So, this year, 2021, our goal was to walk 2021 kilometres. We managed to keep up our kilometre tally over the summer, even when Maiki had a broken knee and wasn't allowed to walk or run for three months, because I could do the walking and push Maiki in her "invalid buggy." I was thrilled when we reached our 2021 target during August, so I decided to see if we could clock up another thousand, and reach 3021 km by the end of the year.
We were pretty much on track until the beginning of November, when I returned from a trip to France (for the KKI Europe regional conference) and discovered that it was incredibly painful for me to walk. Turned out that I had "shin splints" or medial tibial stress syndrome (here in Spain they usually call it tibial periostitis) and the doctor prescribed complete rest for the whole month of November. Friends and neighbours had to help out by taking Maiki for walks and play dates while I was on house rest for five whole weeks. Our end of November total remained at 2844 km and our 3021 km target entered the realm of Mission Impossible.
Finally, in the second week of December, the physiotherapist said it was good for me to begin walking again... but no more than one or two kilometres at a time. I'm walking with a stick, but I can drive the car to a starting point where I can walk a short circuit of no more than 2 km and the dogs can still get a good run.
So, we're not going to walk 3021 km this year, and we're probably not even going to reach last year's record of 3005 km... but I'm very thankful that both Maiki and myself seem to be healing well from this year's misadventures, and we're thoroughly enjoying our winter walks across the fields. When my leg gets stronger and the pain has faded, we'll be able to go for walks in the forest again.
