Walks

April 18, 2022April 18, 2022

Marathon walk around Amsterdam, Sunday 17 April 2022

It’s almost ten years ago that I first accidentally did a marathon walk through London, and looking back on my blog history and walking records in the MapMyWalk app, it’s almost four years since my last one.

It’s been a strange few years. During that walk in 2018 I came across a poster advertising a 100km walk, and I felt enthusiastic about giving that a try. But later in the year I was felled by burnout, and I put more importance on getting enough sleep instead. Between the end of 2018 and the middle of 2019 I was trying to get my head together, and shifting gears at work, to deliberately move more towards a managerial role. This included enrolling in an MSc programme, which has occupied a lot of my spare time in evenings and weekends since October 2019. Oh and family stuff. Oh and pandemic.

My sense of time has become wildly distorted. It was in May 2018 that Fiona and I went to visit the degree show at Duncan of Jordanstone college in Dundee, which feels like it was a turning point for my attitudes towards art school; and now we’re at a point where Fiona is going to be finishing school and moving to Scotland this summer.

I’ve noticed that I’m increasingly relying on tools to anchor my sense of time. I bought my iPhone X at the end of 2017. It was a top-of-the line phone at the time, and it’s still going strong. I had been looking forward to taking more photos with its high-quality camera, and being able to run all kinds of new and fancy apps that were just too slow on my old phone. One of the apps that has stood the test of time is MapMyWalk, which I’ve been using to track my walks, and have stubbornly refused to “go premium” with. All I want is an ad-free thing that will allow me to track my location and distance on a map, and save those tracks. I don’t want challenges or badges or social features. MapMyWalk is still very good at these basics, although over time it has made the premium features more prominent. It’s what I still use as my default tracker, and it’s how I checked when I did my last big walk.

On this walk I decided to pause the app when I took breaks. Inevitably, I sometimes forgot to un-pause when I set off again. The data is missing about 6km between Schellingwoude and Het Schouw.

(Annoyingly, MapMyWalk doesn’t allow for an export of time-series data in GPX format, so I have to use another app, GPX Trail Tracker, to gather data for use in geo-tagging photos from my non-location-enabled camera.)

Early in 2019 I bought a Fitbit Inspire HR with the goal of using it to track my sleep. The heart rate tracking and step tracking were incidental, and I don’t use them much. I would have liked a “smart wake” function that tries to detect “light sleep” up to half an hour or so before your alarm clock is due to go off and then buzzes you awake, but it wasn’t available on the cheap models back then. (It’s on the Charge 5 model now, which makes me wonder about an upgrade…) I occasionally also used the Fitbit app for entering my weight, which has actually been quite useful in hindsight for seeing how I’ve fluctuated over the last tree years.

Photos are a big part of being able to situate my memories in time. I’m all-in on the Apple ecosystem, and the native “Photos” app does a fine job of keeping everything in sync and backed up to the cloud, with the option to do some light editing along the way. HoudahGeo is what I use on my laptop to associate GPX tracks with camera photos, and it looks Houdah Software’s new “Photos Workbench” app is going to be a nice new evolution there. I’m slightly obsessive about keeping my photos properly geo-tagged and organised.

Recently I’ve also been tracking my blood pressure in the Apple Health app. We’ve got a BP monitor here at home, and it’s supposedly bluetooth-enabled, but it requires a dedicated app which doesn’t integrate with Apple Health, and I just don’t feel like putting effort into glueing the two together. I’ll just enter the data manually. I don’t see myself going down the full “quantified self” route, though. The Apple Health app seems like a nice idea for bringing all that health data together. It’s just a pity that none of the tools I actually use for tracking right now integrate with it, and that when I asked my doctor if she could use the data I’d been gathering there she just laughed. I’m not planning to buy an Apple Watch, because I rather enjoy only having to charge my Fitbit once a week.

So, back to the actual walk yesterday. I set out about 08:20, later than usual, because I just don’t enjoy early mornings. The first leg was 5km to the Hempont ferry to cross the Noordzeekanaal from Zaandam to Amsterdam. Then an 11km stretch south the the locks at de Nieuwe Meer. (For future walking reference, there’s a public toilet at the control station for the locks!)

