My last post was this time last week, I had great intentions of a week of varied training - some speed work and may be one longer walk. I need to be a bit more realistic this week! Like many of you, spare time is at a bit of a premium especially at this time of year, so between Christmas parties, kids activities and work the time available in the evenings evaporated and the only chance I had for a walk was on Sunday morning. Dropped my son Nick off at at Ramsey for a football match and went for a quick 6.75 mile walk so that I could get back for the 2nd half to cover my family duties too! Although not ideal training, as long as you make sure you try to get out when you can, I think that will be ok for now,I don't want to beat myself up at this early stage as there will be plenty of time for that next year!
Anyway as I do not have too much to write about (at least that involves walking or training!)I thought I would make a start on a run through my first 2 efforts on the Parish. I am not saying this was the best way to prepare but I think you probably need to be realistic about how much you plan to do for say your first try. Until you truly get bitten by the event (as the inspirational blogger Richard clearly has) you may not have the focus, time or even desire to devote the time and effort required to go for a finish in one of the higher places.
For most mortals, if like me you have not had much involvement with the event but think that 85 miles sounds like a long long way, then I would suggest that a realistic goal for the first time is to train and plan to finish but not get too hung up about a time. Another alternative is to set a goal such a Peel and go for that on your first Parish to get a feel for the event.
My own view however is that if you want to finish and have time to train from now on, you should only focus on reaching Douglas before 8am. It is a real challenge without putting doubts in your mind before you start - set yourself a goal and go for it - if it doesn't work out then so be it but set your goal now and go for it.
If you are keen enough to read "blogger 2" at this early stage then for the rest of this blog
I will assume you want to finish and you haven't before.
For my first Parish in 2009 I basically committed to finishing it when I decided to enter the Parish to support the law society's charity people in need and as part of last year's 150th anniversary. I decided to do this in January 2009. The first question was how and who was I going to train with? I had completed the 3 peaks a couple of years before to raise money for oscars dreams charity (if you are interested see my blog from 2007 on the charities page http://www.oskarsdreams.org/3peaks/3_peaks_story.html) and decided to try to resurrect the same team. I largely failed but eventually managed to persuade my good friend Colin Garvey to do the Parish although I think it is fair to say he was less persuaded by my insistence that we were going to do the whole thing at the first effort. Training got off to a patchy start as with 7 kids between us (2 good catholic families I guess) 2 wives who thought we were mad and 2 pretty time consuming jobs we really only managed 2 walks a week at most and generally only 1. We did about 5 miles a session (which at the time seemed like a lot but now seems amazing light - we thought this would get us through.)
Apart from a light training regime we also decided to walk together for the event. The received wisdom seemed to be that this was a bad idea but we decided that the musketeers approach would see us through.... I have rambled on enough for this post v2 will continue the story.....
