in my stomach before any walk, but a walk with a client brings an extra nervous edge. That I'll be plodding across beautiful, quiet countryside gives me something to look forward to and knowing I'll be helping someone else adds to the expectancy.
Daughter often tells me she gets butterflies before she goes swimming. I find this absolutely adorable because swimming is something we did together, almost every other weekend for a long time during her early years. I taught her to swim, we'd have a brilliant time and splash each other, dive to the bottom to collect our locker key and bounce over the inflatable. The fact she still gets butterflies now, at 13 years old, makes me smile because it shows me she still has excitement at the prospect of swimming, and it indicates how powerful her enjoyment of the activity was.
I think my fluttering stomach flows from similar sources; I look forward to walks because they bring me contentment, relaxation, solid sleep, good exercise and pride in achievement. Over the last three weeks I've walked 25, 30 and 24 miles respectively, totalling almost eighty miles in twenty days, averaging four miles a day. I haven't put that into context before but that's like walking from here to Guildford in a straight line, in twenty days, averaging only four miles per day. I know for a fact I could easily average nine or ten miles a day if I wanted to... This had just led me to look up where the nearest beach is to see how long it'd take me to walk there. I reckon if I pushed myself I could manage 13 miles or more a day on my current fitness level, so it'd take me 8 days to walk to the nearest sea, all going well. This is definitely something to consider for the future, probably when it's less stiflingly hot.
I hope I never lose these butterflies.
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