Training Ramp-Up

With our Camino Primitivo adventure just 55 days away now, Francine and I have made some adjustments to our walking schedule. We walk 5 – 8 kilometers most days, and on weekends we usually plan for one longer walk in the 12 kilometer range.

The big change so far? We’re doing those walks with fully loaded packs now.

It’s definitely been a big difference.

While the added weight has been a challenge, using my larger pack has been an actual delight. Yes, it’s old and heavier than modern packs, but it’s been on Camino before.

Through long experience, I’ve worked out the best places to put things where I can get to them. I love the big hip-belt pockets. And I love that I can take off or put on a jacket without stopping to do so.

It’s also nice to be able to drop by a store and pack food into the stretch-pocket, just like on Camino! Here’s a photo of us doing just that. Added bonus: my windbreaker is tied around my waist.

While we’ve been walking, we’ve also been recording our “virtual Camino del Norte”, which we’ve been doing since the end of September.

Obviously, there was some time off for the holidays and various times when one of us has been out of town or the week I onboarded at my current job, but we’re very much on track to be walking into “virtual Oviedo” well before we fly to the real one!

Most recently, it only took us three days to walk our latest “virtual Camino day”, which represented the 22 kilometers from Santillana del Mar to Comillas – day 15 of the Camino del Norte.

By my calculations, there are 169 kilometers to go to Oviedo, which in a perfect world would take us less than a month in between work and volunteer hours. We’ll see how it goes!

The kilometers only count if we walk them together and record them, so our separate hikes and walks aren’t counted in the total. This in part explains why we’ve only done 335 kilometers of our virtual Camino since October!

Well, that and the various breaks from walking I described above. But we’re at the point where there will be no breaks now. In fact, we’ll be ramping up the kilometers once we’ve reaccustomed ourselves to our pack weight.

Really starting to get excited for the new adventure ahead! It’s starting to become real.