Coast 2 Coast for #CHD

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	10	1100
22/05/11	Richmond	Ingleby Cross	23	560	The lowest point on the walk
23/05/11	Ingleby Cross	Clay Bank Top	11	2545
24/05/11	Clay Bank Top	Glaisdale	18	984
25/05/11	Glaisdale	Robin Hood's Bay	19	1640	The End
26/05/11	Robin Hood's Bay
27/05/11	Spare Day
28/05/11	Spare Day

Seems Simple when I write it quickly...

I'm working on the awareness stuff at the moment, but I need 190 of you; be you parents, charities, GUCHs (or ACHDers) or just people with an interest... I'll walk the miles, and provide the material, your job will be send out YOUR story with mine... 190 press releases to 190 newspapers and/or magazines... If I can do the miles, can you find the address of your local paper and hit send on an email?

Let me know!

TTFN

Paul

navel gazing about running

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 activity I enjoyed most... and why...

Long distance (multi-day) walking is my favorite, but my second could be running... and I don't think I'd realised that until I was asked today...

Oh crap, does that make me a runner?

TTFN

Paul

Its done... Marathon No 2 signed up for...

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

Mad Dog and Englishmen go out in the... cold?

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