L.I.F.T.E.D. - My new considerations during training

It has been a long time since I've posted on this blog.  Mostly it is because I haven't walked any new trails, only rewalked ones I've done before.  It is also because of a few things that have happened in my life in the past 6 months, including moving house and the death of one of my two young cats.  And I took an 8-week Activity with Athritis course to explore ways to still be able to hike while experiencing lower back and knee pain.  During the time I was on that course I suffered an achilles heel injury when out for a relatively, for me, low impact hike.  Two different physios and months later my achilles is good but I'm still experiencing related problems in that calf muscle.  Now I'm less than seven weeks out from another massive overseas walking holiday and haven't yet gotten up to trail fitness.

I've mentioned how I train for a walking holiday before, but now that I am training following a hiking injury I realise I need to take more things into consideration.  Not only that, but for some of my upcoming holiday I will have company, and the way I usually walk is not how they walk, so some adjustments need to be made.

There are 6 things that I found important to focus on this time around.  Although the first letter of each consideration spells out L.I.F.T.E.D, I'll be tackling the six topics in the order that I began to consider them during this recovery training periodtime around.  Do note, I am not an expert in fitness, training, injuries, recovery, etc.  This is merely what works/worked for me.

Injury/Accident Recovery (and Health-Related condistions).  I was pretty much off my feet for a month when I pulled my achilles, and after that downtime I had to start from scratch.  I discussed it with the first physio I used, and we decided I would walk every second day.  I would start with a 10 minute walk the first 2 times, then increase it to a 15 minute walk for the next 2 times, and so on.  Once I reached 30 minutes I chose to increase by 10 minutes each 2 times.  Once I reached an hour I chose to increase by 15 minutes each 2 times.  When I reached 2 hours I increased by 30 minutes each 2 times.  I am currently doing 5 hour walks.  In addition, I was diagnosed with Osteoarthritis a while back which affects my knees, lower back, and knuckles.  In addition to the aforementioned arthritis course I took, I found some back and knee strengthening exercises and have been doing those every non-hiking day.  It took a few months of doing those, but now I have hardly any pain and am back to the level of fitness I had 6 years ago.

Distance.  This usually is the first thing I focus on when training.  I start by doing a comfortable distance, walk that distance a few times, then increase how far I walk.  One of the physios suggested an increase of 10-15% each week is best (but if it hasn't been too long since I've done some higher distances, or once I've worked up to some pretty long distances, I might increase by 20-30% a week).  Do not think that distance is the same as time - it can be, if you are only taking yourself into consideration and you have a steady pace (mine is 6km/hour, or 1km every 10 minutes), but I was going to have to think about time a bit differently than I had in the past (as you will see below).  

Load/Weight.  This is how much you are carrying on your back.  Unless it's a quick walk to the shops, I invariably have a rucksack on my back.  It usually weighs 4.5 to 5.5 kilos, with much of that being water in a bladder.  For my upcoming holiday it will be the first time where I will need to carry everything I have with me from place to place (not for the entire holiday, but for a few of the walks during it).  And it will be the first time I will be carrying my house (tent etc) on my back.  Like with distance, I started with my usual weight, then over time increased it by a few hundred grams.  Eventually I made those increases around 500 grams.  I am now up to 10.5kgs, which is ample for the holiday.

Elevation.  Almost all of the training I have been doing recently is on essentially zero elevation routes.  I chose to do that because of both the injury recovery, and because I wanted to prioritise increasing the weight I was carrying.  A few weeks ago I went on a more challenging 11km hike with plenty of ups and downs, but I decided to carry a lower weight as it was my first time in ages doing elevation.  For most of the hike I was fine, but my left calf suggested it was not completely happy, and by the time I finished the hike I decided I had suffered a set-back in my injury recovery.  It was then I started with the second physio.

Frequency.  How often do you hike?  As I (hopefully) will be walking almost every day once I am on the holiday, I need to be sure my body can handle hiking for multiple days in a row.  Partway through my recovery/training I changed my routine from walking every second day, to walking 4 days a week.  What this does is makes me walk for 2 consecutive days once each week.  I plan on being able to walk, my then daily distance, for at least 3 days in a row before the holiday starts.

Time.  As I mentioned further up in this post, I usually find that time and distance are basically the same thing however some things can alter that.  The first is terrain - as mentioned, my flat speed is 6km/hr, but on that 11km elevation hike I was down to 4km/hr.  Another would be weight - I'm sure if I was carrying 10kg on my back I would have been closer to 3km/hr.  However, the one thing that really made me think about time as entirely independent of distance is one of the people I am walking with on this upcoming holiday.  They are a vlogger, so their pace is slower because of stopping to film, or backtracking to retrieve the camera.  They mentioned they walk about 30km per day, starting at 7 a.m and walking until 5 p.m. and they don't stop (except for filming).  If this is flat terrain they are taking twice as long to walk it as it would normally take me.  In other words, I'll be on my feet for 10 hours instead of 5!

Even though I still have a few goals to reach before truly feeling walking holiday ready, I am feeling very confident.  Good luck with your own recovery/training.