Awareness Raising Walk 2024

A little over a week ago I completed the awareness/fundraising walk that my previous couple of posts have been in reference to. The goal was to, primarily, raise awareness of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic condition of which my son has. The secondary goal was to raise the funds to build an accessible playground at his school, with the option of building more at other schools where students would benefit from them. To make people’s time, or monetary contribution worthwhile, I wanted to walk 79 kilometres on the 7th of September. The reason for the number 79 featuring so heavily is because there are 79 exons on the dystrophin gene, which is the gene, that when effected, causes DMD.

^{At the starting line, ready to get going.}

Being the first year of the event, the plan was relatively simple. Use a local walking track to complete 12km loops before branching off to go to my son’s school for the final few kilometres and to finish the walk there during the culmination of their sports day.

This year, the walk took place on the 20th of September, to coincide with the aforementioned sports day. As they were already going to have the infrastructure of a large, all school event in place, it made sense to run it on this day instead of a couple of week earlier where they would need to create another large school event which really seemed unsustainable. Despite wanting to have the 7/9 play a fairly major role in the event, I was happy for the slight alteration. 7/9 is already a large day on the Duchenne calendar, being World Duchenne Awareness Day, so moving it made the awareness raising aspect last all the more longer.

Due to the length of the walk, it was not going to be achievable on the one day. Because we were running it to end during the school event, we were constrained by their timing, so needed to be ready to finish the walk at around 2pm. With the idea of completing 5km an hour, it was determined that the walk would need to commence at 10pm on the night of the 19th and we would walk through the night.

Now, I’m no small statured person, but the thought of walking alone, overnight, on semi-secluded off-road trails, still gives me pause for concern. While the paths in question are much safer than they have been in the past, I wasn’t overly keen to spend the wee hours of the morning ambling along them on my own. I’m not sure if it was my stint as a security guard or my understanding of people’s propensity for stupidity that elicited my hesitation, but I wasn’t too sure about completing this portion of the walk alone. However, I was prepared to do so - the cause is worth it, but @mattclarke came to my rescue by offering his friendship and security for the overnight stint.

^{Sorry about the blur, I took a screenshot of a video.}

The walk itself went quite smoothly. We set off at 10pm on the 19th of September to not a lot of fanfare. As we took those first few steps, I couldn’t help but ponder the future and how we could well be launching, not just a 2024 event, but something that could grow into a huge charitable movement that will help countless families who have children with DMD.

I’d been watching the weather fairly closely from the moment the day hit the 10-day forecast, and as you would expect, it was forecast to be the coldest and most likely day for rain in the whole 10! I’d already committed to walking come rain, hail or snow, so it didn’t really matter what the forecast said, but I still looked anyway. Two days out from the event, the school notified parents that it might cancel the sports day, which would have been unfortunate because I wasn’t changing the walk. (I’d already switched it once to align it with the sports day, so another switch was out of the question.) Happily, the school decided to go ahead with the allocated day as they had a suitable contingency plan in case of severe rain. While the forecast for rain was in the 90% range, it amount was quite low - 1mm to 5 or 6mm, depending on which day you looked at it.

That all said, it wasn’t surprising when, 20 minutes into the walk, it began to rain. At first it was a light mist, which was actually quite refreshing. Matt and I figured if it remained like that for the full 16 hours of the walk, it would actually be quite pleasant. But alas, it did come down a little harder. Nothing too heavy, but enough to wet us. I reckon it would have lasted maybe 15 minutes at most. It dampened the ground, but didn’t soak us through.

It was really quite peaceful walking at night, and because of the semi-secluded nature of the path we were using, it felt as if we were complete in the wilderness, despite being very much being in the suburbs. Traffic was light and getting lighter, and the tranquility of the walk settled over us. In hindsight, my mistake at this point was the pace I set. While it wasn’t a cracking, land-speed-record-setting pace, it was too fast for the duration and length of what we’d set out to achieve. I guess that was Lesson 1.

After the second lap, we significantly shortened our lap length from the initial 12 kilometres to 1.5 kilometres. This kept us much closer to our makeshift base-camp (out cars filled with Powerade, energy drinks and snacks) and made the laps feel more achievable.

Faster than I realised, it was nearing dawn and Matt was preparing to leave. A final lap together at about 6:30am and Matt said his good-byes and I continued the walk in earnest. The halfway point came at 8:00am and I’d completed a little over 40 kilometres, which, if I needed to attain 79 in 16 hours, meant that I was bang on the money to complete the walk in the allocated timeframe. What I didn’t bank on, despite regular changes of socks, was blisters. Big blisters.

I probably should have changed my socks sooner after the rain, but because it rained so early into our first lap, we didn’t arrive back at the cars for another hour or so after the rain, and I think by then, the blisters had well and truely started to form, although I didn’t start feeling them for many hours to come.

My sister joined me at about 7:00am and by the halfway mark, my feet were feeling the pinch. They were the only part of my body that was sore and becoming more so every minute. I powered on into the morning and by about 10:00am, my need to rest my feet was causing my breaks to become significantly longer. I’d completed 57 kilometres and my kilometre times had exploded from about 10 minutes to well over 13 minutes. I quickly calculated the timing I’d need to complete the remaining 22 kilometres and realised that I simply wasn’t going to make it. I could hardly stand, let alone put pressure on my feet, and time was becoming more of an enemy than anything else.

I’m sorry to say that I had to pull the pin. After 12 hours and 57 kilometres, I couldn’t continue. I’d pushed myself further than I felt I could’ve gone. I understand than when you feel mentally done, your body can offer so much more, but I’d gone past this, and I knew that I actually couldn’t continue and that at this point there was only one thing I could do. As I made that decision, I was already cataloguing the changes I’d be making for next year. The lessons I’d learned would be put to good use so that in 2025, I can complete the full walk.

^{That photo doesn’t do it justice! Couldn’t put my foot flat on the ground for a week!}

When I got home and peeled my shoes and socks off, my sister nearly passed out after looking a the soles of my feet. They were red and puffed and the right one looked like a blister that had a foot attached to it. The one from the image is still dissipating now.

What did I learn from all of this, and how can I be better prepared for future walks? (Although I’m not certain that the format of walking the full 79km in one stint is feasible for a charity event moving forward.)

1. Smaller laps are key.
2. I need to lose more weight - less weight = less pressure of my feet.
3. I need to walk longer walks in preparation (the longest I walked in training this year was 15km).
4. I need to blister my feet more to develop really hard callouses.
5. A slower pace at the start won’t be detrimental in the later stages of the walk.

I’m sure more will crop up as I begin to plan for next year, but for now, I’ve got plenty to focus on.

Despite not walking to the allocated time, we still ‘completed’ the walk at the sports day. My family walked down the 100 metre track at the conclusion of sports day (I hobbled) which was a really nice way to end the event.

I’m not too sure how it will look next year, but my hope is it will be bigger and we’ll be able to reach more people to teach them about DMD. I reckon that this year, we were able to reach maybe 1000 people who’d not heard of this condition previously, which I see as a win. We didn’t raise as much money as I’d hoped, but that was a secondary goal, so I shouldn’t be too disappointed. I’ll donate what was raised to the school. They won’t be able to purchase a playground with it, but might be able to provide something accessible.

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