Though I completed the
Camino Frances with my father in 32 walking days, I didn't do it without pain, tears, and suffering. Walking into Logrono on my 7th day of walking, I more or less collapsed outside of the albergue. I simply could not move my feet. I had developed tendonitis in both of my shins, and the up-and-down movement of my feet was too much strain on the area. We visited the hospital during walk-in hours, and with some crude sign language managed to get the doctor to prescribe some anti-inflammatories for me. He also told me to walk as little as possible for 2-3 days, and to ice as much as possible. We stayed 3 full days in Logrono for me to recooperate, and the fourth day my father walked on to Najera while I took the bus.
The next day, walking from Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada, I was fine! I was so thrilled. However, the day after that it came back in my right shin, and stayed there for the remainder of my camino. About a week later I noticed a similar pain in my left achilles. Then when stretching my injuries before going to bed at night, I noticed a kind of creaking noise whenever I moved the joints in question. My father (a former firefighter with medical training) identified this as crepitus, which upon getting home and researching it, I discovered was a sign that my tendons were significantly weakened and could have even been close to snapping. My right big toe got it as well (somehow?!)
I cannot stress enough how difficult getting this made my camino. Getting up in the morning, I may feel fantastic, but I never knew what km mark would be the absolute breaking point for my body that day. Many days I practically crawled into town. Several times I used our walking sticks as crutches. Often I had to walk down hills and stairs backwards because it was simply too painful to attempt forwards. Because of how I had to adjust my walk to accommodate my injury, I also found myself with a grand total of 17 blisters over the course of my camino. There were many days where my father was determined to stick me on a bus, given the condition I had finished walking in the day before, but somehow I made it. I wouldn't recommend pushing your body the way I did, however. The pull to Santiago is strong, but the desire to not snap a tendon should perhaps have been stronger. Despite feeling the intense pain I was in, I think I underestimated the amount of longterm damage I potentially could have caused myself.
In my last week of the camino, in came back in my left shin as well. It would come and go in both my shins at this point, one being in stronger pain than the other at any given time, and I had only one tensor bandage so several times during each walk I would stop and switch the bandage over to the other leg. I'm sure people who hadn't been walking with me for weeks must have thought I was faking it and couldn't remember which leg I was pretending to have hurt!
I absolutely want to do the camino again. But I need to figure out WHY this happened to me. I trained extensively before doing the camino. I was 19 at the time (this was six months ago) and I'm a fit and active person who has never sustained any serious injuries. My shoes were broken in and I had trained with my pack. I suppose I might have to get myself an appointment with a podiatrist, bring in my shoes and ask him what went wrong. Because as much as I still adored my camino and as much as I consider it to be the best experience of my life thus far, I would rather repeat it without that pain. Does anyone know what could have possibly caused this?
Gracias y ultreia!
