Walking

Pretty much back to normal. Although my big toe nail started oozing blood and pus, after an attempt to trim the dead bit back yesterday evening.

12 miles to a pub sounds lovely.

That Hooks video ^ is great

Almost makes me want to do some walking

Pics or it didn’t happen

Critically acclaimed author and public speaker Fran Sandham walked across Africa solo, from Namibia's Skeleton Coast to the Indian Ocean near Zanzibar, a 3,000-mile trek taking nearly a year. Traversa is the engaging account of this remarkable journey.

https://www.traversa.co.uk/

New route in Cornwall which looks interesting -
https://www.tamarvalley.org.uk/tamara-coast-to-coast-way/

https://www.gr-infos.com/

there is a LOT of road walking

I don’t know if this is the right place, but anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on where to find out about barefoot, minimalist walking and hiking boots? Most things I’ve found are just infomercials.

Recommendations for models or just approaching the idea?

Both really I suppose. I broke a few toes a while back and was looking for something with a bigger toe box. So I’m thinking why not give it a go?

Can’t help with sources of info - but I’m a big vivobarefoot fan. I have the magma’s which are a light walking boot (along with various other more general purpose vbf models) and Mrs cookie has trackers - which look like old style walking boots (except they’re super lightweight) - which were perfect for Scottish hill walking.

Can’t recommend them highly enough, but maybe just get a pair of trainer-types (“primus”) to wear generally first. I’ve used them for years and years but I think it took maybe 6 months to really get used to barefoot shoes.

Revivo is also worth a look for reconditioned vivobarefoots. We’ve used them and could rarely tell the difference between new and reconditioned.

We’ve used them and could rarely tell the difference between new and reconditioned.

Could or couldn't?

Could rarely - they always have brand new vibram soles, so it’s just the uppers that are refurb’d. My magmas had a couple of eyelets replaced for example, if you looked closely you could see they were new compared to the others which had a slight tarnish, but not obvious, and invisible after one use.

Good to know, I always get their ads popping up on socials but hadn't considered them

Yeah - good for kids shoes too actually, very little to wear out on them, so the kids ones - black school shoes, trainers and the crocs-style things, have always been perfect

Cheers I’ll check them out. I rarely wear shoes even in the garden, really just when I’m out so I’ve a head start.

great that there is a thread about walking.

i've signed up to do a walk around the isle of wight next year, it's 106km. I think the furthest i've ever walked is about 20 miles so this is a different scale.

i'm 50, i've got a minor knee niggle and an ankle (other leg so it balances) screwed and plated back together after a bad break 30 years ago. other than that, all is good.

I went out today and walked 21km in 3.5 hours, quite enjoyed it.

A friend who has done 100km walks before advises that I should get comfortable with 50km and after that "it's just about mental toughness".

any other advice?

Don’t do it all in one day?

yes, that would be the rational approach.

I twice did https://trailwalker.gwt.org.uk/ (when I was much younger). I did 3 or 4 decent all-day walks in the lead up, at least 40k each, maybe a bit more. Practice some night walking as well, slightly different mentally.

Otherwise usual endurance event advice Get 100% comfortable with your kit, especially footwear and socks. Don't be tempted to wear anything new. Pay attention to hotspots on your feet before blisters develop. Remember to eat and drink regularly.

Not sure if you are looking for any sort of fast time but whatever you do, don't go out too fast. On the second event we did it in 19 hours - strategy was to walk at a steady pace but be very disciplined to get in and out at checkpoints very quickly. Very easy to get sucked in to spending 20 or 30 mins at checkpoints, especially if they have food, and the time really adds up.

thanks - great advice.

timewise, we have an aspiration to complete in 24hrs but not looking for a fast time.

I think it's useful to try and do it in a reasonable time, 24h seems sensible. If you dawdled round in 30h would just be interminible and demoralising I think.

I would add we did all the training walks as a team which was useful, mainly to ensure we were all confident in each others abilities. The 4 of us had done a fair amount of hillwalking amd mountaineering together as well so we were a good team and we were happy walking at slightly different paces at times.

I really enjoyed both events, great atmosphere so enjoy!

any other advice?

If you look into advice for ultra running I expect a lot of it would apply. Start off feeling very comfortable with the pace, deal with issues when they arise rather than allowing them to become a problem (stone in shoe comes out straight away rather than waiting for the blister etc), don't faff in checkpoints - even better if you can not stop at all and do your admin/eating on the move. A very simple trick is to put your pack onto your front to remove items from it, you can still keep moving and you'll be amazed by how much time you can save by just cutting out all those little stops.
Eat little and often, drink to thirst.
Consider waterproof socks and have spare clothes in your pack.
You get colder than you think at night so have spare layers.
For running people wouldn't normally do a training run much over 5-6 hours. Walking is less intense so you could go longer but I'd expect you're getting into diminishing returns over a certain length. From a physiological perspective endurance changes are triggered by exercise in the 2-3 hour range, so if you have plenty of walks in this range you'll probably find this is long enough to test out kit as well as a good training walk.
"Relentless forward progress" is a good mantra to remember.

I also did trailwalker twice.

The most I did in training was 25 miles/40km (Guildford to Merstham along the North Downs Way), which i did at least twice before the event.

I wore trail-running trainers both times. The first time it rained heavily for pretty much the whole even, which made it very hard. We lost one of our team to fatigue in the middle of the night, we waiting around for a friend to come and pick her up and then had a wait a bit longer as we were asked to add 2 other walkers to a our team who had 2 of their team drop out (we're still in touch with them!). I think it took about 27 hours that time.

Second time the weather was much better, we did it in about 24 hours. We were quite chilled on that run and took it easy with rest stops.

@ChasnotRobert, is it solo or part of a team? It does help having people to chat to and have support from, although in the wee hours after you've been walking for pretty much a whole day, you don't want to talk to anyone. We had a support team, who turned up in a van at a couple of check points, meaning we had a bit of moral support, but also meant we didn't have to carry as much.

Even though I had decent, worn in footwear, I had quite a few blisters (especially on the first one) and lost many toenails each time I did it.

I wore leather boots - lots of people would say that was overkill, but it was what I was comfortable with and I always like the ankle support. They were very broken in and very comfortable, don't recall suffering much with blisters. We had good weather both times which was lucky.