Getting fit for walking
Before starting a walking holiday, get fit for walking!
Reasonably fit adults should be able to walk ten level miles without trouble during a single day. The trouble is
that most trails are more comfortably covered at an average of
around 15 miles a day, and many have hills in. Most desk- or house-bound
adults would find this taxing several days in a row, even in lowland
Britain.
There are many ways you can do this. Cycling regularly is one way;
jogging is another; weight training, with a stress on stamina rather than
strength, is a third. Swimming is excellent for gaining endurance.
However, none of these will exercise exactly the same combination of
muscles that are used in regular distance walking.
Here is a walking schedule which if employed for at least one month
will build up the fitness needed for several days in open country. It also
gets you into the open air!
In each week set yourself a schedule with
• Two short walks of two
miles - taken at a comfortable pace
• Two medium walks of five miles -
taken as fast as you can
• One long walk of ten miles - taken
briskly
• Two days off.
You want to concentrate on walking, not route-finding, so the
walks should be in familiar surroundings or are otherwise obvious.
You could go round and round your local park,
though this could get a bit dull if it’s small. Best, perhaps, if you
work, is walk there or back. Help stop global warming, or give your fellow
train commuters more space! While the clocks are on summer time, once a week
my unlikely-sounding Tottenham Courth Road to Forest Gate return commute becomes a (fast) canal side
stroll. To this I add a couple of early-morning two milers around
Wanstead Flats each week, and this maintains my level of fitness, though
I do rather more in the weeks before major trips like my cross-Wales
walk.
It’s surprising how even the least likely surroundings can give you
opportunities. Take my home borough, Newham, a heavily built-up patch of
inner-city east London, with 230,000 people packed into around 20 square
miles. It has no reputation for greenery, quite the reverse, alas, but
with walks like the Greenway (part of the Capital
Ring) and spaces like Wanstead Flats, there
can be excellent opportunities whatever your home (or work) area.
Eating and drinking on the trail
What you eat on the trail is very different to what you eat off the
trail.
Off the trail you need to build up energy supplies. For this you need
carbohydrates like pasta, rice and potatoes (not all in
the same meal though).
On the trail you need energy foods with
easily-convertible sugars. Dried fruits like apricots and raisins are very
good, so are flapjack, chocolate (not hot days), and mint cake. You can
get ‘energy bars’ in places like Boots and Sainsbury’s which don’t have
masses of energy but are quite low in fat.
On the trail drink well, especially in warm weather.
There are ‘energy drinks’ similar to energy bars which are also isotonic –
they are more easily absorbed by the body as they mimic the body’s fluid
composition. You can get these in sachets – convenient as you can reseal
them – or as powders – convenient for walks lasting several days.
A plastic water bottle can easily puncture. A better investment is
a specialist reusable water bottle, in which category Sigg aluminium
bottles stand out. If you prefer hot drinks, take a thermos unless you
start to get into backpacking and have a stove for a brew-up. Do not take
cans – you have to drink them in one go and you find at the end of the day
that the can wasn’t empty after all – or glass bottles, which are heavy
and break.
Drinking off the trail, especially when staying at picturesque country
pubs, can be one of the most worthwhile aspects of a trail walking
holiday.
Also see: Gear and where to buy it
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