14 weeks to go.

I've been following John Ellis' advise - running 5 days a week for an hour or an hour and a half, keeping to an easy pace and avoiding hills to avoid inflaming my plantar fascia... so far so good. However, finding flat trails has been hard - there seems to be a road anywhere through valleys. Nelly is good on roads, but we both enjoy trails through woods and fields where its softer underfoot and crazy drivers are not a problem.

But this weekend I had to test it, so after my morning run, we we took to the hills of Surrey... yes, that leafy green, mostly very EXPENSIVE suburb of London. We found two great walks up Leith Hill and Box hill (the next day), both about 7 miles long and at least for brisk walking, I was fine. I was amazed that they felt remote - you really would not know that they were so close to London except for the jet noise from Gatwick (solved that with ipod!).The only problem we enountered was mud, particularly when the footpath merged with bridlepaths. We found a remote National Trust Car park that cleared out by 5pm, so we had a very quiet night in the campervan listening to the wind and rain in the trees. It felt pretty strange to be sleeping in the campervan less than an hour from home!

I've been very thankful of the help I've received on the fundraising front and am collecting childhood photos of all my colleages at work and plan to have some sort of event/contest where people get to try to identify who is who. And I had some of those moo minicards http://http://www.moo.com/products/minicards.php made with my just giving site address on the back. I plan to pass them out at dog training class tonight.... .. I'm still not very comfortable asking for money!!