Towards the end of the Spider-man movie, I (James) began to entertain the idea of beginning the 24 hour walking challenge that evening. We were 63 miles from our hotel in Tulsa and planned to walk there in 24 hours starting tomorrow morning. However, Sam’s mother had booked the hotel room for tomorrow evening so that we wouldn’t have to wait to check in when we arrived around 10:00am the following day. I proposed the idea to Sam and he originally took it as a joke. However, he liked the idea after thinking about it. We both knew it would be tough to make it off of no sleep, so we went to the gas station and stocked up on monster energy. We left the gas station around 10:15pm. I was pretty excited to be doing the challenge but also drowsy at the same time. We also passed by several storage sheds in the first hour but did not give into the temptation. A little while later, Sam picked up a flat tire. I enjoyed sitting down while he put in a new inner tube. Our next stop came around 4am, when we were about 19 miles in. We lay down outside a storage shed for 15 minutes and were back on the road. The night walking was honestly not too bad, as we had a nice shoulder, cool air, and very few cars to worry about. It started to become lighter outside around 5:30am. It felt good to take off the night shirt and headlamp after a triumphant night of walking. We stopped again at a gas station around 7:00am to both use the bathroom. At this point my bottom of my feet were seriously hurting. But we knew we had to keep going and left around 7:30am. At 9:30am, we had gone about 33 miles and stopped for a planned one-hour nap in a shady spot off the road. It ended up turning into a 90 minute nap instead, but we were still on schedule to complete the challenge. Near the end of our rest, a man came by to ask us what we were doing and gave us water bottles. We were back on the road shortly after 11am. The next 14 miles were probably the toughest of the walk. Not only was I already physically exhausted and sleep deprived, but it was the middle of the day and quite hot outside. At around 3:50pm, we stopped at Simple Simon’s Pizza with about 16 miles left (we had gone 47). We each ordered a medium pizza and sat on some chairs to rest. Slightly after 4:30pm, we were back on the road. We encountered a hilly stretch, and after a few miles my feet really began to hurt again. We took several short breaks during the final 12 miles and often hunched over our strollers for support while walking. Finally, at 10:07pm, we arrived at the hotel. We dropped off our strollers in the hotel room and headed down to the pool. It felt amazing to have walked 63 miles in 24 hours (especially off of no sleep and nearly a full walking day), which is something I would never have thought I could do. The agonizing foot pain also ensured that I would never do it again. This was definitely the hardest day of my life. But I’m glad that we at least did this once and I’ll always remember it.
9/4-5/22
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