Cue The Proclaimers!
500 miles. This is the milestone I had been waiting for… and by waiting I mean walking a few extra miles here and there to make happen as fast as I could.
Truth be told – it took me almost a week longer to get here than I had hoped it would. This had a slightly weird effect on on me when I finally crossed the ‘line’. On one hand I was really happy to have made it to the fabled ‘halfway point’, on the other was a realisation (and acceptance) that I wasn’t as fully in control of this walk as I might have felt I was a month or two ago. More on that later.
What’s it like to walk 500 miles?
At the time of writing no one has ever walked 500 miles in one go before (The longest walked distance without stopping is 142 miles) – but people have definitely done it a lot faster than I have done… but I consider myself ‘Mr. Average’ in this instance so am probably a fairly good barometer for anyone considering doing the walk/
It’s been a roller coaster.
The first couple of hundred miles was a novelty and zipped past fairly quickly, around the 300 mile mark I started to struggle with the weather and being confined to local walks (for people reading in the future – this is all happening during COVID Lockdowns).. every mile seemed like 5 miles.
I learnt fairly early on, not to look at the big number – If I was focusing on the 1000 mile target it would seem too far away and slightly unachievable – I mentally would detach myself from the challenge and end up walking less. So I focused on chunks, first 100 miles, first 250 and then 500 miles.. and here we are.
Challenges of walking 500 miles.
So I made it – but that’s not to say it was a walk in the park – pun intended!
The biggest challenge was time.
To walk 500 miles has taken me…
Minutes
Hours
Days
Time has been a huge factor, luckily I’m self-employed and have manged to sneak in a few miles at lunchtime, but the vast majority of my walking has been in the evenings. In the late winter months walking in the rain in the dark was no fun, but perhaps it has been character building.
The drawback with walking in the evenings is that while trying to ‘squeeze’ 4 or 5 miles in (a commitment of around 2 hours of walking time ) – it that I have to sacrifice some family time. I’ve manged to persuade the kids to come with me on occasion, but I can’t expect them to be walking 4 miles in the rain… maybe in a few years!
The only other problem I’ve had is physical. The big picture is that my weight has improved and I have dropped almost two stone since January (I’ll write a separate blog post about this soon) – but I have an issue with one of my knees.
When I used to hike across Dartmoor with friends regularly I noticed that my knees started to hurt – in particular my right knee. It got so bad that I became almost impossible for me to walk down hill.. I ended up having to walk side ways to alleviate the pain. Even after numerous Doctors appointments and x-rays they found nothing wrong and after a while it faded away. That was about 10 years go and while I occasionally get a twinge when going down stairs I haven’t really thought much about it. Until now
Since March I’ve been getting pain in my right knee, this has been slowly getting worse and is definitely aggravated by going downhill. I’m currently assuming it’s part-and-parcel of undertaking a large walking challenge and keep telling myself ‘no pain – no gain. I’m avoiding going downhill, and as my walks are mainly circular this means no uphill either (yippee!) – so just for the time being flat walks and a paracetamol before each walk.
500 miles down, 500 to go?
I look back on the 500 miles and think to myself that was (relatively speaking) easy! Hindsight is of course a wonderful thing… but aside from the weather and the increasing boredom of walking in circles for large parts of it, 500 miles over 4 months (and that was slightly faster than I needed it it to be) has been challenging and joyful.
I’m fitter, lighter and have a more positive mindset than I did at the start. if this continues for the next 500 miles I think I will be a better person at the end than I was at the beginning!
Speaking of endings, a few of you may have noticed my use of a few question marks at certain places. “Halfway? 500 to go?”, well I’ve felt for a while now that as I’m slightly ahead of target that I will most likely carry on walking after I reach 1000 miles.
My goal was to walk every day for year and in doing so reach 1000 miles… but I think I can do more. Let’s see what the next few months hold!
Knees don’t fail me now!
Just a note about the official 500 mile medal from County Walking magazine. You don’t get sent the 500 mile medal automatically once you pass the mileage – you need to order one yourself from their online store. Depending on which plan you sign up to you WILL get sent the 1000 mile medal but not medals for any other distances.
Talking points