If you asked me about the best holiday I had ever had, I would without any hesitation replied that it was the one in Peru walking the Inca Trail. We slept in tents and hiked at elevation of 4,000m, suffered from altitude and met amazing people that we keep in touch with. It was an ADVENTURE.
Everyone has a routine: home, kids, work… start again. We wait all year for a holiday, so we can sit in the sun by the pool for a week. Even the holidays blend into one big routine. Spain, Cyprus, Greece, even Thailand - poolside is the same in every country. And then one day, you decide to do something different, and it changes your outlook on holidays and on life.
That’s what happened to me after Peru. Suddenly I started looking into other adventure options. I have a few in the plans.
The one for this year is Camino del Norte, or to be precise, the first leg of it which is 150km hike from Irun to Bilbao in Spain. I chose it, I planned it, and I will do it in September.
What is Camino del Norte?
Camino del Norte is one of the oldest routes of the Camino de Santiago, known in English as The Way of St James, a pilgrimage which leads to the Cathedral of the Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in north-western Spain where the relics of St James are buried. It was one of the three major centres of Catholic Pilgrimage in the Middle Ages together with Jerusalem and Rome.
People decide to walk the Camino for various reasons: some are following spiritual path to find understanding and solutions, others do it as a physical challenge. The reasons are different but all who walk these paths will be unified by the tradition of pilgrimage, common cause, and shared soreness.
Why did I choose this path?
Since early childhood I had an interest in learning foreign languages. I always considered Spanish to be the most beautiful language in the world. However, I only got to learning it in my 40s. We do tend to postpone the things that our hearts want to do, sometimes we do not get to do them at all. Life gets in the way.
When I started learning Spanish 5 years ago, I just wanted to know more and more about Spain, its ways, culture, people, places.
And I also wanted an adventure. Camino de Santiago came up and became this adventure.
I chose Camino del Norte route because it offers everything I am looking for in a holiday: trekking through the mountains and lying on the beach. At this moment it does not have spiritual meaning for me, just purely a physical challenge but something tells me it will change.
How do I train for Camino?
As a PT and a fitness instructor I have active lifestyle. On my feet most of the day, a few cardio classes per week, strength training. In the last 2 years like many I also started walking. Most weekends we go on 10-12 km walks, but I have never been hiking for days in the past. How difficult can it be?
Well, I can tell you, training have shown me that it is not a walk in the park. Soreness is real. Preparation is key.
Training for Camino cannot be done by attending a few fitness classes, you will need time. You will need to start with anatomical adaptation phase when the main objective is to strengthen your tendons, ligaments, and joints and improve your cardiovascular fitness. This will involve doing regular walks of varied distances in a varied terrain. Next phase will be training for maximum strength with introducing strength training into your routines. After that you should start training for medium muscular endurance (involves increase in the number of repetitions and sets you do) and finally training for long muscle endurance.
Completing this training will adapt your neuromuscular system for maximum performance. Now you will need to maintain these gains to use them on your Camino.
If you are thinking on embarking on the incredible journey of Camino de Santiago or any other challenging route, make sure you get ready for it! After all you would want this experience to be enjoyable not painful. And should you need advice or help with your training, please get in touch and I will help you to get Camino FIT! Buen Camino, Amigo!
#caminoconfidence, #caminodelnorte, #hikingadventures, #fitover50, #caminodesantiago, #empoweringwomen
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