Mississauga Half Marathon Walk Division

Note to self: Whatever is said on a race course can be heard by anyone within a 3 meter radius.

What I heard from within my personal 3 metre bubble while walking the Missisauga Marathon on Sunday was encouragingly positive. Surrounded as I was by runners, there were countless times when I overheard runners making comments like "WoW, she is walking faster than we are running." or "One of these days I am going to walk these races."

I like hearing those comments. Not because I need the personal pat on the back, but because I like that the running community may be finally understanding that to walk an entire race as fast as you can, is an athletic achievement. More of an athletic achievement, and truer to the spirit of the marathon competition, than using a run-walk strategy.

Do one thing really well.

So my only disappointment on Sunday was to discover that the race results for the half marathon walk division clearly included participants who ran the course. The formidable effort by walkers who train to walk fast and who do walk the entire race distance is entirely undervalued when runners enter the walk division. Including their finishes in a walk division contaminate the results. It is my intention to encourage and to help facilitate a monitoring system of walk divisions so that the results list only competitors who have walked every step of the race. This will raise the bar on walking fitness.

It seems to be a long road (a marathon perhaps?) to alter the cache that running has over walking. I'm up for the challenge - one step at a time, one step at a time.