Over 1100 days ago, I went for a 50 mile walk. There was no particular reason for it. I wasn’t walking as part of an event, it wasn’t part of a group charity drive and it wasn’t to get anywhere. I never left my island, in fact. As someone who enjoys walking and walking long distances, it just seemed like a logical next step having walked a marathon distance six months earlier.

While I was wiped out and trying to recover from the grueling 14+ hour effort, my daughter innocently gave me an unintended backhand to the face with the simple question: “What’s next, Daddy, 80 miles?”

In the years since I’ve thought about her challenge, but ultimately arrived at the realization that the logistics of walking 80 miles are essentially the logistics of walking for 24 hours straight. People have done that and much more, certainly, but speaking as someone who doesn’t walk for a living it was a bit more than I wanted to take on. Instead, I picked a more realistic interim target: 60 miles. It’s a step up from 50, but more achievable for me at the present time than 80.

All that remained was picking the day, and then working up the mileage to try and hit that goal. As it turns out, yesterday was the day. Also as it turns out, that choice turned out to be a mistake, but I’ll come back to that shortly.

After an early bedtime Tuesday night, I was out our front door at 4:50 in the morning and hit 60.02 miles right outside that same front door at 12:34 AM. In the 18 hours and 55 minutes I was moving, I took 129K steps and burned just shy of 8K calories per my Apple Watch.

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. If you’re interested in the gory details – and honestly I’m capturing the rest mostly as documentation for my future self in planning future dumb adventures – feel free to read on.

The Weather

The last time I did a long walk, I did it in May. For a variety of reasons ranging from family illnesses to work travel, that didn’t happen this time around, and instead I picked the first day of July. For the record, even in Maine, if you’re going to be walking for a while outdoors, May is a better month to do it than July.

As with my 50 mile effort, I never left my island – assuming the little island connected to us by causeway counts as my island. Unlike last time, however, I couldn’t follow a pre-selected route because I had to change things up because of the weather. Out of all of the days I could have picked, I landed on one with “dangerous” heat warnings. I even had a pop-up thunderstorm scare at mile 57, accompanied by ten minutes of heavy, heavy rain.

The morning was relatively cool, so I followed a standard 16 mile route that I do from time to time. After that, however, I started opting for routes that offered tree cover. We have a trail that runs the length of the island, but it hasn’t been cut back recently and to reduce the tick threat, I used that sparingly. Instead, I spent the hottest hours of the day walking a loop in the preserve on the immediately adjoining island which offered not only good shade but sea breezes. After that, I had to make it up as I went along, and spent the last twenty miles basically walking up and down the main road on our island on repeat because my feet were shot and I needed as flat a surface as possible.

To be sure, “extreme” heat in Maine is just another day in, say, Atlanta, but with feels like temperatures in the mid 90’s and sky high humidity, I had to account for it in route and attire. Speaking of.

The Attire

My standard walking attire in the summer is a lightweight merino wool t-shirt, merino boxers, nylon shorts and synthetic socks. That’s exactly what I wore yesterday, except that I swapped outfits three separate times because I was soaked. Changing the t-shirt, boxers and so on wasn’t entirely critical, but dry socks are because wet socks can lead to blisters. Unfortunately, even with the sock rotation my feet were effectively destroyed by the end of the walk, in part because my socks were sweat through.

I also rotated through two different sets of HOKA shoes – one of which was brand new, but alas, that didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

The Feet

After my last long walk, for the last ten to twenty miles, it felt like the entire soles of both feet were one big blister. The good news is that when I woke up the next day, my feet were more or less recovered, and I was walking again two days later.

This year, however, while my left foot was mostly fine the day after, my right foot has a big blister on the heel and an even larger one on the pad of the forefoot. It’s damaged enough that I’ve been hobbling around all day, shuffling like a nonagenarian in an effort to put as little weight on the damaged foot as possible.

In a perfect world, day two will see significant improvement, but if not, I may have some tedious blister remediation work ahead of me.

