How to train for the Camino de Santiago: a 12-week plan
The short answer
Most pilgrims on the Camino Francés walk 20 to 27 km (12 to 17 miles) a day, according to American Pilgrims on the Camino, and they keep it up for a month. No single day is the problem. The days in a row are.
You cannot rehearse a whole month at home, and you do not need to. As the Confraternity of Saint James puts it, you will get fitter by doing the Camino itself. What training has to do is get you to the start ready for those days: able to walk 20 km, in the shoes and with the pack you will take, and do it again the next morning. That second morning is the test. If your feet, legs and shoes are fine on it, they are ready for the days after, and the Camino builds the rest as you go.
There is no official number of weeks. The two big pilgrim associations say it in different words: build up gradually and do not do too much too soon. The Confraternity of Saint James adds rest days. Twelve weeks is enough time to do that from an ordinary starting point, which is why the plan below uses it. If you already walk an hour most days, you can start a few weeks in.
What you are actually training for
The Camino Francés runs about 780 km (485 miles) from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela, and most people take 30 to 35 days. The walking itself is on tracks, farm roads and old paths, never technical. What wears people down is repetition: feet, tendons and resolve meeting 20-something kilometres again the morning after.
It is also hillier than people expect. Day one is the hardest single day of the whole walk, straight over the Pyrenees to about 1,430 m (4,690 ft) at the Col de Lepoeder, and the highest point comes weeks later at the Cruz de Ferro, at 1,505 m (4,938 ft). So the plan builds three things: distance, days back to back, and hills.
In steps, a 20 km day is about 28,400 for an adult of average height, and a 25 km day about 35,500. If your phone says you average 6,000 a day now, that is the size of the gap.
A 12-week plan
An example, not a prescription. Move it a week either way, repeat a week that felt hard, and take at least one full rest day every week.
| Weeks | On weekdays | At the weekend | Pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | 3 walks of 45 to 60 minutes, about 4-5 km each | One walk of 8 km (5 miles) | None |
| 3-4 | 3 or 4 walks of an hour, about 5 km | One walk of 10-12 km (6-7.5 miles) | None |
| 5-6 | 4 walks of an hour, one of them with hills | One walk of 12-15 km (7.5-9 miles) | A light pack on the long walk |
| 7-8 | 4 walks of 6-8 km, one with hills | 15 km Saturday, 10 km Sunday, back to back | Full pack on Saturday |
| 9-10 | 4 walks of 6-8 km, one with hills | 18-20 km Saturday, 15 km Sunday | Full pack both days |
| 11 | 3 or 4 walks of 6-8 km | 20-22 km Saturday, 20 km Sunday | Full pack, Camino shoes and socks |
| 12 | 3 easy short walks | One easy 10 km | Light or none, rest before you travel |
A few rules make it work:
- Weekdays build the habit, weekends build the distance. American Pilgrims on the Camino suggest starting with an hour or more several times a week and a longer walk at the weekend, then growing the distances. That is the shape of the table.
- Back to back matters more than long. The weekend pairs from week 7 are the most important part of the plan. A tired second day teaches you more about your feet than any single long walk.
- Hills on purpose. One weekday walk a week with real climbs and descents, and long walks on varied paths when you can. The Confraternity of Saint James also recommends practising downhills, because the long descents ask more of your knees than the climbs.
- Listen to your body. A sore day means an easy day. The plan has slack built in for that.
Shorter Caminos need less build-up
If you are walking a shorter route, such as the Portuguese way from Porto (about 240 km) or the Camino Inglés (about 120 km), the daily distances are similar but there are far fewer of them in a row. You still want to be comfortable with 20 km days, but you can stop around week 9 or 10 and skip the longest back-to-back weekends. Camino de Santiago routes compares them all, if you have not picked one yet.
Never start the Camino in new shoes
This is the single most important thing on the page. Do not buy shoes for the Camino a week before you go and wear them out of the box in Saint-Jean. Blisters are the most common medical problem on the Camino, according to American Pilgrims on the Camino, and new shoes are the fastest way to get them. Here is why.
Blisters are friction times repetition. A review of the research on friction blisters (Knapik and colleagues, Sports Medicine, 1995) explains that a blister forms when friction separates layers of skin, and that the chance of one depends on how hard something rubs and how many times. The harder the rub, the fewer steps it takes. A new shoe has not shown you yet where it rubs. On the Camino you will find out at step 20,000 of day one, with 30 days still to go.
Your skin adapts to shoes it knows. The same review found that skin exposed to repeated light friction adapts: the cells multiply and the outer layer thickens, which may make blisters less likely. Twelve weeks of walking in your Camino shoes is how you get that for the spots those shoes touch. A new pair touches different spots, and your feet start from zero.
A blister needs days to heal, and the Camino does not stop. The skin under a blister takes about five days to rebuild its tough outer layer. At home you would rest. On the Camino you walk 25 km on it tomorrow, in the same shoes that caused it.
Carrying weight makes it worse. The review also found that heavier loads make foot blisters more likely, and a Camino walker carries a pack all day. That is one more reason to train with the pack on, in the same shoes.
Your feet swell. After days of long walking, feet get bigger. American Pilgrims on the Camino note that some people need shoes half a size to a full size larger, or wider, than usual. You only find out how much yours swell on the back-to-back weekends of a plan like this one.
So: buy your Camino shoes at the start of your training, not the end. Walk every long walk in them, with the socks you will take. American Pilgrims on the Camino put it plainly: be sure you have walked a decent amount of distance in your shoes, including longer back-to-back walks. By week 11 they should feel like the most boring shoes you own. That is the point.
Train with your pack
A loaded pack changes how you walk. The Confraternity of Saint James points out that it affects your gait and the way your feet strike the ground, so walking with it before you go matters. In the plan, a light pack joins the long walk in week 5 and the full pack goes on the long weekends from week 7.
How full is full? The Confraternity suggests aiming for not much more than 10 to 15% of your body weight, with a base weight of 7 to 10 kg (15 to 22 lb) without the day’s food and water. American Pilgrims on the Camino suggest around 10%. Training with the real pack is the best way to find out what you can leave at home: anything you carried for six weekends and never used is a candidate.
Walk the Camino at home first
Twelve weeks of training walks add up. The plan above comes to roughly 490 km (300 miles) of walking, more than half of the Camino Francés, before you have set foot in Spain. That is a lot of evenings around the same streets, and the weeks in the middle are where most training plans quietly stop.
reTrek gives those weeks a destination. Pick the Camino de Santiago as your route and every step of your training, the weekday walks, the weekends, and the steps of an ordinary day too, moves you along the real road from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port toward Santiago, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. You see Roncesvalles, the Meseta and the Cruz de Ferro arrive on the map at home, weeks before you see them for real. The training walks alone take you past León. And you can walk it with the friend you are going with, pooling your steps or racing each other to Santiago.
One honest limit: reTrek counts steps, not climbing, and it does not know what is in your pack. The hills and the weight are yours to add, and the plan tells you when. The Camino is part of reTrek PRO, and Everest Base Camp is free if you want to try the app first. Start walking the Camino in reTrek.
Before you go
If you are still choosing how long to give the walk itself, how long the Camino de Santiago takes works it out by daily distance. And the Camino de Santiago route page has the road itself: where it runs, when to go and how to get to Saint-Jean.