Day 49

Today is my first day back at walking after 2 weeks off. To celebrate finally being free from the headache of concussion I went out in Newcastle last night. With hindsight this was probably not the wisest move I have ever made, as I essentially celebrated getting rid of a headache by giving myself another one. Conditions were also less than perfect, by which I mean the walkway was so icey it resembled a sheet of glass covered with thick snowy sludge. That coupled with my decreased fitness (and incredible hangover) made for a hard morning. The only plus side being that the official decision has been made that owing to Dads shameful shins we will be completing the challenge over a weekend rather than in 24 hours, which means that training walks take place at 3 miles an hour now rather than 4. According to the training plan laid out by the great Brain and Steve about now we should be moving from 4 miles (in an hour) to 6 miles (in an hour and a half) but after 2 weeks away and with tricky footing ahead of us we wrapped up warm and set off, I comforted myself with the thought of a short gentle walk to ease me back into things...
... 8 miles. Dad had taken all these awful factors into account and decided that it would be brilliant fun to watch me toil through the longest walk we've ever done. Talk about a babtism of fire, this was far from the gentle reintroduction I'd been hoping for. Shuffling like a pair of penguins over the slippy surfaces - skidding when the infernal dog (whose presence was just the icing on the cake for me) yanked on his lead - we made painful progress. Dad, enjoying my suffering far too much chattered loudly (so loudly, my poor head) about what developments on the walkway I'd missed; "That's Birdwatching man, I don't know his name because we've never spoken but he's here alot watching birds so that's what I call him," and "This is the puddle the dog got his tongue stuck to on the ice," and other such trivia. My pounding head and churning stomach got worse and worse (and Dad seemed to enjoy himself more and more) as time went on until in the end I demanded we stomp the last 2 miles in silence. I was fairly pleased to note though that I haven't lost as much fitness as I thought I would (probably because there wasn't much to lose) as amongst everything else today that was the least of my worries.
Eventually, on the verge of tears, sweating white wine and swearing I'll never drink again I staggered over the threshold of the house, 8 miles completed in 2 hours 20 minutes. That's 20 minutes too slow for Brian and Steve, but 20 minutes quicker than we expected as our average speed went on to work out at 3.5 miles an hour, so although Brian and Steve would get away from them we wouldn't be as far behind them as we thought we would be.