Motivation

Doubt


All the early enthusiasm has gone. Doubt creeps in to my thoughts. It suggests that spending too much time away from home - time away from loved ones, a month and a half off work unpaid that will drain away my finances - is a bad idea.

Will I be able to cope with the schedule - 1,000 miles in 6 weeks? That means walking 24 miles a day, every day. For me, 24 miles is a standard training walk I can do drunk, backwards, at night in a hurricane. But not day after day after day. That is a different animal. I will need to become a different animal too. Forget the mile counting, I'll be walking on the clock. One third of my day needs to be walking. This is a 9-5 job. 8 hours a day. Done. If I can't do that I'm screwed.

Why the schedule? The guys who are currently walking LEJOG are just taking too damn long. Day 60. Day 65. Day 70. Day 80...I don't have time for all that faffing! It's not in my nature to dawdle - and I'm not saying you guys are dawdling, but... - there are routes and there are routes and the routes a lot of you seem to be taking are waaaay too roundabout for me. I need an A-B straight line or near as damn it. Get there, get it done. Rest, recover, and go again. Fuck the scenic route!  

The quicker I get it done, the sooner I can go home.

I'll be walking mid summer - can I handle the heat, the way it absorbs the strength from my legs, drains my body of water, and chips steadily away at my morale? I don't do heat. I'm a cold weather type. Hot weather is garden weather, not endurance walking weather. This will be a challenge. WTF do I do in a heat wave? Well, I'd have to walk 4 of my 8 hours per day in the early morning, say, 4 till 8, stop, and walk another 4 hours between 6 and 10. I'll be rough camping which means I don't have to be at specific places at specific times. I will be illegally camping on private land. Yes this is very naughty and yes it is illegal and yes it's morally unjustifiable and no I don't care because camping where I want helps me do my walk the way I want to do it so fuck it, the finer points of legality go out the window.

Writing this is motivating me. This is useful. I like that.

How can I motivate myself to walk 1,000 miles?


If I can walk LEJOG I will never have to prove anything to myself again.


Training - revised


I lost interest in training over the last few weeks (training as in traditional walking training). I know my distance capabilities are pretty good but I'm all walked out. I don't want to spend three days a week walking right now because I'll be missing out on home life, garden days and all that good stuff when I'll be spending six solid weeks walking LEJOG. That's perhaps not a good attitude but equally I don't want to peak too early. I need to be at peak performance on Go Day. 

I need to put in one solid week of 7 to 8 hour days back to back. I'll need to do that in July, two weeks before I leave. It doesn't matter how I do that - 4 in the morning before work and 3 in the evening after work, or a full 7 hours after work, or whatever. It just needs to be done. 

I'll also need to do a PROPER long distance walk the week before I go to peak my performance, a 12 hour/35 miler will do the trick. 

That'll take care of endurance. What about strength and fitness? 

I've been strength training for a couple of months now on the 5x5. Compound movements, the basic stuff. It's going well. I've outgrown my standard 1 inch bar and plates and invested in a 2 inch 7 foot bar, squat stands, spotters, bench and 2 inch plates. Progress here has been satisfactory. Strong is good.   

And fitness? You know, running, jumping about, cycling...all that? Yeah - I suck. Solution? Go and buy a pair of running shoes, dust off the road bike and push some metabolic boundaries. This will help improve recovery times. 

Plus it'll help shift some excess weight. I don't want to carry an extra stone 1,000 miles. Would you? 

The question remains - can I walk LEJOG? 

There's only one way to find out.

And...

As an independent author I have to use completely unrelated blog posts like this one to promote my books; historical fiction and call centre fantasy. I'm also writing a book about my LEJOG experience. You are welcome to ask me for a free copy of any of the above which I can send to you. Please email me: lejog2017@outlook.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW TO USE POSTE RESTANTE (U.K.)

Poste restante is a free service where you can forward mail including parcels to a post office in the UK which you will then collect at a later date. I used Poste Restante to forward supplies and clothing to six different Post Offices between Land's End and John O'Groats. If you want to use Poste Restante in the UK but don't know how to set it up, here's how I did it: First you need to know four things: 1. The address of the Post Office you would like to use. If you're sending letters, any Post Office should accept your request. If you're sending a parcel, you will need to select a larger Post Office which has the space to store it. Select the largest Post Office in the area you intend to visit. This is important. Note: you will need to pay regular postage charges on whatever you send. 2. You need to give them a date on which you expect to pick up your mail. If you cannot give a precise date, give a range, preferably no more than two weeks. 3. You need
Read more

LEJOG - the route

Image
Navigating from Land's End to John o'Groats There is no official route between LE and JOG for walkers. If there was it would include the South West Coast path, Offa's Dyke, the Pennine Way, the West Highland Way, the Great Glen Way and maybe one day the Inverness to JOG trail. Those trails are absolutely fine unless you want to get the job done quickly. So all of the above are out of the question for me.  I like the DIY aspects of route planning because I can choose the most direct, efficient and safe route between two points using a combination of national trails, footpaths, lanes, minor and major roads, national cycle routes and any other footway that helps me get to where I'm going. That way I can avoid pointless ups and downs ("PUDs*"), unnecessary zig-zags** and adding unnecessary mileage to this already long distance walk.   Route planning on this scale is new to me and it's thrown up additional challenges beyond that which I have experi
Read more

Kit for a thousand mile walk

Image
Travel light, freeze at night Distance is proportional to the amount of weight carried over time. The less weight I'm carrying the longer I'll be able to walk therefore the further I can travel. There ought to be a mathematical formula out there to demonstrate this...if you know what that is, please comment with a link.  The ruling principle of kit selection has therefore been: TRAVEL LIGHT. I really like the saying  Travel light, freeze at night . Luckily it's mid summer and I have a down sleeping bag which kept me warm enough in February when it was demonstrably colder, yet the principle of less is more is sound. A simple and effective rule is: "You can reduce the weight of an object 100% by not taking it." That includes spares of ANYTHING. There are many excellent websites and videos about ultra-light thru-hiking made by thru-hikers which are available free online, particularly from the USA* - so I won't labour the point. But I w
Read more