- three weeks ago - as I fairly buggered-up my left knee. The pain came on the day after the big walk and was pretty heavy; it took more than a week to subside and the walk I'm about to blog was a tester to see if it'd healed properly. It looks like it has.
This has had a couple of effects. First, it's made me lazy and helped me slip back into old dietary habits, which is a pain in the arse. Well, I'm blaming that but I may have been looking for an excuse. The upshot of that is that I'm reasonably sure I've put on a bit of weight since our holiday, which is when things started to slide, diet-wise, and I've not brought them back to regimented order yet. This gives me fear - so much so I've not stood on the Wii scales since before the holiday. Maybe I should see I've put on weight to kick me in the arse and get back into big walks to burn off some calories and encourage me to stick to my healthier eating system.
Secondly, it put a spanner in the works in terms of my fitness-building plans for a 100-mile walk I'd planned to start next week. Next Wednesday I was supposed to be starting out for five days walking. I'm going to have to put that off until early spring now, which I'm gutted about but at least it'll give me ample time to plan and prepare for it. I wouldn't mind doing it later in October but there just won't be enough daylight to make the most of it, and I'm socially engaged until then.
Never mind, anyway. The plans are in place: kit lists drawn up, route planned, tent tested, mind set. All it needs now is to gather gear, set a date and physically prepare for the toil. In some ways I'm glad to give myself a bit more time to work up to consecutive twenty-mile days - the plan I had was workable but promised to take up an awful lot of time. This way I can almost leisurely work my way up towards it... I've inadvertantly given myself the gift of time, which makes it feel like much less of a failure and more of a reasoned delay.
I have a new client for the charity who's raring to go and increase her mileage so she can lose some weight. She has some admirable personal incentives and plenty to talk about, so I look forward to walking regularly with her. I'm also booked for a follow-up walk with my first client at the start of next week, which I'm looking forward to greatly. That, and regular weekend walks with my parents, has me covering a number of miles every week.
It doesn't feel like anywhere near enough.