House boats near the locks at Nieuwe Meer

Stopped for a bit at the locks to eat and drink, then struck out east towards the RAI. Passed Fiona’s old school on the way. Beyond the RAI, I skirted the south-east bank of the Amstel (Amstelkwartier & Overamstel), which is lovely, and where I’d never been before.

Onwards past Jaap Eden ice rink, through the Amsterdam University science park (also surprisingly nice), along the Amsterdam-Rijkanaal for a bit, then over the IJ at the Schellingwouderbrug, familiar to me as a walking crossing from the Dam-tot-Dam walk.

I stopped to eat and take care of my feet just after the Schellingwouderbrug. My left heel had blistered up, and my right heel wasn’t feeling too great. Despite taping they got much worse in the following 6km towards the ferry at Het Schouw, and my gait probably changed in response, which made my calves feel like they were constantly on the verge of cramping up. Annoyingly, I’d also forgotten to un-pause the MapMyWalk app, so I lost the fine details of that stretch. On the other hand, all it would have told me was that my pace had gone off a cliff.

The last 7km or so back through Landsmeer to Oostzaan were slow and painful. I had loved the stretches through Amsterdam (I love this city), and the legs through the peaceful countryside felt a “can we just get this over with” in comparison. Very pretty, but also much more familiar, and I was taking fewer photos along the way. I’d deliberately left my good camera at home, to remove the temptation to stop and take lots of photos along the way and lose momentum, but I can’t just not take photos at all, can I?

Got back home just after 17:00. My legs almost immediately froze up, and Abi & Fiona mocked me for not being able to stand up any more.

I see these spontaneous marathon-length walks as a casual test of my own fitness. If I can make it through a 42km walk on a weekend without prior training and planning, then I’m in “good enough” condition. I’m happy to have lost a bit of weight in the last couple of months, and that probably helps.

PS: After my black (2017) and then blue (2018) Asics Patriots shoes, I got a pair of red ones in (I think?) early 2019, and I went through the whole pandemic with them. It helped that I wasn’t spending much time walking, or out of the house in general. I loved their colour! But they were getting quite tired and worn, and I bought another pair in February. Blue again, this time. As with the earlier ones, they give my toes lots of freedom, and they’ve very breathable. The heels seem to be where I consistently end up with trouble.

June 3, 2018

100?

My walk the other week took me through the village of Zuidschermer near Alkmaar, where I walked past a sign for the “100 van Leeghwater”, a 100km walk being put on for the second time this year:

I was four and a half hours/25km into my walk at that point, feeling a bit tired and sore because my right heel had developed a blister very early. My first reaction to the sign was, “LOL no.” Walking a marathon was enough. I accidentally did a 50km walk last year, and the longest walk I ever did was a 57km walk when I was still at school. A 100km walk would be double what I’ve done recently, it would require training and preparation, and a ton more podcasts than I usually accumulate in the course of a week.

But the sign stuck with me. I looked at the website when I got back home, talked about it with Abi, with my parents when I was over with them last weekend, and with some friends in Edinburgh last week… and I’ve registered for it.

Now I just need to figure out what my training regime will look like. There are plenty of resources online that tell you how to prepare for a marathon run; there seems to be far less information on how to get ready for a 100km walk.

John runs marathons, and one of his tips was to practice running (walking) on tired legs by doing intermediate distances on two consecutive days. With that in mind I plotted out a 20km loop around Zaandam. I did it clockwise yesterday, and then anti-clockwise this morning, in just over 3 hours. My recent long-distance walks have all been one-way trips, and I’ve taken public transport or been driven back home at the end of them. That’s fine for one-offs, but for training purposes loops will be a more efficient use of my time. I figure that if I increase my loop distance by 5km each week, I can build myself up to a 50km back-to-back weekend before the walk.

That’s still only half of a standard 4-day march at Nijmegen, at which 47,000 people are taking part this year. In terms of long-distance walking challenges, there are still plenty of frontiers left for me…if I make it through this one.

