The CrossingFoot Care
A Cheeky Forty-Eight Kilometres
A cheeky 48.5 kilometres counted as a shorter day by this point. My feet were tired, the Hokas were worn and the campervan evening revolved around laundry and a gloriously mixed dinner.
By Day 52, my sense of distance had become badly warped.
After three 55 km days in a row, I was almost disappointed to finish with 48.5 km. That is a ridiculous sentence, but that was the shape of daily life by then. We were pushing hard toward Port Augusta and Adelaide, and 55 km had started to feel like the standard.
The day started beautifully enough: cold South Australian dawn, trees in silhouette, silos, and a distance sign with Wudinna, Kyancutta, and Port Augusta stacked up in front of me. The pipeline was still there for parts of the day, another practical line through the landscape.
A large part of the day was really about feet, shoes, and the amount of quiet maintenance needed to keep walking. With more than 2100 km already behind us, and three pairs of Hoka Stinson Lites on daily rotation, that meant an average of more than 700 km per pair. They were carrying about 115 kg of me, plus backpack and gear, over dirt track, pea gravel, bitumen, coarse gravel, uneven shoulders and plenty of angled surfaces.
The routine had become very deliberate: mostly walking, with occasional running when it felt sensible. The goal was not speed. It was minimising impact, maximising recovery, and making sure the finish line was eventually crossed.
For all that, the body was holding together better than I had any right to expect. My legs were unbelievably okay. My back had been mostly trouble-free, apart from one tiny twinge when South Australia first started rolling underfoot. My feet were the real project. The massage at Southern Cross had taught me that feet have muscles, knots and trigger points too, and by Kalgoorlie those evening old-man hobbles had started to disappear.
That did not mean pain-free. It meant managed. Rest breaks, mornings, and evenings all involved balms, gels, creams, lubrication between toes, self-massage, checking sore spots, and trying to stay ahead of problems before they became trip-ending ones. The soles had toughened. The toes and calloused edges still complained. Somehow, with the HOKAs, Lightfeet socks, and obsessive foot care, I had only had one tiny blister so far, caused by leaving damp socks on after rain.
I was already looking forward to fresh Hokas in Adelaide. I called it the marshmallow feeling.
The walking itself came in three sessions: 15.1 km, 15.5 km, then 17.9 km. The plan behind the longer third session was sensible. If I kept going, the guys could get ahead, book us into Gawler Ranges Caravan Park, and make an early start on laundry and the usual end-of-day chores. It was a good plan until I started to feel it at about 15 km, and the final couple of kilometres became a real struggle.
So we called it. No fourth consecutive 55 km day. Just a cheeky 48.5 km or thereabouts.
That night we were at Gawler Ranges Caravan Park, Wudinna. Dinner was bangers, cheesy mash, and spaghetti in tomato sauce. Five-star catering in the HAA camper, obviously.
Images From The Day
