Brief update this evening as there is an early start tomorrow morning.

Today has mostly been about the walking, the wordpress, the running and the blisters. I made the mistake of wearing my new DMs when I came down to Aylesbury yesterday. These have been fine for walking since breaking them in a couple of weeks ago, but sitting on the train for many hours and then going for a long walk yesterday turned out to be too much for my delicate feet. My right little toe developed quite a blister.

First thing this morning we were out again for a walk before breakfast. We headed out of town towards Watermede – a new build satellite village constructed by the side of a small lake. By the time we had walked around the lake and then got back to the cafe for breakfast, we had covered another 6km. My toe wasn’t feeling great, nor the ball of my foot. When I came to inspect the damage later it wasn’t a pretty site. Suffice to say that I had to buy some blister plasters at Boots and lavish my feet and raw flesh with them.

Later in the day we went out running. The training plan had 8km and so that is what had to be done. I was a little concerned about my poor right foot, but in the end it was ok. We took a route around the ring road and made up the 8km by taking a small detour towards the end of the run.

The aim is to finish the Manchester 10k in under 1 hour in May — having been steadfastly in the 1 hour 15 minutes zone for too long now. We did 8km in 49 minutes and it felt fine. I think we could have maintained our pace for another 2km, which would have come in at about 1 hour, 1 or 2 minutes. So our target seems perfectly manageable — barring any disasters between now and the start of May.

There isn’t much else to report, really. I posted a polite request for attribution of my blog post on the West Lancs Record and QLocal sites. If there is nothing done by Tuesday I guess I have to move on to take-down notices. Ho hum.

We also watched Good Vibrations and Frank this evening, both good but very different films. Frank is a good film and I knew that it had nothing at all to do with Frank Sidebottom apart from having a character with a large papier-mâché head. However, I felt a bit saddened at the end because I’m sure that the story of Chris Sievey would be just as interesting as that told in the film. Or at least I like to think so.

Here’s some Frank from 2007, not long before we went to see him for my 40th birthday treat.