Yesterday, Justin and I walked from Ocean Beach to Del Mar (19.2 miles). Combined, the two of us have walked this same route a total of ten times. It has proven to be a perfect training walk as it has many of the elements we’ll likely see on the way to Sacramento. The toughest part about training (thus far) for a 600+ mile walk is the time commitment. In order to walk a 20 miler, you have to budget at least 5 hours of time out of your day. Obviously, not many people can take 5 hours out of a weekday to cover the type of mileage necessary to be ready. Instead, we’re resorting to shorter walks (roughly 7-8 miles) during the week and 20+ on the weekends. Hopefully, we’ll be set to go in a little over 100 days.
There is one positive aspect of the time investment: planning. We have spent a number of hours on the long walks kicking around different ideas on people to contact, places to go, rally locations, and musical talent to contact for our rallies. Of course, how far into a walk we are seems to be directly coordinated with the quality of the idea: the further we are, the more delirious we are, and thus the worse the ideas. In other words, my best ideas were not flourishing as we sprinted across the “closed” bridge from Torrey Pines State Reserve up into Del Mar (see here). Shh – don’t tell dad.
More on training after this weekend, when the four of us plan on doing a trial run with the RV along with three full walks.