The Walker With Heart

Sometimes it is the simple things that are the best celebrations... It was a good walk; we started in fog, moved up into a beautiful view of a cloud inversion snaking down the Derwent Valley... We then walked up the millstone paved route up to Mam Tor, ducking and dodging the paragliders and hang-gliders whose pilots were enjoying the wind as much as we were thinking it was a bit chilly! A drop off the other side of Mam Tor, a look at the battlements, and a pit-stop for soup and assorted lunching and then down Winnats Pass en route to Castleton.  Castleton for a midafternoon snack (occassionally a large snack) and then on into Hope.  As some know I have a soft spot for Hope, it's a large village in the Peak District which has simple tea shops and a decent bakery, a couple of pubs and none of the Pennine Way induced razmatazz of Edale.  It's also a nice metaphor when walks finish in Hope... Or for me, 2012 miles worth of walking and running... :-D The imme...

The miles they are beginning to flow... 5 miles yesterday, 10 miles today, add in the two fast-ish 5km's in the week and the bits and bobs and I'm getting close to my target for the year - 2012km in 12 months. I've 45km to go - worst case I know I can do that in that in one go, probably just over 6h worth of effort... That's it about 6h... I hate to think how many I've spent on my feet since 1st Jan to get to this point, and yet when I do I smile.  I've been and done a range of new adventures... Which I'll round up when the year is up, as I may still have some more to add... So where will I finish, if all goes well this week, and I get to run while in London at the start of the week, and fit a run in around Panto practise (and the day job), then I'm hoping I can finish with a few good friends on the flanks of Mam Tor. If I can't fit it all in then it'll probably be at Chatsworth House (still with a few good friends). I'm not back to f...

then its probably not true... An old adage, but a useful one. Those of us with long term health conditions learn to manage them (or chose not to) in our own ways.  Most of the time this management is learnt behaviour, if we do X then Y hurts, of if I don't take tablet A then B goes potty and I end up in hospital. Some is received knowledge - we're told that  if we do something, or not do something, then something bad will happen.  We mainly get this knowledge from our care teams, but also from the support charities, our peers with the same or similar conditions, cultural references etc etc etc And then there's the scary people... They've got magic woo woo beans. A short cut. An easy cure... They don't answer the sort of questions you'd normally ask your Doctor... Does this work?  How many others use it? What are the side effects? They will misdirect and shy away from the detail, they will offer you insights that "others" won't h...

Slowly... As if I'm awaking from a long deep sleep... The desire to go further... The need to go fast... It's been a month, everything that was tweaked during the 50km should have recovered... The body anyway. The mind takes a bit longer, at least mine does, I need to want to feel that strange mix of delight and pain of doing mile after mile.  Part of it is seeing the objective, that target driven part of my soul that has kept me going these many months being able to reach out over the months to come and taste the goal. It has been a busy month; the day job seems to have me shuttling to London most weeks and the weeks where it doesn't my representative or charitable roles do, an exam for the last OU course and an assignment to start on the new one, and various other stuff (you know the boring stuff that everyone has to do - yes even I have to do it). However, I do enjoy most of it (the seats on Virgin Trains I don't, but not many people do) and the day job...