In my quest for a healthier lifestyle and increased self-care, I joined a group called Kitchen Divas which is a part of an organization called Black Women for Wellness. I stumbled onto their event page on facebook and discovered that one of the members, Lula Carter, is an avid walker. She has a ton of photos of many 5Ks and seemed to be the go to person for more info on Kitchen Divas. I decided to go to a meeting and pick her brain!
So far, I've been to four Kitchen Diva demonstrations but it was at the very first one that Lula told me about a woman named Yolanda Holder who is in The Guinness Book of World Records for power walking the most marathons in one year, not once but twice. She broke her own record the second time! I looked up this woman online a day or two later and became quite intrigued with her story. I sent her a message on facebook and to my surprise she responded! This was just days before the Boston Marathon and she was going to be one of the walkers there. She was at mile 20 when the bombs went off. At the same time, her battery went dead on her phone so you can imagine how her fans, friends and family must have felt when they couldn't reach her.
She's back home now, safe and more determined than ever to keep walking. We continued to connect and I told her of my desire to get fit, lose some weight and be healthy. Next thing I knew, she offered to help me reach these goals by training me to walk my first marathon. That's not quite what I had in mind but I immediately accepted. Maybe Yolanda was the angel I'd been praying for.
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Yesterday we met for my first day of training. I told her about my knee issues so we walked on a grassy island near my home. I knew she would be wearing a cute little walking outfit, so I went out and bought one for myself. I couldn't wait to meet her and ask her my one burning question, "Why is there a hole in the cuff of this sleeve for my thumb?" Imagine my disappointment when she said, "I have no idea" and kept walking. We chatted, got to know each other a bit better and took a few pictures. Yolanda showed me some power walking moves and 3.8 miles later, we were done.
Now I have an assignment: to walk every single day until we meet again next week. I promised and I will do it. So my take-away is this, it's OK to take a Tylenol after a long walk if your body is hurting and get a cute new outfit by Wednesday.
