But hold your horses, friends. Before you toss your chin high in the air and spit upon lowly wheelchair and heely users, let me bring you down to earth a little. You see, you may have heard in whispered voices in dark alleys the taboo sport of "speed-walking," or as the pros call it, Racewalking.
Interested? Knew you would be.
There are TWO pivotal rules to Racewalking: 1) The ends of your toes cannot leave the pavement until your alternative foot's heel makes contact with the ground, 2) Your leg must be straight from when your heel hits the pavement until it passes from under your body. Don't expect fair play! There is plenty of room for dirty cheats; as quoted by Wikipedia: "These rules are judged by the human eye, which creates controversy at today's high speeds." When you're barreling down that racetrack with fire in your soul, keep your eye out for the dirty cheaters; they might be wearing bowler hats, they may have long, greasy mustaches - at any rate, keep your eyes out.
For you ambitious over-achievers who aim to do everything the very best, I'm sure your heart will feel golden when you hear that indeed there IS AN OLYMPIC EVENT for Racewalking, with distances ranging from 20 km to 50 km. You can bet there are rest stations along the way for these highly-tuned machines of athletes; there are all sorts of wonderful treats such as water and maybe even raisins if you are lucky. Go for gold, my Racewalking children!
Walkin' in style, G-unit. Maybe a little old for the Olympics, but never too old for awesomeness. |
Walk on, walk on.
I've always been out of the "know" when it comes to speed-walking. Now I know that its actually called "race-walking"--thank you for doing this research so that I don't have to! :)
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