When lockdown came back in January, I started to think of ways that I could challenge myself and make things more interesting. I came across two physical challenges on the internet. I haven’t done either of them, but because this is the internet I’m still going to talk about them.
Because this post was so long, I’m going to do one today and will do the other next week.
What’s the challenge?
The challenge is to walk 100 miles in 48 hours (or the subset challenge of 50 miles in 24 hours). This is normally an organised event somewhere in the countryside, but given current events, it’s been made virtual so anyone can do it anywhere.
What did I do?
Since that seems like a lot of walking, and my previous longest walk is about 21 miles, I thought I would do a practice 25 mile walk (because then I could just repeat that loop four times for the 100 mile challenge).
What did I learn?
My main takeaway was that my 25 mile loop worked. It was fairly flat and I’ve now walked most of the route at least twice (on different adventures), so theoretically I should know where I’m going if it’s night-time and I’m tired. However, it’s not the most exciting walk (in places at least) and I’m not sure how I feel about doing the loop four times in a row. There’s a definite advantage of knowing where I’m supposed to be going which I would lose if I changed my route, plus I wouldn’t be able to resupply (and use the toilet) each time I passed my house.
There were a couple of bits that were far muddier than I was expecting and I did have to throw myself into a puddle towards the end (because that was easier than trying to get round it). It also rained for most of the day, which wasn’t what the weather forecast had predicted. Fortunately I had planned properly and had full waterproofs so a future wet walk would be perfectly manageable.
I did have to add an extra loop of the park before I got home to bring my distance up to the 25 mile target, but my phone GPS recorded half a mile more distance than my watch GPS so it may be that I was already at the right distance. I may have to tweak the route slightly, even if just to ensure that it gets to the right distance.
Could I do the full challenge?
I definitely felt like I could have gone on for another 10-15 miles if I had been prepared. But also my loop took me home, and I think that’s going to be one of the problems. Will I want to go back out for another loop when I’ve already done 25/50/75 miles? Should I just do a 100 mile straight walk? Be sure to come back in the future to find out how I’ve done.
