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People walking 35 - 40 KM per day

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Peregringos

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Time of past OR future Camino
CF
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
The last time I walked the Camino Frances I found the fiercest competition was far more about finding bed space first rather than covering the greatest distance. Can't recall anyone being specially boastful about how far they'd walked that day. I can see it might rankle though. I usually average about 30km but the odd 40+km isn't that unusual. Some people just enjoy a longer stretch of the legs. And who is to say what "2 stages" are? If someone walks it in a day it is one stage. Just a longer one than you might choose for yourself.
 
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.
The only way I could do two stages is if there was a horse pulling the coach :)
I intend to be King of the Snails with a 10k max god willing per day when next I go anywhere near the Meseta ! I love it to bits and am always glad to see the pilgies hurtling past and then complaining there is nothing to see! I love the silence and the emptiness (apart from the wall to wall sea of pilgies) and do my best to get out of the way of the speed freaks. Mind you , if I live much linger (84) I will probably be campaigning for handrails and escalators up the Pyrenees :)

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The last time I walked the Camino Frances I found the fiercest competition was far more about finding bed space first rather than covering the greatest distance. Can't recall anyone being specially boastful about how far they'd walked that day. I can see it might rankle though. I usually average about 30km but the odd 40+km isn't that unusual. Some people just enjoy a longer stretch of the legs. And who is to say what "2 stages" are? If someone walks it in a day it is one stage. Just a longer one than you might choose for yourself.
Exactly. I know lots of pilgrims ( certainly no braggers) who are capable of walking 40 plus k.per day.
If I had the stamina I would certainly would like to try it but alas...🙂
 
The last time I walked the Camino Frances I found the fiercest competition was far more about finding bed space first rather than covering the greatest distance. Can't recall anyone being specially boastful about how far they'd walked that day. I can see it might rankle though. I usually average about 30km but the odd 40+km isn't that unusual. Some people just enjoy a longer stretch of the legs. And who is to say what "2 stages" are? If someone walks it in a day it is one stage. Just a longer one than you might choose for yourself.

Hear, hear!

Who made up the stages?
Guide books are no bible, just recommendations based on albergues to stay in, places of interest etc. Everyone is free to walk as many km as they wish. You may chose 25 km, I may chose 40 km. Who cares? And not everyone who does such brags about it.
 
The 2024 Camino guides will be coming out little by little. Here is a collection of the ones that are out so far.
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.
as they say, "Hike your own Camino"
I am one of those people...I guess I'm struggling with your post. Was I a bad guy? (it wasn't to get a bed at an albuergue and it certainly wasn't something I was bragging about)

I hiked 40kms on a number of days because I didn't have the timeframe a lot of people have to hike the Camino. It was tough, but doable. The toughest day was Estella to Viana (leg breaking day), the easiest I believe was from Granon to San Juan de Ortega.

Waking up at 5am...I did that too...because it was cooler and I could pretty much get 18-20kms done by 9:00. At that point, I could take a break and grab something to eat and then continue on. I didn't want to stop hiking at 11:00am every day...I felt a need to press on. The biggest advantage to this was I often felt like I had the Camino all to myself in the afternoon. Many a day was spent in a wonderful solitude where I could pray the rosary.

Not all days were 40kms. I hiked Najera to Granon (28kms) and stopped at 11:15 for the day...my legs needed the break and it actually gave me a lot of strength for the future parts of the Camino.

"Hike your own Camino"
 
€2,-/day will present your project to thousands of visitors each day. All interested in the Camino de Santiago.
The only way I could do two stages is if there was a horse pulling the coach :)
I intend to be King of the Snails with a 10k max god willing per day when next I go anywhere near the Meseta ! I love it to bits and am always glad to see the pilgies hurtling past and then complaining there is nothing to see! I love the silence and the emptiness (apart from the wall to wall sea of pilgies) and do my best to get out of the way of the speed freaks. Mind you , if I live much linger (84) I will probably be campaigning for handrails and escalators up the Pyrenees :)

Samarkand.
Have you tried out the lifts in Pamplona? Great to whisk you straight up and not have to run up the slope like the bulls do... just do your walking and your gifting of your poetry, Samarkand. That's enough.
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
Off topic, probably, but it was my new learning yesterday, and @Tincatinker reminded me of it with his post above...

