Preparing for the Camino - Foot care

I never thought much about how important my feet are to me until I started to prepare myself to walk the Camino. Imagine if you will, the impact of one million footsteps on the multiple bones, joints and ligaments that make up each foot. As well, your skin surface suffers from constant irritation, heat, and the impact effect of each foot fall. I noticed right away, that my attention to good looking sandal feet was not going to be consistent with building up the calluses that would protect the high stress points of my feet. As well, I quickly learned which parts of my feet needed more attention than others.

I read a lot about hiking and foot care problems so I knew that I needed to pay immediate attention to any issues that I became aware of. This is a good and common practice - ie to stop immediately that you become aware of what is called a hot spot and called that because it feels just like that. A quick stop for a band aid over the area and readjustment of boots will prevent serious trouble which does not take long to develop if the problem is left unattended.

Here is another tip, When you put your boots on, have your foot at a 45 degree angle from the floor ie toe tipped up - which forces your heel to slide to the back of the boot. This gives more room for your toes, anchors your heel at the right place and prevents a lot of slip as you walk. I frequently stopped to adjust my boots by re tying them, untie, tip up the toe, heel slides back and then retie while the toe is tipped up. You would be surprised at how much of a difference this makes if your feet are hurting. It also makes a difference if you are starting a descent. Some people lost toe nails from the constant bumping of the toe nail against the toe of the boot - so keep your toe nails very short!!

The first thing I really studied was the hiking boot. There are many varieties, low cut, high cut, water proof, cool - air flow fabrics. The big thing is to make sure they are very comfortable, fit well with room for your toes and whatever the style selected, they need to provide the support you will need. I like the high cut style and found it helpful on the hills especially coming downhill. Lots of times you walk over rough ground and the protection for ankles is better with a higher cut. I also got water proof boots which proved to be far too hot for the time of year that I walked. I also discovered in a practice hike during a heavy rainstorm, that no boot is really water proof for long. Water proof boots fill up with water as the rain pours into the top if you do not have gaitors to prevent this. I would have been better with a light boot that had greater breathability for my walk as hot feet was a constant problem and likely added to the foot ache issue I had.

I used wool socks (Smart Wool brand) - no sock liners - although a lot of people did use these. I think that sock liners would work better if you wanted to lather your feet with vaseline as lots of people seem to do. The wool seemed to just absorb the vaseline and then make washing them out a bit more messy. I stopped using vaseline after only about a week into the walk.

I did use sport tape and wrapped my toes - sometime individually - heels and the ball of my foot each day. A lot of people used duck tape which actually slips inside your sock better if you have any kind of irritation going on. The sport tape sometimes became rolled up creating a worse problem for me. What I did was to practice with all kinds of wrapping in my training walks so that I had an idea of what would support my feet most. Also remember that you have to put the vaseline on after the tape!

Another important thing to prepare for is blisters which will arise during training. The practice of using a regular sewing needle with idodine soaked WHITE thread to poke through from one side of the blister to the other (use a double thread and ties the ends together in a knot, this will fall off in a few days)- is a very effective way to drain the fluid wihtout tearing the skin surface - which can lead to open wounds and infection.It does not hurt at all and actually provides immediate relief from the pain that the blister caused. Now remember - don't share needles with other people and don't use theirs either. I saw a lot of this and it is very dangerous - a real source of infection, hepatitis, HIV and you name it.

I saw a lot of really terrible foot problems from blisters that had gotten out of control and infected to just ugly sores - so taking care of things in an early stage and protecting feet is really important. Sometimes you might just have to stop and rest your feet for a day.

In Spain and probably the USA you can buy something called Compede which is like a medicated plaster and supposed to be applied to a blister and left on until it falls off. Essentially it creates quite a warm and wet environment - which to me just harbours more infection. I found that the clean and dry approach with a dressing over the site during the day and then exposing to sun and air when not walking worked better.

Foot massages were a great treat in the evening in my group and this was a wonderful way to settle for bed. My feet would often wake me at night, with an ache and feeling of just not being comfortable. Usually this all dissappeared by morning, but I really was worried about stress fractures in the bones and just wear and tear on my feet. I would take some aroma therapy oil next time to treat my feet and also some kind of sheep skin lined sock to put on at night just for the comfort. Wearing open sandals at the end of the day is good as well in order to expose the skin to the air after a long hot walk.

I had relatively few problems with my feet overall. My biggest concern was the short term and long term effect of the hours of constant walking. They were sore for most of the time and I think orthotics would have made a difference to this. Once I got home, it took quite a few weeks for the ache to dissappear - most notable when I got out of bed each morning.

In all, I was thankful for strong feet and legs that carried me all the way. I have always been careful with shoe purchases but now more than ever know that my feet are one of my most important assets.