I decided I wanted to walk a 5k this summer.  Truth be told, I really want a shirt showing that I walked a 5k.  The feat doesn’t matter if I don’t have the memento to prove it.  And yes, I’m keeping my expectation low enough so that I can accomplish it.  I am content to walk not run 3.10686 miles.  

My first attempt to achieve my goal came about the first weekend of June.  This is perfect.  I can do this right off the bat and take the rest of the summer easy.  But I looked at the date wrong and realized I wouldn’t be able to do that particular race.

No worries.  Surely another event would come about.  Isn’t that what we do during summer?

Another one did come up.  A couple weeks later.  A doable date.  All things looked promising.  I signed up.

I started training.  I walk about a mile after work so adding another two miles sounded time consuming.  It’s just for two weeks, I can make it work.  I am also a slow walker and I don’t want to be the last one waddling past the finish line.  It’s not that I expect to be first, I just don’t want to be last.  I tried incorporating speed into my training with my mantra “don’t be last, don’t be last, don’t be last” on repeat in my head.

The thing is, I think my body used the whole time thing as an excuse to get out of walking longer distances.  My body has been complaining ever since I started upping my walk time.  I can’t even complain out loud because all I’m doing is walking three miles (I round down to 3.1 but everyone else rounds up to 3.2).

Two weeks before the race I did a practice run, er, walk.  I got this.  I may not be able to do much else afterwards but I got this.  I will walk this race and not come in dead last.  I hope.