The Walker With Heart

This is one of those messy blogs that will dart around; part of it is a conversation I need to have with someone, so if they (and I doubt they will) read this they should know that this is the Willgoss-lite version... Part of it is the first part of a new adventure and the other bits are the running and climbing, and hopefully something will pop out of the wittering that makes sense. So in my traditional way - I'll start in the middle, I've recently become one of a fairly small group - a member of a small cohort of around 300 people on the Civil Service's Levelling the Playing Field Positive Action Pathway - a year long development scheme, that is intended to give me, and the others, the skills and confidence to progress to the next level in the civil service. The only way to get the best out of these things is to challenge yourself, to get external challenge and to add to that with information, details about yourself you may not like or want to know, but that you need ...

Two sporty things are reaching the point of me needing to move to the next stage... The marathon training is easiest to explain, and what I'm most comfortable with... Tomorrow is when it gets real, I know I can blag a half marathon, I did it at least twice last year... Just go out and run-walk a half marathon on minimal training, injured, full of cold... been there, done that. Now it's real - 14 miles, 23 km, beyond the half, into the known unknowns.  I've been on belting form, three PBs in 5 weeks all on long slow runs, all on a course much hillier than the routes the last PBs were run on. The course tomorrow throws me another hill, being my home marathon has a great advantage I can run the course - which is why St Domingo Road is becoming a Sunday fixed point in space and time - the first absolute sod of a hill of the marathon course, followed by a too steep for fun run down to the town centre. Then, comes my personal hell - Upper Parliament Street - the steep r...