MEASURE FOR MEASURE TIME, WEIGHT AND DISTANCE​

If we could not measure then we could not build cities, trade goods, or carry out scientific experiments

Of all the disciplines that enable human flourishing, measurement is perhaps the most overlooked. It’s a practice that can be traced back to the world’s oldest civilisations and has since become interwoven with everyday life. If we could not measure then we could not build cities, trade goods, or carry out scientific experiments. Yet we often take for granted those units of length and weight that make up this global language. We don’t often stop to ask ourselves, why is a meter a meter? Why an inch an inch?
For each unit, though, there is a fascinating history, that explains not only why seemingly arbitrary lengths and weights have been retained over the millennia, but why measurement itself is so important to our world.
Meter
No unit reveals the political importance of measurement more than the meter. It was first defined during the French Revolution, when the country’s intellectual elite, the savants, set out to create a system of measurement that would embody revolutionary ideals of universality and rationality.France in the 19th century was burdened by a confusion of measures that encouraged exploitation and stymied trade. Defining the value of units was a prerogative of the nobility, which led to a profusion of weights and measures across the country’s provinces. It allowed local lords to take advantage of their subjects – weighing payments of grain in larger units than those used by peasants at the market, for example – prompting a common revolutionary demand for “one law, one weight, and one measure”.
The metric system was invented to overturn this and the other inequalities of the Ancien Régime, with new units derived from the latest scientific knowledge, and the meter itself defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
This definition required a seven-year survey of France to calculate the length of the meter, and a much longer campaign to encourage citizens to use the thing. The work was not an immediate success, either, and France would not only become the first country to adopt the metric system, but the first to reject it, too. It would take decades of political accommodation for the meter and other metric units to be accepted in Europe, but as Napoleon Bonaparte presciently declared after the savants’ work was complete: “Conquests will come and go but this work will endure.”
Inch
If the meter shows how units of measurement can be designed from scratch to solve specific problems, the inch demonstrates the importance of historical lineage.The inch is one of the oldest units in continual use in the English-speaking world, with the first written definitions stemming back to the Middle Ages. Around 1150, King David I of Scotland defined the unit as the width of the thumb “mesouret at the rut of the nayll.” Though, in order to compensate for the natural variety of the human body, this was given the addendum that the length should be taken as the average of the “thowmys of iii men, that is to say a mekill [large] man, and a man of messurabel statur, and of a lytell man.”
Two centuries later, King Edward II of England offered a new interpretation, declaring that “three grains of barley, dry and round, make an inch.” (Interestingly, the barleycorn was for many years its own unit of length, and survives today as the gradation of shoe sizes in English-speaking countries.)
Deriving units of length from the body and from nature is the oldest form of measurement. These include units such as the ancient Egyptian cubit (the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger), the Roman passus (a pace of around 1.5 meters), and Arabic qirat (equal to the mass of a seed from the carob tree, from which we derive the modern unit of the 200-miligram carat, used to weigh precious gems). Such units are useful because they are always accessible, more or less consistent, and appropriate in scale. But over time, demands for precision and uniformity outweigh ease-of-use, and “natural” units must either be standardised or replaced.
Kilogram
The kilogram was created alongside the meter and so shares its political origins. In fact, it was derived from the meter and defined in 1795 as the mass of a single litre of water (the litre itself was the volume of a cube with sides 10 centimetres in length). It was an appropriately straightforward definition and meant that anyone with a meter bar in hand could define the kilogram and check its weight. In theory, anyway.The savants soon ran into problems, though. Try to replicate this experiment yourself and you’ll discover that a whole range of factors affect the mass of a litre of water, from salinity to temperature to altitude. The definition was found to be so frustratingly approximate, in fact, that it was jettisoned, and a lump of metal forged to define the kilogram instead. (This happened twice: first in 1799 and again in 1889.) In other words, although it was more ideologically satisfying to have a definition of the kilogram anyone could replicate, it was more practical to define by fiat.
The story doesn’t end there, though, for even the most stable metal is liable to change, and in the 20th century scientists discovered that the kilogram was losing weight. In 2018, scientists voted to redefine the unit once more, basing its definition not on any physical matter, but on immaterial constants of nature (in this case: quantum calculations involving electromagnetic forces). Every unit of the metric system is now defined in this way, based on phenomena such as the spin of atoms and the speed of light. Such calculations can only be replicated in a few labs around the world, but they ensure that the units we use are unchanging – until we want to redefine them again.
Degree Celsius
Units such as weight and length are intuitively understood, but some phenomena, such as temperature, are so subjective they seem to resist accurate measurement. For most of human history, temperature has been measured only approximately. The ancient Greek physician Galen was one of the first thinkers to suggest there might be degrees of hot and cold in the second century AD, but he thought just four gradations would cover the necessary variations. By the 1500s, natural philosophers such as Galileo had designed early thermometers – glass tubes filled with liquid that rose and fell in response to changes in air pressure caused by heat – but such devices were still extremely imprecise.By the 17th century, thermometers had improved but thermometry still faced challenges. For example, how do you check your thermometer is reliable, if you don’t have a reliable thermometer in the first place to compare it to? The solution from scientists was to seek out stable thermometric phenomena – events that always occurred at the same temperature and could be used to check a thermometer’s accuracy. A number of suggestions were put forth, from the melting point of butter to the heat of blood, freshly drawn. But after much experimentation, two reliable candidates emerged: the freezing and boiling points of water.
It was the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius who applied this discovery most fruitfully in the 18th century, placing the two watery markers at either end of his thermometer’s scale and dividing the range between them by 100. As testament to the often arbitrary practices of measurement, though, Celsius’s original thermometer was actually backwards: he thought that water should freeze at 100°C and boil at 0°C.
Seconds
Why is a second a second long? Well, one oblique and fundamentally unverifiable explanation is: because you have 12 finger bones in each hand. Let me explain – backwards, if I may.The second is currently defined as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.” To simplify a little, this means that scientists fire a laser at an atom of caesium-133, which flips back and forth between two energy states, giving off tiny electromagnetic pulses as it does like the ticking of the world’s tiniest clock. We count these pulses – all 9 billion-plus of them – and that constitutes a second.
If 9 billion-plus seems like an arbitrary number it’s only because we want our current definition to match the previous one, which measured the second as 1 31,556,925.9747 of the year 1900 (you have to choose a specific year because variations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun mean they differ slightly).
That definition itself had been used to replace another fraction: 1/86,400 of a single day. And that, in turn, was used because the 24 hours of the day had been divided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.
These base units of time get their names from these divisions: the minute from pars minuta prima, Latin for “the first very small part” and the second from pars minuta secunda, or “the second very small part.” And why 60? Because the ancient Babylonians, who made some of the world’s earliest and most accurate astronomical observations, used a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system, instead of the decimal one (base 10) we’re used to today.
There’s one final question, though, and this is where we get very conjectural: why are there 24 hours in a day? Well, this is because the ancient Babylonians divided daylight into 12 parts, which were later doubled to cover the night, making a total of 24 hours. They did this because we don’t really know why. One theory is that they were copying the 12 lunar cycles of the year; another is that the number was derived from their mathematical practice of finger-counting, in which you count by touching your thumb to the twelve bones of each finger (which then multiplies by the five digits to make 60).
So, there we have it. Run that backwards and you go from 12 finger bones to the length of the second. And it only took a minute.
* James Vincent is the author of Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement, which was published by Faber on June 2nd
 