The Pace

When I did my 50 mile walk, my average pace was under 18 minutes per mile. This time around, it was almost 19. A lot of that was the weather: I intentionally kept my pace easy so as to not overheat, and I had to opt for different routes as mentioned above for shade purposes which were slower going. Also relevant was that this was ten more miles than last time and I’m three years older. And maybe the biggest issue was the deteriorating condition of my feet.

In the end, however, I can’t say I care that much about the pace. I made it, and that’s what I care about.

The Sustenance

One of the important planning questions in walking a long distance is what to eat and when to eat it. Unfortunately, while there is a ton of information on nutrition for ultra-marathons, there isn’t a lot for walking. It’s an important distinction, because the delta in the caloric expenditure of running vs walking – even the kind of walk/running typical of an ultra-marathon – is significant.

What I landed on was a series of egg wraps throughout the day, with some gummies in between for quick energy and then a protein heavy pizza upon event completion. This seemed to work, in that I both had sufficient energy and that I had no digestive complications along the way. Which, if you read about ultra-running meal plans, sound pretty horrifying.

Anyway, the most important aspect for me particularly given the high temperatures and humidity was water. The night before I refrigerated both a Camelbak-style bladder and two 32 ounce water bottles – the latter two of which were filled with salt-laden electrolyte mixes. I went through all three of these by 5 PM, and cycled through the two water bottles twice each after that.

In a challenge like this, staying close to home is essential unless you have a support crew because there’s no way I could have carried all of the water I would have needed. Instead, I just rotated back through the house whenever I was out of water.

The Reward

My best friend and distance mentor – who recently completed an absolutely insane 100 mile, 10K vertical gain and 10 different species of fish challenge – has a tradition to close out long events with a big beer. Based on some back of the envelope calculations based on ABV requirements and my specific distance, I landed on Bissell’s Betwixt and Between as my celebratory beverage.

It was delicious, and had an outsized impact on my depleted system.

The Thanks

• My Girls: first, and most obviously I need to thank Kate and Eleanor both for making a day like today possible, but more for putting up with all of the work that goes into it. I couldn’t do things like this without their support and understanding. Special additional thanks to Eleanor for my prized “GOOD LUCK DADDY BRACELET.”
• My BFF: my primary inspiration for doing crazy things like this, I need to shout out my best friend Andrew for not only being my distance mentor on everything from what to eat and how to deal with blisters, but more importantly keeping me focused the last ten miles via constant text and talking me in for the last half mile. Appreciate you, friend.
• My Island People: one of my absolute favorite things about walking on the island is the support I get from island people. From the little kid’s tiny thumbs up sticking out the window of a car driving way, to all the people who honk at me (most of whom I don’t recognize), to the people out in their gardens who stop me to ask how much I walk and tell me to keep it up to Terry, who sits out in front of his house and gives me a big wave as I pass. I felt nothing but support yesterday, even as I’m apprehensive about seeing someone post to our local town social media group asking about the guy who was walking up and down the main island road last night until the wee hours.
• My Crow Friends: as some of you know, I’ve spent the past few years befriending local murders of crows all over the island. I feed them unshelled peanuts, and they welcome me wherever I go. To the point that a woman stopped me a while back on the bridge to the island, saying: “excuse me, but are those birds following you?” Anyway, my crow friends were a big help yesterday, keeping me entertained during a long day – and one crow friend in particular, Gray Feathers, probably had one of the best days of his life because he got no fewer than eight drops of peanuts.
• My Apple Watch Ultra: I’m still not thrilled with the battery life overall, but while it promised 20 hours of usage on the Low Power mode, after 19+ hours the watch had 35% left on the battery when I finished. After all of the research I had to do in how to charge it mid-event if necessary, I was thrilled it wasn’t necessary.

The Takeway

Maybe the best takeaway from all of this? Eleanor hasn’t asked me about 80 miles or any other crazy distance yet. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.