Walking, walking

I'm used to walking at a pace that competes with the best of them. I guess that's at least 5.5 - 6km/h. Right now I'm only able to keep up about 2km/h. So that gives me plenty of time to sight see and smell the roses. I expect that speed will climb quite quickly but it's fast enough for now.

The surgeon had asked that I start off slowly and then build up to a reasonable walking distance each day. I'm not sure what that means exactly. I got out of hospital on Monday and managed to do a 1.0km walk that day, which seemed quite puny to me. That was in addition to all of the coincidental walking around the house and a visit to the super market. The next day was a little more at about 1.2km.

Then I stretched my legs and walked 1.7km the next day followed by a 2.0km day on the Thursday and a 2.1km day on the Friday.

All of this taught me two things: firstly I can't do speed just at the moment - I've still got a little bit of a drug load on board so I'm particularly careful crossing roads and checking where I put my feet. The second is much more galling: the run-up to the surgery was pretty rough, to the point that I couldn't really walk at all - 150 metres saw me out. Add to that a week in hospital, even though I did wear out quite a bit of the carpet walking after the surgery, and you end up with somebody who's seriously out of shape. I'm trying to put that right, but it's galling to raise a sweat just ambling somewhere at 2km/h!

My 5km jaunt yesterday left me pretty sore and sorry for myself so today I may slacken off a bit. We'll see. I can't see a trans-continental jaunt in my near future though - sorry Forrest Gump!