I've met people who were genuinely puzzled that I was not walking Brierley's daily stages. One woman was quite shocked and said "Are you allowed to do that?" :rolleyes:

wow, no words for that one...

I'm a big fan of walking your own camino. I've met folks who do a 38-43km day like it's no big deal and others who meander and wander. For me some days my body wanted to do 18km and other days 32km.

However....having walked the both CF, Fisterra and Le Puy, I've noticed the most bragging/competitiveness on the CF. Plenty of times at the end of the day where I could not handle one more minute of incessant and obsessive chatter about beds, finding beds, what about the beds, oh my god the beds. Beds and km. And I did pick up on a bit more judgment on how many km's one achieved in a day.

Whereas in France on the Le Puy no one gave a rip about km or beds. I remember the conversations being about life, where one was from, philosophy of life. The bed thing seemed less chaotic because you booked ahead and thus, it was a non issue.

*editing to add*: I do not have issues with ppl who walk 40km/day. More power to you! It's the competitiveness I grew tired of.
 
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Hola. I am one of those pilgrims, walkers?, who wants to take in all that Northern Spain has to offer. Yes there were days when I walked 30 km, but there were also days when 15km was sufficient. On leaving Pamplona I started with a short day, just to break up the Brierley suggested stages. Although I must say that if I was planning a long stage I would often "book ahead". Its no fun to walk 30km and find all the beds taken.
 
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.

Very sad. Who cares how far anyone else walks in a day?

I wonder what these 'fiercely competitive' people will learn and remember from their Camino experience? :rolleyes:

But I guess we all walk the Camino for different reasons.... ;)
 
The 2024 Camino guides will be coming out little by little. Here is a collection of the ones that are out so far.
I also wonder if "they" are all as "fiercely competitive" as the OP interpreted.
I had the same thought.
The only times that I walked more than 35km in a day it wasn't because I planned it, and woke up extra early to walk all those kms. They were days when I reached my intended destination for the day, and simply wanted to keep walking.
 
People just love to talk about their own experience, their own challenges, their own achievements, their blisters or their fail-proof cures and more. Jean-Christophe Rufin has a delightful paragraph about the "hierarchy" of the Santiago walkers in his book about his own pilgrimage to Compostelle. How far away from Santiago de Compostela you started from, how many days you walked to reach Santiago, how large your daily distance was, how early you started or how late you finished every day, how many Caminos you've done already and which ones, whether you walked in the 1990s or in 2019 for the first time ... Is that competitiveness or just chat? I think that it is chatting. It may appear as competitiveness to you when you allow yourself to think that you yourself ought to strive for benchmarks and goals that are other people's benchmarks or goals or simply their way of enjoyment.
 
