Walking back to happiness...

whoopah, oh yeah yeah - so the song by Helen Shapiro goes. Well, after my leg op on Wednesday, today I started walking; walking back to happiness, walking as many times and as far as possible, as directed by the consultant surgeon who laser blasted and removed some dodgy veins from my right leg. I'm told that I will have to walk and only walk for about 9 days or so before I can consider running again but I have to admit that while out walking today, the thought of perhaps trying out a little trot did enter my mind at times; this mainly brought about because of my leg not actually hurting while I walked. A friend of mine, who had similar work done last year unknowingly has set the standard for this walking recovery period of mine; she was quite focused on her recovery, stuck to the programme and on the ninth day, was able to start running again. I quite like that phrase 'and on the ninth day'; it has a certain biblical quality about it and also resonates quite well with my June 2009 blog, '54 days in the Desert', - at least it does to me. This imposed walking regime is in fact quite strange to me, especially as I have to walk long and far. No just ambling along anymore, this is about making my legs work, particularly the one that has been heated and boiled and is now full of holes. This walking is about getting the circulation going, about repairing the damage done to my leg veins and some nerves too. I'm told that if I was 21 years of age, new veins would grow but as I am 22 years PLUS, there is no chance of this happening. So in a time where society has deemed ageism to be a bad thing, my body decides to be ageist against itself. No surprise there then. Another thing about all this walking, is where to actually go and do it. There's only so many walks you can do from home; down the hill and turn left to the Co-op or turn right for the chippy. Go straight over for the football field and the burnt out childrens' play area or walk up the hill for the newsagent etc. You can see how it goes. I was imagining the other day that I might perhaps make up a series of walks that would loop out and back from my home, in effect treading out the shape of a many petaled flower, like say a Lotus flower. (I like the Lotus flower by the way and have always fancied having one tattooed on my head for some reason - !!). This at least would provide my walks with more meaning, more purpose and I could use my Garmin Forerunner to record each route I take and then download them onto a map to see how close I am to recreating each petal of my chosen flower - you can see how desperate I'm becoming with all this, can't you? As a result of my leg op, I can't drive for a week or so either, so I cannot take myself off very easily to the great outdoors, which actually is not that far away but without assistance, remains unreachable, unless that is, I plan and pack for a long day of walking. I'm not a natural high speed walker and if pushed to my limits, I can actually be in danger of losing my balance and falling over - you can ask my wife about this, as she has seen the stumble coming quite a few times now and finds it all quite entertaining. Even in ultra running events, I try to minimise my faster pace walking bits because of the stumble factor, adopting instead a sort of running shuffle that I feel much more secure with and which also minimises the chances of getting blisters appearing on the soles of my feet. Anyway, I can't run, not even shuffle run at the moment, so if I'm to reach the great outdoors, I must plan to be away for quite a while... or should I just stay local and start walking flowers? Hmm.