Well folks I have bettered my walk of 13 miles last week with one of 15 miles yesterday.  Alison and I decided we should go for a long walk together to get some practise in.  I met Ali at the top of Leith Walk, this is a stones throw away from the centre of Edinburgh.  We then walked down to the bottom of Leith and along Seafield towards Portobello.  The sewage works are along the seafield route which made us walk slightly faster due to the smell!!  We walked along the promenade at Portobello and then onto Joppa and a straight road to the little town called Musselburgh (an old fishing town with a harbour, hence its name).  The first part of our walk was pretty cold and windy, especially along the prom.  There was a lot of sand blowing in our faces and the waves were crashing.  As we walked in Musselburgh we could really feel the heat of the sun and I wished I had brought some sun cream (im a little red in the face today!).  We were both feeling ok at this point and as we got to the end of Musselburgh racecourse we swung back round and started the journey home.  I think its always at this point that psychologically I start to think its almost over!  I tried really hard yesterday not to do this though.  We wlked a slightly different route back and walked the top road, parallel to where we had been.  We gave ourselves a target of reaching the chip shop before having a boost (chocolate bar) and then ate them like mad women when we reached there.  Just after we had eaten the boost and were crossing a little side road Alison got really bad cramp in her calf and was hopping about like a mad woman trying to get on the pavement!  I know its cruel but I got the complete giggles.  I managed to tell her how to stretch off her calf through the giggling though so Im not completely awful.  We were about 4 miles from home at this point so it was not looking good.  Alison managed to stretch it and carry on though.  We had many discussions about how bad we were feeling and how we couldn't possibly think of doing anothe 11 miles when we would reach our destination.  We alos discussed whether once we have done all our training are we going to get to the point where we dont feel bad until the 20th mile or so.  Through the pain neither of us could see it! 

Alison is now cursing the day she said yes to my proposal of doing this moonwalk.  We were both at the stage where stopping was not really an option in case we got cramp so we were trying to time every road crossing to happen at exactly the time the green man came on or when there was no traffic and we could cross.  We did well at this and the relief was huge when we could see our end point.  All we could manage at the end of the walk was a high five and a bye with no stopping.  I got to the car and had a stretch (6 second rule obviously!) before climbing in and driving home.  I sat down to relax and did a good stretch a couple of hours later.  During the rest of the night I decided to keep stretching and I think that really helped.

All in all I dont feel too bad today.  I have a little stiffness and Im a bit sore but Alison is feeling exactly the same.  Its usually a couple fo days later that are worse for me so I will see how tomorrow goes!  So a good weekend in general, and my football team beat the champions to go into the final of the scottish cup where we will play our local rivals Hibs.

xx