I was grateful to find that I could walk up to 20 k a day (so much better than miles, I agree!) But it was noticeable that those who were suffering with blisters and various ankle/knee problems were generally much younger people who were walking much longer distances and carrying 50 litre plus packs.
 
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As to stages or even Brierley stages ... the overwhelming majority of Camino pilgrims have never heard of John Brierley and could not care less about the stages in his version of Camino guidebooks.

20-24 km is an average daily distance for averagely fit walkers (broad generalisation) on averagely demanding terrain. Combine this with the location of villages and towns with a reasonable offer of beds and you find that a majority of Camino pilgrims will stop in the same places every day. For numerous other pilgrims, walking longer distances feels more natural to them while others prefer shorter distances.

Pilgrims are not standardised, and there is no standardised way of (physically) walking long distances through any part of Spain. That should be so obvious that I am asking myself why I am even typing this 😂. Perhaps because, increasingly, I feel that pilgrims have preconceived ideas about going on Camino before they have even set foot on Spanish or French soil ... perhaps not surprising with this flood of blogs, videos, books, and social media platforms with ready-made information about what "The Camino" is going to be like ... or has to be like ...
 
Perhaps because, increasingly, I feel that pilgrims have preconceived ideas about going on Camino before they have even set foot on Spanish or French soil ... perhaps not surprising with this flood of blogs, videos, books, and social media platforms with ready-made information about what "The Camino" is going to be like ... or has to be like
Which is why I strongly discourage people from reading lots of Camino books or watching the ever increasing number of Camino films and videos before they leave.
Let your Camino be your own experience without the influence of other pilgrim's journeys.
It can be fun to watch the videos after you return to reminisce about the way.
 
Having done several 35-43km days on my CF, but not for the distance. Just to avoid the annoying guidebook-stages.
It was just very calm in July 2019. Only on the last 100km it was more crowded by bigger groups of Spaniards.
 
€2,-/day will present your project to thousands of visitors each day. All interested in the Camino de Santiago.
I walked the first week from SJPP last september. Let me tell ye...
It was tough to get a bed. In my group, 2 people quit around Logrono. A combination of factors... Loads of Spaniards, albergues closed....
We got word back from the front... Everything from sarria onwards is booked out... That's without talking about competitive, combative walkers
 
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.
Everyone has their own pace. However, hopefully the ego of bragging will diminish if the Camino becomes part of their heart.
 
The one from Galicia (the round) and the one from Castilla & Leon. Individually numbered and made by the same people that make the ones you see on your walk.
Has anyone noticed this?
I am on the meseta part, and it's fiercely competitive, people getting up at 5am, to storm ahead of everyone else.
It's a bragfest when they reach the albergue, having done 2 stages in a day.

I am not talking about the cyclists, or people taking bus, or other variants.
I have walked the Camino twice (2015 and 2018) and I always got up early nearly every day but especially when in the Meseta. I enjoyed my walks in the dark, especially when there was a moon; and generally reached my reserved albergue early afternoon. I took regular breaks and met many wonderful pilgrims who stopped to ask if I was ok and generally slowed down a bit and walked with me for a mile or two. I took about 50 days to complete my walk. I'm looking forward to walking it again in 2023 at the age of 85! Buen Camino.
 
I walked ~35 km a day on several occasions, particularly on the Invierno where you just don't have albergues every 5-10 km, and I'm usually a fast walker - it's just my comfortable pace.
If people want to add an element of competition to their Camino, I also don't see anything wrong with it - we all walk our own Caminos, with our own goals, purposes, and ways to have fun :)
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
I walked the first week from SJPP last september. Let me tell ye... It was tough to get a bed. In my group, 2 people quit around Logrono. A combination of factors... Loads of Spaniards, albergues closed....
This "let me tell ye" ... made be smile.

So you did not know that the first week of September is that time of the year when, for reasons unknown, the urge to travel from abroad to SJPP and start the Camino Francés is the strongest, with the result that these Camino walkers create a "bottleneck" between SJPP to Pamplona and have to walk further than initially intended or get a taxi to find a bed further away?

And that, throughout the year, Pamplona and Logroño are popular holiday destinations for Spanish travellers, especially on weekends, with the result that the demand increases for beds in the hotels and the numerous albergues that are albergues turisticos, i.e. they cater for all kinds of guests and not just pilgrims?

