Two weeks today (all being well) I will be walking up the northern slopes of the Pennine range on the first day of my Pennine Way (North to South) walk. The first day involves around 4,000 feet of ascent, and a smidge under 16 miles of distance. I have to admit to feeling somewhat nervous about this now, although that’s just one of a stew of emotions roiling around inside me. As well as the apprehension, the mix also includes anticipation and excitement, but these emotions, which have been in the forefront of my mind for the last few months, seem to have been overwhelmed in the last week or two. The negative emotions stretched out a convincing lead yesterday, when a familiar and dreaded pain flared up in my left foot.
I think my nerves stem from the feeling that I’ve not prepared for this walk in the way I usually would. By this time in the year, I normally have several hill walks under my belt, at least three or four back-to-back hill walks completed over weekends away in the van, and sometimes I will have been lucky enough to have a three-day walk completed. These usually give me confidence in my hill fitness, and I can unconsciously relax and enjoy the anticipation and excitement of another long-distance walk. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, I’ve only done three or four, mostly low level, and relatively short hill walks. The weather has been dreadful of course, good weekends have been rare and it’s difficult to motivate myself to spend a wet weekend in the van. Chris, my usual walking companion, who would encourage and motivate, has had other commitments – so I am where I am, feeling a little under-prepared and hence nervous about the challenge ahead.
I normally train for the toughest day of an upcoming trail, and I like to have completed at least one training walk that’s somewhat similar to that day. I’ve done nothing close to the first day of the Pennine Way, which is probably the most demanding of the nine days I have planned for the first section of the walk.
I’ve not been completely sedentary of course, in fact I’ve done more miles on my local ‘dog walks’ this year, than I’ve ever done before. I’ve been hammering out the local miles, in the rain, snow, wind and hail, and even in the occasional bit of sunshine. I’ve worn out one set of boots, I’m halfway through a second pair, and I’ve managed around 600, albeit mostly flat, miles. I must have included some height gain however, because my Garmin tells me I’ve almost finished climbing Everest and I’m over a quarter of the way through the Appalachian Trail – I started both those challenges on 22nd January!
Speaking of boots – I sort of had a plan for this year’s long path, and that plan is now up in the air, and I have a real dilemma on my hands. I’ve had a rough time with boots over the past two or three years and not really been able to settle on one specific model. Ideally I’d have loved to have committed to the Salomon X-Ultra 04 Mid Wide – they are beautifully comfortable, have a protective sole, and are quite water protective. However, the latest version of the boot has a ridiculously soft sole and I’d worn my last pair down quite substantially in just 150 miles. Combine this with a change in policy by Salomon, to not sell through distributors, resulting in the boots becoming much more expensive, and I decided that £140 for only a couple of hundred miles was just not value for money.
At the time my second pair of XU4 boots was expiring, I found my next favourite pair of boots on sale on a German website. I also love/hate the Inov-8 Roclite 345 GTX – they are also wonderfully comfortable and are normally waterproof for the first hundred miles or so. Their main problem is the soles offer very little protection from stony tracks and I’d had my feet pummelled on the Scottish trails I’d used them on over the last couple of years. However, they were so cheap on this website that I bought three pairs. My plan was to use the 345s for all my local walks and to save what remained on the sole of the XU4s for my Pennine Way.
I then found a pair of the XU4s on another website, some of the last retailer stock in the wild, in my size and wide width for a really nice price, so I snapped them up. I decided to keep these new boots in the box and use them for the Pennine Way. I loved the old XU4s so much I kept wearing them on local walks – I used them so much in fact that I wore the heels completely down – I could see the material beneath the rubber sole showing through before I finally consigned them to the bin.
I then switched to the 345s and I’ve done over 400 miles in the first pair of them. These new 345s have proved to be anything but waterproof though – they’ve let water in from day one! I got soaked feet walking across through wet grass on their first outing. I even broke out the second pair of the three pairs I bought and they did the same thing. Unfortunately, they’d been sat in my cupboard for too long to return them as faulty, so I’m stuck with them. They are fine as long as I don’t get them wet, otherwise I just squelch along in wet feet all day.
On Thursday I decided to give the new XU4s a test – I can’t use them for the first time on the Pennine Way – they don’t need to be broken in of course, but I do need to introduce them to my feet for a couple of walks before-hand. I walked about 10 miles in them, on one of my longer local walks and although they felt different, they were mostly fine. Until yesterday morning that was. I woke up to a quite painful left foot. Yes, I know, it’s only taken about a thousand words, but we’ve finally got to the point of this post!
The pain is familiar and fills me with dread. I’ve experienced it twice before, and both times have resulted in multiple weeks of enforced rest, which of course would spell disaster right now. The pain is indicative of damage to a metatarsal bone in my foot. In 2019 I fractured the fifth metatarsal in my right foot – it came right out of the blue, on the first day of a multi-day walk, and forced me to cancel the rest of the trip. Then again in early 2021, on the same foot, after 90 consecutive training walks – I’d probably worked it too hard trying to get fit for another multi-day walk. This year I’ve deliberately been taking rest days between training walks. I tend to walk about 5 days of the week, never doing more than 3 consecutive days. My goal is 70,000 steps a week, rather than 10,000 steps a day – which I’ve managed every week this year apart from one. Until yesterday it had been working well and I’d been feeling quietly confident, albeit slightly nervous that I’d not been doing enough hills.
My main concern is that it was the 10 miles in the XU4s that caused the pain in my foot. I’d been looking forward to walking the Pennine Way in what I consider to be the ‘perfect’ boot, but now I have to reevaluate that. I’ll give the foot a rest for a few days and see if the pain subsides. If it does, it may well just be bruising caused by the new boots, which will mean I have a difficult decision to make. Do I do another 10-mile test walk in them to see if they are the issue, and risk exacerbating the situation? I don’t think I can risk using them on the Pennine Way without giving them another test. In which case, do I set out in the 345s – boots I know will give me wet feet and sore soles when I’m walking on anything other than grass?
