Hi,
I am posting this to help me keep to the plan! I am walking a marathon for cancer research the night of 24/25 September and the longest walk I have done so far is 11 miles last Monday. The marathon is just over 26 miles, so not yet halfway.
The aim is to do a 15 miles walk this week, next week 18 miles and the following week 22 miles – then a ‘rest week’ with the marathon the following one.
I do pilates every week and am adding in a spinning class and yoga as well as some gym sessions.
Yesterday I signed up for a 30 minute spinning class at lunchtime – I don’t really like cycling, but it is an effective way of strengthening the legs without spending hours on a machine. I paced myself for the 30 minutes (only ever done one or 2 classes before about 6 weeks ago) – so not too much resistance, but kept the pace going all they way through, however it did not stop at 30 minutes…. it went on for another 15 minutes! Had I known that, I would have been easier on myself at the start – BUT – I managed it! It just goes to show what you can do when you decide to! The trainer complemented me on looking like I had been doing spinning for years :-). I did a pilates class last night and the teacher kindly gave us lots of exercises aimed at legs to ensure mine were well stretched and also help strengthen them! They are a little tired today!
Tomorrow is my long walk – hoping to go to Lee Valley and do two rounds of one of their walks stopping at the car for lunch. Yoga in the evening to stretch. The issue is it will be 28 degrees tomorrow – hopefully there will be some shade 🙁 .
Wish me luck!

Hi Orchid
when you do your marathon walk, it won’t be nearly as hot – as tomorrow or the walk last week.
have fun tomorrow – take LOTS of water
I did my first nordic walking lesson this morning – I’d forgotten how amazing Hampstead Heath is, I hadn’t been there in years – not sure if I’d ever been to the bit that we were walking in this morning.
I’d also forgotten how pleasant it is to be in a gym with beautifully kitted out changing rooms – we were outside, obviously, but the walking is attached to an independent gym. The Nordic taster session in Hyde Park was ‘meet at the bandstand, loos nearby for 20p!).
Mostly walked in shaded woody parts, but still extremely hot.

Hi Orchid
Good luck with the walk in September.
Your training sounds good preparation. A marathon sounds pretty impressive to me. Managed to do 12/14 mile (?) charity walk earlier in the year but was limping quite badly towards the end so I think a marathon distance would be really hard!!
Do plenty of other exercises though and try to mix it up a bit to wake my body up and get a bit toned….ha ha!!
Must be working though as I don’t have flab on my legs and arms …..no Bingo Wings any more.
.
I do spinning classes sometimes for the cardio benefits but not every week. Been trying to do more Body Pump atm to help
the wobbly tummy!!!! Not shifting any weight but losing visceral and subcutaneous fat….hark at me.!!!
Tummy is wobbling less….and I may even be gaining a waist.
What’s not to like?

Get up and waddle around folks……you know it makes sense!!!!
(It doesn’t need to be a fearsome indoor cycling class btw…..unless you’re a bit mad like us!!!)

Hi Orchid

I”m doing the Walk the Walk Marathon next May so read your post with interest. I did 16 miles this year and the biggest problem I had was that I got dizzy about 3 miles from the end. I had been low-carbing for a few weeks and my friend who is personal trainer thought I sounded as though I’d just run out of energy. I also found that there was so much standing about, stopping and starting that we got cold as well. I’m starting my training now and was interested to read about Spin and Pilates. I’m not fit enough for Spin right now but I will definitely add it to my list of exercises.

Good luck with the Walk and do say how you got on.

