that there should have been a steady flow of Canadians heading south to the States this weekend.

So I slept in for a little bit, finished my column and went to get a late breakfast around noon. I had to stick around until 2 p.m. to update the parking on the car in the garage so I started in on a book that I picked up last weekend, "My FBI", by Louis Freeh.

I began to think about taking a walk around the city and to see how far I could go, especially since I wasn't going to be here on a regular basis perhaps by the end of June.

One mistake is that I didn't do this in my running shoes. I did it in my regular athletic or "tennis" shoes and now the balls of my feet are pretty banged up. (I have no idea how folks do 100-milers and more.) Just getting around today is going to be a challenge.

So how far did I go? 24.88 miles.
Here's the route: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=133322

Yes, I almost walked a marathon. And for the record, I do not understand how anybody can walk that distance. To those of you who do, I'm impressed.

I realized that when I was running Fargo two weekends ago that I felt I had lost my mental edge to do a marathon. Well, I think I got a little of that back.

Once I got started, I also thought that it would be a good test to see how I felt - right now - with all of the banging that my body - not just my feet - would take again over that distance. Obviously, I recovered pretty well from doing one half one day and another one the next.

I'm not as sore and exhausted as I am in running a marathon, but the wrong choice of shoes have really left my feet in pretty bad shape this morning.

I had 7 hours and 54 minutes on my watch, but there was 36 minutes that I had either stopped to get something to drink (three times), go to the restroom, buy a hat (since it was sunny) and to grab dinner at the very end of the stretch. I'm sure that the last hour plus was very slow.

One portion of where I walked was part of the course for the Scotiabank Vancouver International Half Marathon, which will be run in approximately three weeks. That was not a good event for me last June 25 (2:29) and I'm not sure that I enjoyed seeing it too much at about the same point in my journey yesterday.

Before I got back and evaluated how bad my feet hurt, I was even thinking about going out to the 10K today in White Rock, BC and volunteering, but again - ouch!