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.