May 20, 2018

Marathon walk to Schoorl, Sunday 20 May 2018

I got up early and left the house a few minutes after 06:00. The weather forecast was fine and sunny, with the temperature expected to hit 22°C in the afternoon, but at 06:00 it was misty and cool. The roads were dead quiet that time in the morning anyway, but the mist made the first few hours of the walk extra still. It wasn’t a pea-souper; just dense enough for towers and pylons to drift in and out of sight, and for wisps to gather and swirl lazily over the glass-flat canals.

View of Cargill Gerkens Cacao factory from the Willem Alexanderbrug in Zaandam

I walked north-west through Zaandam, Koog aan de Zaan, Wormerveer, along the edge of Markenbinnen, then over the polder to Alkmaar, then finally out to Schoorldam and Schoorl. I hit marathon distance in Schoorldam in 7h 31m, which is a personal best. Apart from wanting to try out my new shoes today, I also wanted to do the walk at a fast pace, just to see what kind of time I could put down. That didn’t quite work out, because I couldn’t stop myself from stopping to take a bunch of pictures along the way. I also spent the first hour stopping a lot to adjust my laces, because I just couldn’t get comfortable with the racer’s loop.

My right foot is slightly smaller than my left. Although my left foot was mostly snug with standard lacing, I could feel my right heel slipping. But when I did tie the right up more tightly, it was painful across the bridge of my foot. I could feel a blister forming on my heel by the end of the first hour, and I regretted taking a new pair of shoes out for a long walk without breaking them in first. I’ll know better next time.

Time-wise, I think I could easily cut off 10 minutes with broken-in shoes and better discipline. With more training, I could probably get my average pace up, too, and take the time down to 7 hours (about 6 km/hour). But that’s not what I’m about. I do big walks to prove to myself that I can do a slow marathon with no preparation beyond bringing enough drinks to stay hydrated; and I really enjoy taking pictures of interesting things along the way. I’m not going to force myself on joyless marches.

Starnmeerpolder — Periodic reminder that Noord-Holland is really flat…

Crow weathervane Schoorl — Large crow silhouette weathervane in Schoorl, near the N9

I messaged Abi near the end of the walk, and she drove out to Schoorl to meet me for a mid-afternoon coffee. (It was another 2.4km past Schoorldam, giving me a total distance of 44.6km for the day.) I’ve never been to Schoorl before, but maps showed several cafés in the centre. It’s right next to the coastal dunes, and they have the Netherlands’ tallest sand dune (the Klimduin) that runs right down to the village centre, which is pretty cool. A slice of apple pie was a welcome treat to finish the walk.

Martin just after finishing in Schoorl — Obligatory finish line selfie. Look at that puffy face!

May 19, 2018

Wear patterns

Because most of my long-distance walks are over tarmac and concrete, I bought a pair of Asics Patriot 8 running shoes to replace the more rugged and waterproof hiking shoes I had been using. They’re great, but even after a few months I noticed that the inside padding was starting to wear through at the edge where the heel counter meets the collar. Beneath the padding of these shoes, the heel counter is made of firm but flexible plastic, and the the wear happens right at the top. Even though it doesn’t feel like my heel is slipping, the wear pattern doesn’t lie:

According to running forums and sites, the answer seems to be that I should tie my laces with a “racer’s loop” (“heel lock lacing”), a technique that takes advantage of the “extra” lacing holes behind the standard ones.

The soles of the Asics Patriot 8 shoes are made of a softer material than my old hiking shoes, so it’s natural that they’d wear down a bit faster. Here’s what the soles look like compared to a brand new pair:

Asics Patriot 8 soles, old vs new (about 7 months)

As I’m walking rather then running, I can live with less grip from the soles, but I’d prefer it if the heel padding lasted a bit longer. But I like these shoes a lot, and so I bought a fresh new pair to replace them. Asics has a new model for this year (the Patriot 9), but apart from new colourways and an “Amplifoam” logo on the side of the sole, I can’t see much of a difference. The 8s are still readily available online, and being last year’s model, they’re cheaper too. I’m going to take them out for a spin tomorrow.

October 24, 2017October 24, 2017

Marathon walk from Oostzaan to Woerden

A couple of weeks ago I set out to do another marathon walk. I had spotted a nice-looking stretch of countryside on the map one day, and thought it would make a nice long walk. The Amsteldijk extends from the heart of Amsterdam along the Amstel river, and winds through the countryside sandwiched between Amstelveen to the west, and Amsterdam Zuidoost to the east.