My gut feel at this point is ‘better the devil you know’ and I’ll probably break out the third pair of 345s and hope their waterproofing is better than the other two pairs! My next post will probably be at the end of day one, by which time we’ll know whether I made the right call – wish me luck!
16 thoughts on “Pre-walk Nerves”
My ‘training’ for long distance walks was 6 mile local (flat terrain) walks on a daily basis.
Although this doesn’t correlate to the 16 mile per day average of my long distance walks, it appeared to be enough. I tended to suffer mental fatigue on LDWs, rather than physical. Sometimes it would be so bad I could not navigate with map and compass. After getting lost a few times, I gave up LDW.
I have the memories though.
I do hope you get the foot/boot issue sorted out Stuart before you start the slog up to White Law and beyond. Having had foot surgery in late January and not enough conditioning time before starting the TGOC (about the same time you start your PW walk), I too have the pre-walk jitters. Let’s hope it’s just that. Fingers (toes?) crossed for your journey. Tim
The foot pain has receded thankfully and I’m thinking clearly again, because what the heck was I thinking! Changing boots a few days before the Pennine Way? Old age getting to me I guess! My plan is to use the high route to White Law, and also tentatively planning on diverting to the Cheviot – but will see how my legs and lungs feel after the brutal climb up to Auchope Cairn! Good luck on the TGO and let’s hope the weather does us both a favour!
It seems you’re not the only one having issues with the Salomons! Some damning reviews here:
https://www.gooutdoors.co.uk/16203511/salomon-mens-x-ultra-4-mid-gore-tex-walking-boots-16203511
Wow! That’s a horror show! Having had a pair of XU4s already, and been happy with them, it never occurred to me to check reviews – it also never crossed my mind that a newer version of the same boot would have a different sole composition. When the soles of my second pair wore down within 150 miles, I actually complained to Salomon. Their response was “We are really sorry for the inconvenience caused but that version of the X-Ultra features a softer outsole compound in order to provide secure and sticky grip when going hiking on wet and slippery terrains, as it is a technical hiking model.” This seemed to be enough to reject my complaint.
As an experienced long distance walker, I think your choice of footwear is somewhat strange. Boots (like bicycle saddles) are a very personal thing, so it is not appropriate to make recommendations. One man’s carpet slippers are another’s clogs. All I would say is leather rather than fabric, and soles rigid enough to offer protection on the technical terrain. Heavier, yes, but you need to factor that into the training. Other than that, Derek’s suggestion of Sealskinz socks is worth a try.
Good luck with the walk, and I look forward to reading about it in due course.
Every boot decision I’ve made over the past 10 years seems to have included one or more compromises – I envy the folk that can buy a pair of boots and get 10 years of comfort and reliability out of them, but it’s never happened for me. You find a reasonable pair of boots and then 12 months later, when they’ve done 800 miles and you come to buy them again, they’ve been discontinued, or changed. I hate heavy boots and I’m happy to make some compromises to go light. I, probably rather foolishly, expected my feet to be able to switch easily from Inov-8 to Salomon – you live and learn I guess.
It’s been so long now since I last bought boots that I’m tempted to ask, what constitutes a heavy boot nowadays? I’ve weighed my Karrimor KSS boots (which I’m still using after 10 years or so – and they’re 967g per boot/1934g per pair). Wouldn’t you say the Salomons are a classic example of being lightweight – in every sense? Very much a case of comfort over durability.
You’re a lucky guy Stu! The Salomons weight 946g the pair and the Inov-8s weigh 850g the pair – both for size 11. I absolutely agree that using lightweight footwear means durability is sacrificed for comfort, and as much as I complain that boots don’t last long enough, I still keep buying them! There’s a price point at which the durability issue isn’t really an issue, it just seems that I keep paying more per mile for my comfort. There’s a modern consumer term for the decline in online services, which can now be applied to pretty much any product, it’s called enshitification. I hope the KSSs last you another 10 years, because I’m willing to bet my mortgage, that when you come to replace them the alternatives will not be anywhere near as good!
Stuart, your mortgage is safe! It seems that Karrimor no longer make the KSS boots. I’ve checked their KSBs inshore, which look very similar, but weight about half as much, which tells me they are also going to be lightweight in every sense. Entshitification, indeed – almost as scandalous as Apple’s forced obsolescence, but that’s another story! Good luck with the PW of course. It’s been a few days since you started this thread, so hope that your foot is improving. Rgds
Foot pain subsided after 4 days rest, and I’ve done three 7-mile walks in the Salomons just to confirm it’s not the boots that caused the problem. However, I’ve decided to walk in the Roclite 345s as these are what I’ve been wearing for the last few months and it seems crazy to change that a couple of days before such a big walk. Not sure what I was thinking!
I’ve used all makes of boots on Pennie Way, Cambrian Way etc. The best for me by a long way Lowa Renegades. Hope this helps.
Best foot forward for your Pennine Way walk Stuart. I look forward to reading your updates. If you need a bed for a
night when you are on County Durham let me know.
Thanks Jonathan – beds are all sorted 🙂 I’m long past the point where I’d consider camping a long distance path!
Not the best of times to have foot issue but hopefully will clear up.
Do you have a pair of sealskin socks? They are said to be waterproof and you have time to test them out.
Goof luck
Not sure if they’ve changed – but I’ve had Sealskinz in the past and they are quite thick due to having three layers, so you tend to need a 1/2 size extra in the boots, which I don’t have. Maybe I need to buy some and test them – with the option to return them if they fill the boot out too much.