Trail dirt!

Today was our standard Saturday group training walk. We stepped back a bit from last week’s 8 miles and only went 6. I was pretty happy about that because I had a class to attend later in the day. I ended up getting a bit confused about the route and took the hike and bike trail for a bit. It was nice walking on the dirt path instead of pavement. Plus, it was more scenic!

Route

Info (as recorded by Endomondo)
Distance 6.27 mi
Duration 1h:42m:02s
Avg. Speed 3.7 mph
Min. Altitude 385 ft
Max. Altitude 592 ft
Total Ascent 206 ft
Total Descent 219 ft

Lovely view during a Volkssport walk in New Braunfels

I should have started a walking blog when I first started training to walk a half-marathon, but I didn’t. I should have started it when I then started doing Volkssports. But I didn’t. Since that last bit was much more recent, I’m going to go back to my first one and then attempt to blog walks since then. (Thus, I’m dating this the day of the walk, not the date entered.)

I started walking because I wanted to lose weight. I also wanted to stop limping. Turns out, I can’t stop limping until I get my right hip replaced. So until then, every walk is about improving my form so that I’m limping as little as possible.

Once I reached my goal weight, I kept walking to maintain and, because, well – I’d actually started to enjoy it. Imagine that! Me? Enjoying something that has to do with exercise? Trust me, I find this to be as confusing as you. Before I started liking it a little, I signed up for a half-marathon and then for a group to help me train for it. I figured that if I didn’t want to die during the half-marathon, I’d actually have to train. Signing up to train with a group was done to help make me accountable to something with the training. Yes, I needed a lot motivation to actually get off my ass. I signed up with two co-workers and, are you sitting down? I’m the one who’s followed the training plan. I KNOW! Seriously, I don’t know what’s come over me.

To make things even weirder, I found out about Volkssporting via the Walk with Walgreens program. (Hey, free points/$ for something I was already doing? Sign me up, Walgreens!) I liked the idea of the program – a way to encourage people to be active for life. Plus, you get to stamp books and keep records. The OCD part of me loves the record keeping. The 2 year old loves the stamps and dorky patches you can earn. Plus, these would be walks done at whatever pace I wanted to go. I wouldn’t be training to finish a marathon before the course closing time. I could take my camera with and turn them into photowalks.

There are year round self-service walks, but I wanted to do a seasonal walk for my first one. Why? There would be people there to explain things to me and I could buy my record books there. Frustratingly, most of the seasonal walks are the same day my marathon training group meets. But, I found one in New Braunfels that was on a Sunday. Yay! Plus, the award for participating was a Wurstfest ticket. Even better. Off I went.

I found the check-in point and very helpful and nice people explained everything, sold me a new walker packet (including the record books and coupons for 3 walks) and got me checked in. Off I went! I admit to not being entirely thrilled with a lot of the route as it was through a new suburb – not the most exciting scenery and more pavement walking. I already get a lot of pavement walking in my training and was hoping for something different. At one of the check in points, however, the helpful fellow who marked my start card to indicate I’d made it to the checkpoint told me about a trail option for the next leg of the walk. I picked that and had a more challenging and scenic walk through a lightly wooded area. Then the route spent some time going along Comal Springs – lovely!

It took me quite a while to finish the 10k route, but that’s okay. This wasn’t a training walk, right? it was just about being out, taking photos and enjoying the world around me. On all of those accounts, it was a success!

Here are my photos and here’s the route: