“Nou, ik deed het met twee vingers in mijn neus”!

Last Saturday the parents of my girlfriend came over for Dinner. I had just completed my training walk , which was a bit of a weird training walk. As I was walking along the Haarlemmerweg, all of a sudden I heard a bang and saw a motorbike driver fly through the air. It seriously took me a couple of seconds to realise what had happened. So for about 30 minutes, I was waiting with him for the ambulance to arrive. He had broken his arm. Luckily that was all he had broken.

I didn’t complete my 15km. I was a little bit in shock after what happened and when I kneeled down to help the driver, I had pain in my right foot again. I realised my walking shoes ( I used different ones this time) really started aching. So after about 7km I walked home again.
I even had to take off my boots as at some point I thought my little toe was going to explode, lesson learnt. I will stick with my good old grey walking shoes. After all they got me through a 60km walk 2 years ago ( A sisters hope walk for Breast cancer).

Speaking of which, as my in-laws settled in and we shared glass of wine, Wilma (for the sake of lesser words to explain: let’s call her “my mother in law”;)) and I realised that we did the same charity walk only a year apart. Well, I on my part, know that I found the first 30km on Saturday really difficult. I was so happy when at 18:00 in the evening when we arrived at our overnight stay. I sat down for about 30 minutes to rest my legs and have a well deserved beer. When I wanted to get up, boy oh boy… It felt as if my legs had been in the deep freezer for about 24 hours, I was stiff , I could hardly walk, my blisters on my feet were hurting. I felt about 98 years old. As I went to bed that night I thought to myself : Damn it, I have to walk 30km tomorrow as well. Surprisingly the first 15km were okay to walk, but my blisters were hurting and an injury from a week prior to the walk was also playing up ( I was well happy with the ice-spray I brought with me).

So I was talking to Wilma about the walk. I thought how difficult I found it and then to my surprise she said: “I found it quite easy, after the first 30km I could have walked a bit more”.  In Dutch she said : “Nou, ik deed het met twee vingers in mijn neus”!
I think what Wilma saw at that moment, was my jaw dropping and big eyes looking at her. It’s my own arrogance to think that someone who is a bit older than me (sorry Wilma!) can  just walk this and not feel even more pain than I did! Well, I think only someone who has done the Iron-Man about 5 times is allowed (in my eyes) to say : “ It was easy”.

So, now I have recovered from that shock, and I know one thing: the weekend I will have to walk 74km in a training walk, when the going gets tough and I feel like a wuss again, I’ll think of Wilma, who would probably bounce along next to me singing and dancing saying “Easy he!”. And this will get me through that training walk. Because now I want to complete 37km and at the end think :“Pah, that was a piece of cake!”. And then wake up the next day and bounce along, singing and dancing for the next 37km.

I just realised that I am competing with my mother in law, who doesn’t even know I am competing with her. Well now you do know;). And thanks, because this will be a little goal on the road to 100km. And little goal’s is all we  need.