Keeping things interesting... Feeling lousy... but happy...

I've got a blurg... Not a cold, no fever, no sneezing, no nothing apart from someone has hooked me up and drain all of my go-go juice out of me.

The hypochondriac in me (and we all have one) has run through the normal collection of diseases and disorders... Scurvy, rickets, something to do with the diabetes, something to do with the dicky ticker... And as normal nothing particular stands out so its probably just a blurg!

However, the 5km walk I did just to get fresh air in my lungs did mean I've crossed a threshold - on the original challenge I've less than 1000m a day to complete to finish it...

As for a revised target, 1500 has a round sound to it, 625km in 127 days - just under 5km a day... That should keep things interesting!

Tomorrow is a walk, interrupted by a climbing session, followed by lunch... This week, as long as the blurg disappears should crack the 900km barrier, now that will make me happy:-)

TTFN

Paul

It is getting there... in more ways than one:-)

2 friends that look like they're on the mend... :-D

5km run on Tuesday, 5 miles today... :-D

Only 135km to go on the original challenge... :-D

Only a couple of days until the next phase of the awareness raising begins - The GUCH Walking Club will be TGO Club of the month:-D

The running at the moment is about maintianing the fitness levels, and letting the niggle repair itself properly - so a sensible 64min 5miles today, 10km on Saturday and a walk and climb on Sunday. The 5 miler was up the canal away from Liverpool, new things to see, new ducks to terrorise, new information boards to read - the original Toffee Towers, war defenses, I do like being distracted when I run:-) For those interested the run is here - http://connect.garmin.com/player/25527287

And tonight's job a press release to the local papers - 30days until the Liverpool Half Marathon

TTFN

Paul

I'm back!!!! A gentle 5km with no after effects... Blood glucose - a bug warning?

Well that felt good:-)

Nice gentle 5km, a couple of new people joining the lunchtime plod club:-) And what's more scary they seemed to enjoy it! The test will be next week, and if they come along again:-D

The only evidence I have for the bug is my blood glucose is high and my diet isn't that bad, in fact its pretty good so I suspect that my system is running hot to burn something off.

(if you hadn't twigged I'm type II diabetic as well as the dickyticker)

Which makes life a little more fun at times, like now, my BG is a good indicator that I'm coming down with something, or hopefully fighting it off, so I get an effective warning not to push it too hard the rest of this week. So it'll be a climb tomorrow, gentle 10km on Thursday and then a day off on Friday. Sat is a gentle 10km and Sunday a walk in the Peak district...

Yup that's and easy week, hopefully by then the BG will have dropped consistently and I'll be completely niggly free

Then I'll ramp up the training again, first target is the Liverpool Half Marathon on the 28th...

TTFN

Paul

Calf Sleeves... Human Origami... Bog Trotters... Canal maps...

Ho Hum... a soft gentle 5km walked... no twinges felt!

What fun shopping can be, especially when looking for running gear... I never knew you could get calf sleeves of neoprene (in varying sizes) to help support injuries. And they seem to work, though putting one on in the toilets of a shopping centre can be interesting!!! Human origami, in a small box!

As for bog trotters, this is apparently the name for male capri's... 3/4 length running tights, mainly got as an inbetween the winter tights and my shorts. I'm not a pretty sight in tights, however the work in terms of holding all my muscles together and keeping them warm...

Hopefully the bog trotters will get out on Tuesday, a gentle 5km to ease the calf back into the running thing!

And then I spot a map of the Leeds & Liverpool canal... In the next couple of weeks I'm going to need to do long long runs (at the 30km+ end of the market) and the canal provides me the best method of getting from human habitation to human habitation... and I may even get to see some boats!

My friends in hospital are in good spirits, and it looks like they're getting the treatment they need... So more good thoughts are flowing...

In the next couple of weeks the awareness raising side of things should start kicking off... The GUCH Walking Club will a club of the month in TGO Magazine, complete with photos from some of our best walks!

I'll let you know when its out

TTFN

Paul

a niggle and much more important stuff...

well it had to happen sometime... After jogging a half on Sunday and a good solid 10km on Tuesday the wheels started wobbling, well my right calf wobbled... Normally any tightness loosens off in about a km and I can start striding out... Not today and rather than risk do something more serious to it I decided discretion was the better part of valour and strolled a 5km.

Fortunately, the works gym has a deal with a sports physio so an email has been sent and next week I should be strapped down as someone sorts my kinks for me! The runs this weekend I'll take exceptionally easy and mutate as I need to!

