Saturday, April 26, 2003

This morning Vic and I took part in the March of Dimes’ WalkAmerica. We left bright and early, right on time (7:40) according to my plan and caught the 51 bus easily up the street from our house. Though wrangling the stroller between busses was mildly annoying, we also made our transfer to the 12 bus without mishap and wound up down at Lake Merritt a half hour before the walk was supposed to start.

The lead time wound up being fortuitous because when we hopped off the bus at the address indicated on the web site, I could see nothing resembling a large walk-a-thon in the immediate vicinity. I started wandering toward the lake and the lakeside park on the off-chance that I could see something indicative in that direction and sure enough, while I didn’t see anything, I could hear the announcer on the loudspeaker up ahead beyond the slope of a hill and some trees.

We walked down into the park and up the hill and sure enough around the bend, a lawn opened up and the tents were pitched there, along with an archway of balloons to mark the starting line for the walk. I pushed Vic’s stroller under the archway and looked around at all the tents. Music was booming from the speakers under the main tent where a stage was set up and the announcer would step up to make announcements. Most of the tents appeared to be specifically set up for members of various corporate teams. I felt a bit puzzled by the fact that all these corporate tents were the ones right up front, because I had no idea where to go to check-in and turn some of my donations in.

Finally I spotted the main check-in tent and stepped up to give my name and turn in my envelope. Unfortunately, the folks at the tent weren’t very organized, they didn’t have the lists of folks who’d signed up online. So I had to fill out a paper form and estimate the total donations I’d received. The guys also didn’t seem to understand that most of my donations were given online so weren’t in tangible format, but rather electronic credit card payments. I only had two checks on me, one from a co-worker and one I wrote myself to consolidate a number of cash donations that were given to me by other co-workers.

Regardless of this confusion, we got all checked in and then wandered over to secure some free Krispy Kreme donuts. I’d hoped that we’d meet some other parents to hang out with in the crowd. While I did have some random conversations, none of them panned out into being a “friendly hang out while walking” kind of thing. Before we walked, they had an aerobics instructor run a warm-up and stretch session for a few minutes. Vic and I danced to the music instead of warming up. It’s kind of hard to do stretches when you’re holding a 22lb 11 month old after all.

Around 9:15am it was finally time to line up and start walking. I put Vic back in the stroller and got ready to go. They gave us the go, and off we went. The course was the entirety of Lake Merritt, we were to walk around it going one way, get to the final checkpoint, then turn around and go back. I set off in high spirits, Vic was kicking his feet happily in the stroller, the weather was beautiful instead of the predicted rain and there were baby goslings populating the banks of the lake.

The lake sports several interesting architectural structures around its edges. On one end is a nice Roman-Greek style colonnade with vines growing on some of the posts. The sun was very bright and the sky was clear, so it was a relief to get under the colonnade for a while and walk in cooler shade. We kept pace with two women and their little boy who is a year older than Vic throughout the first part of the walk. This meant a steady, fairly rapid pace, but with slow-downs due to the volume of people in the walk. We made it to the last checkpoint 5k/3.1 miles around the lake in just over an hour.

Many groups abandoned the walk at the midpoint, walking past the checkpoint to rejoin the crowd by the free food in the park. I stood at the checkpoint for a while, debating whether or not to go back around or not. I drank about four cups of water while Vic slumbered peacefully in the stroller before making up my mind to go ahead and complete the entire walk. I spun the stroller around and headed back the way we’d come. This time, I opted not to cross the beach at the bottom point of the lake because getting down there involved pushing the stroller through a fair amount of sand and the path down was pretty broken up. I’d almost lost control of the stroller coming around the first time and had no desire to repeat the experience.

Unfortunately I wasn’t paying attention as we approached that area of the lake and found out that we were now stuck down at the bottom and if we wanted to walk around on the sidewalk instead, I’d either need to turn around and walk back to the driveway that circles the boat dock in order to get back onto the sidewalk, or I’d need to push Vic, who was still dreaming away, up a steep grassy verge to get onto the same sidewalk. I opted for the grassy verge and gave myself quite a workout. The only soreness I’m feeling now post-walk is from the backs of my thighs and aching in my knees and it’s from going all out to push the stroller up a 45 degree incline.

Once on the sidewalk again, I retied my shoelaces which had come loose and then took off. We were able to maintain a much brisker pace on this second loop due to the fact that so many people had dropped out. There was more room for me to navigate with the stroller and I could pass slower-going folk more easily. So I really pushed myself and gave myself a good workout and made it back around the lake in about half an hour. My total time for the entire 10k/6.2miles was an hour and 45 minutes including my extending water stop at the final checkpoint. Not too shabby for an overweight mama pushing a 22lb kid in a 10lb stroller!

Reproduced in part from Thursday’s Child an online journal.