Guts to Glory

The Long Walk

From left to right; Annmarie Bruning, Margaret McGuinness, Sandy Coila.

By Susan Rich

This is a story about three women: Annmarie Bruning, Sandy Coila, and Margaret McGuinness, and their single goal to racewalk the USA Track & Field National Racewalking Championship 50k, held last January in Chula Vista, CA.

They shared the same dream, the same coach, the same intensive training schedule. On the day of the event, they shared the same start, but not the same finish. Even so, Bruning, Coila, and McGuinness are victors of this long walk, because they achieved what they ultimately set out to do: Train to walk a 50k — 31.2 miles — in just 12 weeks.

Annmarie Bruning
Annmarie Bruning started walking eight years ago. Now a seasoned walker, Bruning has walked the Portland Marathon six times and the New York marathon once.

Walking the 50k was not always on her To-Do List.

Initially Bruning, McGuinness, and Coila believed a 50k was only “five miles more than a marathon.”

A few weeks after the October 2006 Portland Marathon, they asked walking coach Judy Heller to help them train. The racewalking championship, set for Jan. 28, 2007, was less than three months away.

Heller’s first reaction, Bruning recalls, was to tell them that, “We were crazy. Racewalking a 50k is like walkng two marathons back-to-back, not just a marathon plus five.”

Heller said it would normally take four months to train to walk a 50k; to do it in three would require an accelerated training program. In this race against time, all three women decided to bite down and train hard.

Because the 50k event would be a 2k loop, with walkers circling the distance 25 times, Heller tried to simulate the experience. The three women trained on the Springwater Corridor, tying a ribbon at the 1k mark, then repeatedly marching between the start and end points. It was a tough season for training, with strong winds and daytime temperatures dipping to an unseasonably low 38 degrees. “It was grueling. I’d bring three changes of clothes because I’d get so cold and wet,” Bruning recalls.

Things were going well until Bruning got food poisoning a week before the event. She was sick for 12 hours, unable eat or drink.

By race day, Bruning was confident she’d be able to complete the 50k. She started with gusto, but after walking 34k — 21.25 miles — she got calf cramps in both legs. She pulled off the course a total of eight times to work the tight muscles.

Finally, the cramps eased, and Bruning resumed. But at the 42k mark, her right hamstring locked up. This time judges and a paramedic greeted her as she racewalked off the course to begin another round of stretching. The pain eventually eased, and she got back on the course…finishing the 50k in 6:43.

Sandy Coila
Sandy Coila never intended to walk a marathon. So it follows she never intended to racewalk the National Racewalking Championship, either.

That she has walked not one, but four marathons, and nearly completed the 50k, just goes to show what can happen when you put one foot in front of the other.

Coila started walking four years ago, following a bout of illness. Initially, she walked three days a week. She decided to join Women Who Walk the Marathon, where she trained with McGuinness.

But even then, she wasn’t serious. “My goal was never to walk a marathon,” she says now. When it was over, Coila was surprised by how easy it was. So this accidental walker kept on going.

Now a four-time finisher of the Portland Marathon and other events, Coila wasn’t seeking her next challenge. It found her anyway.

Once training started, it was a whole new world. “The first hour I’d be asking myself, ‘how long till this is over’ and then finally I’d hit the point where my body would warm up and I’d mentally warm up and decide ‘it’s not so bad, this is the easy part,’ but you would get more exhausted as you’d go on.”

On the day of the event, Coila was doing fine — until she became dehydrated, and had to sit down. “I got as far as 38k and I had to sit down, literally on the course, because I realized either I sit down or my body will put me down.”

Despite the unexpected finish, Coila remained undaunted; in fact, she is thrilled with the experience and her performance.

Margaret McGuinness
Margaret McGuinness decided to tackle the 50k because she had just turned 50, and found the symmetry of walking a 50k in her 50th year appealing. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says this six-time finisher of the Portland Marathon and other events.

But just days after signing up for the intensive training program, she badly sprained her left ankle.

A lifelong athlete and a seasoned walker with several endurance events under her belt, McGuinness thought her ankle would quickly heal. However, the injury was worse than she was ready to admit.

Still, she persevered and followed a modified training program for three weeks. It consumed a quarter of the 12 weeks allotted to train for the event.

Despite training and therapy, the ankle refused to heal. She finally made one concession: She would walk the 20k, which is the current Olympic distance for women.

Ignoring the pain that echoed with every step, Margaret completed the race — a distance of 12.4 miles.

“I feel good about the accomplishment,” she says. “I had two goals — not to get DQ’d (disqualified) and to finish the 20k in 2.30. I did it in 2.32, with only one warning. The injury was there for every step I took. I was nervous I wouldn’t be able to do it, but I set a realistic goal, and I did it.”