Walkley Heights is young, established in 1995, and it sits on genuinely interesting ground. The land was formerly part of the Yatala Labour Prison farm, plus fifty-five hectares compulsorily acquired from R. M. Williams during Playford’s premiership.
Dry Creek linear park runs through the middle of the suburb, with mature river red gums and a stockman’s hut still standing in it. Within that sits the Walkley Heights reserve, where mallee box grassy woodland is being actively conserved.
That linear park is the reason most people from here end up seeing me. It is the local running and walking route, and it does what every linear park does: it removes every natural reason to turn around. Flat, continuous, pleasant, and very easy to do more of than your body has been built up to.
The injuries that follow are consistent. Achilles pain that is worst for the first ten steps of the morning. Shin pain that arrives at the same point in every run. A knee that starts talking at a predictable distance and settles when you stop.
The instinct is to rest, and resting works, right up until you run again. Tendons and bone respond to load, and an unloaded tendon is a weaker tendon, so six weeks off usually means going back to the same running on less capacity than you had when it first hurt. The fix runs the other way, through loading rather than away from it, and it takes months rather than weeks.
Walkley Heights is a straight run down Hampstead Road. Around ten minutes, and you can park at the door.