<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"><channel><title>2024-02 on Funky Si's Test</title><link>https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/2024/02/</link><description>Recent content in 2024-02 on Funky Si's Test</description><generator>Hugo -- gohugo.io</generator><language>en-gb</language><managingEditor>funkysi1701@gmail.com (Simon Foster)</managingEditor><webMaster>funkysi1701@gmail.com (Simon Foster)</webMaster><lastBuildDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2024 11:00:00 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/2024/02/index.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><item><title>Funky Si walks a half marathon</title><link>https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/posts/2024/charity-hike/</link><author>funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701)</author><pubDate>Sun, 18 Feb 2024 11:00:00 +0000</pubDate><guid>https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/posts/2024/charity-hike/</guid><media:content medium="image" type="image/jpeg" url="https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/images/fsi-hike.jpg"/><description>&lt;p&gt;On June 8th I will walk 13 miles near Bakewell in the Peak District to raise £250 (or more) for Cancer Research. To sponsor me click &lt;a href="https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/funkysi1701" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/funkysi1701&lt;/a&gt;
, to find out more about the event go &lt;a href="https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved/find-an-event/big-hike/big-hike-peak-district" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved/find-an-event/big-hike/big-hike-peak-district&lt;/a&gt;
&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2 id="so-why-am-i-doing-this"&gt;So why am I doing this?&lt;a class="anchor ms-1" href="#so-why-am-i-doing-this" aria-label="Permalink: So why am I doing this?"&gt;&lt;i class="fas fa-link" aria-hidden="true"&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;img src="https://blog-test.funkysi1701.com/images/fsi-hike-route.png" alt="Hike Route" width="400px" style="float:left;padding-right:8px" /&gt;
I am a Software Developer in my day to day life, which does not involve a lot of physical activity. I have become very lazy. Doing a half marathon is completely outside of my comfort zone and is not at all a me thing to do.
&lt;p&gt;However last year I realised my mental health was starting to degrade. I have a family which keeps me very busy, I am facing lots of challenges with this, other members of my family have mental health issues which is starting to have a knock on affect on me.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I mentioned some of these challenges to a friend who suggested I join a walking group which was helping people with mental health problems. I went along and to my surprise I really enjoyed myself, the people were friendly and I enjoyed the walk in the countryside. After this I went out and bought some proper walking shoes&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I went to the next one, and the next one and each time I enjoyed myself. I must admit that after these walks it tired me out due to my unfit nature, but it was worth it as for a few hours I wasn&amp;rsquo;t thinking about the 101 problems that I had no solutions for.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to about a week ago, an advert for this charity walk popped up on facebook. I took a look at it and I started thinking. The 10k was a similar distance I had done on one of my walks, so I could easily do that. What if I could raise some money for a charity and go for a fun walk? For the next few days I kept thinking about it. Eventually I booked it. My thinking was if I am going to do something for charity I need to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I would never manage a full marathon, but what about a half marathon?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So tomorrow I start training, every day or so I walk for about 40 minutes, I will probably post some updates on my &lt;a href="https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/funkysi1701" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"&gt;charity page&lt;/a&gt;
as no doubt I will struggle to keep going.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Please if you can think about donating, and give me some encouragement I think I am going to need it.&lt;/p&gt;</description></item></channel></rss>