The Walker With Heart

I can safely say it wasn't too warm today, most of the other people doing the circuit at the local "fitness trail" were wrapped up as if it was winter... so I was getting funny looks for my shorts and t-shirt!!! I've read that marathon runners use 80% of the energy they use to pump heat out of their bodies, and on days like this I can see where this number comes from. With the coolness out there, I took a longer warm up just to make sure that my bits and bobs weren't going to snap under sudden acceleration (I say sudden, think oil tanker moving off!). A good solid run, 5 km jogged before I needed a walk break - and that was mainly a confidence thing - 500m walked and then 2.5km to the end... One of my target times is the 60min 5miles, and after the 5km and 500m walk I had 18 minutes to do it in... at 7km I had 6min... Well I have to confess to a small dose of machoism and I did try and run it down, 60min and 43s... Still I'm chuffed I could run a sub-7min km...

But they'll probably intrepret that as something related to male fascination to their tackle... Only joking, I have an elcetic group of friends and friends of friends... 3 Biologists and 3 clinical psychologists go for a walk may be sound like the start of a long, and probably not particularly funny joke but was the start of a pleasent walk over a gentle hill, an ancient priory and part of the Cumbria Coastal Path. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/9856523 is the link - ignore the height gain, garmin always has it far higher than it actually was at c250m. Miles added, fun had and a nice meal to finish... TTFN Paul

I hate the summer... Its official I'm a cold weather runner and a warm weather walker, even waiting until this evening when it was cooler was hot and hard work. But another 4km to the good, and I'm going to need to start putting in more of these smash and grab runs as my time gets eaten up by work, my charity commitments and the faint traces of a social life I manage to fit in. Anyway, grumbles over for tomorrow is another day and I'm walking on Sunday:-) TTFN Paul

Well, the idea of running or walking at the weekend went out the window as my head beat out an early iron maiden track, without the guitars... or the vocals... However, today dawned a little better and the paracetamol and codeine killed anything that was remaining, and left a pleasent hum:-) Which kept me going through a fun climbing session, by fun I'm talking forearms pumped, cuts to my shin where I came off and hammered it into the underprow of a volume and nailing a 4c I'd not managed before. So the running thing gets picked up hopefully tomorrow evening, or Thursday lunchtime. This week is a pig in terms of work, long days and travel to London on Friday for meetings and then a Children's Heart Federation trustees meeting on Saturday. So I'm hoping for easy travels so I can bag a decent run on Sunday. Designs for my plinth-wear are going well... TTFN Paul

The good news is thanks to a fellow GUCH with more IT savvy than me there's a count down timer and a distance complete monitor on the blog... The bad news is I'm on the 2nd day of a thumping headache, no not Swine (or any other type!) of flu... I just get thumping headaches, in clusters from time to time... Sometime I prefer getting 1 solid, vomit inducing, migraine to a couple of days of this. In terms of activities, we'll have to see how I feel tomorrow, worst case I'll go for a 5km walk to get my lungs and legs moving and see if that helps, next up I'll pop to the gym for a 5km run on a nice bouncy treadmill and if all is well I'll go for something more substantial. TTFN Paul

Somedays running just doesn't work... and when you're lunchtime running partners legs seize up it probably a good thing to slow it down and shorten the route. So instead of the planned 5km it was 4km... But its been a fairly active week - 2 bouts of climbing and 24km since sunday... Tomorrow is more climbing, indoors this time, but the longer walls... Normally we climb the 5-6 m walls the big ones are 12 metres, which means more tea breaks to stretch out the aching muscles. Saturday I start prepping my costume for the Plinth, think bright red and broken hearted TTFN Paul

Nice gentle 5km at lunchtime today, nothing special, nothing too painful (though my running partner may disagree;-)) http://connect.garmin.com/activity/8764770 is the standard work 5km, nice gradual slope up, and then flat and down to a pig of a hump back bridge... Climbing tomorrow to work the kinks out, and then an evening meeting of a sub-group of the ECHG... Don't know who they are? We're to be found here www.echg.net TTFN Paul