Couch to 5K Walking; hit and miss

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.

Yards and Gardens

 I was baffled to see a large front lawn surrounded by flowering shrubs described as a 'front yard' in an American magazine article. This space was larger than most British gardens. We Brits would call it a garden, so why was it being described as a 'yard'? I've also seen lawned or rough areas around and at the back of the house described by Americans as 'yards'. 

Yards, to my mind, are generally paved, utilitarian areas. They may be small, like the yards at the back of Victorian terraced houses, space for a washing line, perhaps with a privy shed and a coal shed,  or just access to the privy and coal hole, a few strides between the back door and the gate to the back lane.  Or larger, like a farmyard, livery yard, scrapyard or builders' yard.

Intrigued, I asked an American friend to explain their use of yard and garden. It seems a 'yard', in addition to a paved, utilitarian space, is an outside space attached to a property, which isn't being deliberately designed and used as a growing space. Okay, there might be a stretch of lawn surrounded by shrubs, but it's whatever, nothing special. The grass gets cut and the shrubs pruned and mulched, the leaves raked up, but there's no thought of design, no intent beyond a tidy bit of kerb-appeal. It may be a space to play catch, have barbecues, sit in the sun, but it isn't being actively 'gardened'. To count as a garden, the same space would have design and intent behind it, from which plants to grow and how they work together, to landscaping of paths and levels, or a space designed for growing fruit and vegetables. If you happen to have a few citrus and olive trees in your Californian 'garden', it may nevertheless be a 'yard'.

So many people here in the UK, especially in houses built from the 1960s on, have a small, private, outside space - a 'garden'. Often described in estate agents' details as an 'easily-maintained garden', which they think is a positive, but is not attractive to someone who really wants to garden. There is an almost cultural imperative to have a lawn, which one feeds and seeds to make it grow, then cuts to keep the growth down, keeping it free of 'weeds' by using a broad leaf herbicide, keeping any shrubs around it free of pests by using a pesticide. Controlling the space is what makes it a 'garden' here in the UK. So if it's an outside patch with a patio, a shed and a patchy stretch of grass with a trampoline and swing, it's a garden in the UK, but a yard in the USA.

I can see the point here; this differentiation of yard and garden makes sense and is growing on me (sorry, couldn't resist the pun!). I would not often (if ever?) say this, but this is an example of American English usage that I would like to see introduced here in the UK.

A new plan for Couch to 5K Walking

My Couch to 5K walking plan last year bit the dust after a patchy several weeks, when increasing knee pain coincided with lockdown. I did a few walks which went unrecorded in Strava because I forgot to press the start button (facepalm). A few more were rather inaccurate because of interference with the phone's GPS (high buildings, bridges, having the phone in a pocket, can apparently all interfere). I trudged through hail showers trying to convince myself that this was good, while the cold increased my pain levels. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Stop whining, JFDI, don't be so lazy, where's your self-discipline? There's nothing special about you, stop making excuses, try harder! etc. A friend commented that I might have some internalised ableism. I had to look it up and found she was right - I'm generally happy to accommodate others' disabilities and differences, but struggle to do the same for myself. It's the way I was brought up; to strive, work hard, be strong and independent (and with all the above thrown at me when I fell short of expectations). Although the judgemental comments could be reworded to be more encouraging, (my ballet and dance teachers never used that sort of language!) I don't see anything wrong with that, except that it goes hand-in-hand with being hard on yourself. I still find it impossible to find the line between enough and too much, to navigate a fair path and forgive myself when I fail.

I also lost my dance mojo (still haven't really found that, although I do find myself boogying slightly to supermarket music). I transferred my energies to gardening, which remains a battle with brambles, pendulous sedge and bindweed, but it now feels as though I am making progress. I can't control the weather, but I can take a pickaxe to those roots and I feel the stronger for it!

This year, with lockdown easing, and friends posting beautiful photos and stories of miles walked in the sunshine, I started to feel totally pathetic about my inability to comfortably walk even a mile. See? Ableist! Others who struggle to walk a mile have my sympathy and understanding, but I can't accept that I can't walk a mile, or three, or five. It's time to dust off the plan and get out there again. The bonus is that at the moment, my knee pain is not as bad as it was when I was doing this last year; it feels as though the gardening work has improved things.

However much I tell myself not to overdo things, it seems I don't notice while I'm gardening/walking/ dancing until I've overdone it. I blame those endorphins. I had a lovely day in the garden a week ago and couldn't move the following day. As soon as it eased off the day after, I did only a little more and spent the next two days in agony. Also, while I want to walk, I need to leave enough energy to garden or whatever else in the day. I need a new plan.

Last year's plan involved starting with 15 minutes a day, increasing to 20 minutes in week 2, walking for five days and having two rest days in a week. That was too much and it didn't help that I got totally carried away one day when I was feeling good and did 2 kilometres (1.25 miles) in 45 minutes. Oops. I also turned a blind eye to the comment that this was for beginners 'without significant health complaints'.

I've looked around for walking plans this year, and find that most are for people who are aiming to walk 5K for charity, and need to train (that is, push themselves), with 10 week plans involving daily walks, interval training (changing the pace), a speed of 3 mph or faster and significant step-ups after week 4 or 6. Obviously, a generic training plan takes no account of how you are personally on a daily basis.

So, here are some self-imposed rules:

• Aim for 5 walks/2 rests a week, weather allowing, starting with 10 minute walks
• Walk for time, not for distance
• Walk at an easy pace, no interval training. The easy pace should get faster as you get fitter.
• Walk mindfully, think about your posture and gait, take in details of your surroundings.
• Review progress every 4 weeks
• Stay at or go down a level if it starts to feel too much, add in a little more if it feels too easy.

My first 4 weeks look like this:

• Week 1: 5 x 10 mins
• Week 2: 3 x 10 mins, 2 x 15 mins
• Week 3: 2 x 10 mins, 3 x 15 mins
• Week 4: 1 x 10 mins, 4 x 15 mins
• Review: is 5 x 15 minutes in week 5 okay?

This pattern has me walking 5 x 30 minutes in week 13 (that's 3 months) which feels like quite a time commitment. From there, I envisage staying at that with a day's longer walk each week and see how I am doing. I would like to be able to walk a mile (approx. 1.6K) by midsummer, (I used to be able to walk at 3 mph quite comfortably).

I announced my intention on my Facebook timeline late last night and found such an outpouring of support from my friends this morning, I feel loved. 💖

Time to get my walking shoes on!