How many roads must a man walk down...

Another decent weeks training, but unfortunately I managed to pick up another injury in my neck from a session at the gym. Thankfully it wasn’t as bad as my previous back injury & didn’t hamper my training too badly, letting me complete a decent weeks training & a serious Sunday walk!

The spinning & weights session on Monday turned out to be a god send as my muscles were pretty tight from the 30 odd mile walk on the Sunday & although the last thing I wanted to do straight after work was go & ride a bike for 45 minutes I was very glad I did. I found it loosened up the muscles & made me feel much better than I had done all day (something for me to think about for the days after climbing Kili & the lead up to the parish).

The rest of the week went as usual, my college course is nearing the end & the sun is definitely starting to hang around a bit more which is a true indication that summer is on its way or may have even arrived! I'm really glad about this as not only does it make everything seem a bit easier & better, it should also help me get out for a few more walks & enjoy the outdoor training a bit more.

Thursday was the usual hockey training & coaching, it’s hard to believe that we don’t even have many hockey games left in the season & things are getting pretty close in my teams division. Although Celts (Castletowns mixed 1st team that I play for) haven’t dropped a point all season we are very close to our nearest rivals Saxons & it could go down to the wire on goal difference depending on the next time we play them.

I've talked about my team in a fair few of my blogs & they're a great group of people as are my hockey club. To see a breakdown of the league (if you’re interested) click on the link below:

http://www.englandhockey.co.uk/fl/comps/cv.asp?d=21336

Saturday night ended up being the Castletown away leg of the beer pong league. It definitely seems to becoming a regular weekend fixture & although brilliant fun & very competitive, doesn’t help to avoid a hangover for my usual mammoth walk on Sunday, this week myself & the "Iron Man" Mr Frank Barker managed to become champions, winning 7 games in a row - I thought i'd post a picture of us winning the highly sought after T-shirts to help amuse you.









This week myself & Dave had entered the Firemans walk for charity, another 31+ mile trek, but this time around the north of the Island & thankfully it was covering the majority of the route the parish will take, giving us an opportunity to scout out the exact route.

For more information click on this link: http://www.iomfire.com/walk2010/saraswalk2010.htm.

It's pretty rare that I travel up to the north of the Island, but from the route I took i'm going to be controversial & say it was pretty dull in terms of sight seeing! There were plenty of straight roads & hedges with the odd prison but I think I prefer the good ole, tried & tested Sloc routes!

The walk itself was pretty tough though & I was struggling at the end of it having picked up a pretty big blister on my right foot & an extremely sore left knee which is making me struggle to walk at the moment!

A bit disheartening compared to the relative successes of last weeks walk, especially considering this was a flatter & potentially easier route & still only 30 odd miles compared to the 80+ on the actual day!

It's also made me realise I really need to sort out some decent footware as my current road walking shoes are just not upto scratch for these larger distances.

We're hoping to do the return journey i.e. Ramsey to Douglas in the upcoming weeks to make sure we're fully clued up about the parish walk & have covered it all at various stages of our training.

Although i'm dishearted I believe a lot of it was due to the dodgey knee & if I can sort out these things by stretching properly & preferrably not having a hangover it's got to be easier :)

Roll on next week!

The Sloc + 20 or so miles

After the previous weeks lack of training it was time to man up & put in a serious effort. Thankfully the back was feeling much better & I was able to do a full week’s worth of hard training with a tough goal at the end of it.

The goal was to complete the Sloc, but instead of starting at it or near abouts, we were going to complete the full 20 or so miles of the Parish walk before we got to it.

Feeling full of confidence & just glad to be back to a reasonable state of health & be able to plan such a trip we set off in the morning & managed to go the wrong way in the first half an hour, pretty impressive eh?! Unfortunately I thought we needed to carry on the TT slip road slightly further than was necessary (ahem, OK a mile or so more than needed), but needless to say after a call to our trusted guide Hayley we got back on track.

It was good to be training on the actual route from the start & prepare ourselves both mentally & physically as to what was come. However, it didn’t take too long for us to get lost again as we managed to miss our turning onto the newtown road & ended up going a mile or two out of our way & then turned back on ourselves. We even managed to find what seemed to be the longest, narrowest, oddest road on the Isle of Man, which we affectionately named ‘Murder alley’, I’m quite glad that we wont have to traverse this little gem again!

We stopped off for massive amounts of food on the only shop that appeared to be open on the Isle of Man (the Colby Spa - a massive shout out & much love) & sat in the bus shelter while we ate it. This was an extremely welcome break from the mid day sun & made me think that I will have to think carefully about breaks & the food & drink that I plan to take with me or at least have with my support car for the later parts of the race.

The Sloc turned out not to be as bad as I thought, especially after traversing the 20 or so miles before it, but again, I wouldn’t have said it was enjoyable!

I think we managed to do the walk in a fairly quick time & although I was tired & sore at the end of it I definitely could have carried on, but saying that, I was glad I didn’t have to walk back to Douglas as my parents gave us a lift back (thanks Mum!).

A good sign for the future considering this is our longest walk to date!

Oh, so 85 miles is a long way then...

This has been possibly the most infuriating week of training to date, I managed to pick up a back injury which has left me walking around like an old man. It’s infuriating to be unable to do even the basics of things like getting out of bed, putting on your coat etc without being in a lot of pain & have to think carefully about everything you do.

Thankfully something useful came out of the week as Hayley kindly agreed to sit in as a navigator and show us where we needed to go to successfully complete the Parish Walk. This was extremely scary, just realizing the sheer distance we are going to have to cover & just how long it took us to get around in a car, let alone walking!

Needless to say, it’s been a pretty poor week on the training front, especially after feeling that I really needed to put in 100% after a relatively slack week with going away on tour last week, but thankfully is starting to feel a lot better now & it’s made me feel like I really need to start stepping it up!

The Pool of Black

What a week… Unfortunately though, not for the right reasons! It was that time of year again, the Easter weekend, which can mean only one thing… Blackpool Hockey Festival!

Castletown hockey club have attended this festival for the past 4 or 5 years & it’s never disappointed in terms of being brilliant fun, or making me thinking about giving up alcohol for ever & this year turned out to be no different.

Yes, we did play 3 or 4 games each day for 3 days but I think the alcohol & bad food unfortunately may have taken the training into a bit of a decline on a usual week’s workout.

I remember warning Dave that Blackpool would not be good for training, but I think we’ve both dedicated such a large part of our life & time to our training & this mammoth task that I didn’t feel too guilty in having a break & enjoying myself.

I won’t go into too many details on the trip other than I had one of the best nights of my life on the Friday in a Karaoke bar surrounded by Blackpools finest ‘locals’, which I must admit I never thought I’d hear myself say outloud. Played in the beer pong championship of the world on the Saturday & ended up dressing as a camp caveman on the Saturday…

I’ve attached a few photos below to give you a flavor of some of the goings on! More can be seen on facebook if you're feeling adventurous!