Following yellow arrows!

Last weekend we wanted to go on longer walk, and ended up doing part of first stage of the Camino Português that starts in Lisbon. It's a trail that we already knew well, with no elevations and barely no tarmac, mostly dirt roads. That means we we're actually following yellow arrows! So that was kind of a mental preparation for the real deal!

We're already walking towards Santiago! 

Detail of the above picture.

We walked about 25km. It was a good practice walk, I used walking poles and I prepared my feet as I'll do on the Camino: proper socks, taped toes and lots of vaseline. We made one stop halfway through to have a rest and I aired my feet, rubbed them and dried them out. Would have smeared vaseline again, if I had it with me at the time, but I forgot it at home. On the other hand, Luís prefers to do it as we have always done our walking: no breaks (not even to eat), not to much worries about his feet or anything else, really. But The Way won't be a ordinary walk, so he better get used to the pace!

Conclusions: I hated the socks we bought. Although I have bought the same size I usually buy, and the same brand, they are far too big on my feet and feel too stretchy. I felt that if I had walked an extra 5km I would have got blisters for sure. Therefore, note to myself: to buy new and different socks next time.

Overall we felt very tired at the end of the day, but the truth is that we walked at a very fast pace (we did it in about 4h30min, mean speed of 5.5km/h), but no major issues on the next day, although my feet felt kind of tender; I would like to try and walk slower next time, but I know this is the pace we're used to walk and I don't think we'll slow down until we have full packs on our backs. Next time maybe we'll tackle some nearby elevations to get our leg muscles into the equation.

One last thing: on our way back, we stopped at a little café we know. I left the walking poles outside, and after entering and ordering a bottle of cold water, the owners looked at our day packs and asked if we were walking to Santiago! We really feel like pilgrims now. :)

Oh no, feet problems!

As part of our training (well, we actually did this even before deciding to go and walk the camino) we've been doing regular walks of 8-11km during the week (about 2-3 per week), and some a bit longer on weekends (around 15km), and everything's been fine regarding my feet and the newly acquired boots.

The problem arrived a couple of weeks ago, when we decided to walk about 25km from Paço de Arcos (where we live) to Cascais and back. We weren't carrying any packs, but we walked mostly on hard surfaces (paved walkways). I started feeling some pressure on my little toe midway, but didn't pay much attention to it. I'm used to get calluses and even blisters on both my little toes, as they stuck out a little bit and almost every piece of footwear I wore so far have a pressure point at this particular spot.

But after having walked the 25km my pinkies really hurt! I got a bit scared at this point, but I thought that maybe it would be a matter of breaking in the boots and the problem would be resolved.

Well, the next day we started another 11km weakly walk and I couldn't manage to walk past 8km. My little toes were hurting like hell. It even hurt when slipping my feet under the bed covers. So it was time to look for a solution to this haunting problem.

Browsing through the forums I found that some people with sensitive little toes used medical tape (Mefix, Medipore) to tape the little toe to the one next to it, and it seemed like a good idea. Also I decided to use leather conditioner on my boots to get them a little softer, and then applied some pressure on the spot that hurt me from the inside of the boot with an bottle of sun blocker (it was in this case the handiest thing to fit the purpose) and left it there for a couple of hours on each boot, while drying after conditioning/waxing.

For the time being, it seems to have worked! Last week we made a couple of 15km walks and everything went fine. By the way, Luís also bought his pair of Lowa's last weekend! So let's see how things go when we increase the distance.