Monday 30th March

Woo hoo, I’ve broken in to the double digits!!

It wasn’t too successful mind, took me 3 hours. But that might have something to do with the copious amounts of alcohol consumed the previous night and the lack of sleep due to the ridiculous hour I went to bed. I will NOT be making that mistake again! Seriously, I completely underestimated the effect that alcohol has on your body so far after the event and I felt like I’d been run over when I got back in yesterday. I am not touching the stuff for the whole week before the walk, and not before any of the longer training walks either. Consider my lesson learnt.

Anyway, enough of the moaning. I walked on the Monday as I was busy Saturday, it was the husbands birthday Sunday, and we had Monday off work. I got togged up in my new Pineapple jacket and sports top I landed in the Debenhams sale (result) and headed out on what was a lovely sunny day. I’d plotted a route around the outskirts of Ashford, through places I’d not been to before so I was looking forward to exploring. I did get lost less than 1.5 miles in when I realised I’d gone down the wrong road, so had to find my way back to the right one and stand on a corner studying my map for a few minutes before I got my bearings and worked out where I was headed next. Once out of the housing estates I walked along a couple of nice long country lanes, it was so sunny and peaceful, it was lovely. I switched my ipod off for half hour to enjoy the silence. I also got a chance to practice some proper power walking cause no one could see me LOL. About halfway round I was starting to struggle, the sun was hot, I was tired and I started to run out of water, I couldn’t believe I had the same again to go. But then I had to go over a footbridge to cross a dual carriageway and was rewarded with an amazing view of the whole of Ashford and the surrounding fields. That spurred me on a bit, as did the bottle of lucozade I got from the newsagents. Then I was back in the housing estates and putting places to road signs, which was nice. I walked all round the industrial area at the back of the railway station so that was interesting seeing as I see the front twice a day. As I came round to the front I took a detour to the Designer Outlet to get some more water and visit some proper toilets. Then it was just the last push home. And a push it was, but I made it. Unfortunately my pedometer hadn’t measured my distance properly so I only have walkjogrun to rely on in terms of distance covered, according to that I did 10.75 miles and it took me 3 hours 5 minutes. I think I can probably add on 0.25 miles to cover detours and getting lost, which would make it 11 miles. Hmmm, not too bad, but not good either.

Things I learnt today, other than alcohol is evil, is don’t put fizzy drinks in your water bottle. They fizz over, run all down your bottle and get all over your hands, then you have a sticky bottle and sticky hands. Won’t be making that mistake again. Also, keep an eye on your pedometer. There is nothing more demoralising than knowing you’ve covered over 2 miles, and then realising your pedometer has flipped upside down and has measured 0.3 miles for you. Aaaaaaah!!

So overall, not a real successful walk. But I’ve broken the mental barrier of a double digit walk. The next mental barrier is to do more than 13.2 miles which is half of the 26.3, and the 14 miler is scheduled for a fortnights time, so I have that to look forward to.