Susie Taaffe walked the Camino de Santiago twice, and an early injury taught her to ditch the rigid goal of 25 km daily. She took buses, adjusted distances, and found that pushing through pain to reach a destination doesn't work. The real lesson: find your pressure sweet spot around 5/10 to stay motivated without burning out.
Chapters
I genuinely wanted to finish it. It is, it's, it's a beautiful walk. You make wonderful connections with human beings that might come into your life for half an hour or a day or 3 weeks. Um, it's, it's an incredible part of Spain. It's a huge— it is one of the greatest achievements of my life, walking the Camino. And now I've been lucky enough to do it twice. It is an incredible achievement, but it's, it's not about how— and you learn this very quickly Um, or you don't.
Totally.
Everyone's very different and everyone's Camino is their own journey. But I learned that reaching Santiago is not the— that's not actually the goal. The goal is in finding your own journey and running your own race.
And adapting your conditions.
Yeah.
To a way that feeds you, because you don't want to— like, there's no point doing like that. It's too long. Like, you know how you can like knuckle down and push through for a short amount of time. But that's sort of a journey you cannot just push through because you won't, you'll be carted off in an ambulance. You will, you will. So it's learning to adjust the conditions to make it enjoyable. Yeah.
And to achieve the thing that you want to achieve with adapted conditions. So I—
And removing the expectations that have no value. Yeah.
And, and the, the expectation that I would walk 25 kilometers a day Had no— there was no value to that for me whatsoever. So I adjusted. I think, uh, I walked the first day after my injury, I walked 7 Ks, and then the next day I walked 8 Ks, and then I walked 10 Ks. Um, I took buses, I took trains, um, I had my backpack transferred. All of the things that very cocky, sure me at the start of the walk—
Was not gonna do. Was not gonna do.
No, I will carry my pack every day and I will walk 25 kilometers and I will never take a bus and I will walk every single step of the Camino. Yeah, that didn't happen. So I did, I learned that lesson on the first one, on the first Camino, and then the second Camino provided different challenges, more injuries, and a deeper understanding that it's my own race to run. I'm not competing with anyone else. I will finish at the stage, at the time when I finish in the capacity that I, that I can commit to.
Yes. And that there's no point doing it miserable.
There is no point doing it miserable. There's no point that— like, there's no point for limping over the line into Santiago. Yeah, broken, broken.
It's like, what is that? Are you like screaming to the pearly gates? Yeah, like racing to— like pushing through to get there like that. Like, I think that it's such a metaphor for life. It's like, there is no point doing it broken. No, like, there's no point doing it broken. Like, you've got to adjust. So the journey along the way is manageable, is feeding you, like feeding your heart and your soul. Like there's no point walking, like sticking to her 25 kilometers a day and being miserable and in pain. And I think that like as a metaphor for how we're living our lives, like are you, are you doing that? Are you pushing so hard that you are limping through it like miserable and pain-like? I think that's— we just got to take the foot off the gas.
Yeah.
And adjust our conditions so that we are actually enjoying each day. Like, of course there's going to be pressures. Like, always there's going to be pressures. But if you're already at like a 9 out of— I use this all the time. Where are you on the scale, 1 to 10? If you're at a 9 out of 10, you get a 3 event, you're at a 12. You're gone. You're screaming profanities at the— you're stomping around the room and like, you're done. You're screaming at people in traffic. So it's like, we need to operate at about a 5 out of 10 because you do need some pressures. Otherwise we'd get nothing done. Like, we can't just like lie around on the couch all day.
No, no.
Like, and you would get bored. That wouldn't feed you. That would eventually flip and eat you.
Yeah.
So it's like lying on the couch can be too— like, anything can be 2 things. Yeah.
Yeah.
Something like no pressure whatsoever can end up eating you.
Yeah.
Too much pressure eats you. So it's like finding the balance of things. And sometimes lying on the couch will be feeding you and sometimes lying on the couch will be eating you.
Yeah.
And it's all dependent on where, and only you will know where you're at.
Yeah. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And back to, again, bring everything back to the Camino because it is, they are life lessons in this micro, this safe little bubble. Um, uh, you know, some days feel really great and I walked 32 kilometers. Some days I only walked 10 kilometers. Um, but I—
But on those days, did you just see how you were feeling?
I did.
You didn't like commit, I'm going 32.
No.
It was more like, Okay, let's just see.
Yeah.
And I would have to say that's one of our favorite phrases. It's like, let's just see, let's just try. And when it feels good, keep going. And if it stops feeling good, don't keep going, like, stop.
