A brisk walk south...

...100km south. Late last year, when longer days were a thing of the past and a distant and difficult to see future, I was asked a question, "Hey, Wil, would you like to walk with me to Brighton, from London?". My colleague Claire said it very matter-of-factly. After a few seconds of deep thought, I said yes. It's a cliche to say "How hard can it be?!", so I said that too.

I consider myself physically fit but after the first of three 20, give or take, mile training walks the answer to that question punched me in the face. The answer? Bloody hard. Real bloody hard. Hard on the feet, hard on the legs. Not forgetting mentally tough. Nearing the ends of these few walks I find myself revisiting the back of our family car as a child somewhere along the A303 asking that question, "Are we there yet?". Flashbacks of arduous journeys, where initial excitement fades into the simple want to arrive. Corners breed corners, where is that finish line? I just tell myself, that come May 23rd I will have to do this but three times over, 20+ hours of continuous walking, and that's not helping. There's no silver lining.

I may have made it sound like something I don't want to do. But I did say yes. Of course I want to do it, if it was easy, I'd back out. And to be blunt, I'm excited. Steinbeck once said; 'What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness'. I think of this quote a lot. Along with Claire's tiresome offer of a can of man up at every moan that leaves my lips. 

This isn't just a walk for the hell of walks by the way, we're both walking for charity, mine being the British Heart Foundation, which means something to a lot people, including myself. You can support me by donating here. And Claire is walking for The Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases, you can donate to her here. 

I'll try and blog a little about our progress from now until the big, big day.