Dry Run - In the Wet

Tomorrow, starts 3 days of walk in preparation for next year. Up to now single 20 mile walks have made up the training schedule along with some regular treadmill (boring!!) work, whereas tomorrow and the following 2 day I will be covering 20miles+ per day. Initial route planning was to follow the Severn Way from Bewdley to south of Gloucester, but due to the recent and predicted weather (flood up Cumbria etc) I have chosen to stick to the canals(which don't flood?). Essential is good path finding as it is dark from 4.15 onwards, so the time will be spent walking not scratching my head looking at maps. Well that's the plan. Along with the distance I will be carrying 3/4 weight of the predicted pack of next year. Long distance paths are not new to me, neither is 20miles a day on a long distance path, its the duration of the walk which motivating me to step up the training. An a different subject, entertainment during the walk is being addressed, with the purchase of a second 8Gb MP3 player with FM radio. The current 4Gb MP3 player will have some audio books loaded and hopefully an English - Spanish language course - well I can try to educate myself - or is that too late (Future blogs in Spanish????). On the second MP3 player will be music and lots of it. Currently going thro my CD collect including Disco from the Seventies, everything from the 80's etc and load on to the PC to download onto the MP3. Both the players are cheap (£25) and not the Ipod standard, but the beauty is they run on AAA batteries so recharge from a computer is not necessary. I am thinking of taking rechargeable AAA batteries, which is subject to getting a camera with AAA batteries - another story. So with the exception of walking busy roads I'll have the music on singing or spouting some "Brummie" Spanish whilst walking along. God help anyone who see/hears me. Other than that the other form of entertainment, as summarised in one of the many LEJOG books is "Skull Cinema" This is playing visions in your head as walking along, maybe scenes from the past, who knows, but I'll certainly have plenty of time to do it. Just looked at the forecast for the next 3 day wet, windy, you get the picture, drowned rat, lets hope the kit holds out.