T-Minus One Week and Counting!

         Well, it is exactly one week until I catch my flight to Paris to start my trip to walk Camino de Santiago. It was a beautiful morning, very unseasonal for East Tennessee in August. I awoke to temperatures in the upper 50's with an expected high in the low 80's. I hope that this is proof that global warming is not a fact.

    I decided to do a trial run, a dress rehearsal to see if the load in the pack was properly distributed and practice making the necessary adjustments to it. It is a new pack that I have backpacked with a couple of times, but with full camping gear in. This is the first time I have tried it with my "Camino" gear in it.

    I set out to do a 10km walkabout, I chose to do pavement, since the route is nearby. I made the walk at a very relaxed pace, and had to adjust the straps very little on my pack. I had to tighten the waist strap once and the top strap once. The pack seems to be packed properly and well balanced. Even at the leisurely pace, two pit stops I still walked in 2  hrs and 7 minutes. I think this may still be too fast and with the Pyranees on the first day, I think I won't have any problems going too fast! lol

    The only issues I had was a couple of "hot spots" on the balls of my feet. No blisters but it is an area of concern for me. The coming week I will experiment with lacing and foot lubrication to see if I can eliminate this issue.

    One week and counting, WOW!!!!!! Can't believe it is almost here. Still have a little work to do!!!
It will be here before I know it. When I first started planning, it seemed forever away. Then after a month of planning I felt I was ready. Now with one week away, the doubts creep in as to if I'm really ready. This always happened to me when I was planning a big race, this is so much different than those races I have done in the past. I really want to go and smell the roses and meet my fellow peregrinos!!! Reading that my forum buddy Nathan and his son made Santiago de Compostella today, just fired me up that much more. Congratulations to them, I hope their Camino was everything and more what they expected.

Buen Camino!!