Hacker News Reader

Comment by bbig | Hacker News Reader

Lately I've been walking 20 km per day (~12.5 mi). Takes at least 3.5 hours. I try not to listen to any audio -- I just let my mind wander.

To step it up a notch, I put on a weighted backpack (i.e. ruck). I'm typically carrying 30 lbs, sometimes 50. This raises the heart rate and roughly doubles the caloric burn. Low injury risk, too. Michael Easter's book "Comfort Crisis" has a nice chapter on rucking.

I just wish it was easier to contact nature on my walks. I live in a big urban centre, so it's not always easy. But at least urban centers can facilitate social walking -- I've found some fantastic Meetup groups where I can partake in social hikes.

Can't say enough good things about walking/hiking/rucking. It's foundational to the human experience. Get outside, everyone :)

View on HN

> 20 km per day (~12.5 mi)

That is some serious distance. I remember thinking I would be able to do at least 25-35 km per day, a few years ago when I walked parts of the camino de Santiago in Spain. Blisters and destroyed feet in just a few days, not ever reaching 30 km per day I think.. How long did it take you to get used to this kind of distance daily?

I have heard of the camino de Santiago from someone planning to do it. I just looked it up and it says you can choose one of many routes. Camino Frances being the most popular. Feel like this will be on my bucket list if I can ever get that fit :-).

> I just looked it up and it says you can choose one of many routes.

Yes, I've done small parts of the route on two different occasions. First time I quit due to problems with my feet, the second time I quit after problems with the heat :-)

I never planned to go the full camino, as most of these routes are quite long. The one that starts in France is about 800 km (500 miles) I think, so that will be a full summer holiday and probably a few weeks off work at best. Not ideal to walk during the height of summer either, as the heat can be brutal.

I had a good baseline fitness from other activities, so was able to pretty much launch into 20 km daily.

Blisters happened at the beginning. Investing in Darn Tough socks helps.

> Investing in Darn Tough socks helps.

Thanks for the advice. In the army we got the opposite advice, they said we must never use woolen socks when we did the 30 km march, always use cotton they said...

Does the quality of shoe matters here ?

Yes, but in my experience the quality of your socks matters much more. A single wrinkle is gonna give you a nice blister within 5km. Get nice socks and pack blister bandages. Those things are like magic.

As an anecdote, I stopped buying "normal" socks from regular clothing stores completely.

All I wear is hiking labeled socks from sports stores. Greatly reduces wrinkles even if you go for the cheap ones. (Decathlon's store brand for example, but that's EU only i think).

Are there any socks you recommend? I've had good luck with Darn Tough socks, but I'd be interested in something better if available.

From my adjacent experience (ultrarunning / multi-day races), after trying a bunch of different brands, I've settled on Drymax. By far the best blister resistance! They're really good at keeping feet, well, dry, which helps a lot against chafing.

If you have particular hot spots, I'd also recommend applying some foot cream like Trail Toes. I always use it for runs over ~30km.

Merino wool socks are definitely what I'd recommend for trekking.

Socks with a high percentage of wool are amazing if you've got even remotely sweaty feet. You can be having a complete swamp in your shoes and still have warm feet.

+1 for Compeed. A miracle bandaid.

Probably but it's one of many factors.

When I (not parent) went to the Camino de Santiago, I was already an experienced hiker (I could certainly walk 30kms in a day and I had done it many times) and I brought a good pair of shoes with me (that I used before without getting any blisters).

But my feet were just not ready to take 30km per day for many, many days in a row. It's one thing to do it just during weekends, doing it every day is a different beast.

Eventually it got better, but it took a while for me to get used to it (and a whole lot of Compeed plasters).

My advice for anyone who is going, would be to start gradually (maybe 10-15 km/day) and then over time go for longer and longer walks.

