Camino Training - 3 Months Out
Wednesday 1st Jan
Whilst there are many advantages to living in a rural area when doing training for a long walk such as access to good trails, dirt roads etc and little to no traffic there are also some disadvantages.
The biggest is that it gets hot where we live - damn hot. So that means in order to get a longer walk done I need to be up at 4am and out of the house around 4.45 at first light in order to get before the heat becomes unbearable. I am not an early morning person so I really struggle with this and I usually sleep poorly the night before - something about having to get up early makes me anxious. Crazy I know but thats me.
The upside of getting out this early is you do get to set some magnificent sunrises and catch lots of early morning wildlife like all the kangaroos.
The other not so great thing is that there are zero facilities. And I dont really mean bathrooms. Its reasonably remote where we are and when I walk I generally see no cars, no people and certainly nothing like somewhere to stop and rest and have a coffee or even a breakfast. So I carry water and low sugar snacks to get me through the 4-5 hours I am walking.
Whilst I had planned to do 3 long walks a week by this stage I find I am not doing that every week. I have done it a couple of times but often life gets in the way - especially around Christmas and New Year. However, I am keeping up a solid regime and that includes some walking on the golf course each week as well as daily dog walks so I am up around 100km per week which is good.
I am also training with a medical regime that means I have reduced stamina and strength and this will not be the case when I walk so anything I do over and above now is a bonus.
So, what will it be like when we walk the Camino Frances? We are expecting quite cool weather in early April and at the higher altitudes there may even be a little snow. Given we are walking early spring we are expecting changeable weather and we will certainly get some days of rain - something I am not looking forward to.
As the walk progresses it should gradually warm up into the low 20's centigrade by the time we approach Santiago in mid May and perhaps even a little warmer than that.
But certainly very different to training in the Australian summer!
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