As I didn’t really do any serious training for the Night Hike, there’s a neat symmetry in the way I recovered in the worst way possible too.
Dad and I rolled into our beds at a hotel in south west London at 6.30am, and were both awake at 8.30. I creaked a bit on getting out of bed, took a hot shower and got dressed. (It’s a mark of my poor preparation., I think, that I hadn’t taken a clean bra wih me – the one that had walked 20 miles the night before wasn’t an appealing prospect, so I went commando, bra-wise, for the first time in more than a quarter of a century. I can’t say I felt especially liberated. Just a little…. loose.) We had a woeful breakfast – shame on you, Holiday Inn – and packed and got ready to leave.
We’d travelled down in my Dad’s Porsche Boxter, apple of his engineer’s eye. I’m not telling you this to show off, I’m telling you to help you visualise the low, low seat. One of the first things you don’t want to be doing after a 20 mile hike is getting into one of those, I tell you.
So, we left, and we got to the M25, the orbital motorway surrounding London, and we looked in horror from the entrance roundabout on 4 lanes of traffic at a standstill, as far as the eye could see. It was so bad that we decided to drive the wrong way round the M25, adding 50 miles to our journey, because we were pretty sure it would be quicker that way. Almost 3 hours later, we stopped for a coffee. After getting into a Porsche, it turns out, the next thing you don’t want to be doing is sitting still in it for 3 hours. And the thing after that is getting out again. Rather than swing my legs out, I actually had to pick them up and lift them. As we made our wobbly way into the service station, we must have looked like a couple of marionettes being operated by first-time puppeteers, or people who had only just had callipers removed.
The journey took eight and a half hours in total, exactly as long as the hike did. I was in a steaming hot bath as soon as I could get myself up the stairs. But as I lay there I thought about last year, and was fairly sure that it was at least 5 days after the hike until I felt as recovered as I did then.
Sunday was characterised by stiffness rather than pain, and I slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon and felt as though I had caught up. (Lack of sleep, as regular readers know, is my high road to inhumanity. I am awful when I’m tired.) Today, I’m better again. Tomorrow, I’m sure, the Night Hike will be mere muscle memory to my legs.
I did find a blister, by the way, a teeny tiny one on the inside of my right heel. The area above my left ankle is red and feels a touch bruised too. I think both of these not-even-worth-calling-injuries are caused by my boots being not quite worn in enough before I started.
I’m fairly sure they’re worn in now.