Sports & Interests
Race Walking—by Genevieve
Gorski Parker
There’s got to be a way to go
faster right? I competed against/with Ted
at the 17th Annual Glen Iris 5km in 2012.
Granted I usually walk but what’s 5km
when I’m used to 21.1km half marathons
so I mostly ran. I came in at 43:58 which
put me in 96rd place overall (races are
measured by start clock time, gender, bib
time – when your number crosses the
start and finish line and age category).
Runners pace themselves to run at most
for 10 minutes and then walk for 1 minute. I tried it, and it was hard – no make
that really hard. But I gave it a go and
thought I was faster but it wasn’t the way
I wanted to be faster.
After that race I did the MidSummer Nights Run in Toronto and saw a
participant doing these figure 8 loops at
the start and she had a really wide stride.
She was stretching from the hips instead
of trying to propel with the knees to get
her stride. She wore an Ontario Racewalker jersey and so I made a note after
the race to find out what that was about.
She seemed fast and that was just a
warm up. I finished in 2:13:47 in 102nd
and she did in 1:40:06 and in 1st place.
I called up the club and they said
sure come out and learn how to race
walk. I was hooked by this change in
technique! I was going fast – not just kind
of fast but really, really fast. And it was
much easier than trying to run. I did the
Mid-Summer Nights Run again this year
and finished in 2:12:27 in 59th place but
the real test was when I entered the Ontario Race Walking Championships and
finished in 40:06. Usually you only take
off a maximum of 1 minute off your time
but I was completely amazed to take off
over 3 minutes! I discovered that working hard sometimes only gets you part of
the way there –
the other part is
finding a better
way to do it. My
racing season is
over until the
spring but I can
feel an under 40
minute 5km I
just need to find
Rebecca Dzudz at her Roller
a better way to
Derby game with her team, the
get rid of those
Border City Brawlers.
6 seconds!
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