T oday’s been pretty busy. Most of it was spent sat in front of the PC trying to source more items from the kit list, which I’m pleased to say is fast getting ticked off – hurrah! The list is now up to date as it stands today and any item on the list that has its details filled in either means I’ve got it at home right now or it’s on order and will be delivered very soon.

After spending so much time indoors, and it being such a lovely day out there, I decided to get out and take a walk in the boots to see how I faired today. I didn’t really have a plan of where I wanted to go or even how far so I headed out the door, turned and made my way out through Hurst, with the intention of at least being out for an hour.

As it turns out, I was out for 2 hours and 15 minutes and walked a reasonable 7.4 miles. I’d tried desperately to slow myself up a bit, which I managed to a degree. Instead of my usual walking pace of around 3.6/3.7 miles an hour I slowed the pace to 3.2 miles an hour. It’s still too fast really but I’m sure the weight of the kit on my back will do the rest for me.

My feet held up ok – there was still a bit of discomfort on the soles but not too bad – although the little toe on my right foot started to play up again. I think I’m going to be doing the walk with a blister plaster on that toe all the way. Hopefully that’ll stop the pain. I’ll be trying that and some other things over the coming weeks to see what actually works and what doesn’t.

You can see the route in the map below:

It’s not exactly an exciting route, just doing a circular route round the lanes here, but it was really very nice seeing the countryside that I normally fly by in the car. That’s the part of the walk I’m really looking forward to; the bit where I really get to see the UK and not just a blur through a car window.

I’ll be using this method to show the training routes I make as/when I do them but when it comes to the actual route I’ll be putting the maps on this site so you don’t have to muck about if you want to see them. For now though this’ll do.