Lucky the pilgrim who, thanks to physical condition and/or training, is capable of outwalking all this. ☺️
 
I walked the first week from SJPP last september. Let me tell ye...
It was tough to get a bed. In my group, 2 people quit around Logrono. A combination of factors... Loads of Spaniards, albergues closed....
We got word back from the front... Everything from sarria onwards is booked out... That's without talking about competitive, combative walkers
I hope you do not mind if I come in with a comment about other pilgrims. Or walkers, if they decide they are not pilgrims, that is their business. Competitive or combative - whatever. Now that I have begun to think out loud - which is how I know what I actually do think about something! Hang on: I just checked the title. So what if anybody walks 35 or 40kms a day? I can tell you, Jimmy, as a most unkempt Scottish tv character (Rab C Nesbitt) might say: what has that got to do with me, as a pilgrim? Sweet nothing. Necessity ( no beds in Portomarin) caused me to have to do that one day, two days from Santiago on the CF. 2006, if you don't mind! By then I could, stamina is a wondrous thing! I know my limits, and I know where the permission given to my feet to stay going comes from - and it is unaffected by anybody else. Knowing myself, and the reality of accommodation options on the Ingles, I chose to book, as I knew I would otherwise be sleeping on the side of the road, too late for any albergue along the way! It is of no consequence to me how many kms anyone else walks, or how fast or how slow.
What has been, and will be, important: engaging with other pilgrims, and an awareness of when to stay quiet and let others be. I am half sorry I am posting this as maybe it is not quite on topic... but only half sorry! 😁
 
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My first 2 caminos I was out the door walking for around 5am in the dark. It was nothing to do with being fiercely competitive, it was about starting when the temperature was nice and cool and also there is nothing as nice as seeing the sunrise whilst hiking. I walked until I was ready to finish for the day and would be anywhere between 20 & 45km, 30km being the norm for me. Might be different next month when I start from Saint Jean as I'm older and currently have a painful IT Band so no hiking / training at the moment. It will be what it is I guess. And everyone's Camino is their personal Camino so I don't think we should criticise people who walk early or big distances, it the choice of the individual. If someone is worried about getting a bed, then book a hotel ahead. For me personally I prefer to walk until I'm tired then find a bed somewhere, but that's my Camino experience.
 
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The only way I could do two stages is if there was a horse pulling the coach :)
I intend to be King of the Snails with a 10k max god willing per day when next I go anywhere near the Meseta ! I love it to bits and am always glad to see the pilgies hurtling past and then complaining there is nothing to see! I love the silence and the emptiness (apart from the wall to wall sea of pilgies) and do my best to get out of the way of the speed freaks. Mind you , if I live much linger (84) I will probably be campaigning for handrails and escalators up the Pyrenees :)

Samarkand.
Here's our take: after we arrived back in the States after our first Camino, we were filled with overwhelming sense of regret ... why in the world didn't we take MORE time? We had it to take ... we actually had more time that we could have taken—and didn't. Not this time. We've decided to do no more than 10-15 km's per day and take even more time enjoying the people and places and walking. We are planning for a 60-65 day Camino because we want to and we can. More pictures, more sightseeing, more rest, more relaxation, more listening to God. We realize we are in a small minority, but we're going to take in everything the Camino will give us.
 
@Peregringos - I have definitely experienced caminos were there was sometimes a competitive vibe among some people in the albergues. It can be off putting. I hope the beauty of the meseta and conversations along the way are the bigger parts of your days.
Buen Camino
 
St James' Way - Self-guided 4-7 day Walking Packages, Reading to Southampton, 110 kms
The first edition came out in 2003 and has become the go-to-guide for many pilgrims over the years. It is shipping with a Pilgrim Passport (Credential) from the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela.
For the rest of us, and thank you to, "malingerer," for this term, "pilgies," are not to be concerned with. They are simply a reminder of what is at home for most, the hustle and the bustle, the competition. The pilgies have simply brought their life with them, too young and / or inexperienced / immature to understand the Camino's true purpose.
Maybe they can do two stages at a time, so what? The only way this issue would be a problem for anyone is if you were a competitor against those doing two stages at a time. So, let them do what they do. When being passed, it only lasts for a few seconds, then they are gone.

To be concerned, in any way by the racing pilgies is to have to admit your desire to compete as well.

For me, as with many, we will keep putting one foot in front of the other, each day, until we reach where we set out to...or not. Free will or not, there is only one who is in control, and I pray to Him each day.

And if none of this means anything, remember the tortoise anf the hare, my friends, the tortoise and the hare.
 
I am a fast walker and have no problem doing 30k-35k a day. On the Francés years ago, I became “known” as Godzilla ( ( a movie creature) after a bicyclist nicknamed me after I made it up a hill before him. For days, I was approached by a school group, a priest, other pilgrims who heard I was “that woman.” Many thought I was racing or missing out on the beauty of the camino. I assure you, I missed nothing! I patted every dog, cat, donkey I saw, found heart shaped stones on gravel paths, and chatted with butterflies that landed on my mochila. I have two speeds—go and sleep! And at the time I was 64–so much to see, not as much time left to see it all! Each subsequent camino reminds me I should’ve started earlier!

