Tomatohead goes west.

Medium term I'll be fine. No ridiculous Rooney-esque hood wearing and forced celibacy while the implants take effect. Brushing the wiry and lightly greying thatch forward will see me through the next few years without too much difficulty, and when that starts to fail, I have reserves in the form of a pair of eye-brows that would give the Archbishop of Canterbury a run for his money. With that and the ear hair and a little imaginative topiary, baldness will only need to be admitted when I am about 60, by which time I imagine it will be the least of my problems, with the full set of real and imagined ailments that are queuing up. However, in the short term, I have a problem. Even those who barely know me cannot fail to notice my forehead. Not only is it a bit more expansive these days, but today it is glowing bright red, throbbing and pulsing like a like a dangerously over-heating nuclear isotope.

Pretty village with no shop

Yesterday, I was outside enjoying the glorious Somerset sunshine, listening to some of my favourite music and the big orange fella in the sky exacted a terrible revenge. I also have a lower arm and leg 'tan' and an Arkansian neck to go with it. No, I wasn't sweating around Glastonbury in the dry mud in wellies, though I was quite close. I decided to forgo the comfort of the family car in travelling from a Saturday party in Bristol to Vobster Quay diving school (on my parents' doorstep in Somerset) where Henry was getting Padi qualified. Rather than be wafted in hung-over and air-conditioned comfort, I decided to hike the 20.5 miles as my weekly long training session. I did think about getting some sun cream, but there wasn't much open in Bristol and when I got out into the country, there was nothing. Not even a village shop selling water. So I got a little 'tanned' and today it hurts if I frown. It also hurts where I got stung by stinging nettles and torn apart by brambles as I jumped into the hedge to avoid the young Sebastian Vettel wannabees. My route took me on the smaller lanes and roads, but in places a surprising amount of traffic hurtled around, making the best use of the warm tarmac and hugging the bends, little expecting a sweating, panting vision in lycra to be staggering along towards them sucking furiously on a camelback. So, somewhat de-hydrated after some vigorous partying on Saturday, hatless and without sun protection, dangerously low on fluid and with no food, you certainly couldn't accuse me of over-preparation. The good news is that I made it in a little over 5 hours with a mixture of walking and running - the bad news is that it was painful, and I can no longer con myself that I have time to gradually increase the workload in preparation for the big one. I covered just one third of the full distance and if you had told me to turn around, and do the whole thing again, twice, I wouldn't even have had the energy to hit you. So, it's time for some more sophisticated forms of self-delusion.

Last week, John, one of the fearless foursome, sent me a link to an article the Telegraph. The email didn't come with an explanation, just the link. I think he was trying to tell me 2 things; the first was to give me some handy tips on how to write a blog from someone who is clearly very good at it; the second was a reminder that whilst our challenge may seem pretty hard core and extreme, compared to the stuff that some people get involved in, ours is merely a gentle walk in the country. This screwball (the blogger - not John!) runs ultra-marathons for fun and has just set off on the epic 3220 mile race across America from LA to New York, covering around 50 miles a day every day for 2 months. Check out http://www.runningandstuff.com/ram/ if you are fed up with my whining about sunburn and sore feet and want to follow someone a bit tougher!

The point for mentioning this, and, as usual it is slightly tangential, is that the piece of mental trickery I am going to rely on to do triple the distance I did this weekend is this. Anyone who has ever done a longish run, bike ride, swim or whatever knows that the maximum distance you can ever do is the distance you set out to do. I know that sounds thick, but what I mean is if you set out to run 5 miles, you might fail and only do 4, you might succeed and finish, but you couldn't even do 5 miles plus 20 yards. I can cycle 100 miles, but if only set out to do 50, I can't do 51. So, if I set out to hike 100km, I might make it, but once I get to Brighton, I will not be able to walk another metre. Not on Sunday and probably not for a good few days afterwards. I am similarly sure that once this James Adams chap reaches New York, he will go no further.

Tomato-head

The other thing I am going to have to do it is to convince my team that finishing as a team is more important than finishing in a 'good' time. I did 20 miles on Sunday at a pace that would have us finishing in 15 hours and I now know, with absolute certainty, that I can't sustain that pace over the full distance, and I'll need the full force of the team's encouragement to get me to the finish line. We had a team call last week to agree our 'goal' and agreed that a good time would be good; I think we also agreed that we want to finish as a foursome and this is more important that beating the Gurkhas. So, unless one of us is badly hurt and can only crawl, we help eachother through the bad patches. Guys, I think I am going to need quite a bit of encouragement.