{"id":606,"date":"2009-12-06T01:35:30","date_gmt":"2009-12-06T06:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/?p=606"},"modified":"2009-12-03T19:52:27","modified_gmt":"2009-12-04T00:52:27","slug":"the-source-of-walking-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/2009\/12\/the-source-of-walking-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Source of Walking Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n

I walked 1,100 miles; that was about 65 days of walking.<\/p>\n

I hurt a lot during those days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About day 60 of walking I figured out what causes walking pain. I am not stupid; I can learn, maybe not fast, but I do learn.<\/p>\n

My wife and I started walking in mid-September of 2008. I hurt from the start. I hurt really<\/em> bad. Blisters on both feet, joint pain, muscle pain, pain on top of pain. We stopped walking on November 4th of 2008 to rush home and see our newborn grandson.<\/p>\n

I started walking again late in September of 2009. I had to walk while pushing a bicycle and then ride the bicycle (see this link for the full explanation<\/a>). The surprising thing was that I didn’t hurt<\/em>. My feet didn’t have blisters and my joints didn’t ache. I had plenty of sore muscles in my legs, but really, I was walking 18 miles and then riding a bike 18 miles. Of course I had sore leg muscles.<\/p>\n

Then the situation changed for the last two weeks of the walk. My older brother joined me. He drove, I left my bicycle at his house, and all I had to do was walk 18 or 20 miles a day. Another surprise – my body ached and I had blisters on my feet<\/em>. I hurt and I was disappointed.<\/p>\n

I pondered the situation. When you are walking five and six hours through rural Mississippi, you have plenty of time to ponder the situation. I finally understood it:<\/p>\n

It is the walking surface that determines the blisters and pain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2008, I walked mainly outside the edge of the roadway. I either walked on a steeply sloped shoulder or off the pavement in gravel or grass. The gravel and grass were rough, uneven, up and down a dozen times with each step.<\/p>\n

In 2009, I started with the bicycle. I walked mainly inside the edge of the roadway. Pushing the bicycle through dirt, gravel, and grass was too much trouble. The cars could go around me because I was walking on the road.<\/p>\n

The situation changed in 2009 when my brother joined me for the final seven or ten days. I no longer had the bicycle. I no longer put myself out on the road for cars to go around. I returned to walking on the shoulder. The blisters and the other pains returned.<\/p>\n

It is the walking surface; that is the source of walking pain.<\/p>\n

People ask me now and then if I\u00a0 will do another walk. I would love to do another walk. One thing for sure though, as much as I can, I will walk on the road, not on the shoulder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Dwayne Phillips I walked 1,100 miles; that was about 65 days of walking. I hurt a lot during those days. About day 60 of walking I figured out what causes walking pain. I am not stupid; I can learn, maybe not fast, but I do learn. My wife and I started walking in mid-September […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,110],"class_list":["post-606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-health","tag-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":607,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606\/revisions\/607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/takingawalk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}