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| Toasting the end of Season 11 with My First Beverage in Absolutely Ages! |
The acid test for getting myself a finale for 2022's walking year was always going to be factored by how well my body responded to a week of actual labour, and in the wake of a week of work, I think we can conclude that that this season is done, and has been ever since I rode the train from Dodworth station three weeks ago, feeling like all the energy had been drained from my body, as a push through five days of being almost completely desk-bound at the Medical Records Library at St James Hospital has left me feeling absolutely spent, as I knew it was going to be tough, but felt like it ought to be within my compass as a Nine Day Weekend of annual leave was scheduled directly after it. Returning to regular business proved harder than anticipated, even though there was no massive impetus to get into very early starts as per usual, as train strikes (or rather the aftermath the cancellations thereof) meant there were only bus rides to be taken on the mornings of my first two days, rocking me up a little later than normal, and being relieved of physical duties meant that a eight hour stretch at my desk was all I had to get on with, at a nicely moderated pace that nonetheless had me ready for a heavy refuel and an early night once my working day was done, sleeping like the dead as all my energy reserves had expended themselves. Come Wednesday, my body has already given up on me and I'm over-sleeping to the tune of over an hour, and having to force myself into work, clearly still in the grip of a bout of post-viral fatigue, which my senior colleagues warn me is something than I'm likely to be dealing with for a while, plausibly until Christmas, as a post-Covid recovery doesn't have those day by day incremental improvements that come in the wake of most viral infections, and a six-week restoration to normal wouldn't be at all unlikely, so it's mildly encouraging that a bit of a physical bounce returns on Thursday, perhaps because we're over the hump of my five day week and abbreviated return to work spell.
It may have also been due to a small celebration coming on the Friday to mark me ticking over 48 years, and having worked in the LTH MRL system for literally half my lifetime, which demands many biscuits be shared, and it's a very small consolation to discover that no one else in my workplace seems to have gotten ill thanks to any interactions with me before I was off, not that anyone else knew why I was absent, as such matters are still kept private, even though I really think they shouldn't be, and everyone ought to be made aware if one of their colleagues was toiling with Covid, just in case they might have been doubting the necessity of getting boostered. Still, a return to work did indeed provide the physical acid test on whether there might be a finale to my eleventh walking season, as the testing days and need for as much recovery as possible afterward saw my hope of getting active again fall away rapidly, as there was clearly not enough stamina left in my reserves for an excursion of anything more than an hour, and as my nine day weekend rolled up, the brightest and bestest day of the bunch, the first Saturday was lost to any activity due to the fact that I was still in bed at 10am, which is a positively unheard of time to be still horizontal, even on a post-seasonal morning. The weather shows no signs of improvement for the coming week as we write, not offering anything even vaguely decent until the next weekend, by which time we'll be well past the usual bounds of my walking year, with the onset of the Dark Season making the days impractically short, and we'll also have My Mother visiting in order to offer some belated Tea 'n' Sympathy, and so that family birthdays might also celebrated (as Elder Niece soon turns 16 too), and thus my energies are to be better spent with housekeeping and shopping in a NIW week that will actually be that thing keep promising to myself but never have, a break in which I do absolutely nothing but rest and relax. It's nonetheless frustrating to have lost plausibly four days of additional walking at the end of this season, as we reflect from only three weeks distance from my 1,000km achievement, which could really have pushed me onto towards a mileage that could honestly have been regarded as the best that I could probably do, but now projects a standard that could be bested in the future, which I hope will come in 2023 and a restart in February, once the after-effects of Covid have finally been shaken out of my body, not that you'll be getting a blow by blow account of that, as the end of the walking year means an end to weekly blogging too, so consider yourself spared...
2022 Total: 633.5 miles
Up Country Total: 5,441.5 miles
Solo Total: 5586.6 miles
5,000 in my 40s Total: 4512 miles
1,000 km in 2022 Ticker: 1018.8 km
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