Days 5, 6, 7, and 8

Happy New Year everyone! I haven't blogged for a while and know you will all have been worried, "Has she given up already?" I hear you cry, "has she finally eaten her own body weight in chocolate and exploded?!" Well fear not friends, firstly it would take a lot more chocolate than that to finish me off, but also the reason I have been away from my laptop for a while is that a spanner was thrown into the works, a Marty shaped spanner. Grandma has been insisting that we all "carry on with our lives" which involoves me taking my turn in New-Yearing at the boyfriends, as he fullfilled his duty in spending it up north last year. So after our training session on (day 4) the 30th I headed down to Kings Lynn, trainers and sports bra in my bag, ready to keep to my commitments with the walking, I had instructed Marty explicitly on how seriously I'm taking this, and made him solemly swear that we would do the walks properly, apart from New Years Eve which as you'll recall from my last post I had decided to allow as a day off.
So the next day dawned and I revelled in the thought of a day without marching around wishing I could drown Eddie in a ditch, my joy was short lived however when Dad texted me a photo of him and Eddie on the top of Roseberry Topping (our local hill) The rats! They're not having a day off at all! "Quick Marty! We need to find a hill!" I squawked. Ever charming Marty grunted and rolled over in bed. Frantically I scrambled up, dressed, and urged Marty into joggers and trainers before I remembered that being in Norfolk, the flattest county in the country, if not the world, we were going to struggle to find anything steeper than a high curb. Having to settle for 4 miles on the flat through the town we set off. Apparently Marty hadn't fully understood the term 'power walk' (being from Kings Lynn I should have suspected that there were too many syllables in the phrase for him to have correctly comprehended it,  but I suppose I had heard what I wanted to hear when he promised he had understood and would comply) so we began an awkward shuffle, me walking at the correct speed dragging him along with me "stop pulling meeeee!" he moaned like a petulant child "Well walk properly then!" I snapped back equally stroppily. The final straw came when he whipped out a packet of crisps, a packet of crisps! At this point I did scream at him and storm off, leaving him stumping along munching on his crisps, good for nothing son of a gun. Powered by rage I walked faster than I ever have before, a cloud of cartoon style dust must have risen from the ground behind me, stomping along I came to realise that I was approaching the only landmark I know in the town, a pub, The Retreat. Having reached it, to avoid getting lost the only thing I could do was turn around and walk back, hoping that it was a 4 mile round trip. 55 minutes later I was back and luckily the journey it turns out did cover 3.9 miles, so apart from the blazing row that followed with Marty (think "I cant believe you walked off and left me!" "I cant believe you wouldnt walk properly!" etc) my efforts were successfull (Marty also apologised in the end, as we have seen earlier I am always right, so it was only to be expected really) Then as is the tradition of New Years Eve, we went out and got drunk.
As part of the going-out-getting-drunk thing, I accidently clocked up an extra 2 miles of walking; in the small hours of the first morning of 2012, after much drinking, dancing, auld lang syne-ing and so on we staggered out of the premier night club of Kings Lynn 'Chicagos' (yes just as glamorous as it doesn't sound) and made the genius decision to walk back to Martys house from town. Lots of girls in preparation for a situation such as this put flip flops or some other form of flat shoe in their bag to save themselves from walking home in heels. I had thought similarly, but had taken out that night with me a very pretty but very small bag, too small for extra shoes, I had cleverly managed to squeeze a pair of socks in there though. These went on to do me little to no good as it had been raining when we left, and everyone knows how useless wet socks can be. 2 miles were covered though, essentially barefoot by me, in just over half an hour, so I'll leave it in your hands to decide whether this is allowed to count, but unless anyone tells me otherwise I'm going to count it! I did also complete a formal walk, at 8am the alarm I had cunningly set the night before went off, and without bothering to try and wake Marty I set off, not hungover yet as still probably slightly drunk. As a result of this the 3.9 miles to The Retreat and back passed in a 55 minute blur. Then the hangover hit me and the rest of the day was lost, so I was glad to have gotten up early in the end.
On day 7 I awoke to another text from Dad, saying that the weather at home was shocking, so he and Ed would take that day off today. Following their lead I too took a semi day off; in that I made Marty walk rather than drive the 4(ish) mile round trip to town, but at a more relaxed pace (which is what I imagine he had expected to happen all along) and we did stop while we were there and have a massive fry up.
Today I returned home, refreshed from my day off and chomping at the bit to get back out into the country air and back onto some rough terrain. Ed returned to college in South Sheilds yesterday, and I'm yet to hear how his town walking went today. I imagine, using common knowledge of 19 year old boys, that he stayed up all night drinking with his mates (or using more specific knowledge of my 19 year old brother, stayed up all night playing xbox) and has not moved far from his sofa today, but I remain hopefull and will let you know how the South Sheilds division of the troupe has faired when I know. Dad too was unable to participate today, being a grown up and having to return to work today (oh how I long to stay a student forever so that the world of work continues to not affect me) so I set off, so desperate fro company I even deigned to take the dog with me. After my day off and 2 previous days strolling on the pavements of Kings Lynn, the country air and rough terrain I had longed for quickly became tiresome, and when the shocking weather that Dad had mentioned from yesterday reared its ugly head again as I passed the first mile marker I was sorely tempted to turn around, cut the walk short and go home, but I bravely continued. As hailstones began to hit us and the dog began to whimper we upped the speed of the walk to mad dash between patches of shelter of trees and bushes. In this cold, wet and unpleasent fashion the remainder of the walk/jog passed speedily, such was our hurry to get back into the warm house, and we clocked back in in 1 hour and 1 minute,  my personal best (and 9 minutes faster than Dad and Eds best effort to date!)