Half-marathoner

Note: My Start Walking posts can easily be found by clicking on the label Start Walking 2008.

I did it.

In answer to Concept 2's Global Marathon Challenge, I rowed a half-marathon (21,097 meters = 13.01 miles) on Saturday night.

Boy did it make my tush sore. This in spite of having followed Concept 2's advice, on its Training for a Marathon page, to lay in a supply of bubble wrap. I started with one sheet, & it really helped, too — for about the first hour. But then me bum got progressively more & more sore, & I had to pop on another sheet. But me bum was still sore, poor me. I think I could have put in a better time if it weren't for the stops I was making just to stand up & give me poor sore bum a break. I finished with a time of 2:21:28.6, which put me at the bottom (how appropriate!) of the rankings for women in my weight/age range.

But I did it!

The top-ranked women's heavyweight age 40 to 49 class has a time of 1:27:35.2. Wow, it would've been nice to have sat nearly an hour less than what I did! There was some recompense. I was accompanied in my effort by three & one-quarter episodes of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" spinoff series "Angel". Thank you, Joss Whedon, for creating something to keep my mind occupied whilst I rowed me poor sore bum off.

Thanks to having also rowed a set of high intensity intervals on Saturday morning, plus a deensy amount of walking in between, I accumulated a total of 40,867 steps (or their equivalent) for the day. In our virtual ascent of Mt. Everest, this brought me into the village of Dughla.

Where I gave myself a Good. Long. Rest. Couldn't do much else: I was completely wiped out. My Sunday went like this: I got something to eat, went & sat on the couch & read a bit, dozed off, woke up, read a bit, got something to eat, came back to the couch with it, ate & read, dozed... that was the whole day. My cat came & sat on my lap or on the back of the couch behind my head — that was nice. I intended to do at least a brief walk around the neighborhood, but when I checked on my energy levels all I found was nada. Zip. Zilch. Null.

Well, that's to be expected, I supposed. I'm doing better today, already got some dancing in & I think I'll be able to get 10,000 steps in actual walking in. I still feel a bit of residual wipe-out from Saturday night.

But I bet I'll do a whole lot better next time.