The more important stuff... and this is an honesty warning... I now have 2 good friends in hospital, one with a nasty infection and one following a heart attack. As regular readers will have guessed I don't do the religion thing so all I can is think good thoughts, provide what support I can, and wait... and wait...

So with positive thoughts following, and a curry eaten, time for a stretch and a long soak!

TTFN

Paul

I jogged a half marathon:-DDD

And what's really scary it didn't hurt too much...

Which is brilliant, and means that this training plan is working... 13.1 miles is a long way to go in 3 hours, and at the moment the time doesn't matter all I'm doing is conditioning my legs to the action of jogging for that amount of time. The plan is do the distance, then build the pace on shorter routes and slowly merge the 2... so my 10km pace becomes my 10mile pace, my 10mile pace becomes my half marathon pace and so on.

It's also the first time I've started to believe that I might be able to jog the whole marathon. There were none of the little demons telling me that I was doing too much, or remember your heart condition... It was just me, the path and the comedians who suggested I could walk faster... (8min 20 km's... 21 of them... Hmmm, don't think so...) One of them did get a potted explanation of why I was running and about my heart condition... Not sure if it went in, but they did look a bit sheepish.

Throw in the extended warm up and cool down of 9 km and a 30km day and the weeks total up to 75km:-D

This week is a bit lighter on the running and travel front - 10km tomorrow, 10miles on Thursday, 10km on Sat and then 10miles on Sunday... Nice and gentle tomorrow, target around 2 hours on Thursday, gentle on Sat and again a target run on Sun:-)

That's the plan... With climbing today, good hard session nailing my second ever 6a and also ending up explaining to one of the climbers about the dicky ticker... Awareness raising can happen in the strangest places!

The big issue now is how far to extend my challenge distance - at 827km done, with 139 days to go 1000km is looking like its might be a bit easy... What do you reckon 1500? That's the equivalent of an another 300miles, or boosting what I need to do for the next 139 days to 5km a day! Answers here on facebook...

TTFN

Paul

Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Walks - They work

They work... on two fronts, they let people meet up and chat in an informal setting while enjoying a gentle stroll around the streets of Cambridge, past historic colleges and tea shops....

The second front is that the shop assisstant in the joke shop (that provided us with the helium for the balloons) had a daughter with a murmur and PFO - so knowing that there where 30+ adults who had been through the same and worse made them feel more comfortable that life can be normal, or as normal as anyone's is!

So what do 30 GUCHs, friends and family look like? A bit like this:
The volunteers who planned, organised and led the walks travelled fromfar and wide (apart from those who live in Cambridge), walked the route to check for any health and safety issues, other than the hurtling bicycles, all was fine!!!

The logo you can see on 1 of the ballooons is that of GUCH PA...


And so I hurtle north knowing that awareness is about getting people to meet, to share and most of all about decent chunky soup:-)

TTFN

Paul

Birmingham and the Heart Care Partnership

2 Blogs in one train journey - bit of a catch up from a busy 3 days...

Birmingham was for the Heart Care Partnership - I've the honour of being a Trustee of this charity, adding the adult congenital heart view into those around the table. We provide the patient's voice to the British Cardiovascular Society and work to promote effective communication between patients and the medical profession as well as developing information that can help anyone whose going to an outpatients clinic.

The latest of our newsletters is here - and reviews what we achieved last year http://www.bcs.com/documents/HCPUK_December_09_Newsletter.pdf

The plans we've made for the coming year will be delivered as we go, but it should be a good year!

The walking was 10miles http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24467699 following the public scuplture trails, all 4 of them, in one evening... Its a bit of a meandering tour, but well worth doing if you're in town esp if you like oddities in scuplture like this:


A heart shaped padlock,
Which is nicely appropriate the Congenital Heart Disease Awareness Walks...

TTFN

Paul

Three Quarters Done... What awareness means to me... CHD Awareness Week

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2 days, 35km walked or run...
Yesterday was the CHF Trustees meeting (of which more later) so it was a pre-dawn start and a 10km walk from St Paul's to the Vauxhall Bridge along the south bank of the Thames, walking under the London Eye and with stunning views of the Houses of Parliament. The way back on the north bank was along Whitehall and Paul's Walk... I jest not...
Today was a 10mile run, my only pre-run challenge to myself was to jog all the 10miles, blow the time just jog it... And so I did! for those interested in such things the 1st 5miles were in 65 min, the return 5 in 62min... Which equals me being very, very happy... and very very hungry!

