Jenny and Erin

Times have been hard for Jenny and my walking dare. Due to some ongoing problems she was having with blisters our walks have been cut short, not only in distance, but also in repetitive days of walking. We are fighting back and are finally back on track.

Jenny and my last walk was nearly a month ago. It did not end too well. Her continual battle with blisters got worse on the trail and her push through the pain brought misery to both of us. She spent the last 2 miles in tears from pain, and she is not a woman who cries easily. However, there was not much we could do, we were in isolated territory and the only way out was forward, literally one step at a time.

Later that evening, as Jenny and I tried to ignore how serious things had become, we began calculating how far she could walk the next morning. A family member, taking in the conversation and hot red lines that had begun to move up her legs, suggested that it may be time to “we seriously question our sanity…”

Ouch. Although these words were said out of love, they hurt. However, they also freed us from the belief that success meant pushing through no matter what. Jenny and my refusal to give up has carried us through many roadblocks in the past, but this time the rules had changed. Pushing through was not working, instead we were pushing ourselves into a slow, long failure.

We decided the family member was right and slowed down. Jenny went to the hospital the next morning and was prescribed 10 days of antibiotics for blisters that were so raw they had become infected. Looking back, I do question what we were thinking.

After this, Jenny took time off from walking. She skipped our morning trainings and we canceled plans to walk trails. I saw the direction this was going and offered to walk without her so that we still had a chance to finish our dare on time (as did above mentioned family member, thanks!). This has been challenging for me, and I have had to work hard on my patience. I have kept on reminding myself that our friendship is more important than a dare, regardless of how much I want to complete it. This is where I am growing. So, I am sorry Jenny if I have been impatient, I know you were hurt.

Well, I did not walk alone, no one took Jenny’s place and this weekend after nearly a month we walked the trails again. We did not walk our typical 18 mile day, but instead walked 10 miles. We know this shorter mileage put us even further behind, but it was worth it. We walked the miles laughing, talking and for the first time in months with Jenny completely free of pain. The adventure is fun again and we are back on track. Jenny and I may be behind on our miles, but we have learned more lessons which make this dare worthwhile. No one said this would be easy.

So, we are back and are going to start knocking off more trails. And I can almost guarantee, you will hear our laughter in the distance long before you see our feet walking down the trail…

This entry was posted in Boots are Made for Walkin on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 by Erin Dietrich. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.