A Lovely Day for a Walk

Now, you may have read between the lines and realised that there is a "do we walk or do we run/walk" kind of debate going on. We've had walkers we've previously overtaken then overtake us when we've been recovering from a running stint, we've experienced the physical flogging of running say 15kms in this hard terraine and the after effects during the next bout of dawdling walking we've done to help us recover, and we've had people classify us as "runners" which in Oxfam puts you in a whole different madness category. But most telling of all has been our own times when we've been running and that creeping feeling that maybe, just maybe, walking can be as fast, if not faster than running during Oxfam. In fact the reality has always been we'd probably run maybe 30-40kms off and off then walk the rest (or if we'd flogged ourselves, then dawdle the rest). So we'd already been questioning that strategy a little when injury (me) and illness (Trace) struck.
So this glorious, fabulous Sunday was our first serious training session in a couple of weeks. 42+ kms planned over the second, less taxing half of the course. And we planned to walk it to help ease my ankle back in and since Trace's antibiotics had just started to kick in. Now after our first night time session where we headed out with Tracy's husband Vic, who kind of charged off ahead while we meandered along, chatting, we have adopted a new strategy called "Vic Pace" which means for us walking so fast we are kind of breathless and stretching ourselves. So this Sunday was all about walking at "Vic Pace", and getting over the 40km mark (and for Mia the 50km mark). For me, I just wanted to be back out on the track.
And what an amazing day we had. We carved up the day, barely stopping for breaks (when running each checkpoint was a 20 minute relief stop), but when walking, we just patched up feet, discarded layers, texted home, grabbed some food and were off again. And what a difference it made to our times!
CP4 -CP5 9km 1 hour 33 mins (when running, we'd done 1 hour 30 mins)
CP5 - CP6 12km 2 hours (when running 2 hours 15 mins)
CP6 - CP7 10km 2 hours (running: 1 hour 30 mins - but this track is fab for running)
CP7 -CP8 7.5km 1 hour 50 mins (1 hour 15mins when running but on fresher legs than ours on sunday)

So not that much difference in times, although the difference in endurance is huge as we've never done all of these stages together, previously just pouring ourselves exhausted into cars at the 30km mark. This time we kept going, for me walking an additional few km's to home to relieve John who was heading out, for Tracy, walking an additional 10kms, having swapped her camelbak for her babypack and 15kgs of Evey, and for Mia, knocking off that magical mental and physical goal of 50kms.
So on a glorious, sunny Sunday we may just have come up with a new plan!
A night walk planned for Tuesday with Vic and Charlie the dog before two big weekends of walking coming up (and a week's skiing for Mia, she's not going to stop moving for 10 days by the looks of it!)and most important of all, our first 4 person team walk. We're together at last. Bring it on!