I used to play about 5 days a week, 2 hours per session. Unfortunately, due to back problem, I had to stop few years ago. As my sport time reduced, I had to find other ways to do some exercise. Going to gym was always boring to me. Nevertheless I tried again, joined membership of nearby club. After a month or two, I stopped. Tried some other exercises, Pilates, yoga, home exercises etc. but, soon I got bored of them. One fine day, I decided to take a walk as exercise. I walked 6 km on first day. It felt good and I thought to continue regularly. However, I did not realize that all those sports never trained my walking muscles. After 4th walk, when I came home, I felt pain in bottom of my feet. The arc muscles were in pain. In an hour it reached to the level that it was hard to even keep it down. I managed through the office somehow and went to emergency. Doctor asked me what you did differently. I told him that I went for this walk. He asked me with a surprise, why? I was double surprised, why not? It is just 1 hour walk!! Anyways, I learned my lesson that all muscles are different and one need to develop slowly. Since then, I have been walking on and off.
Although I have been walking, but it was always a fun relaxed walk. People who know me, knows that I walk really slow and sometimes it could be boring for partner :). I think maximum I did was 90 min or so. Recently, I changed; I went for a walk that lasted more than 2 hours. It happened in Pisak. After that, I had taken many 2 hour walks; mostly in the morning with a break in a park do some exercises. As some kind of bread-crumb path, I happened to read somebody’s travelog. In one of those she went for a 7 day walk. It immediately attracted my attention and I started to think about how to do that. I made some random plan, but soon to realize that I need to build up to that. So, I aligned with a friend of mine for a 1 day walk; destination was lake Vrana.
We planned to start early in the morning to use some cool time before the Sun starts to smile at us. Thanks to my laziness, we started only by 0630. We took a bus to our starting point, Sukosan. It was only a 10 min bus drive. Landscape looked beautiful in the morning. We went off the main road to take walk through villages and avoid traffic. Start was good. I noticed some people running on the roads. Few cars also crossed. I realized that soon the thought, how many kms have I walked?, started to rose in my mind. I knew that it is not even an hour, but it was unstoppable. How many kms, speed, pace, distance? The path went through fields and we came across fruit plantations. Figs, grapes, blackberry were common among others. We stopped at some place to take a bunch of grapes and that stopped thoughts about kms also. We reached Debeljak, a small town, to have our breakfast. Milk, cheese and bread were really tasty as we sat to eat in the public park. We continued our journey through Donje Rastanje to Sikovo. We stopped at a church before Sikovo for rest. Sun was higher and was no longer making beautiful colors in the sky. By the time we crossed Sikovo, my partner started to feel the heat and tiredness. Clothing had to be adjusted to ensure than Sun does not hit the head directly. Now we were off the road and without water. Soon we found a Church to rest; setup in nice landscape with water. We took some rest, refilled our water and continued. However, now the tiredness was no longer in linear relationship with distance covered. Bottom of the feet started to hurt. My partner needed to rest and have coffee, but we were still far from any place to have coffee. We checked the map and found Biograd is the place. It was still about 7-8 kms to cover. We reached the place after few small stops. By now, any wrong step to search for coffee place seemed a big risk. As we continued we were welcomed by chickens and ducks. After some walk and thanks to road-side fruit vendor, we found a cafe bar. We had coffee, massaged our feet, stretched the body and relaxed for some time. We started our walk again and soon lake was visible. We walked to lake and after little hit and trial, found lake side restaurant. It was already 1700. We had some food and drinks and sat in the grass for some time. Once we relaxed enough, we went to the town of Pakostane for dinner and take the bus back. After a nice dinner, we reached the main road to wait for our bus at 2130 as suggested by the information center. However, by 2200 there was no sign of any bus. No choice but to hitch-hike now. After 10-15 min of trying finally a kind man stopped his vehicle to take us to Zadar. We reached home around 2300. A very interesting day and experience.
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| Lake Vrana |
This day was not just interesting from walking and exercising perspective. It also gave few lessons and insights about myself. Lessons learned
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| When things gets out of focus |
- It is more about metal perseverance than physical.
- Build up and train before you take the big leap; even if the activity seems like a simple one. In this case reducing initial crazy target of 7 days to 1 day.
- Body does not work in linear equation. If I can do 5 km easily in 1 hour, it does not mean that 10 km is easy in 2 or 2.5 hours.
- Every body is different and behaves different in different conditions. I normally walk slow, but I found that this helped me in the day long walk in contrast to my usual fast paced partner.
- Check the weather and your interaction with it. Sun and rain can have effect on the journey and reduce the walking throughput substantially.
- Carry only what you need. I carried some extra clothes, in case needed. I never used them and carried heavy bag all the way. In my defense, I think for first attempt it was not bad.
- Plan, but be flexible. Original idea was to cover around 50 kms. We could not do it, but it it was still fun-filled exciting day. But we still managed to walk total 35 kms
I went for this walk, but somewhere I had this hidden feeling that it is crazy thing. However, as I walked through the day, that feeling went away slowly and by the end of the day, it was dead and out. I saw a different side of the country, new landscape, farm lands, scenery that contained other trees than the famous pine trees. Although it was tiring at times, but throughout the distance it felt like something positive is increasing and made me joyful. Probably it was this feeling that kept me going through the whole distance By the end of the day, when we walked last couple of kms to home, I was feeling so light, so energetic that I actually wanted to run last km or so. (Of course I did not do that 🙂 ). I learned about local places, plants areas, which I would have never came across otherwise.
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| Wrong usage of app gives wrong data, but map is still valid |
Well it was not all just rosy and beautiful. Next day while I only felt a little stress in my back, to our horror my partner had fever due to Sun; exposed skin was radiating heat allover. This took about 4 days to recover. But, thankfully no major damage happened and it was all fine again.
Everybody is different and finds joy in different things. For me this walk was beautiful and filled me with joy and smiles. Smile, that I could share with my walking partner, people on the road and on cafes or restaurants. If you also find something that makes you smile then do it and make sure you share it with others too. One day this will come back, when you might need it.
Love
Arundeep
A group of Muslim religious leaders once got together and, having nothing better to do that day, began to talk on trivial matters. One of them asked:
“During a funeral procession, should one walk on the right side of the coffin or on the left?”
Immediately, the group was divided by a difference of opinion. Half said that they would walk on the right side, while the other half maintained that they would walk on the left side. Finally, they decided to go to Mulla Nasrudin and ask for his religious proclamation. Mulla listened carefully and then said laughingly:
“It does not matter, just as long as you are not on the inside.”