When I booked my tickets I did not know if I would be capable of completing this walk. While I may have walked much longer distances in days gone by than I’m expecting to this time, back then I had not sustained a significant Achilles injury and I was walking fit. I may have felt invincible…..which is not unreasonable when you have walked day after day of over 30km – and even 100km in one sitting. This time I had not been walking at all for far far far too long…and when I re-started I could not even manage a kilometer before the Achilles protested. But slow steady progress convinced me it might be possible to consider a slow steady camino of meagre daily distances. It was refreshment and reflection that I was seeking, not lots of walking.
And then – before you could say “Santiago-de-Compostela” I was contemplating the longest continuous route in Spain. Ambitious? Ridiculous? Downright Stupid? Probably. When I booked, I had not yet even walked 10km a day every day for a week. Come to think of it, I may not have even walked seven days in a row. But I’m pleased to say that changed. Whew. My distances crept up and the frequency improved the day I decided I was going to walk every day for the rest of my life (as far as it was within my power to do so). That conviction grew to encompass the idea that a distance of under 5km didn’t count. So far, so good.
In the past I had walked as far as I wanted and had never given it another thought.
This time I started wondering if the increased miles were responsible for tight ankles/heels every morning, and eventually whether I had been premature in booking a connecting flight from Madrid to Almería – would it have been more prudent to keep my options open and be able to zip up to the Camino Francés, which provides much more frequent accommodations and the possibility of short days? Most likely!
Worst-case-scenario, I figured, I could still do that and count the flight as a sunk cost. But there was little appeal in that. I started looking for alternative not-quite-so-bad-case scenarios. I now have options. I won’t know for certain how the walk is going to pan out until I am doing it….will I manage the 36km days? Will I manage 20km+ days every day for a week? Whatever happens (short of breaking a leg), I should be able to find a way to make it work…..although, sadly, it will mean chopping out a section or two or three….
Right now I’m pretending to be a Bona Fide Athlete. After an ultrasound confirmed bilateral Achilles tendinopathy with low grade neovascularisation and reduced echogenicity, I saw a sports bio-mechanist, who put me on the path to recovery. While he’s used to working with the likes of Olympic gold medalist and World Champion kayaker Dame Lisa Carrington and the Elite Women’s Squad and the NZ Men’s squad, he was also willing to see little ol’ out-of-shape me. He put me in completely different shoes, prescribed a programme of strengthening muscles that I didn’t even realise you could use when walking and showed me a new way of using my poles. He knows his stuff and knows how to impart the knowledge so that you are empowered to understand your movement patterns and take control of your biomechanical journey (or so his website says). Who knew! I’m learning.
Having the goal of being long-distance-camino-ready was certainly a useful motivator to get me walking again. I hope to do it for the rest of my life.
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P.S. I actually wrote this post a month ago. Since then I have come very close to reaching the conclusion that I will not be able to complete the route I had my heart set on. If my Achilles rehab continues at the rate of no more than 10% increase in distance per week (which is the recommended practice to prevent flare ups) then it will quite simply be impossible. I have turned my attention to the Camino Francés, where, with some careful planning, I should be able to continue rehabbing my way across a smaller bit of Spain. If I start in Pamplona I might make it to Samos…..then there would be a week and a half left to either spend in the Sobrado monastery or increase distances a bit more and make it to Santiago de Compostela in time to catch my flight home. I just might have gone full circle back to my original plan! Within that journey before even taking the first step there have been curiosity, concern, excitement, hope, frustration, disappointment, uncertainty, wondering, gratitude, anticipation….
solowalk 2024 