The road to freedom and success are littered with barriers. There are rarely any freebies in life. That’s why freedom and success feel so good, why they’re so damn satisfying. They’re hard to achieve. They have to be earned. If you think about your own life, the successes you’ve had, the freedom you’ve enjoyed, you’ll remember that you probably had to show some grit and determination to get there. If it had been dropped in your lap, it wouldn’t have had much meaning. It’s the adversity that makes freedom and success so valuable.
I say this because I had some dizzy spells a couple of days ago. I practically fell over onto the stroller at one point. It slowed me right down for two days. I actually thought that this is what was going to end this walk for me. I even considered stopping for the year and picking up where I left off next year. But I made some more changes to my diet and changed from Crystal Light to Gatorade in my water in case the dizziness was from an electrolyte imbalance, and yesterday I was fine. I walked 71 kms and didn’t feel dizzy at all.
Today, the barrier to success is a bad heat rash on my thighs. I thought my thighs were covered in no-see-um bites, since the bugs are ferocious at dusk now and can get up under my shorts. But it looks like a heat rash. It burns. So, I put on some Penaten last night. This morning, my thighs look raw, but they don’t burn.
The next barrier is the heat. It’s 33 degrees right now and will be in the plus-30s for the next ten days or so as well. I haven’t decided yet if I will adjust my routine by walking at night when it’s cooler; I’ve noticed that even with my bike light and head lamp, it feels more dangerous walking in the dark. So, we’ll see.
If I were just doing 25 kms per day, none of these problems would matter. I have often found a juicy stealth-camping spot after about five hours of walking and thought, “I could just spend the next 18 hours in there, napping, reading books, drinking Gatorade, and popping jujubes in my mouth all day.” It’s a nice fantasy, and one I want to indulge in on future walks. But this walk is about speed. It’s about challenging myself to the limit. It’s a different kind of adventure.
I’ll keep the pace up as long as I can. To finish this in 100 days means I need to average 10 hours and 40 minutes of walking every day for the next 26 days. Every day that I can attain it is another day I’m still in the game. But to lose a day or two at this point would likely put the goal out of reach. So today is about staying fed and hydrated and walking, steady as she goes.
