Girl on a Hike.... Part 2

Today's post is going to be slightly different. For a start, there isn't really a train in sight. Those of you who've been following me for a while may remember that, back in the summer, I shared on twitter that I have signed up to take part in the London Marathon Walk in September of this year, raising money for Girlguiding, and asked whether people would be interested in hearing about my training journey, and the overwhelming majority of those who responded said that they would. And so, Girl on a Hike was born. I did an introductory post in September last year explaining the basics, at the end of which I said that I was planning on doing my first decent length walk (5 ish miles) in the next few weeks. And then life took an interesting turn. I was offered a job in a school locally to where I live. I always try run my blog posts a couple of weeks behind my actual trip to ensure that if I suddenly wasn't able to travel I wouldn't run out of content. Which meant that, around 10 days after I posted the introductory post to the Girl on a Hike series, when I was offered the job, the story of my first walk hadn't been written up, let alone posted. They wanted me to start less than 2 weeks after being offered the job, which meant that life was very hectic in getting ready and settling in, however I did some trips over the autumn, which will be keeping the blog going all through lockdown 3. But I felt that the story of this walk needed to be shared, if nothing else for a bit of amusement.

So, the route. There's a bit of a story behind this. Back in 2017, I was meant to be participating in a "Walk the London Bridges" event with my guide unit, which got cancelled with only a few days to spare. And since then, I'd always wanted to do it. Of course,  what with being at university in the midlands, that wasn't convenient. But then I signed up for the marathon walk and decided it was a good place to start with the training. Now, one thing to understand is, like how you wouldn't run 100m and a marathon at the same speed, you wouldn't walk them. The time estimate for the event itself is around 9-10 hours, including refreshment stops, so I'm aiming for just over 3 miles per hour as a sustainable pace. The route was relatively simple: starting at Westminster tube station, walk across Westminster bridge before turning left and walking the entire way to Tower Hill tube station, crossing every road bridge (plus the millennium footbridge) that I found, a total of 8 bridges. The first couple of bridges passed relatively easily, and I was keeping relatively to time. But then I got to Waterloo bridge and it all went wrong. 

How much had I eaten that morning? Not enough. What food did I have on me? Nothing. It was also rather warm. I was exhausted already, but I wasn't giving up. I decided to look for a shop to buy food. The first place I came to was a Waitrose, but I could see both a Sainsbury's and tesco on the other side of my next bridge. I decided to push on. I don't know why. I suppose it helped me build my resilience, which will help in the future training walks of up to 20 miles. I must admit that I don't really remember walking across Blackfriars bridge, I just remember the air conditioning of the Sainsbury's hitting me as I forced myself in to buy food. I thought smart - what was going to help me? I picked up a couple of sports drinks to help rehydrate me, along with some sweets to get my blood sugar up quickly, because I was starting to worry that I was going to pass out if I wasn't careful. Plus I picked up a couple of sausage rolls and some crisps as "lunch". I also got some water to carry with me, but stopped outside the shop to eat some sugar and drink one of my sports drinks before I carried on to the millennium bridge. It was when I got to the south bank of the Thames that I felt a bit better. Not fantastic, but I didn't feel so faint any more. And, of course, I was over halfway there now. 

The next section of the walk was uneventful, until I decided that I really needed the toilet. I was on London bridge, and was about to walk past the station of the same name, so stopped in there, although that took me longer than it should have done because I got rather lost in the one way system that had been introduced due to covid. But, from there, I was on the final stretch. As I crossed tower bridge I was exhausted yet relieved. I did semi crawl onto the underground from tower hill back to blackfriars, where I boarded a thameslink train. I still felt quite weak physically, so alighted at London Bridge to get food before boarding a train home and, after eating a (relatively substantial) late lunch on the train home I felt a lot better. So, what did I learn?

Well, the main thing is that I'll burn more calories than I think. My walk tracker app estimated I'd burned 1100 ish calories in that walk, and of course the marathon walk will be more than 5 times  that distance, and so I need to fuel up adequately, both in the days before and on the day itself, but at least I know that before I start training properly later this year.

That's all for today,  but next week we are back on the trains with details of a couple of my London trips from September.