Walk the Walk

One of my lovely sponsors (hello, Sue!) advised me that, after her experience of The Moon Walk, trying to walk a proportion of the distance of The Walk a couple of weeks beforehand would be wise.  She said "see if you can do four."  I agreed with her, and then managed to come up with a bunch of excuses.

To be fair, if I’d tried to do this last week, I’d have broken myself. My joints were all kinds of progesterone-overload floppy and hurt like the devil.  For various reasons, I wasn’t able to go to the gym on Wednesday, and compromised by walking home. 2.1 miles of limping, bitching, spasming and misaligning later (it took me 50 minutes, though this included shopping for food) and I was entertaining my first serious doubts that I’d be able to do The Walk at all.

Well, thank goodness for the bit where the progesterone runs out, eh?

I’d run out of decent excuses, and today I decided that I was tired of the crappy ones and, after running a surprisingly successful (if somewhat truncated) poetry workshop, I came home, ate and drank a little, and put on my walking hat (it’s the same as my poetry hat, and my going to work hat, but ssshh).  Okay, between the sandwich and the hat there was some gaming, but I did it.

Did what?

I set off to walk to Milton Country Park from my house, wander around it a little, then come home.  I hoped to make it to as much of four miles as possible, without stopping.

And did you do it?

It would appear so.  According to my Google tracking app, I walked 4.34 miles in 1:06 hours.  This included pauses for: waiting to cross busy roads, getting a bit lost in the Park, taking photos, and buying some flavoured water for the journey home.

So it wasn’t exactly non-stop, then?

Piffle - mere details. :)  I paused occasionally, but I stayed on my feet.

Speaking of which...?

Sore. The right foot is more sore than the left, possibly because it was taking more weight in order to deal with the Really Bad Knee (left one) complaining.  By the time I was down to half a mile to go, I was limping somewhat.  My right ankle is, similarly, not impressed with me.  We shall see what else washes up tomorrow...

What else?

Well, I did get thirsty, but not as much as I would have anticipated (mind, it was dusk by the time I got to the Park, and I’d drunk a little water beforehand, as well as staying reasonably well hydrated through the day).  I finished the 500ml fruity water bottle before I got home, though - so I was obviously some thirsty...!  I was overheating in my various outdoor layers by the time I was limping, but again less than anticipated (see: dusk into night-time travelling), and it gives me some clues for how to dress on the day.  It’ll be a 10:30am start.  Yeesh.

What worked well?

Eating a light meal with a little water an hour before setting out. Wearing layers that could be opened to let the air circulate. Allowing myself a drink after 45 minutes. Listening to music for the first part, then listening to birdsong for the rest of it. Taking photos.

Photos? Really?

Yup.

What was less awesome?

I’m still trying to make up my mind whether it was easier or harder doing this long walk by myself than with someone else.  I don’t think there’ll be anyone physically with me on the day, by the sound of it, and, let’s face it, an old and not entirely groovy part of me is just fine with that.  On the other hand, all you lovely valedictorian friends make this entire effort seem all that much more worthwhile with your kind and thoughtful words and praise.  I am officially confused.  Maybe I should eat more cheese.

I also forgot to stretch when I came back in, though I did sit my arse down in a comfy chair pretty much immediately, which was a good thing.  And got given cheerleading, which is always nice.  And then I did stretching later.

And how does this all make you feeel?

You’ve always got to ask, eh?

Well, far more confident, and less like I’ve tricked people into sponsoring me money.  Cautiously optimistic about recovery from The Walk (all dependent on tomorrow’s news).  Determined to do things right - basically, more of the good stuff I’ve been doing already, and less messing about and coming up with excuses.  Also: stretch.

The other advice I’ve received, but which I’d already determined on anyway was: rest before The Walk itself.  Do very little (though I will be doing physio) the week before the event.  This sounds sound, I just need to persuade myself that I’m Doing The Right Thing and not slacking.

So that’s it, really.  Hi, I’m back.  And the exercise bike won’t know what’s hit it, the next time I lay legs on it.

And yeah: thanks for all the encouraging Tweets and Facebook "likes" when I said I was going to do today’s dry run.  Y’all are lovely.

