Fitness....

Those who know me from 'other blogs' might know I broke my distal radius aka the wrist 'nastily' mid-year, and I've had to be careful about what physical activity I've done for a few months. Walking the flat streets of my city is easy enough, but I've completely lost confidence about tackling some of the hillier, less predictable paths nearby. But the time has come to 'get over it'!!

The irony of all this self-protection is that today I fell over- not on a steep, uneven track, but at home in my back garden where I was too busy taking a photograph to notice the step in the way. Fortunately, whether my brain was protecting my wrist or just my camera, I managed to fall sideways along my arm rather than hand-down, and all is well!

So tomorrow morning I am planning to rise early and head up one of the rural roads that I used for 'training' for my last Camino. I imagine the soles of my feet might slightly complain by the end of it, but I am looking forward to being outdoors walking in the countryside for a few hours.

When I 'trained' and also when I walked the Camino, I carried a few short bits of inspiration each day in my pocket. (Except I learned not to do this when it rained: those particular bits of paper fell into pieces in my shorts pockets and never lived to enhance another day's reflection.)

Tomorrow I have chosen a song and a poem to 'accompany' me. The song is "We say thanks", a song by Fr Chris Skinner off his 'Awesome God' album. Thankfulness was something I realised I had to practise when walking the Camino. It was sometimes too easy to think about problems like sore feet /ankles, rather than remembering to be thankful for all the gloriousness in the landscape, the kindness of the people etc. And the poem I am carrying is 'Why I Wake Early' by Mary Oliver. It is always a special joy for me to walk early when the world is still waking up for the new day. But it has already gone 10pm here, so if I plan to walk early, I need to head off to bed pronto!!

Confession time! OK so I never woke up early- and my grandiose ideas of walking a 22km circuit had dropped to a more manageable three hour walk by the time I left home!!! But it was quite a 'symbolic walk' really: I walked up Kahuterawa Rd to the intersection with Green's Rd. And this was the very same walk I walked on my first  'training' walk in late-2007, getting ready for the Camino in April 2008... Hopefully this a beginning for my next Chemin!  (Some more photos from the walk are in my 'everyday' blog!)