Although this blog is to follow my progress in the build up to the Edinburgh Moonwalk 2011, I thought I would initially tell you the story about how I got on last year since I never got round to blogging about it……until now that is.
Why I decided to take part in the Moonwalk
One of my friends Sophie took part in the Edinburgh Halfmoon in 2009 and loved it, she decided to volunteer in 2010, however suggested that more of us should actually take part. I was looking for a challenge and thought it would be fun, so I decided to take on the fullmoon walk in Edinburgh - 26.2miles over night was definitely a challenge for me!
Don’t worry I was not alone in doing the Moonwalk in 2010, three of my great friends Shara, Kirsty and Natalie all joined forces as team “leg’s go!”.
Practicing for the Moonwalk
We started practicing our walking from mid Feb, starting initially with short walks of about 5 miles and a nice leisurely pace steadily increasing the length and speed. Closer to the actual date we tried to do at least one/two shortish walk (around 5 to 8) miles after work and a long walk (over 13 miles) at the weekend. This seemed to work well and soon we were happily keeping to the target pace of 4 miles an hour.
The practice walks were not only a chance improving our fitness but also were good for catching up on gossip, eating lots of nice treats including Lucas ice-cream in Mussleborough, getting a suntan (well for me that means sun burnt) and of course finding new places in Edinburgh we had never seen before including the “Innocent Railway” which proved to feature in a number of our walks.
So all in all we did hundreds of practice walks, of varying sizes and times, the longest for me was 25 miles in just under 7 hours – which meant we were finally ready for the big night itself!
The Big Night
We donned our expertly decorated pink bras and headed to the “pink palace” in Inverleith Park, Edinburgh to enjoy our meal of pasta/rice and the most amazing flapjack, before getting bored, that’s right we got bored – there is a lot of sitting around if you arrive early.
Anyway, the closer it got to midnight the tension grew in the tent and everyone was getting more and more excited! Finally it was time for the warm up with Mr Motivator himself and then of we went.
The walk itself was really good, very slow for the first 8 or so miles due to the huge number of people taking part, but the atmosphere was amazing. It started to get very cold around mile 13, and mile 18-20 was pretty tough with sore legs etc L
However, we had saved our music for the end to help motivate and spur us on…. So mile 20 the music went on and we walked the faster than we had all night! Crossing the finish line in 7hrs 48minutes! (a little slower than planned) we were over the moon (excuse the pun!).
So why do the Moonwalk again in 2011
The whole experience from the Moonwalk 2010 including;
- The fun of the practice walks
- The atmosphere on the night
- Raising money for such a great cause
Has spared on us to do it all again this year, originally we wanted to take part in the London Moonwalk, but as normal we never got round to applying in time so here we are…. ready to take part for the Edinburgh Moonwalk 2011!
However, only Kirsty and I are doing the Moonwalk in 2011, so we have changed the team name a little to “What a Pear”, and are ready to start practicing J
Let the fun of the Edinburgh Moonwalk 2011 commence…..