From Oostzaan to Uithoorn would be in the 25-30km range. But it had been two years since my last marathon walk (Oostzaan to Maarssen), and I wanted to push myself. I found myself a Saturday with a nice weather forecast, and walked all the way to Woerden. When I plotted the route beforehand I thought it came in at around 45km. But I think I deviated from the plan a bit, and when I checked the tracking data on my phone and correlated with Google Maps, it was more like 51km. (The figure on the picture below includes the 2.5km ferry from NDSM to Centraal.)

Walking route from Oostzaan to Woerden. (The 53.7km distance includes a 2.5km ferry.)

That’s the second-longest single-day walk I’ve ever done. It was also the first long walk with my new walking shoes, which are actually running shoes. (Asics Patriot 8) Back in August I did a 20km-ish walk to Muiden in the hiking shoes I have been using for the last couple of years. As has been far too common with these shoes, I ended up with lots of blisters. I also thoroughly bruised my big toe. For far too long I’ve been using rugged all-terrain hiking boots and shoes when most of what I do is urban walking over smooth paved surfaces. I don’t need rigid soles and toe protection against falling rocks. I need a soft breathable upper and good shock absorption.

So: running shoes. When I first tried them, they felt quite strange. I can stretch my toes sideways and the shoe stretches with them! If there’s a breeze, I can feel the wind reach in and actually cool the top of my feet! I had broken them in with a couple of weeks of daily use, but this was their first serious outing. They worked great! When I stopped for a break in Uithoorn and took off the shoes to air my toes out, my feet were still fine. I did develop blisters right towards the end of the walk. I can’t blame the shoes for that, though. The stretch of road from Uithoorn along Kromme Mijdrecht via De Hoef to Woerdense Verlaat is a windy single-track road for cars. There isn’t a separate bike or walking path, so I had to step off the road onto the uneven verge quite a bit. Along with increasing tiredness, I think this messed with my gait. When I start to walk unevenly, I get blisters. The last 5-6km stretch from Zegveld to Woerden Station was a bit painful, but I made it anyway.

I took pictures along the way, and dropped them into the non-social network account I sometimes use for this. Here are some good ones!

On the NDSM ferry, looking south to new construction

The rowing coaches cycle along the dyke, keeping pace with the rowers, and shouting instructions at them through megaphones

Startled I made it this far. Still sucking at selfies.

December 11, 2016

Aberdeen walk, Sunday 2 December 2016

When I met up with Dave last Saturday evening, we spent some time thinking about the last time we had met up. We weren’t able to put a date or even a year on it, but we reckoned it must have been 2006 or 2007. I had been up in Aberdeen with Alex, probably visiting Grandma McLean, and Dave came to meet us at the Inversnecky Cafe on the Esplanade. Remembering the Inversnecky planed an idea in my head. Instead of having a lazy morning with maybe a bit of shopping the following morning, I got up in reasonable time and went out for a walk instead.

My first stop was a beautiful piece of graffiti I had spotted from my hotel window. It covers the maintenance door of the multi-storey car park on Denburn Road.

I didn’t go down into the harbour, but walked along the A956 and up Beach Boulevard to the Esplanade, where I had a lovely full Scottish breakfast at the Inversnecky and read my book. I noticed the joke on the chalkboard outside (“I bought my wife a new fridge for Christmas. I can’t wait to see her face light up when she opens it”), but I hadn’t realized that the café has become a social media phenomenon as a result.

I walked along the Esplanade for a bit, then cut down past Pittodrie and along Golf Road to the flat where my grandparents Sutherland used to live.

The beach erosion defenses look like colossal whale tails

Along School Road, and back to Union Street via King Street. Not a super long walk, but enough to give me a blast of Aberdeen memories. There is something about the granite buildings with their occasional towers and crenellations that make the old town feel slightly out of time. The granite is so solid and constant that old and new buildings look like they are of the same age. This might be what a city would look like if a middle-age fortress mentality had persisted into the twentieth century.

The perenially uneven white-on-black Aberdeen street name signs charm me

Aberdeen Central Fire Brigade Station. Now student housing.