A walk in the park

The physio assessment was useful. I asked for advice on maintaining the current reasonable(ish) condition of my ITBs, and some help to get them loosened up a bit, and came away with some exercises to do. She also did a bit of work on them - somewhat suspiciously, it was by far the least painful session I've ever had, but she may have been testing the water. I'm going back in three weeks' time, so we'll see what happens then. My foam roller use (every other day, more or less) has been approved - I'm glad about that, because I can feel the difference it makes. She also advised me that the muscles of my lower back are currently compensating for weakness in my core, so I've got some exercises to work on that as well as stretches for the back itself, which was pretty tight when prodded. Meanwhile, work have given me a footrest, which I'm trying to bully myself into using properly.

That morning's four-mile walk turned into a six-miler after I unaccountably turned the wrong way down a road - what is with me at the moment? Between that and the already-compressed schedule, that week's speed session ended up being dropped in favour of an extra recovery day. Last week's unfortunately went the same way, but this week should be a bit easier, so I'll just draw a line under those and move on.

Last Saturday's walk was a quiet and snowy ten-and-a-half miles around Derwent and Howden reservoirs. This being the longest walk I'd done for a while, I was a bit daunted by the distance, but it didn't feel like a challenge in the end. I was able to press on a bit in the last couple of miles, once the slush started to disappear, so the whole circuit took three hours and thirty-eight minutes. I don't rush these ones at the moment - it's nice to be able stop every now and then to admire the scenery, or stand at the water's edge and imagine three or four Lancasters rumbling out of the cloud.

There was a stumbly, slithery, foggy four-miler along the lower slopes of Stanage Edge on Monday evening. Not the most enjoyable time I've ever had on a hillside, but the wind had picked up by the time I got back down to the road and there was nobody else around, so I turned my headtorch off, put my hood down and walked along the road in darkness for half a mile or so, listening to the rustling and whistling of the trees. Very atmospheric.

The next long walk was on Wednesday, after work - a sympathetic employer is allowing me to shuffle my hours around, so I set off from home at 1640 and walked 9.5 miles through the woods and along some of the country roads nearby. Some of the roads are a bit dangerous in the dark - narrow and lacking in verges - so I'm going to avoid those in future. It is a bonus that I'm learning a lot about the part of the world I live in, doing this.

I must admit that Wednesday's was the first walk I really haven't wanted to do. It was just tiredness and the lethargy that comes after a full day's work, when there's a TV and a game of Hearthstone and a Stephen King novel at home... But you go out anyway, and it's always worth it. My back and legs both started to hurt in the last three miles or so, but stopping and stretching the back seemed to help both. I felt tired the following day, but not uncomfortable, so I'm starting to feel less afraid of the longer distances. I'm looking forward to what's coming up. 😁