Walking: where next?
Mar. 18th, 2012 07:59 amGah! The weather's gorgeous today, after my four days walking through gloom. Grump!
I'm surprisingly un-stiff this morning. In fact, I barely feel sore or stiff at all, and I had a good night's sleep last night, too, after several bad ones, so I feel that I could do another 20 miles today, if I wanted to. (I don't.) I'm also sure that I could have done the entire thing in three days, instead of four, and I might try to do that one day, though I won't have opportunity to do so for a while. Maybe October, and maybe I'll do it anti-clockwise this time, for a change.
I've been walking almost every weekend this year, doing around 20 miles on one day of the weekend, and a shorter walk on the other day. I don't want to carry on doing this - and won't be able to, even if I wanted to, since there are a lot of busy weekends coming up in April and May. But it's Walk the Wight in two months, and I don't want to find it difficult. Quite apart from walking muscles, all my past blisters have turned into calluses, and I did all 70 miles without even a hint of a single blister. I don't want to lose that.
So the question is: if you've developed a certain level of fitness*, how often do you have to exercise to more or less maintain it? Will one long walk every fortnight suffice? Will shorter walks do the job, just as long as I keep on doing some walking? I don't really know how muscles work, and how quick they are to revert to patheticness.
* Not that I'm remotely fit. I can do long walks, yes, but I can't run, haven't cycled in years and would probably collapse in exhaustion after two miles if I tried it, and can't do press-ups and so on. So by "fitness," I just mean walk-related fitness.
I'm surprisingly un-stiff this morning. In fact, I barely feel sore or stiff at all, and I had a good night's sleep last night, too, after several bad ones, so I feel that I could do another 20 miles today, if I wanted to. (I don't.) I'm also sure that I could have done the entire thing in three days, instead of four, and I might try to do that one day, though I won't have opportunity to do so for a while. Maybe October, and maybe I'll do it anti-clockwise this time, for a change.
I've been walking almost every weekend this year, doing around 20 miles on one day of the weekend, and a shorter walk on the other day. I don't want to carry on doing this - and won't be able to, even if I wanted to, since there are a lot of busy weekends coming up in April and May. But it's Walk the Wight in two months, and I don't want to find it difficult. Quite apart from walking muscles, all my past blisters have turned into calluses, and I did all 70 miles without even a hint of a single blister. I don't want to lose that.
So the question is: if you've developed a certain level of fitness*, how often do you have to exercise to more or less maintain it? Will one long walk every fortnight suffice? Will shorter walks do the job, just as long as I keep on doing some walking? I don't really know how muscles work, and how quick they are to revert to patheticness.
* Not that I'm remotely fit. I can do long walks, yes, but I can't run, haven't cycled in years and would probably collapse in exhaustion after two miles if I tried it, and can't do press-ups and so on. So by "fitness," I just mean walk-related fitness.