Last week’s struggles (!)

So what did I get up to?

On MONDAY evening, I went with Friend Cathy to a Nordic walking group – sadly there were only the two of us, plus the leader, so she doesn’t think she’ll carry the group on. It’s a shame, as it was at a good time: between 6.30 & 7.30, so not too late to have dinner afterwards. There is a group on Monday mornings, which I might try to get to when I’m not working.

I did find there was more to it than “walking with poles” and Laure, the leader, was less than complimentary about my “body conciousness”. However with arthritis in both  knees, a wobbly right ankle and foot, plus a crumbling disc or two, it doesn’t matter how concious I am of my body, I know that it hurts from time to time! She suggested I went to her exercise class on Monday evening, but I can’t see me keeping it up TBH. So I won’t.

So, on Monday I did 1 hours Nordic walking.

WEDNESDAY: 2 km round the Port in Roanne. From this aerial shot, you can see my route

Start at the car park in the top left hand side of the picture, down the right of the basin, over the footbridge (1 km) then down the other side, between the canal and the river. A little bit extra at the end to make it up to 2 km. There! Done at a pace of 11.55 mins/km. Not too shabby. But not too quick, either.

I know I should have gone for a walk on either Thursday or Friday, as both days I was only working half day, but somehow I just couldn’t be arsed.

On Saturday it was lovely weather outside – inside the house it was cold. The house, which is old & stone, has taken on its winter chill, and the warm sun outside wasn’t making much impact, so I thought I should ghet out into the sun. I borrowed Mr FD’s walking poles, (a little too tall for me, and jammed into their height. I couldn’t twist the mechanism to change the height.) and headed out.

I completed 4.35 km, and although my pace is down on Map My Walk as 12.58 minutes/km, I reckon I can take about 1 minute off that, for pauses made when taking off my jumper (hot!!), getting tangled in my poles, stopping for a breath and forgetting to press “Pause Workout” and so on. Even so, 11.58 isn’t great, but with the poles I felt I’d had more of a workout than without them. They do also mean I seem to walk faster – though that may not be the case!

The only problem is that, due to being shaky on my balance, I do have to watch the ground constantly, when I’m walking off road, which means I don’t get to look at the countryside. Which is a bit sad.

I thought about going out on Sunday too, but got very involved in drawing Celtic knots – fascinating work! – so didn’t.

Piddling with rain today, so I’m not going out in that, and working all tomorrow. However, a cancelled lesson on Wednesday means that I have time for a longer walk. That will be the one I did the Wednesday before last, round the Gravel pits

You can’t quite see it all on this photo, as the route goes round the lower lake (bottom right hand corner) then up between the river & the lake, to where you see the first tree lined path splitting the lakes. Past the horses in the fields, and the house/visitor centre (R-H side of pic) and back to the car. 3.28 km, which I did last time at 11.53 min/km. Let’s see if I can shave a couple of seconds off that, shall we?!