Elaine x

Hi Elaine, I was going to do an update today so here goes!
I did the long walk that I planned, but the temperature was even hotter than forecast. I left the car I the shade and it recorded 30 degree plus at lunchtime. It was 32 degrees plus at 5pm when I left! I only did just over 13 miles, partly because I got a bit lost in the morning and kept stopping to get my bearings so lost time; but mainly it was just too hot. By the afternoon my back was really tired and it was a struggle to keep going. I did finish the half marathon distance and although my back ached a lot of the way, my legs were fine – only a little tired. That is a big improvement on when I did the Shine half marathon walk 2 years ago and at the end my legs were dead, there was nothing left in them and they were the same next morning!
Last week I went back to the same place having identified routes I could do that meant I walked about 2 hours then had a short break to eat, then back to the next 2 hours loop then break and out for the third one. That worked well and I did 19.6 miles. I started at 10am and finished at just before 5pm, so roughly 3 x 2 hours walking with two breaks for food and toilet of 30 mins each. If I can keep that up, I can get through this marathon in 10 hours. The challenge will be the food, as I looped back to the car each time so was not carrying anything with me.
The 13 miles walk, I had a pack on my back which was an extra 4.5kg. The 19.6 miles I ditched the pack and had a bum-bag with a phone, money and nuts with me plus water attached to my belt. That worked well and although my back ached a little early afternoon, I walked through it and it was my legs that were beginning to complain near the end. It was a lot cooler – 18 degrees in the morning and 23 in the afternoon.
I am planning one more long walk either this week or next to get to 22 miles so I know I am able to do it.
On the actual walk there are lots of pit-stops for water and if it is the same as the other one I did there will be lots of bananas to take on route. On walk days I do not stick to the low carb – I try to have at least 20g carb for breakfast (I added 10g toasted oatmeal to my normal full fat yoghurt, blueberries and seeds breakfast) plus a Portobello mushroom and cheese (10g). After 2 hours I had miso soup, an egg, cheese and salad cream filling with a besam flour flatbread plus black coffee. Next break was a salad with oil, two small plums and black coffee. I had a peanut bar with me in the bumbag that I ate 2/3 of towards the end of the day. That worked fine, but was well over 100g carbs. I still need to work out how I do the actual nights fuelling – that will be the things that makes or breaks it.
I am concentrating on back strength for now to stop the backache and possibly be able take some food with me in a back pack on the night. I also need to call Cancer Research to make sure they are providing the same foods as they did last time!
I was getting dizzy turns last month, mainly in the mornings when I bent down to pick things up. I was doing archaeology fieldwork and was on my feet all day so decided my carbs needed to go up a bit and also to make sure I did not bend down and back up too quickly. That helped, and I also had a square or dark chocolate in my bag with water in case it happened again. I suspect I will need to stop the diet completely the week before the walk especially if the overnight food is bananas and health bars!
I’ll let you know how it goes and what I found worked and what did not.
Good luck with your training, make sure you do a lot of work on your back strength, my core strength is quite good, but you are on your feet for 8-10 hours at a go with short stops and your back works as hard as your legs do!

Well done, Orchid, you are an absolute star, fantastic achievement.

Just one thing I wanted to add – if you are getting dizzy turns, have you thought that you might not be getting enough salt? I know we’re all recommended not to have too much, but if you’re drinking loads and peeing loads, you’ll be washing it out of the system and this can indeed cause light-headedness. You can help by

adding more salt to food
drinking miso soup or perhaps a stock cube in boiling water as a drink
marmite/vegemite on a celery stick as a snack

Hope that might help you, it’s important and not always appreciated that lack of salt can have poor effects

Hi ay caramba,
I’m impressed that you have got rid of the bingo-wings. I look good in clothes, but without them I have bingo wings, still got a bit of flab on the stomach – some of which is loose skin so probably will never go now, and likewise in the thighs. With only a couple of kg still to go I am not so worried now about losing that as improving the muscle tone overall. Might try the body pump after the marathon is over and see if I can fix the bingo wings etc.
As you say – get out and try to do something – every little bit helps and suddenly you find you are doing even more than before.

Ay caramba, – thank-you for that! I was having miso soup at lunchtimes, and the dizzy turns were nearly all in the morning! I had been intending to dig out my vegemite as I found some lovely oatcakes ( 2 are 16g so 7.6g carb) that I was having some days for breakfast as well as my normal muesli – I love oatcakes and vegemite/marmite with a bit of cheese. I will definitely try that with celery as well. 🙂

Hi Orchid
good news that its going well – the walk I did on Saturday was good; turned out the run was 10k and the walk 6k
– and the weather held off.

I’ve just offered to volunteer for the shine walk – will let you know where I’ll be if they still need more volunteers

Hi frog, great news about the walk and even better news about the Shine Walk – I hope you are on one of the stands – it will be great to see a familiar face on route!
Sorry for taking so long to reply, I saw the post in the morning of the 7th intending to reply that afternoon, but I started feeling a bit squeamish and ended up with 3-4 days of very acid stomach and eating almost nothing for 2 days when it began to settle. Basically did not get to the PC to log on and reply :-(.
A bit better yesterday and today almost totally back to normal.
The most annoying thing is that I was going to do the 22 mile walk last Friday, but was no way able to cope with it. I then decided I could do it tomorrow or Wednesday and then cut-down the training from there. However…….. I checked the weather on Sunday and that plan is out the window. I am not doing another long walk in 28-30 degrees! Ahhhh – it is September, can we please have low 20’s high teens for temperatures – sorry to all those who will be getting the colder temperatures…….. :-(.
Today I did a spinning class followed by a gym session on back strengthening and a short hill climb. This evening was pilates which stretches everything back out. Tomorrow I’m going for a swim (should be cool enough in the water) again to concentrate on the back muscles, but using different exercises. Friday looks like my first possible long walk day – I need to think about just how close it is to the actual walk and decide if I can do it or not.
Anyhow, I am now officially I maintenance mode. I weighed myself on Sunday and got below 70kg for the first time in probably 27 years. I put it into my goal tracker with my waist measurement and it came back with – you just just reached both goals (set in March for 20 Sept), I had not realised I was so close! I am so chuffed even if it was the upset stomach that lost the last bit, and ahead of schedule! Certainly I am not on low calories for the next 15 days until this walk is over, I need all the energy I can get. After that – probably 5:2.
Let me know if you will be on one of the helpers and if so where you will be…..

