"Speed" walking is right!

As almost everyone who knows me is aware, I am totally obsessed with the Olympics. Whenever the Games are on, I am glued to the television. I couldn't get enough of the recent Beijing Olympics. One of the events that I was particularly interested to watch this year was the speed walking. Having now walked distances equal to those covered by the speed walkers, I was really interested to compare their speeds with my own to see how I measured up.

Well, it turns out that I have a long ways to go before I become an Olympic speed walker! Those women and men are flying! For example, in the women's 20k race walk, the gold medalist won the race in a time of 1h 26min. In order to do that, she had to be "walking" at an average pace of 8.67 miles per hour! For comparison, Kelly and I covered 11.3 miles today, which is the equivalent of 18.19km. We felt like we were making great time and were able to finish in under four hours (including a lunch break), meaning we were going at a pace of a little more than 3mph. I can't even fathom walking almost three times that fast! I think my feet would fall off!

So sadly, I have had to shelve my short-lived dreams of being an Olympic speed walker. I'll just have to stick to walking in the Breast Cancer 3-Day, a feat in and of itself. I just wish we had a torch.