The Week After: How to Recover From a Challenge Walk

Your recovery starts the moment you stop walking, not the next morning.

Get the first hour right and the rest of the week looks after itself. Here is what to do after 13 miles, after 23, and after 37.

You have finished. Somebody has handed you a mug of tea, your feet have stopped being your feet, and the only decision left is how quickly you can get horizontal.

This is the bit nobody trains for.

Most walkers spend twelve weeks preparing for the day and about four minutes thinking about the days that follow. That is a shame, because what you do in the hour after you stop makes more difference to how you feel on Tuesday than almost anything you did on the hill.

This guide works for any distance. Our own events range from 13 miles up to a 37-mile coastal ultra, and the principles below scale across all of them - and across a Mighty Hike, a Three Peaks day, or a route you made up yourself.

What to Do in the First Hour

The hour after you stop is the one that pays you back. In rough order of importance:

• Change your socks. Even if you are about to drive home. A damp sock against damp skin for another hour is how a hot spot becomes a blister you are still nursing on Thursday.
• Get warm and dry. Your body stops generating heat the moment you stop moving, and you will chill faster than you expect - especially on an exposed finish or a September evening.
• Drink something. Water first, then something with a bit of salt or sugar in it. A cup of tea and a packet of crisps is a perfectly respectable recovery strategy.
• Eat within about an hour. Not a feast. A sandwich, a flapjack, a sausage roll. Your appetite may well have gone missing - eat anyway.
• Walk about for five minutes before you sit down for good. Cooling down gently is far kinder to your legs than going from mile 23 to a car seat in ninety seconds.
• Don't stand still in the cold making conversation for forty minutes. We have all done it. Your legs will send you the invoice.

The First 24 Hours

The main job is simple: keep moving a little, and eat and drink normally.

• Have a warm shower rather than a scalding bath. Heat feels wonderful and does very little.
• Get your legs up for twenty minutes at some point in the evening. On the sofa, feet on a cushion. That is the whole technique.
• Eat a proper meal. You may have burned somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 calories depending on distance, pace and how much you were carrying.
• Sleep. This is where the actual repair happens, and it is the one thing that has no shortcut.
• Expect to sleep badly if you have gone long. A big day can leave you wired. It passes.

How Long Recovery Actually Takes, by Distance

These are honest, typical ranges for a reasonably fit walker who has trained. Add a few days if it was hot, if the ground was hard, if you carried a heavy pack, or if the distance was a big step up from your longest training walk.

The pattern most people notice is that day two is worse than day one. That is normal and it has a name.

Day Two Is Worse. That Is Supposed to Happen

Delayed onset muscle soreness usually peaks somewhere between 24 and 72 hours after a long day, then fades. It is most pronounced in the quads and calves, and it is worst after a route with a lot of descent - which is why a hilly 18 miles can leave you stiffer than a flat 23.

The things that genuinely help are dull: gentle movement, food, fluid and sleep. A short flat walk on day two, even fifteen minutes to the shop and back, will do more than an afternoon on the sofa.

What is normal:

Stiff quads, sore calves, tender feet, tiredness that arrives out of nowhere on day three, and a strange reluctance to look at hills.

Your Feet Need More Than a Shower

Feet take the worst of a long day and get the least attention afterwards.

• Wash them, dry them properly - including between the toes - and let them breathe. Sandals or bare feet for the evening.
• Leave intact blisters alone. The skin on top is a sterile dressing and it is doing a better job than anything in your first aid kit.
• If a blister has already burst, clean it, cover it, and keep it dry.
• Check your toenails. Bruising under a nail usually means your boots are too short or your laces were too loose on the descents.
• Look at where the rubbing happened. It tells you something about your boot fit or your sock choice for next time.

If you are heading straight into another long day, a second clean, dry pair matters more than almost anything else you carry. This is the one piece of kit where the cheap option genuinely costs you - our friends at Capricorn make their mohair walking socks in Leicester, and a dry pair at the halfway point is the single easiest blister prevention there is.

Eating and Drinking in the Days After

Nothing complicated here.

• Eat normally, and a bit more than normally for two or three days.
• Include some protein at each meal. Your legs are rebuilding.
• Keep drinking on day two - most people are still slightly behind, and dehydration is a large part of why day two feels grim.
• If your appetite disappears for 24 hours, that is common after a very long day. It comes back, usually with interest.

When Can I Walk Again?

Sooner than you think, and gentler than you want.

• Days 1-2: short, flat, slow. Twenty minutes is plenty.
• Days 3-5: an hour or two on easy ground. No big climbs.
• Week 2: back to normal walking, including hills, if the soreness has gone.
• Weeks 2-4: back to proper training, if you have another event in the diary.

The one rule worth keeping: do not go straight into another long day because you feel fine on day four. Feeling fine and being recovered are not the same thing, and this is how people arrive at their second event of the season already tired.

Using the Momentum

Here is the honest bit. The best time to enter your next challenge walk is the week after you finish one, while you can still remember why you enjoyed it and before your brain quietly edits out the good parts.

If you have just done 13 miles, 18 is a genuinely comfortable next step. If you have just done 23, the jump to 26 is smaller than the number suggests. And if you have done a 26 and enjoyed it, the coastal 37 is well within reach with a proper training block behind you.

Our 12 week challenge walk training plan is the place to start when you are ready, and the training planner will map it against your event date.

Frequently Asked Questions