May 8: Nivelles – Seneffe
Nivelles – Seneffe is probably only about 15 km one from the other but even so I thought I wouldn´t make it. I was more stumbling than walking, partially with hallucinations and sitting down to rest every 10 minutes or so. When I finally reached Seneffe at about lunchtime, I entered the first supermarket to feed myself and than called the first pension that appeared on google maps to reserve a room. The landlord was a little surprised that I talked so little but I just wanted to have my peace. I think I went to bed at about 15:00 and slept the whole night.
I had learned that the nightwalks are killing me and that I needed to have some quality rests. I remembered a documentary about the Iditerod husky race in Alasca, one of the toughest races in the World where a multi times champion commented that if you compare the race times of the slides, they all have more or less the same speed. However, at the end there are significant time gaps between the slides, so how is that possible. It is mainly because of the resting intervals, the slide that can keep the resting time to a minimum but efficient and with high quality is the one that is going to lead the race.
With me it was more or less the same, you can do a night walk or two and make 50 to 70 km on the short term but than the next day you are toast and do 10 km. So as a consequence of this I started focussing more on my resting times and even in Spain where you have a lot of albergues every 3rd day I preferred to pay a more expensive guest house or hotel where my sleep would be definitely better.