The GPS feed is here http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24152903 Add in the 5km warm up/cool down (the bit between mine and the start) and 35km is done for the weekend:-)

Its CHD Awareness Week, well one of them - the other one is in May... So what does it mean to me - 2 things -

First, I want all parents and patients of CHD to know and feel entitled to, and if necessary demand the best healthcare. For parents that can mean prior to diagnosis, and often diagnosis is before the child is born, there should be decent echo scans with referral to specialists if any issues are suspected. After birth and diagnosis, there needs to be appropriate advice given, support found (financial, emotional ect), surgical and medical teams equipped to provide worldclass healthcare. This care needs to be lifelong, including specialist adult/GUCH services.

Second, I want people, the public, our employers, friends, occasionally lovers to appreciate some of what its like to live with congenital heart disease. If they're not involved through family or friends they'll never "know" some of the stuff we live with every day but an understanding that the "miracle blue babies" of 40-odd years ago are now grown up, some with no major issues, others needing as much support and help as they did as a baby.

So where does the CHF Trustee's meeting fit in... As well as the Build-a-Bear initiative (http://tiny.cc/RyrI8) there's a series of events being planned and delivered throughout the year - the annual trip to the Children's Ballet, the Molly's Dollies picnic (Molly's dollies have scars on so children can have operations explained to them, and their dolly looks like they do) and others that are still being planned.

And that's where the Trustee's come in, we've a damn good Chief Exec so we don't need to get involved in day-2-day stuff but we are responsible for the direction and finances of the Children's Heart Federation so any event has to fit in with our strategic view and be affordable.

The rest of awareness week is another Trustees meeting - of the HeartCarePartnership, which I'll explain later in the week and the big event - the GUCH PA Awareness Walk in Cambridge - http://tiny.cc/zewLc

So to leave you an awareness video with a difference - the GUCH Walking Club walked 100km last summer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ku3D95iUaY This was my review, the other days are up on YouTube too... Enjoy!

TTFN

Paul

The 3 types of run you enjoy... and a bit of info on info

There's 3 sorts of run I enjoy:

1) The ones that just feel right, I feel comfortable in my own skin and all I work hard it feels GOOD

2) The ones where its a triumph (ok a minor one, but 4 or the 7 of Paul's plodders cancelled today with the general excuse that it was wet) just to get out there and do it...#

3) The ones where the 2 above come together, and that was today - ice cold rain, intermittent and then lashing down while trying to turn into hail or sleet.

The sort of run where I finished, smiled, then got a surprise when I looked at my watch - 62:58 for 5miles, on a course with 2 long drags of hills, a couple of sets of traffic lights and generally a bit not nice:-)

Now, someone asked why I referenced the CHF info on Fallot's (http://www.childrens-heart-fed.org.uk/how_we_help/information_service/heart_conditions/fallots_tetralogy_tetralogy_of_fallots) rather than write it out myself.

For me its vital the the information that parents and patients get is authoritative, balance and most importantly accurate. I'm an example of what surgery could do 35 years ago, not now. The CHF leaflets are checked and checked again to make sure they're correct and give that balanced view.

The full list of 24 is here: http://www.childrens-heart-fed.org.uk/how_we_help/information_service/heart_conditions and some come with animations:-)

Its a resource for everyone, so please use it!

Paul

GUCHs a genuinely international community

Well, many of you who've read this blog know I'm tapped into a wider network of GUCHs across the world...

That network has given me some of my closest friends, those people who can predict how I think and what will upset me, and what I might do to cheer myself up. They're the people who in the small hours of the darkest nights know when I'm screaming at the night sky, I don't know how and the rationale part of my brain says its because they share the same friends and know when something isn't good with them... Bit that's the rationale part of my brain.
We also work together, with the parents and families groups, in groups of many acronyms - ECHG, ECHDO and Corience. We're connected in ways that when I started being involved in GUCH stuff 15 years ago would've been considered science fiction...

We email and facebook, tweet and text - we now can keep tabs on each other between meetings and between letters. It also means we can use each other as a source of expertise, finding out what we do in our countries and how we help each other.

Which is why I'm in the Swedish magazine "Hjartebarnet" writing about volunteering for GUCH PA and including last years Awareness Walks in Chester.

So, GUCH PA is in a Swedish magazine... with links to the GUCH messageboard (http://www.guch.org.uk/forum/index.php), Walking Club (http://www.guchwalkingclub.org.uk/) and this blog... so to my Swedish readers god natt och tack för läsning

TTFN

Paul