One Foot In Front Of The Other

A few months before Jim retired we started planning our first bucket list vacation. In his 38 years of employment he never took more than one week off at a time so we wanted this to be a longer trip. The first time we went to England in we noticed people hiking all over the countryside and thought it might be nice to take a walking holiday. While there I even bought a book called Walkers’ Britain (now out of print) and have leafed through it longingly over the years. In either a moment of extreme optimism or complete insanity we decided to hike the Coast to Coast.  After all we reasoned, it’s just walking; simply putting one foot in front of the other over and over again.
Neither of us have ever done any kind of long distance walking so we knew we would have to train to be able to walk 192 miles in 16 days. Initially Jim was reluctant claiming he could already walk 80 miles in a day (haha!) so he would have no trouble. However as we did more planning and he saw some of the elevations he realized it would take some hard work. Even more motivating, he received a Fitbit as a birthday/retirement gift from our son and daughter-in-law.  Once he could easily track the miles, he began walking in earnest.
Fortunately, it's easy to walk in Appleton. There are sidewalks everywhere and you can walk anywhere in town. Typically I listen to an audiobook (I almost dated myself by calling it a “book on tape”!) and just stroll around the neighborhood. Jim, however, likes to have a destination. So we've been walking to the bank, to the library, to the grocery store, to dinner, out for a drink, etc., etc.  For the most part any time we have an errand, we walk. Of course the main drawback is how much time it takes to accomplish anything (another reason my quilting productivity has plummeted this summer).  A fifteen minute trip to return library books becomes a two hour journey. We’ve been trying to walk a minimum of 8-10 miles every day which adds up to two or three hours of walking. It doesn't seem like much but it really eats up your day!
The only thing we haven’t been able to train for is elevation.  By the time we complete the trip we will have ascended and descended the equivalent height of Mount Everest.  Appleton is flat—really flat.  There is hardly a hill anywhere in town. 
This picture is taken from the Oneida Street bridge, about the highest elevation in town.  Cardio trainer usually shows a climb of about 35 feet.  We’ll need to do about 100 times that on the hike!