Think the deepest depths of winter are just a dead time, with nothing to do but wait for spring? Think again! There’s a lot of very positive things you can be getting on with this time of year.
You could think of it as housekeeping time but in essence it’s about giving your attention to some aspects of your Sport Walking that you’ve maybe not had the time to focus on during the summer months. So, here are a few suggestions for useful things to do as the year draws to a close
Check your kit
It might sound like a bit of a dull idea this but, really, checking your kit can be very cathartic when it’s dark and horrible outside. You feel like you’re investing in adventures to come by looking after your gear but also, it keeps you connected to the adventures you’ve already had.
Clearing mud out of the soles of your shoes for instance, can remind you of that last walk and the experiences you had. Sorting your vest might reveal some snack wrappers that make you think back to your last challenge.
There’s lots of ways in which cleaning and looking after your kit can remind you of good times or why Sport Walking feeds you but above all else, it’s really important to keep your gear in good condition, so that it performs at its best and that’s the most important benefit.
So, clean your shoes until they’re almost as good as new. Clear out your vest and give your soft flasks a deep clean, even use something like Milton Fluid to sterilise them, if they’ve been neglected for any time.
It’s especially beneficial at this time to re-proof your rain jacket and any light over trousers you might use. Check all your other gear for any damage, wear or repairs that need doing and then, once you’ve given everything a good spruce up, put away anything you won’t need during the winter in a dry place, so it can have a good rest!
Get to grips with strength training
With days being short and nights long, chances are you’ll have more free time in the dark than in the light, so it’s a great time to really knuckle down to establishing a strength and conditioning routine.
Strength work, whether with weights or just body weight exercises, are the foundation of your conditioning for taking on Sport Walking challenges. The stronger you are physically, the more resilient you’ll be physically. But you don’t need to undergo long drawn out sessions down the gym queueing for machines or free weights. The exercises that will be most beneficial can be done relatively quickly and simply at home. All you need is some sort of free weights, either dumbbells or maybe kettle bells or even a weighted bag, if you have something that’s not too cumbersome.
We detailed a simple four move strength routine in the first episode of Series One of the Sport Walk Show. It starts at around 12:50.
The key to success with strength work is to focus initially on getting into a routine and performing strength sessions regularly. It’s about normalising this work in your day to day schedule, so that you don’t think twice about doing it. Once it’s a part of your day to day schedule, you can then start to refine things to increase the benefits you’ll get from it.
Perfect your night time strategy
The other really good thing about long nights of course, is that you can use them to get acclimatised to walking after dark and perfect your strategy for dealing with night time in a challenge. Now you might think that there’s not much to perfect but you’d be surprised how long it can take to feel comfortable operating in the dark and, also, it’s very easy to overlook logistical elements which will be much harder and more complicated in the dark.
So this is a very good time to embrace night time as a Sport Walker and to actively practice and perfect your night routine. This could mean, walking out from your home before getting your head torch out of your bag, to replicate reaching a point in a challenge where you need to get rigged for light. It could mean building up your fear resistance by gradually going along darker and darker lanes or paths. It could mean identifying issues that you notice while you’re walking in the dark that you think could be a problem in a challenge and figuring out how to counteract them.
There’s a whole range of things you’ll figure out the more you go out in the dark and the more you use your gear in practice, the more natural it feels to be doing it. One thing we’ve noticed with head torches is that you can get a slight blinding effect if the beam is tilted at the wrong angle. The strength of the light, visible in the top of your sightline, can be uncomfortable. So walking with your head torch a lot and figuring out the best angle, the best beam position and, most importantly, getting used to a weaker beam to give you more peripheral vision, is a really good thing to do and means that when you need to use your head torch in a challenge, you won’t be phased by all these things, which can seem like a really big deal when you’re tired and depleted.
Commit to next year’s challenges
By the end of the year, it’s a really good idea to have committed to and signed up for you challenges for the following year. Yes, you can add in a few impromptu events that take your fancy as you go but the main ones need to be fixed by now, so you can get your training set out and you’ve got something clear and tangible to work towards.
So, if there are events you’ve been thinking about entering but haven’t yet, sign on the dotted line! The difference between going out Sport Walking and training for a fixed event is much stronger than most people realise. When you have this fixed immovable event moving towards you, it really focusses the mind!
It’s also always best to enter events at the earliest point you can because prices tend to rise as you get closer to the event date, so being an early bird ensures you get to enter at the cheapest possible price point.
Have a good time
Lastly and most importantly, make sure that all this cleaning, muscle building, fear conquering and event entering doesn’t get on top of you. It’s really important to try and have a good time in November and December (maybe substitute for other months if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere). Your fitness isn’t going to escape you and your endurance certainly won’t, so the value of letting your hair down, having a good time and not obsessing about training, nutrition or anything else for that matter is huge.
As they say – “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, so allowing yourself to have a break, to just have a good time and do whatever you want to do will refill your tank and mean that when you start to get back into training in January, you’ll be fresh, will have missed that feeling of working hard and will have the enthusiasm to really press on.
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