The Walker With Heart

You're mad, absolutely mad... a refrain often repeated but not normally by myself into a mirror... I've booked the 2 weeks leave, with some emergency days at the end for the coast to coast (and hopefully some awareness raising)... So what am I taking on... This basically... Coast 2 Coast for #CHD Day From To Miles Along Feet ascent Note 14/05/11 St Bees Ennerdale 14 2315 The Start 15/05/11 Ennerdale Rosthwaite 14 1740 16/05/11 Rosthwaite Patterdale 15 3625 Can be split at Grasmere 17/05/11 Patterdale Shap 15 3265 The highest point of the walk 18/05/11 Shap Kirkby Stephen 20 1755 19/05/11 Kirkby Stephen Keld 11 1690 Inc the Pennine Watershed 20/05/11 Keld Reeth 11 1790 21/05/11 Reeth Richmond ...

with apologies to the excellent book by Haruki Murakami ... I think when I run, my little grey cells order, and reorder my existence ... I practice difficult conversations, I finesse easier ones... I try any work out time and distance, and fail miserably so just look at my watch... I mentally test my body, is that niggly ankle better or worse than it should be, is my dodgy hip just being dodgy or being a genuine pain (oh yeah, and I keep an eye on the heart rate... ) I also wonder whether there is anything else I can do... Frequent readers will know that I'm not without the odd health blip, but in comparison with too many of my friends absolutely nothing major. I don't always get answers, but I do get to frame more interesting questions to ask myself when I'm doing the contemplative thing... which brings me to what inspired this navel gazing post... Mooching around Manchester's selection of running & walking shops one of the shop assistants asked me which outdoor...

And so the insanity is permanent... £48 has been spent on over 5 hours of hurt... And all of the hurt for the months before hand as I get the training in... 263 days to go... The curious thing is the distance doesn't scare me anymore, I know I can do it... What scares me is the training, the single minded focus that I had to bring to much of my life to get this job done. If anyone ever says marathons are easy, then I fear they are lying, delusional or plum daft! When I ran Edinburgh I passed a couple of runners wearing tops saying "26.2 miles the distance runners are measured by"... Well, time to get the stopwatch out for the second time, my summary of the measurement... Nice steady heart beat, well thought out strategy, all bets are off if its hot! TTFN Paul

One foot in front of the other... and just keep doing it... Ignore the twinges, you always get them... Watch the heart... 175 ok ... 210, means I'd better ratchet it back... Plod when I needed to plod, walk more than I wanted to, but as much as was sensible... 3 weeks to my first race of the year... And its called "Mad Dog"... Let's hope its just a name... I tell you what though, it felt good:-) TTFN Paul