We all march to the beat of a different drummer. I hope the OP just ignores the braggarts. We’re each doing the caminos for different reasons.
 
????? Ahem, the Camino francés is in Spain..... What exactly were they expecting and what's the issue with Spanish people camino-ing in their own country?
exactly...(and I'm from the US)
 
The 2024 Camino guides will be coming out little by little. Here is a collection of the ones that are out so far.
My first 2 caminos I was out the door walking for around 5am in the dark. It was nothing to do with being fiercely competitive, it was about starting when the temperature was nice and cool and also there is nothing as nice as seeing the sunrise whilst hiking. I walked until I was ready to finish for the day and would be anywhere between 20 & 45km, 30km being the norm for me. Might be different next month when I start from Saint Jean as I'm older and currently have a painful IT Band so no hiking / training at the moment. It will be what it is I guess.
exactly...hike in July and tell me that those few hours from 5-9am weren't a delight with cooler temps. 3:00pm...in the Spanish heat, took a LOT out of me.
 
Off topic, probably, but it was my new learning yesterday, and @Tincatinker reminded me of it with his post above...

MEASURE FOR MEASURE TIME, WEIGHT AND DISTANCE​

If we could not measure then we could not build cities, trade goods, or carry out scientific experiments

Of all the disciplines that enable human flourishing, measurement is perhaps the most overlooked. It’s a practice that can be traced back to the world’s oldest civilisations and has since become interwoven with everyday life. If we could not measure then we could not build cities, trade goods, or carry out scientific experiments. Yet we often take for granted those units of length and weight that make up this global language. We don’t often stop to ask ourselves, why is a meter a meter? Why an inch an inch?
For each unit, though, there is a fascinating history, that explains not only why seemingly arbitrary lengths and weights have been retained over the millennia, but why measurement itself is so important to our world.
Meter
No unit reveals the political importance of measurement more than the meter. It was first defined during the French Revolution, when the country’s intellectual elite, the savants, set out to create a system of measurement that would embody revolutionary ideals of universality and rationality.France in the 19th century was burdened by a confusion of measures that encouraged exploitation and stymied trade. Defining the value of units was a prerogative of the nobility, which led to a profusion of weights and measures across the country’s provinces. It allowed local lords to take advantage of their subjects – weighing payments of grain in larger units than those used by peasants at the market, for example – prompting a common revolutionary demand for “one law, one weight, and one measure”.
The metric system was invented to overturn this and the other inequalities of the Ancien Régime, with new units derived from the latest scientific knowledge, and the meter itself defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator.
This definition required a seven-year survey of France to calculate the length of the meter, and a much longer campaign to encourage citizens to use the thing. The work was not an immediate success, either, and France would not only become the first country to adopt the metric system, but the first to reject it, too. It would take decades of political accommodation for the meter and other metric units to be accepted in Europe, but as Napoleon Bonaparte presciently declared after the savants’ work was complete: “Conquests will come and go but this work will endure.”
Inch
If the meter shows how units of measurement can be designed from scratch to solve specific problems, the inch demonstrates the importance of historical lineage.The inch is one of the oldest units in continual use in the English-speaking world, with the first written definitions stemming back to the Middle Ages. Around 1150, King David I of Scotland defined the unit as the width of the thumb “mesouret at the rut of the nayll.” Though, in order to compensate for the natural variety of the human body, this was given the addendum that the length should be taken as the average of the “thowmys of iii men, that is to say a mekill [large] man, and a man of messurabel statur, and of a lytell man.”
Two centuries later, King Edward II of England offered a new interpretation, declaring that “three grains of barley, dry and round, make an inch.” (Interestingly, the barleycorn was for many years its own unit of length, and survives today as the gradation of shoe sizes in English-speaking countries.)
Deriving units of length from the body and from nature is the oldest form of measurement. These include units such as the ancient Egyptian cubit (the length from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger), the Roman passus (a pace of around 1.5 meters), and Arabic qirat (equal to the mass of a seed from the carob tree, from which we derive the modern unit of the 200-miligram carat, used to weigh precious gems). Such units are useful because they are always accessible, more or less consistent, and appropriate in scale. But over time, demands for precision and uniformity outweigh ease-of-use, and “natural” units must either be standardised or replaced.
Kilogram
The kilogram was created alongside the meter and so shares its political origins. In fact, it was derived from the meter and defined in 1795 as the mass of a single litre of water (the litre itself was the volume of a cube with sides 10 centimetres in length). It was an appropriately straightforward definition and meant that anyone with a meter bar in hand could define the kilogram and check its weight. In theory, anyway.The savants soon ran into problems, though. Try to replicate this experiment yourself and you’ll discover that a whole range of factors affect the mass of a litre of water, from salinity to temperature to altitude. The definition was found to be so frustratingly approximate, in fact, that it was jettisoned, and a lump of metal forged to define the kilogram instead. (This happened twice: first in 1799 and again in 1889.) In other words, although it was more ideologically satisfying to have a definition of the kilogram anyone could replicate, it was more practical to define by fiat.
