It was raining a lot here yesterday. But at one point the sun broke through and there were lots of beads of rain on the trees sparkling in the sunlight.
I went out to try to capture pictures of them.
But my photography skills weren’t up to it, I just couldn’t get a shot that worked.
Then I saw the lichen on the bench and the mixture of colours and textures appealed.
I’ll have to practice the sparkling water drop shots though
I knew that there would be days where it would be hard to find a time slot to do 3.5 miles. It’s not far but sometimes the days pan out in a way that means different ways of fitting the miles in are going to need to be found, or I’m just going to have to find ways to catch up.
Day three was one of those days…we were travelling back to London so there was no real chance to fit in some walking 
Day four was better. I went in to London to meet someone so I walked part of my tube journey. It turned out to be 2.42 miles so not too bad but not perfect.
So at the end of day 4 I’ve done 10.81 miles. I should have done 14.05 – uh oh looking like a big few days coming up.
We found these mushrooms at the farm shop.
Huge huh….
But most tasty sauteed in butter with onions next to my sirloin steak last night 
So I signed up and on 1 January 2011 there were 573 days until the start of the Olympics. My aim is to have done 2012 miles by then. That’s 3.5113438 miles per day average…..
But first?
Well OBVIOUSLY I needed some gadgets and tracking system so I knew how I was progressing. A quick tweet and I had quite a few suggestions for iPhone apps that could help. After a bit of checking them out I settled on starting with RunKeeper as it seemed to do the main thing I wanted (track distance using the GPS). Then I wrestled with my iTunes account for ages before I managed to download it…mainly my own fault for not being able to remember the password ddoh!! (BTW you don’t have to run it lets you tell it what activity you are doing like cycling, walking, hiking etc…computers they are so clever huh).
And we were off.
We decided to do one of our regular Suffolk Coast short walks and guessed it as about 3 miles. Off we set the GPS thing ticking away and us bounding along overtaking most the leisurely New Years Day strolling classes….got back to find WHOOP it was 4.54 miles long. Day 1 = ahead of the game 
The stats load to the RunKeeper site automatically if you want them to so you can get all geeky and look at your pace by section, the rollingness of the terrain covered (max height here 39 feet above sea level) and so on….useful I think as I progress to see how hopefully I am improving.
Day 2 we decided on a different but regular walk we guessed this at 2.5 miles and it came in at 3.85…so we have a theme here we are rubbish at estimating distance….wonder if we are as inaccurate at guessing really long distances. Today we were a little faster but thats probably because part of yesterday was on the shingle beach.
Legs feeling the effort a little today….now I know 8 miles in 2 days isn’t really that far but it is when you only have to walk about 5 metres to your desk each day.
Here’s a little snapshot of the stats (today by the way we spent some time BELOW sea level)
So end of day 2 I should be at 7.02268761 miles and I’m at 8.39 miles = AHEAD , which is nice.
I’m blaming that @farctum
She has this off beat twitter/blog party cum quiz at Christmas which she terms #12dcp
Its about the 12 days of Christmas. There’s playlists on spotify, interesting tales, tough questions and requests to share stories.
Its all good fun. Mostly.
Anyway this year on Day 5 she posted about the 2012 Olympics and sport in the UK and challenged us thus:
So my challenge to you today is to make an Olympic pledge, if you live in Suffolk you can learn more here. Not sure if there are similar pledge sites in other counties/countries. But even if it is to walk a mile a day can you commit to something in the lead up to 2012?
You can read the whole post here.
I responded like this:
Well with the Olympic site only a couple of miles from me (although we aren’t a borough that is hosting any events) I think definitely need to pledge to do something Olympian…. I shall return later with details of the pledge…so right now I’m erm pledging to pledge :S
And then:
After much thought my pledge is to do 2012 miles by the Olympics either walking, cycling or swimming in any mix that takes my fancy so long as I do 2012 miles. If I do it on foot that just under 4 miles a day. compared to now thats challenging but not impossible. Wish me luck 
So here I am on the brink of something foolish/epic/Olympian/painful …who knows
Here is some footwear I hope is going to help me on my way….
Wish me luck….
I’ve been making my own bread since I went on a Dan Lepard course in 2009 and I’m a real convert to his low knead method of making bread. This year I found out about his quick loaf recipe and blogged about it here. I started making it and varying it: 100% white, 50:50 white/wholemeal, 100% wholemeal, 30:70 rye/white.
And so on, and on, and on.
Here’s just some of the ‘quick’ loaves I’ve made this year.
And for 2011 I’ve decided I’m going to carry on experimenting and make a different loaf each week. Proper bread is so much better.
I love pikelets, they are so much nicer than crumpets I think.
They aren’t actually that easy to find in the shops. Marks & Spencer sometimes have them but they seem to sell our very fast. And I’ve not found them anywhere else.
So I decided to make my own for breakfast this morning…..
The recipe yielded rather a lot.
I could be eating them for days.
But they are so delicious I don’t mind.
I used the recipe from the River cottage Bread Handbook, you can also find it here.
PS I just counted them and put some in the freezer. We got FORTY TWO in total. Yes really.
