The Camino cares about your pace, not your fitness

The Camino doesn't care about your fitness level. It cares about your pace.

Most people preparing for the Camino focus on the wrong thing. They worry about whether they're fit enough — whether they can cover 25 kilometres a day, whether their legs will hold out. These are reasonable concerns. They're also mostly the wrong concerns.

The pilgrims who struggle most on the Camino are often not the least fit. They're the ones who start too fast. Day one feels easy. The excitement is real, the legs are fresh, the path out of St. Jean is beautiful. So they push. They overtake slower walkers. They arrive in Roncesvalles ahead of schedule and feel good about it.

By day four, their knees are swollen. By day seven, they're on a bus.

Experienced pilgrims know: the Camino is not a race and it's not a test of athletic ability. It's a test of consistency. The goal is to walk every day, not to walk fast any day. Start slow, find your natural rhythm, and let the trail set the pace. The tortoise always wins here.

The right question before the Camino isn't "am I fit enough?" It's "can I slow down enough?"

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