The story doesn’t end there, though, for even the most stable metal is liable to change, and in the 20th century scientists discovered that the kilogram was losing weight. In 2018, scientists voted to redefine the unit once more, basing its definition not on any physical matter, but on immaterial constants of nature (in this case: quantum calculations involving electromagnetic forces). Every unit of the metric system is now defined in this way, based on phenomena such as the spin of atoms and the speed of light. Such calculations can only be replicated in a few labs around the world, but they ensure that the units we use are unchanging – until we want to redefine them again.
Degree Celsius
Units such as weight and length are intuitively understood, but some phenomena, such as temperature, are so subjective they seem to resist accurate measurement. For most of human history, temperature has been measured only approximately. The ancient Greek physician Galen was one of the first thinkers to suggest there might be degrees of hot and cold in the second century AD, but he thought just four gradations would cover the necessary variations. By the 1500s, natural philosophers such as Galileo had designed early thermometers – glass tubes filled with liquid that rose and fell in response to changes in air pressure caused by heat – but such devices were still extremely imprecise.By the 17th century, thermometers had improved but thermometry still faced challenges. For example, how do you check your thermometer is reliable, if you don’t have a reliable thermometer in the first place to compare it to? The solution from scientists was to seek out stable thermometric phenomena – events that always occurred at the same temperature and could be used to check a thermometer’s accuracy. A number of suggestions were put forth, from the melting point of butter to the heat of blood, freshly drawn. But after much experimentation, two reliable candidates emerged: the freezing and boiling points of water.
It was the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius who applied this discovery most fruitfully in the 18th century, placing the two watery markers at either end of his thermometer’s scale and dividing the range between them by 100. As testament to the often arbitrary practices of measurement, though, Celsius’s original thermometer was actually backwards: he thought that water should freeze at 100°C and boil at 0°C.
Seconds
Why is a second a second long? Well, one oblique and fundamentally unverifiable explanation is: because you have 12 finger bones in each hand. Let me explain – backwards, if I may.The second is currently defined as “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.” To simplify a little, this means that scientists fire a laser at an atom of caesium-133, which flips back and forth between two energy states, giving off tiny electromagnetic pulses as it does like the ticking of the world’s tiniest clock. We count these pulses – all 9 billion-plus of them – and that constitutes a second.
If 9 billion-plus seems like an arbitrary number it’s only because we want our current definition to match the previous one, which measured the second as 1 31,556,925.9747 of the year 1900 (you have to choose a specific year because variations in the Earth’s orbit around the sun mean they differ slightly).
That definition itself had been used to replace another fraction: 1/86,400 of a single day. And that, in turn, was used because the 24 hours of the day had been divided into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds.
These base units of time get their names from these divisions: the minute from pars minuta prima, Latin for “the first very small part” and the second from pars minuta secunda, or “the second very small part.” And why 60? Because the ancient Babylonians, who made some of the world’s earliest and most accurate astronomical observations, used a sexagesimal (base 60) numeral system, instead of the decimal one (base 10) we’re used to today.
There’s one final question, though, and this is where we get very conjectural: why are there 24 hours in a day? Well, this is because the ancient Babylonians divided daylight into 12 parts, which were later doubled to cover the night, making a total of 24 hours. They did this because we don’t really know why. One theory is that they were copying the 12 lunar cycles of the year; another is that the number was derived from their mathematical practice of finger-counting, in which you count by touching your thumb to the twelve bones of each finger (which then multiplies by the five digits to make 60).
So, there we have it. Run that backwards and you go from 12 finger bones to the length of the second. And it only took a minute.
* James Vincent is the author of Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement, which was published by Faber on June 2nd
I got hot and shrunk an inch trying to read this.
 
The only way I could do two stages is if there was a horse pulling the coach :)
I intend to be King of the Snails with a 10k max god willing per day when next I go anywhere near the Meseta ! I love it to bits and am always glad to see the pilgies hurtling past and then complaining there is nothing to see! I love the silence and the emptiness (apart from the wall to wall sea of pilgies) and do my best to get out of the way of the speed freaks. Mind you , if I live much linger (84) I will probably be campaigning for handrails and escalators up the Pyrenees :)

Samarkand.
I am 82 and planning my first Camino in September and I am with you! The Camino , I thought, was about the exact opposite of speed competition and ego. I am disappointed to find these kinds of walkers which will not be pleasant to encounter. I, too, plan to walk easily and take in the scenery, the call, the smells of nature and life which I think is what walking the Camino is about. Buen Camino!
 
