Walk training in earnest!

We've been in Sao Paulo, a metropolitan jungle of nearly 20 million people, for almost two weeks.

It took us a while, but we've found some good parks for long walks, with water and toilet facilities.  Smooth underfoot, and mostly plenty of shade, which helps when days here have usually been 30 degrees celsius or slightly more, and never under 22 degrees overnight.

Cycling isn't good for core strength, and after three weeks cycling 1600km from Asuncion in Paraguay to Sao Paulo here in Brazil, we did little other than cycle.  We had lots of hills, and thus getting out for a hard walk, or doing other strength works was generally not appealing each day as we were tired from the hours on the very heavy tandem bike.

But now settled, we managed a streak of 10 days with 2 x 20 minutes intense strength sessions each of those days.  Plus, we've walked a lot more, and thanks to the good park loops we found, we have been able to concentrate a little on speed and form.

We've walked every day.  But the three main walks in the last 12 days have been:

  • 20.00km @ 7:38pace, around Parque Aclimicao on 3 April,
  • 8.09km @ 9:10pace, ascending Pico do Jaragua with 373m of elevation gain on 9 April, and
  • 30.00km @ 7:48pace, around Parque Villa-Lobos on 11 April.

That hilly Jaragua walk was up on a good sealed road which meant we could walk fairly hard, and then down on a technical, unsealed and slippery single track.  We were slower down than up!

The 30km walk was deliberately controlled to aim for that distance in four hours, including stopped time for toilet, water and shoe adjustments.  Moving time was 3:54:01 and total elapsed time was 4:00:33.  We were very happy with that.

The 30km walk was yesterday, and today we are a little stiff and tired.  But no muscular issues which bodes well for our first major walk in Europe in just over 5 weeks.  That's the 100 miles, Continental Centurion in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

We still have two more weeks here in Sao Paulo, and have more walking sessions designed to keep our fitness progressing for the Netherlands event, and then the Parish walk.  Because Parish walk has some hills, we are making sure we have solid hill sessions in the schedule.

Generally, we're going well.  Just over 37,500km of cycling now completed since we arrived in the Netherlands on 30 May 2022.

Brazil is quite lovely, and has a reasonably familiar feel, compared to Australia and Europe.  There's always some differences of course, but I'd think most people from modern societies would easily fit in here and find their way around.

A reminder, that to follow more of our story, most unrelated to walking, head to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JustinS007/











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