Day One

Wow, the day was finally here! Something Kim and I had been looking forward to and dreading all at the same time.

We pretty much got there before most everyone else (we don’t live far from the starting point). The folks that were there first were the paramedics. Not sure if that was a good sign or not :)








They had a continental breakfast for everyone and the line up grew as folks showed up. I just waited until the end of the line and grabbed a banana. And a green one at that.







During the opening ceremonies, they had asked how many people had been training and how many hadn’t trained at all. I was shocked as there were quite a few hands that went up that hadn’t trained at all. In this picture we had an Olympic speed skater and his pregnant wife putting us through some stretches.





Then we were off walking around 8:30 a.m.










It was cool to look back and see 300+ people walking along the road.

They had pit stops every 3 or 5KM apart. The first stop did not have any porta-potties, but the second one had 2 – 300 people and only 2 potties. The line-up was long and slow. At that same pit stop they also had snacks for everyone from chips/pretzels, to cheese sticks, orange slices, banana’s and quarter slices of bagels and cream cheese.

They had that kind of setup the entire route (all three days), one stop just Gatorade and Water, and the next stop had food. They were all spaced 3-5K apart. Of course with more porta-potties.

I had been carrying a backpack but it quickly became to heavy and I passed it off to the bus driver who was pacing the walkers. They had 3 school buses available for us in case of an emergency evacuation, or bad weather. This one driver asked me if I wanted to pass off my pack and I took her up on it immediately. Learning here is to carry as little as possible.

Lunch stop the first day.

We changed socks and I changed my shoes this day (had collected my back pack from the bus). I also had come down with a cold on Thursday and by this time, noon on Friday, I could hardly talk. My throat was dry and sore. I had been hit pretty good by the cold.



But I kept on walking.

The route was very hilly and this particular hill was very long and parts of it were steep. It sucked to tell the truth.








Kim and I did not walk very fast about 3mph sometimes slower and although I had previously commented on how slow she walked, on Friday I certainly did not mind. I was feeling pretty sick and had little energy so I was all for walking slow. We were about the middle of the pack and not anywhere near the end so I was good with that. This picture is the end of the day stop. We hit it around 5:00 p.m. We had walked 35KM that day. I was ecstatic and sore, and tired and so proud.


They bussed us to the camp and we were to go find our backpacks and haul them to our tent and set up home for the next two nights. These tents fit two people and that’s it. No bags. They stayed outside wrapped in tarps.






We went and found the showers, and then went for dinner. It was spaghetti with Meatballs, bread and a salad. Nothing special but it worked. To tell the truth, because of my cold, I had to force myself to eat at all that day. I did because I KNEW my body needed it.

Then after dinner this was our entertainment. They had three lovely belly dancers in there dancing around. They made me feel cold just looking at them.







Since I was not feeling well, I took some cold medicine before going to bed and unfortunately all it did was keep me awake. I laid there in pain until about 3:00 a.m. I had an one inch air mattress to lay on and my back and hips were killing me. I could not get comfortable. I had a conversation with myself all night that there was no way I could repeat the same thing the next day. I just didn't know how I was going to be able to get up the next day to walk anymore. I wasn’t feeling good and I wasn’t getting enough sleep. And I HURT!

To be continued…..