My first training walk

Went for my first official race walk training. I still cant believe my coach gave me a 7km walk for my first time out in 2 months. Plus even more earth shattering was that he told me to go at 6min/km pace......THAT was my RACE pace.

So after struggling to get my form correct in the car park while I warmed up waiting on my training partner Pete to arrive, I pondered this pace and started to doubt myself. It was one thing to be running and gain some extra fitness but why was I so breathless after just walking around the car park?????

Pete arrived and away we went. We started out sticking to 6.15 min/km pace to warm up and easy the old body back into it. We headed out along the Atawhai Walkway....its a nice smooth flattish walkway with a couple of road crossings along the way. Once we warmed up Pete stepped up the pace. His normal race pace is 6 min/km so he just settled into that in front of me and I gave chase.

We must have picked up the pace at some stage as we passed through the 5km mark at 30:25sec. At the 6km mark I asked to slow for a moment as I started getting stitch and was feeling that "sick" feeling...so we eased up a little. After a couple of mins I said OK lets go again....and away we went. Both knowing it was only 1 km to go. I always think to myself some thing that my coach told me at this point....."Its only going to hurt for another 6 mins, so go hard"

As we crossed the main road beside the athletic park, (approx 500m to the finish) we had to slow right up due to the uneven foot path and it was dark with only random street lights...making it rather treacherous underfoot. But we carefully picked out way along and then did a quick sprint until we heard my GPS chirp out the 7km mark.

I hit the stop button on my watch and was almost afraid to look......did we make it...did we hit the target time????? my lungs were bursting (so much for my fitness) but my shins felt fine and so did my calf's....YAY....

We did it in 43.09.............I was truly gobsmacked.....I honestly didn't think I could pull that time off for my first walk. Plus if we had not been held up at road crossings and had to slow for the foot path...we know we would have hit 42 mins...just as my coach had requested.