Reach for the Stars

I think it's fair to say that the sponsorship effort is going pretty well for The Walk.  As you know, I beat my original target and raised it.  And then I beat that and raised it again.

And now I'm close to beating that.  Blimey. People are lovely.

Raising attention for this has meant stepping outside yet another comfort zone, one that came up in conversation last night as my mate and I stumbled home for 2½ hours from a gig in a London location so outer that it didn't even have a London postcode. She was being quite... insistent... on helping me with my (large, but not as large as usual, and on wheels, okay?) case.  She was lovely and patient and helpful and non-patronising, but letting her carry my case was a bit of a mental struggle for me.

To say that asking for help doesn't come easily to me is a bit of an understatement.  My first phrase, apparently, as a child was: "I do it myself".  (My mother used to say that my first word was "No".  Hard to say how accurate that is...)  So it's been a fairly overwhelming characteristic of mine since, basically, early cognition.  My ingrained dedication to self-reliance is not about to change with ease/ at all/ ever/ overnight, is what I'm trying to say.

I'm getting better at it.  For example, I'll accept help with much more alacrity these days.  Not quite the same as actively seeking assistance (and I've always been someone happy to go seek information, being more than willing to accept that there's always someone who knows more than you do about, e.g. where the condensed milk lives in this shop, how to open the car bonnet of the car I'm driving, ou est la gare, etc.) but, you know, a start.  A big part of the last three years has been accepting what I physically just can't do and persuading myself that I'm worth getting it done well and not hurting myself in the process.  At some level, Being Able To Do Stuff is enmeshed with my feeling of self-worth.  And yet, as with my complicated perception of the desirability of dieting, I don't judge others by what they can't do...

This is echoed in my sometimes desultory attitude to publicising my own events/ merchandise, etc.  The best way to persuade myself to request assistance is to remind myself who else suffers if I don't.  So having a goal where others will benefit if I do well is über-motivational, and this has got me pushing mention of my sponsorship drive around the shop. And now that everyone and their monkey know that I'm doing it, I can't bottle out. And if I'm definitely going to walk six miles in a go, I'll need to get the tools to be able to do it without breaking myself and returning to the place where I need to ask for help.

Ta-da! Fay-logic circumlocuted! I win out over the apathy!waaah, and Sport Relief get a bag of cash to help people in need.  Oh, and the people who give me the money get to feel good about themselves too... :)

Thanks! :D

Just Do It #2

Quick, throwaway "motivational" phrases can be helpful, especially when you're exhausted and your body's drenched in adrenalin, and the buffer zones of carefully-constructed cognition are crumbling in the face of your inner waaah that just wants to give up and go home and, incidentally, eat a large plate of biscuits, or possibly ALL THE CHEESE.  So this tag series is for those small, pre-fabricated tools that help me get the chuff on with it.

So my latest auto-Tweet sharing this blog got favourited by @Inside_Tracker. I went to have a look, and they have some doozies of those cheesy inspirational bon mots that I implicated in my last post on this tag.

Oh, some of them are pretty good, don't get me wrong: 

"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop."

and

"It's never a question of can you, but will you?"

which, okay, has some grammar issues all its own, but is reminiscent of that Ayn Rand quote that I have up on my desk at work, in its Zen Pencils form:

"The question isn't who is going to let me but who is going to stop me."

Quite a flawed individual, that Ayn Rand, but that doesn't make her statement any less true, or any less useful to people who've suffered from a form of training that leads them to expect to need permission to follow their ambitions.

Anyway, there are some properly silly quotes there too:

"There is no elevator to success; you have to take the stairs."

which is patently a lie (cronyism, inherited wealth, nepotism, blackmail, etc.), and:

"Training is the opposite of hoping,"

which is madness, because surely you need hope to start and persist through training. Surely "wishing" would work better there.

My favourite, though, is:

"Clear your mind of can't."

because I want to remove the apostrophe and send it back to them.

:)

Got sent some great links to motivational phrases by Theodore Roosevelt (among others) in the wake of the last post in this tag. Ima check those out and see if any can turn into tiny "come on, one more push"-type tools and will - of course! - share if they do.

Any of you got any more for me?