The Walker With Heart

I've got a blurg ... Not a cold, no fever, no sneezing, no nothing apart from someone has hooked me up and drain all of my go-go juice out of me. The hypochondriac in me (and we all have one) has run through the normal collection of diseases and disorders... Scurvy, rickets, something to do with the diabetes, something to do with the dicky ticker... And as normal nothing particular stands out so its probably just a blurg ! However, the 5km walk I did just to get fresh air in my lungs did mean I've crossed a threshold - on the original challenge I've less than 1000m a day to complete to finish it... As for a revised target, 1500 has a round sound to it, 625km in 127 days - just under 5km a day... That should keep things interesting! Tomorrow is a walk, interrupted by a climbing session, followed by lunch... This week, as long as the blurg disappears should crack the 900km barrier, now that will make me happy:-) TTFN Paul

2 friends that look like they're on the mend... :-D 5km run on Tuesday, 5 miles today... :-D Only 135km to go on the original challenge... :-D Only a couple of days until the next phase of the awareness raising begins - The GUCH Walking Club will be TGO Club of the month:-D The running at the moment is about maintianing the fitness levels, and letting the niggle repair itself properly - so a sensible 64min 5miles today, 10km on Saturday and a walk and climb on Sunday. The 5 miler was up the canal away from Liverpool, new things to see, new ducks to terrorise, new information boards to read - the original Toffee Towers, war defenses, I do like being distracted when I run:-) For those interested the run is here - http://connect.garmin.com/player/25527287 And tonight's job a press release to the local papers - 30days until the Liverpool Half Marathon TTFN Paul

Well that felt good:-) Nice gentle 5km, a couple of new people joining the lunchtime plod club:-) And what's more scary they seemed to enjoy it! The test will be next week, and if they come along again:-D The only evidence I have for the bug is my blood glucose is high and my diet isn't that bad, in fact its pretty good so I suspect that my system is running hot to burn something off. (if you hadn't twigged I'm type II diabetic as well as the dickyticker ) Which makes life a little more fun at times, like now, my BG is a good indicator that I'm coming down with something, or hopefully fighting it off, so I get an effective warning not to push it too hard the rest of this week. So it'll be a climb tomorrow, gentle 10km on Thursday and then a day off on Friday. Sat is a gentle 10km and Sunday a walk in the Peak district... Yup that's and easy week, hopefully by then the BG will have dropped consistently and I'll be completely niggly free Then I'l...

Ho Hum... a soft gentle 5km walked... no twinges felt! What fun shopping can be, especially when looking for running gear... I never knew you could get calf sleeves of neoprene (in varying sizes) to help support injuries. And they seem to work, though putting one on in the toilets of a shopping centre can be interesting!!! Human origami, in a small box! As for bog trotters, this is apparently the name for male capri's ... 3/4 length running tights, mainly got as an inbetween the winter tights and my shorts. I'm not a pretty sight in tights, however the work in terms of holding all my muscles together and keeping them warm... Hopefully the bog trotters will get out on Tuesday, a gentle 5km to ease the calf back into the running thing! And then I spot a map of the Leeds & Liverpool canal... In the next couple of weeks I'm going to need to do long long runs (at the 30km+ end of the market) and the canal provides me the best method of getting from human habitation to hu...

well it had to happen sometime... After jogging a half on Sunday and a good solid 10km on Tuesday the wheels started wobbling, well my right calf wobbled... Normally any tightness loosens off in about a km and I can start striding out... Not today and rather than risk do something more serious to it I decided discretion was the better part of valour and strolled a 5km. Fortunately, the works gym has a deal with a sports physio so an email has been sent and next week I should be strapped down as someone sorts my kinks for me! The runs this weekend I'll take exceptionally easy and mutate as I need to! The more important stuff... and this is an honesty warning... I now have 2 good friends in hospital, one with a nasty infection and one following a heart attack. As regular readers will have guessed I don't do the religion thing so all I can is think good thoughts, provide what support I can, and wait... and wait... So with positive thoughts following, and a curry eaten, time for ...

