I like to give myself at least one really good challenge each year. Last year it was to cover over 310km on various pieces of gym equipment in 1 month. This year I wanted to walk to Peel in the Parish walk. Right now as I type this I’m sat at home whilst the other 1700 or so people are out pounding pavements. I’m gutted, I have never failed on one of my personal challenges but this just wasn’t to be.
I signed up late for the Parish, I only gave myself 8 weeks to prepare for it, 2 weeks of which I’d be on holiday. It didn’t matter though because I was still 99% sure of completing the 32.5 mile walk. Why so confident? I’ve done some very long walks in the past, I find walking easy. Running I train, but walking is just one of those things. I was so confident I had a great time winding people up who had put their heart and souls into training for it 
My training regime was simple, I’d carry on in the gym 5-6 days a week like I always do, do some walking whilst on holiday (like we always do) and then when I got back from holiday get out once or twice just to really stretch my legs.
The first sign that life wasn’t going to make this easier for me happened almost as soon as I signed up. A viral infection that I hadn’t seen since I was 16 decided to have another go. For the 2 weeks before I went on holiday I couldn’t do any gym work. It killed my planned routine on the cruise ship as well and even though I did manage a lot of walking on holiday I never honestly felt above about 70% the whole time. Then just as I thought I was getting over one thing I ended up with a chest infection. I’m still on antibiotics for that but again it killed my gym routine and since returning home I’ve only been 6 times. All in illness has cost me 5 weeks of gym time.
Undaunted I was still confident enough to go for a “decent” walk, if nothing else I needed to see how much it had taken out of me. The short answer is quite a lot. Less gym time equals me carrying more weight (about 5 pounds more than I’d like) which equals my sciatica causing more problems. In the case of my walk my back problems were causing me to put too much weight on my other foot. Tendanitis, 1 week before the big day!
Still I was confident enough to do the pre race registration. I have some good tablets to manage the inflamation and it’s only 32.5 miles after all. To be honest I was considering stopping at an earlier 19 mile checkpoint by this stage but secretely I was still hoping for my original target.
Then last night, the night before the race I was due out for a meal with some friends from Thailand. The meal itself was fantastic, I limited myself to only a couple of beers. I left the casino early leaving them to party on. I was being good knowing that I had to be up at 6:45 this morning. I woke up feeling fine, then as I slowly came around I had feeling in my stomach, one I know well. Thirty minutes later when I finally managed to get out of the bathroom the writing was well and truelly on the wall. There was no way I could even consider walking if I’ve got to run to the bathroom every fifteen minutes.
So that’s why I’m sat here typing instead of walking, a total failure. The Parish Walk will have to wait for another year, it just wasn’t supposed to be this year. But what’s the point in all this? Besides just a general whinge there is a simple message here, I’ve had similar experiences with websites I’ve tried to build where it seems that absolutely everything is against you. You pound against the current determined that you’re doing something right, most of the time what I’ve found is that it was just never worth all that effort. There is a lot to be said for the path of least resistance and living the easy life. When something isn’t meant to be then it’s just not meant to be, don’t beat yourself up, move on to something else, onwards and upwards.