Earlier this year I had the idea of doing a day on foot from sunrise to sunset as a new birthday tradition. I brushed it off this year as I am preparing for Colorado in a few weeks and coming from a long hip injury. The night before I thought about what am I capable of in a days notice? With that in mind I started preparing for the next morning, executing this idea at sunrise. Picking out a route that included ways to refill my 3L camel back, use a toilet, and had good scenery. I used high calorie food that was easy to carry. I had some expectations of how the day would go, and had broke it into sections with landmarks. It took awhile to fall asleep as my mind processed different outlooks resulting in the fact I have no idea what it will be like, how I will feel, and what the weather will actually be doing. The not knowing what is next is what makes an adventure.
I woke up with 4 hours of sleep, but felt ready to go. Arriving on the beach at 6:18 to commence with my personal adventure starting traditions and set off with my official start time of 6:25. The scenery started off like a high class display of amazing and made the first few hours easy as the sun rose from the horizon of the ocean. I had broken the first part of the day into three sections: roughly 10 miles of beach, a 1 mile pavement connection to 6.8 miles of trails, then back to the second 10 miles on the sand again to the vehicle. Approxiamate route .
Arriving at the first ten mile mark, the Fort Clinch fishing Pier, I was happy to have felt no fatigue only a slight tenderness from my feet. I slowed down and took a few pictures and headed toward the trails that would offer the landscape of a variety of ecosystems. This is when there was a team of thoughts in my head that named themselves 'discomfort and friends" and they started a relay of discomfort for the rest of the day. Striking first and lasting was the blisters that are very rare for me, and dramatically slowing down my pace. The team relay continued with a heat rash, as well as a severe lighting storm that had heavy rain for about an hour.
As I stood at the pier looking back down the shoreline as I had a meeting with reality, we looked at the facts, and it was clear the last 10 miles is going to be sponsored by "discomfort and friends". Each step was a reminder of the condition of pure discomfort as well as the option to view this as a lesson how perspective can change how to deal with unwanted stresses.
I learned that if you say out loud to yourself , "I am an American and would like to file a formal complaint about an afternoon in which not every thing went the way I wanted" that you will stop complaining even to yourself.
Will I do this kind of day again? I would like to do something big with a `12 hour notice a few times a year. It is certainly a day of adventure, and being outside is always good. Getting to new places on foot, or bike as long as I can for a day.
Who else will challenge them selves with a 1 day notice? Find out what you really have now. Here are some other 1 day ideas. I am gonna write down many of these and later pull out a random idea and do the next day. Think about what would be dreadful to do in a day, and do just that. You can get creative and move your furniture around for function training.
Some other 1 day goals,
cycle all day
On foot including many breaks of body weight exercises
20 miles of any varied combo of surface area as fast as possible
am/pm long runs
This is awesome Beth! What beautiful pictures!
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