The 2024 Camino guides will be coming out little by little. Here is a collection of the ones that are out so far.
In July 2015, a friend and I walked the Francés in 20 days, averaging about 40km per day. This was not to find beds for the night or to get there first. It was because we could.
That was my first Camino. Since then, I've walked the Via de la Plata and the Norte, each slower than the last. And my next will be even slower. There is no wrong way, as long as our actions do not harm another or their Camino experience.
 
One thing that I found on the Camino is that there'll always be someone who walks faster than you, does more in a day, started further away etc etc and it's not a competition. I met several people who walked much longer than me (35-40km to my 25 average) but that's how they've chosen to do it and it's what works for them. I saw people who'd start early and finish before noon, and others who were walking into their final stop of the day after 8pm, we all do it differently. And that, for me, was part of the enjoyment of the camino - you'd have some people you'd see regularly because you were walking at a similar rhythm, then others you might only see once or twice as you passed by them or they passed by you.

Just like you can't always see the struggles someone might be going through, you can't judge their comfort level from outside either. What might be too much for you is just right for others, and that could change from day to day too.
 
This is what I loved about the Camino Madrid; I was the only one on trail so there was no one to compare to. As soon as I joined others on the French route, I noticed how my mind went into comparison mode. The peacefulness of my journey was disrupted. Best not to compare. When they say “walk your own Camino” this is what is meant.
 
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You are wrong.. by definition there is competition with other people. Why else would people be getting up at 5am, and racing ahead. If you think otherwise , why not arise at 1200 noon. You are naive
I disagree. If people want to walk that fast, why don't they just do race walking somewhere else. The Camino has been touted as an event where everyone can be themselves and dress, walk, be alone or not, whatever, as they wish it. It should be the freedom to be who you are. It is a shame if people start bringing in competition, next there will be fights about politics and religion. And then we don't need a Camino for that!
 
Hear, hear!

Who made up the stages?
Guide books are no bible, just recommendations based on albergues to stay in, places of interest etc. Everyone is free to walk as many km as they wish. You may chose 25 km, I may chose 40 km. Who cares? And not everyone who does such brags about it.
Who knows? People in a race in life usually get nowhere, but I do not intend this to be judgmental as each person is where he/she is in life because they are a product of what came before. (I have no idea what I am saying?)
 
I’m on the Meseta now and I think for most people, getting out at 5 is more so to beat the heat. I for one would rather walk during the cooler hours and try to be in my albergue doing laundry and resting in the afternoon. I have met people that are doing 38km/day but most of those are people who started in the Netherlands, Italy, etc… and are just “used to” walking all day every day. If I could walk those distances, I would because I enjoy the walking, but my body isn’t quite built for that. More power to them!
 
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As others have already said….beating the heat, enjoying the sunrise, wanting to walk in solitude…If you left at noon you would be in the heat of the day. I won’t be waking up at 5 a.m. but won’t be giving a second thought to those who do….it’s their Camino, not mine.
 
The problem is , people who get up at 500am are waking everyone else.. packing, unpacking, talking, checking phones.
 
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What would Saint John say? I think he would preach the teachings of Christ which were more about themes of peacefulness, acceptance and loving one another. This ancient pilgrimage has roots in much more important concerns than how fast someone is walking or how early one rises. Please, be mindful of your mind as you walk this transformative walk.
 
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In July 2015, a friend and I walked the Francés in 20 days, averaging about 40km per day. This was not to find beds for the night or to get there first. It was because we could.
That was my first Camino. Since then, I've walked the Via de la Plata and the Norte, each slower than the last. And my next will be even slower. There is no wrong way, as long as our actions do not harm another or their Camino experience.
don't ever apologize for this...I was in a similar timeframe...not because I wanted to but because I didn't have the timeframe that others seem to have
 
Hi,
I walked the Frances in February 2013 accompanying my wife. I found the going fairly hard and about half way I read in Sergei Ramis's guide book that: 'You could take the ultimate challenge and walk it in 4 weeks'. I said to the wife 'so why are we walking it in 3?'. She said that her mother couldn't look after the children for longer!
Buen Camino,
Simon
 
Walk your ow Camino is bollocks advice. It's clear why people are getting up at 5am, to beat the heat, and to get next stage ahead of other people

I did get up one morning at 439, walking the 17km stretch.
I saw a load of people ahead of me. I thought, who the F are these people?
you didn't really learn anything, did you? who died and made you St James?

HIKE YOUR OWN CAMINO and be done with it.
 
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