In theory, this should be week 20, but the walking has been a little hit and miss.
I hit my aim of doing a mile by midsummer, early. For my first walk in week 4, I had a nice evening and set off down the Brunel Trail with a spring in my step. After a while, I realised I hadn't set a timer and thought I should really stop and go back. The return trip felt progressively harder, and I was glad to collapse in a heap on the sofa and look at what I'd achieved, which was just a smidge over a mile!
The next day, my knees hurt, so I decided to take a rest day from walking, but had to go shopping. When I got out of the car, my left knee gave way. I limped my way around the supermarket, using the trolley as a walker. Once home, I found my left knee gave way every so often, and only managed a little garden work and one other walk that week.
In the following few weeks, I did another couple of walks which were a little over a mile, and got to the point where I was really enjoying walking, taking my rainbow umbrella with me to ward off the drizzle.
Unfortunately, there is a physical backlash. It's as if I only have energy for walking or doing housework and gardening, but not both. After walks of a mile or more (and some walks of less than a mile) my body aches, especially my knees and feet. I had planned to walk 5 days, rest 2 days each week, but it was progressively harder to do more than one walk a week. It started affecting my motivation to go for a walk.
Then I banged my little toe one night, trying not to stand on one of the cats in the dark. There was a nasty crunch and when I examined my toe, I found it was straighter, but bleeding into the nail bed. It was so bruised and painful, I erred on the safe side in case I had broken it and kept off my feet as much as I could for a week.
While I was resting my toe, I thought about how to help my motivation to walk and realised that just launching myself out of my front door, walking just for the time and distance, was not enough. I want to get to 5 km/3 miles so that from there, I can walk further, not so that I can finish some charity walk in an hour or so. I love Pembrokeshire for its wildlife, history and landscapes; that's what I want to explore, on foot. With my foot up on the couch, I got out maps and did a little list of places I wanted to go.
Once the toe felt better, off I went again, deciding not to press the distance, but to include some hills. had a lovely couple of walks in Milford, on the steep streets down to Castle Pill and around The Rath.
Then the skin on the side of my left foot split, leaving it very raw and sore. (I get a type of eczema called pompholyx, where the skin comes up in little itchy, burning blisters, which merge into bigger blisters, which then dry out into flaky plates of skin. Then after a couple of weeks, the cycle starts again. I get it on my hands too. No real cause or cure. Sorry, probably too much information, but it's a damned nuisance.)
It took the best part of a week to heal, and despite care and moisturiser, it split again on my next walk, though not as badly.
I've just had a very busy couple of weeks, where walking has been low on the agenda, partly to conserve energy. I planned a walk at the start of this week, but had to give it a miss because it was absolutely pouring with rain. And going into autumn with more unsettled weather, this is increasingly going to be the case. I was rather hoping for some lovely autumn sunshine to walk in. As the nights are drawing in, I'll have to walk earlier.
I've nearly 30 walks on the list, not including a few I've already done (such as down to Castle Pill). Most are longer than I can manage at the moment. The longest walk so far has been about a mile and three quarters. I'm looking forward to more exploratory walks, but it may be some time before I hit the 5K target.