And what's really scary it didn't hurt too much... Which is brilliant, and means that this training plan is working... 13.1 miles is a long way to go in 3 hours, and at the moment the time doesn't matter all I'm doing is conditioning my legs to the action of jogging for that amount of time. The plan is do the distance, then build the pace on shorter routes and slowly merge the 2... so my 10km pace becomes my 10mile pace, my 10mile pace becomes my half marathon pace and so on. It's also the first time I've started to believe that I might be able to jog the whole marathon. There were none of the little demons telling me that I was doing too much, or remember your heart condition... It was just me, the path and the comedians who suggested I could walk faster... (8min 20 km's ... 21 of them... Hmmm , don't think so...) One of them did get a potted explanation of why I was running and about my heart condition... Not sure if it went in, but they did look ...

They work... on two fronts, they let people meet up and chat in an informal setting while enjoying a gentle stroll around the streets of Cambridge, past historic colleges and tea shops.... The second front is that the shop assisstant in the joke shop (that provided us with the helium for the balloons) had a daughter with a murmur and PFO - so knowing that there where 30+ adults who had been through the same and worse made them feel more comfortable that life can be normal, or as normal as anyone's is! So what do 30 GUCHs, friends and family look like? A bit like this: The volunteers who planned, organised and led the walks travelled fromfar and wide (apart from those who live in Cambridge), walked the route to check for any health and safety issues, other than the hurtling bicycles, all was fine!!! The logo you can see on 1 of the ballooons is that of GUCH PA... And so I hurtle north knowing that awareness is about getting people to meet, to share and most of all about decent chun...

2 Blogs in one train journey - bit of a catch up from a busy 3 days... Birmingham was for the Heart Care Partnership - I've the honour of being a Trustee of this charity, adding the adult congenital heart view into those around the table. We provide the patient's voice to the British Cardiovascular Society and work to promote effective communication between patients and the medical profession as well as developing information that can help anyone whose going to an outpatients clinic. The latest of our newsletters is here - and reviews what we achieved last year http://www.bcs.com/documents/HCPUK_December_09_Newsletter.pdf The plans we've made for the coming year will be delivered as we go, but it should be a good year! The walking was 10miles http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24467699 following the public scuplture trails, all 4 of them, in one evening... Its a bit of a meandering tour, but well worth doing if you're in town esp if you like oddities in scuplture like ...

o 2 days, 35km walked or run... Yesterday was the CHF Trustees meeting (of which more later) so it was a pre-dawn start and a 10km walk from St Paul's to the Vauxhall Bridge along the south bank of the Thames, walking under the London Eye and with stunning views of the Houses of Parliament. The way back on the north bank was along Whitehall and Paul's Walk... I jest not... Today was a 10mile run, my only pre-run challenge to myself was to jog all the 10miles, blow the time just jog it... And so I did! for those interested in such things the 1st 5miles were in 65 min, the return 5 in 62min... Which equals me being very, very happy... and very very hungry! The GPS feed is here http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24152903 Add in the 5km warm up/cool down (the bit between mine and the start) and 35km is done for the weekend:-) Its CHD Awareness Week, well one of them - the other one is in May... So what does it mean to me - 2 things - First, I want all parents and patients of CHD...

There's 3 sorts of run I enjoy: 1) The ones that just feel right, I feel comfortable in my own skin and all I work hard it feels GOOD 2) The ones where its a triumph ( ok a minor one, but 4 or the 7 of Paul's plodders cancelled today with the general excuse that it was wet) just to get out there and do it...# 3) The ones where the 2 above come together, and that was today - ice cold rain, intermittent and then lashing down while trying to turn into hail or sleet. The sort of run where I finished, smiled, then got a surprise when I looked at my watch - 62:58 for 5miles, on a course with 2 long drags of hills, a couple of sets of traffic lights and generally a bit not nice:-) Now, someone asked why I referenced the CHF info on Fallot's (http://www.childrens-heart-fed.org.uk/how_we_help/information_service/heart_conditions/fallots_tetralogy_tetralogy_of_fallots) rather than write it out myself. For me its vital the the information that parents and patients get is authorit...

Well, many of you who've read this blog know I'm tapped into a wider network of GUCHs across the world... That network has given me some of my closest friends, those people who can predict how I think and what will upset me, and what I might do to cheer myself up. They're the people who in the small hours of the darkest nights know when I'm screaming at the night sky, I don't know how and the rationale part of my brain says its because they share the same friends and know when something isn't good with them... Bit that's the rationale part of my brain. We also work together, with the parents and families groups, in groups of many acronyms - ECHG , ECHDO and Corience . We're connected in ways that when I started being involved in GUCH stuff 15 years ago would've been considered science fiction... We email and facebook , tweet and text - we now can keep tabs on each other between meetings and between letters. It also means we can use each other a...