best foot forward

I've had to scale down the walking recently - I was getting overenthusiastic about improving my pace and one of my knees started protesting. The symptoms all pointed to "Runner's Knee" (not exclusive to runners), the dreaded IT band syndrome. 

The knee was telling me to slow down (not to rest, that would have been impossible!). I didn't take any pills for the pain so that it could carry on talking to me. 

The pain has now gone, so I'm back in the groove, just building up the distance again slowly. I'm on a challenge to do 300,000 steps during August and I'm still on track with that. The object is to be able to walk 20 miles a day, day after day after day, it's not a race. This is my lesson learned.

“Days of slow walking are very long: they make you live longer, because you have allowed every hour, every minute, every second to breathe, to deepen, instead of filling them up by straining the joints…” 
― Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking