Walkies!

So as well as supplements we were starting to increase our walks. Holly and I had always walked a lot but now it was time to start thinking about how far we were going and how often.

I was grumbling to a friend at work about maps and string and trying to work out distances. He told me about a website for runners that might be just what I was looking for, and it was. Map My Run is a great website and probably contains a lot of very good information that I don't use. What I do use it for is working out distance. You can call up a map and then draw your route on it. It them tells you the distance and, even better, it also maps the ups and downs!

So after a happy week or two where lunchtimes at work were spend interrogating the map my run website I now knew how far all our favourite walks were and had worked out some additional bits and alternative bits to up the distance. I was aiming for 4 to 5 miles over two walks on days I was at work and 7 to 10 miles plus on non-work days.

About 8 months prior to diagnosis Holly and I had taken up Geocaching which gave us plenty of inspiration about new and interesting places to go for a walk.

Non work days were nice and easy, we* would prepare a packup and gather our bits together and then set off on the bus and train or in the car and spend as much of the day as we wanted out and about in the countryside exploring and walking and generally enjoying ourselves.

* by "We" I mean I made the sandwiches, Holly would hoover up anything I dropped. I would gather waterproofs, drinks, walking boots, rucksack and all the other walking essentials, Holly would be no further than 2" away from me making excited noises all the time and generally being in constant danger of being stood on or tripped over.

Work days were a little bit more difficult. I needed to be out of the house at 06:45 so the morning routine at that point didnt involve a walk, just a trip round the garden and some mental and training exercises while I prepared breakfast, showered and made a packup. After a little thinking I started to adjust things gradually, a couple of weeks at a time.

For the first fortnight the alarm was set 15 minutes earlier and Holly got an extra 15 minutes of training.
The second fortnight and the alarm came forward by another 15 minutes, now we had an extra half hour and this was enough time to go for a lap round the little park near to where we live (according to map my run 0.75 miles round the perimiter).
The third fortnight and another 15 minutes, still a lap round the little park but now we started to vary our route there and back to bring the distance up to between 1 and 1.5 miles.

After the third fortnight the alarm came forward by 15 minutes one last time so we were now getting up a whole hour earlier than we had been. Some experimentation, and one or two mad-dashes, and we discovered how far we could go and soon had four different walks of upto 2.5 miles we could fit into that hour always making sure we were back home again by 6am for breakfast, shower and all the normal morning stuff before I left again to go to work and Holly retreated back to bed to re-arrange my duvet into a cosy nest just the right size for her and the cats to spend the day sleeping in and recharging their batteries ready for evening walkies and playtime.