10000 Steps: Day 26 – Back to walking!

I woke up at 5:30 am and had a shower and got ready to walk to meet my son at my ex wife’s new flat to walk with him to school as he wasn’t sure of the best way to walk. The knee felt really good after an initial period of adjustment as I was still walking weirdly to favour the left heel that was split and hurting last week! I have a feeling that walking with the split heel was the reason that my knee started hurting in the first place as I was really changing my gait to not feel the pain even though it was not hurting today as it has healed!

Once I had fixed that I and I was walking normally I was pain free and walking normally again! I di however forget to start Strava when I left home so I walked for about 5 minutes before I remembered so I walked father than the image below shows but its not too important as it was just a rough guide to highlight the route anyway! I left a little later than usual but still got to their house early so had to wait while my son ate his breakfast and finished getting ready then we set off to his school. When we got to town my son saw a couple of kids from his year so he told me to go a different way and let him walk on his own so I did! To be honest I was quite glad as I didn’t have to walk up the really steep hill to his school and instead walked home along the river 🙂

By the time I got home I was on 10895 steps which is pretty good and meant that I had reached my 10000 Steps target before 8am. I then ate breakfast and went back to bed as I was freezing cold and a bit tired from getting up early.

I am really please how good the knee felt today after a couple of days of rest and I am hoping that I can keep walking for the rest of the week without any further flare ups! I have to be healthy for Sunday as it is the first team meet up so I’m pretty excited at that and really want to be able to ride as its gonna be fun!

I am going to stay off of the bike until the team day to reduce my chances of getting hurt again!

When I got up I started organizing the house ready to go back on shift tomorrow night as I hate starting shifts with a messy house as after 4 days on shift the house gets in a really bad state and it stresses me out!  I also wanted to make the most of my son not being here as he is amazing at making a mess, which is not good as I am already a bit disorganized and messy (although I am slowly getting better!) so the house gets really bad!

I wore my new jacket and new compression shorts that I bought from Sports Direct that arrived Saturday. Both fitted really well and are super comfortable although my son says that I look like a chav in the jacket but I’m not bothered as it is literally for walking in anyway and my old BQR jacket is starting to fall apart after 3 years or more of heavy use and it is not as waterproof as it used to be! Hopefully the Nike jacket lasts as well as the BQR one has. The BQR jacket will now be exclusively by BMX race jacket so it is not finished with just yet!

I also got the notification that my stretching aids arrive today instead of tomorrow so I can start with the stretching a day early 🙂 hopefully this will mean that I will be in better shape for the weekend!

I have been looking at my steps totals for the month and at the moment it is looking like I will have actually averaged over 10000 steps a day even though I have missed 2 days due to the injuries. With 4 Days left I have currently completed 302659 which equates to an average of 11641 steps per day for the past 26 days so well over my 10000 step goal!

So as long I walk at least 10000 steps for the next 4 days I will average at least 11422 steps per day for the month of April which is a resounding success and I will class it as the challenge completed! This is especially true as the only 2 days off were due to a knee injury and that there were at least 4 days that I could have easily not made the 10000 step total but I pressed on and did it even though I was really tired and hurting!

More positives this month are that I have discovered the vivobarefoot shoes and also the Injinji running ghost socks which have totally cleared up my shin splints and foot issues that were plaguing me in the first couple of weeks walking in conventional walking shoes and normal sports socks!

I have been so amazed at the results from walking almost every day this month from losing almost 2kgs without changing my diet at all (this will be a future goal for sure!), to improving my asthma so dramatically that I have forgotten to bring my inhaler on walks a number of times in the past week and not needed it at all, Improvements in my body composition (apart from my belly and love handles 🤦‍♂️) to most importantly a dramatic improvement in my overall fitness that has dramatically improved my fitness in daily life and on the BMX even though I haven’t been riding it very much!

I have been thinking about how to challenge myself over the next few month and at first I though about increasing the number of steps I do a day but then I thought about by training history and my pattern of training a lot in the first months, getting results and then and then over training, burning out and getting injured in the second or third month so that I have to stop training for a month or 2 and I loose all gains and put more weight on! So,  I have decided to keep the same level of intensity (10000 steps) and work on being consistent for the next 3 months instead!

I intend to try and walk 10000 steps a day in May, June and July or at least average 10000 steps a day each month like I did this month as there are bound to be days when I am too hurt to walk! I am also going to set a new goal of stretching for at least 10 minutes a day for the same time frame to try and increase my flexibility in my back, hamstrings and ankles specifically and hopefully reduce the number of injuries that I have and also improve my performance on the BMX as the season starts at the end of next month so I am going to have to add some BMX training too but not ride too much so I do not get burnt out before the first race. Starting next week I am going to try and fit 2 sprint training sessions in a week plus riding gates sessions at Bristol and Bath on weekends where I am able to do it (not many as my weekend shifts will be coming around starting this week 🤦‍♂️ I have found that sprints are the best off track training that I have done so I think doing them a couple of days a week is a great idea as it really improves the first straight which over the last year or so has been getting worse and at National level is really obvious as I come out of the gate with everyone else but by the time we get to the first jump I am at the back of the field. I think a couple of months of sprints will sort this out and I feel after this months walking I am physically ready to complete a sprint session without injuring myself, which I was not this time last month!

This years BMX goals are to try and get in the the top 20 nationally if possible and to try and gain experience that I am severely lacking in from mainly racing regionals for the past 4 or so years! Regionally I am literally going to do the minimum of 2 races to qualify for the brits in Leicester and then try and make the semi at the brits as the only brits I have done I crashed in the last practice before the start of the motos so I didn’t even make it to ride even one moto!

I am not really bothered about Regional rankings as they mean nothing as the age groups are mixed and therefore we have numbers according to age group position so there is literally no point trying to get a SW1 ranking as I will still have to race with a number in the 20’s due to being old AF and only the 17+ number 1 gets to ride with the number 1 plate. I feel like it makes more sense to race as little as possible this year to reduce the risk of injury and also focus more on Nationals as they will be where I will get the most experience. This will also mean that I can start saving money to be in a way better place financially next season so that I can try and race ALL national races next year! So this year I am going to do the 2 closest nationals (Gosport and Cyclopark), 2 Regionals to qualify for the brits (Bristol and Exeter are looking the best for now) and then the Brits at the end of August! This is compared to doing 4 rounds of Nationals (Gosport, Cyclopark, Scotland and Manchester), 10 Regionals and the brits so I have basically saved a bunch of money on race fees, travel and hotels already!

The goal for next season is to try race a full season with the goal of finishing in a position to qualify to ride for the UK in 2023 maybe.

By the end of the day I had walked another 4607 steps to take my daily total to a whopping 15502 steps today!