Why do I get myself into these messes?  It's now only four months until I set off from St Bees in the Lake District towards Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire, following Alfred Wainwright's 192 mile Coast to Coast Walk.  This is part of my 1000 mile in 2019 challenge which, as it says in the title, is me waling and running 1000 miles this year.  The reasons I'm doing this are threefold; firstly to raise funds for Pumping Marvellous who have been an amazing source of support since my diagnosis with heart failure in 2016, secondly to help raise awareness of heart failure of which there will be more later, and thirdly to prove to myself that I can do this.  The 1000 miles itself isn't too bad, after all it's less than 3 miles a day and I hope to at least do double the target, but the Coast to Coast is 15days without a rest day walking between 8 and 25 miles a day and a total ascent of 10km which is higher than Mount Everest.

Heart failure awareness is a big part of why I'm doing this, and the walk should give me the opportunity to help people understand what heart failure is, and what it's like for those of us who are living with it.  Remember, there are around 920,000 people living with heart failure in the UK alone, but when was the last time you saw it featured in the news or on the breakfast red sofa?  Other conditions are regularly featured, and while I have no wish for them to have less exposure (it's not a competition afterall), it does irk me somewhat that heart failure is pretty much ignored when coming up with stories to put in the public eye.

One of the reasons why it is vitally important for awareness heart failure to be raised is that people don't know what to look for, leading to the majority of cases being diagnosed in hospital when symptoms are quite advanced.  When I was diagnosed in August 2016, I had been ill for months and my condition was very serious.  Now, part of that was my own fault.  I put off going to the doctors, initially dismissing feeling ill as a case of flu that would go away, to eventually accepting that there was something seriously wrong butt then being scared to go see my GP for fear of what they would tell me.  Heart failure never occurred to me, I had seen the cancer awareness adverts where a small boy was mimicking his grandad getting breathless while mowing the lawn, and was convinced that was what I had.  Would my avoidance of  the doctors been any different if I'd knew about the symptoms of heart failure?  Probably not, but it would have made things a hell of a lot less scary when I was told in hospital by my cardiologist that this is what was wrong with me.

So, this is why doing this is so important, not only can I tell people who I meet along the way what living with heart failure is like, but any money I raise will help Pumping Marvellous to spread the word as well, and of course coninue the amazing work they do supporting us all.

I hope that some of you can join me in May and June, please do let me know if you fancy any of the stages.  It looks like there are a few people joining me from the readership of Country Walking magazines #walk1000miles challenge too.  Of course, if you can, please do donate to my fundraising page over at https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/1000-miles-in-2019-coast-to-coast