Hi
I replied on another thread then got to this one – sorry you’ve not been feeling well – good news that you’re feeling OK again – do you know what caused it?
I’m a course volunteer from 9.30pm to sometime after 6am – meeting at Hyde Park corner, but not sure if I will be around there or that is just the meeting point. Apparently I’m there to walk along with people on the course and offer encouragement.

Is it getting hot again at the weekend? Hadn’t spotted that!
I’m sure that you’ll be fine on a cooler overnighter with the preparation that you’ve been doing

Don’t think my pedometer does anything that fancy! – But I’ve switched to FatSecret instead of myfitnesspal, and when I put daily weights in, it keeps coming up with a verification check message that says something like “that’s a lot to have lost since you last weighed in, are you sure?” – that’s quite satisfying.
I have targets in entered on that site, I’m sure it will do something celebratory when I eventually get there!

Hi Frog,
It looks like you will be about 40% of the way through which is great. I start at 9.30pm so will hopefully see you about 1.00-1.30ish. I need to call Cancer Research today to see what food and water is available and if so at what distances. Ideally I will have their bananas and water rather than carrying that around with me, but I will have my own protein bars and jelly babies with me :-). If I eat well during the day I can hopefully get through the night on that, but it will be different to the recent walks when I have been eating a large snack at 2 hour intervals. I was reading an article last night on running anything above a 10k, and they were talking about carb loading plus topping up on route. The issue I had after the half-marathon was zero carbs left in my legs, so I will follow the carb load for a couple of days (4.5g carb per pound), so that is 700g carbs per day for a few days before, and keep that topped up by eating some carbs every 20 mins over the race. I also need to be sure I get enough electolytes/salt en route. Clearly the walk won’t be as severe are a run, but I want to make sure I finish this and am able to move again the next day! I have booked a hotel room nearby the end for the Saturday and Sunday nights, so if my muscles are aching I can come home Monday morning, or if I am just tired, I can come home during Sunday, but won’t be getting chased out the hotel at midday. Looks like I will be on the BSD 800 for the week afterwards to decarb :-).
On the apps, I was training for 5 and 10k’s 5 years ago (an completed both) and use a website called The Good Run Guide. It is aimed at runners, but I kept my subscription up (you can also use it for free with a more limited access) and have a data store there of runs, weights, measurements etc that have helped me compare to my fitness and shape of 5 years ago. It allows me to plan my training and log what I have done. There is also a targets section and you can set all sorts of short and long term targets which I have found very useful and used it for my target weight and waist measurements for the BSD. My next target is a park run, so I need to think about what to do for that.
Anyhow – back to sending out emails to friends for sponsorship!

Hi Orchid
that sounds technical – very detailed planning!
Do drop me an email with sponsorship details, or post a link on here if its a justgiving link or similar

D

This is really interesting and helpful. I’m doing the Walk the Walk marathon next May and I really need to get my nutrition right as I suffered from a complete lack of energy about 3/4 of the way and kept feeling really dizzy. Fortunately small mars bars helped a lot. The website looks great as well and so I’ve signed up.

Thanks for this Orchid and good luck on your walk if I don’t get back here in time.

Elaine x

Is there anybody out there who, like me, is stuck in a wheelchair? OK it’s an electric chair but it still means that my exercise options are very limited. I don’t want to start this regime without knowing about exercise since Michael’s book says that just sitting and not walking is a no-no (Chapter 8)! Leaving aside any DDA implications is there anything to be done?

Hi AlanChantler,
there are others who have done this programme without the exercise for different reasons and lost weight. I did a search and found this thread
https://thebloodsugardiet.com/forums/topic/exercising-with-a-disability/ that may interest you.
Depending on how much you have to lose you may lose a little slower, but the Mediterranean diet is a very healthy way of eating so you should still get a lot of benefits from it.
Good luck getting going and let us know how you progress.

Many thanks for that orchid. I have looked at and replied to that forum thread and will continue there for now. I’ll come back to update this thread later.