Question:What you need to do depends on your initial level of fitness?For walking
(as opposed to running?) the distance of a marathon, the ability to just
keep going is what you need?
Answer:
The point of rest is to allow your body to recover, and that applies to
all fields of athletic endeavour - body building, swimming and yes,
walking. The idea is to stress your body through training, recover and
then train again. If your training is genuinely stressing your body
enough to get fitter through doing it, omitting the rest can lead to
over training and a worsening performance. Of course too much rest is
also a bad thing.
Now whether or not 6 miles walking is enough for you to need a rest day
afterwards depends on your initial state of fitness (and the 6 miles you
walk) - but there's a huge difference between walking 6 miles and 26
miles.
Personally I think you will get fitter, faster with training hard 3
times a week and getting decent rest in between than with gentle
training 6 days per week. Remember also that as you get fitter you will
need to make your training sessions more intense. It may also be
helpful to make some of the training sessions something other than
walking - so long as it's aerobic. Swimming will give your heart &
lungs an excellent work-out if you start having lower-limb joint
problems. Weight training can be aerobic, and so can circuit training
and (of course) cycling.
I'm 54 years old and an
avid hiker. I know that your post is right, and sometimes you just need
someone to set you in the right direction. So I am going to try this: Monday
4 easy miles or whatever my body wants to do. Tuesday 7 hard miles,
Wednesday 4 easy miles, Thursday hard 7 miles, Friday 4 easy miles and
Saturday is a longer moderate hike. Monday - Friday walks are split up so I
will walk 2 or 3 times a day because of my schedule. I never did a marathon
before and I want to do one when I'm 55 years old. This will be in October.
Any comments are always appreciated.
I'm 46, I haven't walked more than 15 miles in a day since my early 20s. I'm
overweight at 16 1/2 stone and 6 ft 1 in. Although I'm used to doing walks
of 12-15 miles, sometimes with a weekend camping rucsack and usually with
quite a bit of ascent/descent, these walks are not that frequent (once or
twice a month). I do tend to walk 3-4 miles a day just in the general course
of going to the shops etc.
Two weeks ago I did a 27 mile walk without much trouble or any additional
specific training. My only problems were a couple of blisters due to me
taking the wrong sock combination for the boots I was wearing and my feet
being a bit soft. I tend to dehydrate easily and I found that at around 18
miles I was somewhat dehydrated and my thigh muscles were starting to feel
tight. A 5 minute stop, some drink and a couple of biscuits cured that.
Some people suggest that topping up with carbohydrates is counter-productive
because once your glycogen stores are depleted, your body'll start to burn
fat efficiently. Personally, I find that I get significant thigh-tightening
if I don't have a few carbs on the trip.
I think the fact that my body is relatively used to doing 12-15 miles helped
the first half go by with no discernible worries. The 15-20 mile section
felt hardest, but after that I got my "second wind" and 20-27 miles sailed
by.
The only other "training" I do is a 1 hour circuit traing session every
week, plus rock climbing, once or twice a week in summer, less often in
winter. I've recently been running 2-3 miles on 3 mornings a week, but
that's a very recent thing and I hadn't been doing it long when I did the
walk. We have a 70 year old in our climbing club who regularly does "100
miles in 48 hours" endurance walks. He doesn't train that avidly, either,
though he does train a bit more than I do.
If you've got a halfway-reasonable level of general fitness (I mention my
own case as an example of someone who is middle-aged and not tremendously
fit or training-orientated being able to do this distance without
concentrated training) then whether you complete a marathon walk or not will
be largely down to ensuring that you have the right footwear...it'll most
likely be blisters that get you! Take Compeed or whatever similar
blister-protection you prefer.
It occurred to me recently just how focused any particular activity is
regarding fitness. Walking on the level offers little training help for
walking up hills.
Rather alarmingly, I have discovered my overall fitness has deteriorated
since spending more time rock climbing than hill walking. It must be
true what they say about climber's preference for crags right next to
the car park.
Even climbing fitness depends largely on what you climb. I've been going
to a local wall to get fit for the coming season, and low level
traversing is about all you can do there. Being lazy, I stopped using my
pull up bar when I started back at the wall, and although my finger and
foot strength is much improved, I have discovered my upper body strength
has dropped off
slightly.
