The Walker With Heart

A week off the running, and only time for one climbing session... Been busy with work stuff though, data to mash in ways it wasn't designed or collected for... to see fear in the eyes of people start talking about multi-year trend analysis as a basic datum feed into a prioritisation exercise... Especially when they don't have the data.... Some days I like being me:-) Interviewed for interns, poor souls who will work for me for a year - feel for them:-) Also been working behind the scenes for my main contribution to Heart Week, its all a bit hush-hush at the moment as the last bits fall into place but hopefully it will work, raise a lot of awareness and be a bit of fun as well. The other thing is should raise is cash which will help CHF carry on doing things like Molly's Dolly - a doll you can customise to match the scars a heart kid will have following an op... Playing with someone who looks like, with the same scars so you can see that its ok to have a scar is somethin...

This time in 27 days I should be just about 20miles into my marathon (yes I'm being possessive ) I'm typing watching the those hammering the streets of London with an odd mix of awe and hope. Awe that so many people are just as mad as me, and hope that if some of those can do so can I. It was also good to see Jamie, with his parents, on TV - James is blind and I first met him when he was learning to climb at my local climbing wall... I then met him as he over took me on the Liverpool Half Marathon, one of the few times I haven't grumbled when I've seen someone elses heels move in front of me. So I'm hoping when I see him next that he'll have finished his 41st marathon... and I'll have done my first. So that's the inspiration... the sensible - I'm giving my hip a rest, I'll climb gently mid-week just to stop it seizing but nothing else until next weekend. Someone the other day asked how does my heart effect my running, I'm not a medic or a p...

Its been a week... Walking Marathon last weekend, busy week at work - just for once a quiet week would be good! Climbing all afternoon on Friday, got some pesky routes I'd been having problems with, and eaten a fair amount of pasta to prep for today's efforts. The first 10 miles were good, excluding the idiot in a merc who decided to go road rage at me, ran 2km and walked 500m and kept it up all the way the rather nasty hill from Aughton to Ormskirk , yep a slow run, but still a run. 2 hours in and it started getting hot, very hot... Kept it up for another couple of km and then spotted that I'd drunk the 3rd of my hydration juices in 5km compared with the about a bottle every 5miles. I also spotted the normally black shoulder straps of my running sack were going a little white with the salt... And my hip began to ache in the same place as it did after the walking marathon:-( So I called it a day at 13miles... Annoying but probably sensible! TTFN Paul

The Cancer Research Shine Marathon is done - 26.2 miles around the streets of Manchester. No running was allowed so this was purely a test of my physical and mental stamina, added to by not starting until 10pm... Organising 7500 walkers of various fitnesses into 2 walks takes a bit of doing, and the inevitable delays as we waited for the balloons, to get out of the GMEX and also to get going took us to well past 10pm, and then there was a slight navigational problem when walkers met the main drag... Ho Hum, but we got started... The buildings weren't illuminated - not sure what happened there, so it really was a a case of head down and focus on the walking - the time of the walk meant that there wasn't that many supporters so it was a focus, walk, check pace and see what happens. And what happened, well I'm happy... My total time was 7:05 - only 6min slower than the walk/run I did back in November, but the really good news was my moving time - so all of the stopping for ...

That feels better! After the Liverpool Half and the walking the week after I felt like crud, and more importantly just didn't feel like getting my sorry ass up and wobbling around the streets of Liverpool. So, a week off (well 5 days, but all in work so it felt like a full week) 10.5km (a quater - thon , apparently) jog to a mates to help drive some poles in (think Stonehenge), dig out a water butt (without killing the frog) and generally potter... Apart from random comments, potentially smutty, about my stamina no one got hit by the pole driver, the frog survive intact - and I had pie and chips bought for me:-) Today was a nice gentle 5 miles, with the gang I run with of a lunchtime, sole objective to get round and feel reasonable good about it... Which I did:-) I'm also climbing well, which always helps my psyche... And even got a 1/3rd of a way up a constant overhang wall... Ok if I hadn't gone the wrong way and hanged around for 5min working out which way to go I...

Well the days of pointing to the shelves in WH SMiths or Waterstones , or even Asda , and saying "I'm in there" are over... Time moves on so does the walking and running world, so there's more worthy causes and people doing daft things filling the shelves where I was once... However, plans are afoot... A way of kicking off Children's Heart Week with a lot of publicity... I can't take a lot of credit for it - one of the Parent's on the Heartline's messageboard came up with the original idea and I'm just doing my normal job of trying to expand it as much as possible! As details firm up I'll let you know, but as a taster think of me dressed as a Teddy Bear! The niggle is annoying me... Walked most of last week to give my legs a chance to recovery from the Liverpool half, using the good weather (I know on a Bank Holiday!!!) to walk stretches of the local canal I'd not done before. But Sunday I tried to run, and just felt crud, no energy an...