Edit: I totally agree with the sibling comment about socks being just as important, if not more, than shoes

This was something I heard very often from fellow pilgrims on the camino. That the constant abuse, really is something else. There is a ton of shoe stores along the camino, and plenty of people that "just have to wait a bit" for their feet to catch up. I guess both shoes and socks are important; but certainly never do what I did and go to Spain with brand new shoes...

Absolutely. Not only the size, but the general shape and the technologies of the shoe. For walking/running (not hiking as the parent post is discussing) I like the Ultra Boost line of shoes with their "torsion system", breathable knit upper material, and lightweight foam outer sole. Comfiest shoes I own.

I'm going to go against the grain here but probably not. I walked 500+ km (300 miles) on the Camino Del Norte in a pair of 20£ under armour running shoes I bought 3 years ago. I only had one blister that went away when I put a blister plaster on it.

I think in my experience the size of the shoe matters hugely, more than the quality. Slightly too loose or slightly too tight will lead to blisters if you do an unusual (for you) amount of walking.

Probably, but I wore brand new shoes the first time I tried walking the camino, and that's a big no-no :-)

I'm doing 20-30 km on free days and 1-10 km on most work days for the last 2 years, but not nearly as fast (my average speed went from 4.5 to 5.1 km/h in that time). Are you sure about the doubling of caloric burn?

Cause I started when I was 130 kg and now I'm 90-100 kg and I measured calories in and how much I walked, and calculated the calories burned/km walked depending on weight and it's basically linear for me (roughly 60 kcal/km at 100 kg). It would be very weird if just 30 kg doubled the caloric burn, maybe the speed makes the difference?

At any rate I agree it's great, it completely changed my life. It's very hard to be frustrated after a 5-hour walk.

I started doing this and got to walking ~10-15km per session, but boy does it take a long time. It gets old fast. Music helps but at some point the time cost is just too high. I started swimming instead and it feels like 30 minutes in the water is roughly equivalent to 2 hours walking, though I'm not a very good swimmer.

There is definitely a risk for injury walking. Aside from the obvious risk of tripping over, you can also mess up your feet and your back, especially when carrying weight. I didn't have any knee problems but apparently that's another risk.

Do you work full-time as well? How do you fit that in your schedule?

> 20 km per day

I'm not sure my body could handle that (my hips would need a day to recover from a 20 km walk).

I'm in my mid 50s, so I'd like to believe my age is part of that.

I do about 7 km / day, which still takes time.

I've probably done everything mentioned here (thinking, audiobooks, music, walking with my kids, etc.).

Lately, I've been simply listening for birds. I've gotten pretty good at identifying several species by vocalization and it has the added benefit of putting me "in tune" with my environment.

> (my hips would need a day to recover from a 20 km walk). > > I'm in my mid 50s, so I'd like to believe my age is part of that.

Nah, it's just lack of practice. I turned fifty during my walk across Europe from Dublin to Istanbul. I'm 55 now and can happily cover 30 km every few months.

Try going for an extra ten or twenty minutes on your regular walk, and when that feels good, add another ten or twenty minutes. Keep going until you can knock out 30 km in a day's walk, with a break for lunch. Good luck, and enjoy it!

I'm an avid walker (I guess rucker, considering I always wear my backpack). My worst is when passing cars stop and offer me a ride. Apparently it's socially acceptable/normal to run, though.

You are very lucky. After walking about 6km every day for few months arches of my feet started to hurt. Basically overuse injury. I probably should be varying shoes and places (surfaces) I walk on.

That's a lot of time spent walking, how does a typical day look for you in terms of work?

People who spend a lot of time in mindless remote meetings (the kind that proliferated during the pandemic) can take most of them while walking. There’s a ton of resources on walking meetings going back many years, some are geared towards just grabbing the attendees and all going for a walk, whereas the tendency these days is for remote / video / audio meetings.

There are even tools that transcribe meeting audio and try to extract summaries, agendas and actions from the discussed material.

> Lately I've been walking 20 km per day (~12.5 mi)

This is crazy distance, keep it up.

Awesome advice on the weighted backpack to keep the calories burning.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com