Fed up with ordinaryExtra ordinary is where it's at

in normal shoes anymore!

To test how my blistered feet were healing I went for a run in my normal, cushioned running trainers. I was cautious about wearing my FiveFingers as I really didn’t want to hinder the healing process (I’ve had far too long out as it is).

Setting off through the park was hard. Nothing to do with the shoes, but not running for three weeks ruins your fitness! Once through the mental barriers, I got into my stride and started noticing pain in my left knee and ankle.

It got slowly worse through the run. By the time I’d finished my 4 miles I certainly wasn’t in agony but it wasn’t pleasant. I also noticed that my thighs were killing me. They were really tired and the next day they felt awful still.

I went out and did the same route in my fivefingers and what do you know? My legs, knees and ankles were fine. No pain, no real tiredness, no hurting blisters.

This is far from a conclusive, scientific test here but wearing fivefingers for the first time changes your gait: you absorb shock using your calves rather than relying on the shoe. Running on cushioned shoes seems to bypass the calves and concentrate effort in the thighs. I’m sure there’s a PhD thesis in there somewhere…

We had a partial meeting of the fellowship this morning (Rich is in Spain at the moment) with the aim of bashing out the route.

Then JP let it be known that he can’t make the agreed date as he’s got some exams slap bang in the middle. Crap.

I guess I should be happy that we haven’t got further with the planning as it would be a lot harder to sort if we had accommodation booked already.

Anyway, getting out diaries, it became apparent that we’re pretty limited on how much we can move things either forward or back.

Also with Rich out of the country, we’re unable to agree a new date anyway. I have no idea when he returns. I hope it’s soon! If you’re reading this Rich, drop me an email will you?!

It all means that far from getting clearer, the whole thing is getting unclearer. Or should that be “more unclear” or “less clear”? Either way, it’s not good. It raises the question too of what to do if we can’t agree a date at all.

We’re still looking for support too. Ideally we’d like someone to either cycle or drive ahead of us, carrying our baggage from stop to stop. They would also be on hand to aid in an emergency. We’ve had a couple of leads but they’ve not come to anything. If you fancy it, please let me know!

All this disorganisation reminds me of a scene in Red Dwarf (Series 5 – Quarantine for all those interested):

Lister: We’re a real Mickey Mouse operation, aren’t we?
Cat: Mickey Mouse? We ain’t even Betty Boop!

Oh my word… We aren’t even Betty Boop…

This is getting serious (and I’m getting nervous). The run is only about 4 months away and we still haven’t decided on a route.

As you loyal readers will remember, we’d tried to get this sorted before Christmas, but it didn’t happen. It’s still not happened…

The latest update is that we’ll be running the Hadrian’s Wall walking path. Great. But that’s only 84 miles. Add on the 6 miles to get from the end of the wall to the sea and we’re still 60 odd miles short.

It’s really important to me that we run a marathon distance each day for the 6 days we’re running. That’s the whole point of the exercise!

John-Paul is wanting to avoid road running at all costs. I can understand that, and I’d much rather run cross country but doing so has two drawbacks for me. The main one is that running 26 miles cross country is way more effort than on road. Secondly, keeping off-road require much more route planning than following the well described C2C cycle way.

The Hadrian’s Wall walking path is well described and sign posted. It also has a fair amount of ‘accessible’ paths which means they should be easy going.

So I’m happy with that part. We just need to add on 60 extra miles…

A bit of research revealed that there is a Hadrian’s Wall cycle route that starts from a place called Ravensglass. This is about 60 miles down the coast from Bowness-on-Solway, where Hadrian’s Wall starts. The plan is that we will follow the cycle route from Ravensglass to Bowness and then join the walking path from there.

It’s not ideal from my perspective to be honest. If we can run 60 miles of cycle way, a lot of which is on roads anyway, what’s the big difference to just running the C2C route? The thought of running up the coast seems pointless too. Mentally I imagine running across the country, the coastal bit just seems pointless.

Anyway, I just need to get over that I guess and get the route finalised. Note the “I” there. As I’m the one who is bothered about the route and getting things booked in, I need to do it. I can’t wait for us all to get together for the evening and bash it all out as it’s not going to happen. I just need to crack on with it otherwise the stress of it not progressing will get to me too much.

I really wanted the whole thing to be a group effort and didn’t want to push my agenda on the run. Looking back, I think it would have been easier if I had. We’d be a lot further on too. I’ll remember for next time!

Today we had the inaugural meeting of the team – the confirmed members are Smack, Rich, John-Paul (JP) and me.

It was great to get together this morning in Caffe Nero and start sharing this experience. For me it was good to be able to get some of the issues and thoughts I’ve had out of my head.

We didn’t agree much, if anything it raised even more issues to be thought about, but just getting together and chatting was great. This now feels like the start of the journey!

I do worry a little bit thought that the others will see this as my run that they’re joining, rather than it being our run. I’ve had longer to think about this and because I’m naturally outspoken (or gobby if you prefer) I need to watch that I give the others a chance to make it their run too.