Another Left At Albuquerque.....

It's been a few weeks, so I am posting a few this week to catch up....this post will tempt to recap my training walk on August 21, 2010.

I woke up on Saturday, August 21, 2010 at 5:30 AM and took my time getting ready. I was just sitting down with my peanut butter and honey sandwich at 6:05 AM when I get a text message from the training walk leader saying something along the lines of "see you in 10 minutes...." My first thought "well there goes my morning!" When I woke up, I thought the walk started at 7:15, not 6:15, so just like that I'm an hour late! My nice, relaxing morning became this mad dash through Hiram, Smyra, and Marietta to get to the walk. Luckily for me, I found a short cut a few weeks ago that cut my drive time from 45 minutes to 35 minutes, and I ended up meeting my team a mere 30 minutes (or 2 miles) into the walk.

I caught up with them by parking at an elementary school on their route and fell in step with the walkers without too much trouble. This walk was set up in loops - 7 miles for loop one and 7 miles for loop two. I completed the remaining 5 miles of loop one in what came to be pouring rain. My morning just kept getting better and better!

Most walkers fell off after the first loop due to the weather and various other committments, so for loop two, it was just Michelle and I. We started off, still a little wet, but drying out since the rain had stopped. Along the way, the bottom of my feet started tingling and I found out that I tied my shoes too tight. Apparently, feet swell when walking long walks and if you tie your shoes snuggly when you start, your feet may swell to the point of cutting off your blood flow. Such fun! When I stopped to retie my shoes, I also changed my socks only to find the beginnings of my very first blister - because my socks were wet! Whoo-hoo! I am on a roll!!

Since we were on our own, we depended on the map and GPS. Funny thing about GPS - when you are walking, you move too slow for the satellites to pick up the signal, so according to the GPS, we were in two different counties at the same time! And for some reason, we had the map upside down or something and ended up taking a left instead of taking a right, and didn't figure out that we had "walked off of the map" until we were past the map by just over a mile - so to get back to the route, we added 2 miles! Both a good thing and a bad thing - good thing because I ended up earning my 14 mile high along with my blister, but a bad thing because we had no choice but to finish it out - and I didn't even know if I could............

Good news is: I finished the 14 miles at Michelle's car and got a ride back to my car! Yey, something going my way today...but it didn't last long.

Once in my car, I started home only to get myself stuck on Barrett Parkway or should I say "Barrett Parking Lot"??? A two mile drive on Barrett took me close to an HOUR!!! Here we go again! And to keep the hits coming............Once I arrived home, I found an allergic reaction forming on my leg from something I sat in while changing my socks, 2 bug bites, and the blister that started earlier was the size of a dime.

Needless to say: I didn't walk Sunday!

Thanks for reading! ~ Deanna