Instead of ascending a mountain yesterday, the girls and I took to our local streets and did two seven-mile loop hikes close to our home. Both girls carried fully loaded backpacks that weighed more or less the same as the loaded backpacks we'll take on the Camino (we have not yet settled on specific Camino backpacks or brands of gear). During our hike, it snowed, rained, and hailed. In other words, we experienced typical New England weather.
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| Ready to roll |
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| Catching snowflakes with our faces |
The girls and I are used to hiking 10-18 miles at a time over mountains. That feels natural to us, and our muscles have adapted to that kind of exertion. Road walking is very different. There are no rocks or roots to deal with, and the elevation gain isn't as severe. We definitely moved faster on the road than we do on the trails -- it took us only six hours to hike the fourteen miles yesterday, and we were walking at a very casual pace. However, our feet and calves were quite sore at the end of the day; hard asphalt and concrete are unkind to legs! We'll have to make sure we stretch from time to time during our next long-distance road walk.
