Yesterday my friend Nadine came to stay from Gippsland.  Nadine is my training and walking buddy for the  100k Walk from Melbourne to Sorrento 

and also the Camino de Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage trail across Spain.

Our 100k walk is in April 2013, just a few short weeks away and we’ve both been stressing a little about whether we’re ready for it yet or not. Do we need more time to train? How much more training could we even  fit in to our lives?  Can anyone ever feel ready to walk 100k? These are some of the questions we’ve both been confronted with lately.

We’ve been training mainly separately, as we live about 4-5 hours from each other, with occasional meetups. But on Saturday we had planned to train together, so Nadine came to me at Bendigo over the weekend full of enthusiasm for a big test walk. We set off on Saturday morning at 7am, and walked half of one of my favourite cycling routes which was around the outskirts of Bendigo. We then walked into town, and spent a couple of lovely hours browsing some of the sports and health shops, finishing back at Kangaroo Flat at 7pm. We had managed to walk 45k and were feeling great. We didn’t rush this walk at all, taking quite long coffee breaks, and the break in town at the shops. During the walk neither of us suffered at all, in fact we were full of energy for the entire walk, right up until the end. Most importantly, neither of us had any foot problems including no blisters.

It was a pleasant surprise to wake today feeling full of energy, no aches, pains or sore muscles and still no feet problems. It seems that the training we’ve been doing has been good enough to keep us on track for the big walk, even though we had a feeling we may not have done enough. We are feeling quite pleased and chuffed with ourselves today. But most importantly we are now feeling confident that we will complete the 100k walk and that it is not just a pipe dream. The 3454 calories burnt was an added bonus.

As I waved Nadine off on the train today, the thought occurred to me that  “we done good”.