The Psyche and the 25 mile Walk

Last Saturday I completed a 25 mile walk in 7.5 hours (it was an event - the Dorset Circular Challenge run by the Dorset Fire and Rescue Service). We had to complete in 10 hours and the route was circular starting and finishing at the Square and Compass in Worth Travers.

I didn't have time to fully process the challenge this might pose physically - busy week and the election was taking up a lot of my mental faculties.

Anyway I travelled down on the train on Friday. Several beers, a Cornish pasty and a curry later (ideal preparation for an endurance event) and we were holed up in Swanage YHA. Six in the dorm, zero sleep (there is something distracting about the incontinence sheets that crackle every time someone turns and the light blazing through whenever anyone makes a nocturnal trip to the toilet) and up at 6.30am.

We started at 8 and our group was being led by a very fit woman (I'm still not convinced she is entirely human). The pace was blistering. I had not prepared for that or the sheer cliff faces we stormed up and down for the first 14 miles.

They say that when you run the marathon you hit a wall. I definitely hit a wall on that walk. From about miles 18/19, but especially 21 onwards I was well out of it. It is not something I have ever experienced, the feeling of my psyche leaving my body, ostensibly giving up, whilst I looked down on myself putting one foot in front of the other, again and again and again. My mind kept saying 'I will just lie down on the grass. Go to sleep', my body continued. It was a battle to keep the two connected, but my desire to complete seemed to overpower the other thoughts. Crazy. I guess that is partly how it feels when you're training for the SAS or something. Anyway it adds fuel to my ideas on the psyche as being separate to the vessel (body).

We finished.

And I'm now contemplating a 48 mile walk in 18 hours. Is this possible? Am I mad? Time will tell.