My cameraman, Leon McCarron, and I have now spent more than five months walking south from Mongolia towards Hong Kong.
Before setting off, I wrote in this column about how I had prepared physically for the journey (through training hikes, and learning the best stretching exercises). All this preparation certainly helped. But now, more than 3,000 kilometres later, how have our bodies coped with the day-in, day-out pounding which we have been giving them?
First, it should be explained what kind of strain our bodies are under. On average, we walk for 12 hours a day (covering about 35 to 40 kilometres) for five days, and then take one day off. Our packs weigh around 25kg (primarily from our camping gear, camera gear, clothes and food). Combined with my body weight, this means my feet are taking a 100kg pounding with each step, and as our total distance will eventually be 5,000 kilometres (or five million metres), this means that each foot gets five million 100kg poundings against the road.
So it is testimony to the resilience of the human body (and perhaps the Ecco boots I am using) that our feet are still intact. But at the same time, they have had more problems than the rest of our bodies.
About a month into the expedition, just as we reached the end of the Gobi Desert, I developed a very sore second metatarsal. (The metatarsals are the bones in the feet.) I could barely put any weight on the centre of my foot for several weeks, and had to walk with a limp, taking as much pressure as I could on my hiking poles.
After some extra days off, and inverting my ankle support so it covered my foot, I found the injury was stabilised, and I could start to walk at full speed again, and both Leon and I continued uninjured for a while.
The next injury, two months into the expedition (while we were walking down the frozen Yellow River valley), was Leon's back. This started to give him great pain, which we thought was due to his rucksack becoming unbalanced.