If anybody asks you to work on organising a Hundred be afraid, be very afraid! Hundreds are the thieves of time.

When I started on the Cinque Ports Committee I was living and working in Kent but by the time the real work started I had retired and moved onto a narrow-boat. The narrow-boat is moored on the Grand Union Canal at Weedon Bec in Northamptonshire. This a three and a half hour drive to the Committee meetings near Dover. retiring help a huge amount with the work but moving out of Kent did not!

I thought that helping with the Cinque Ports Hundred might not be easy so I chose to be the Entries Secretary, how difficult can that be? The answer is that it is dead easy but, boy, does it take up your time!

One of the things that you have to do is to talk to next year's Hundred Committee because they have questions and that is how I got involved in this blog malarkey. I was shopped! I did say to someone that I was thinking of actually doing some walking and that next year's Hundred sounds the very thing because I already have
the maps for the Hadrian's Wall. The next thing I know is a call from a member of the Organising Committee offering me the job of doing this blog.

I was done up like a kipper.

To get out of it I even told them that I was a trans-gender girl and will be transitioning to living full time as a woman over the winter but to no avail, they still wanted me to do the blog. What has a girl got to do to get out of this?

As I said being Entries Secretary for the Cinque Ports was not difficult but was a lot of work and whilst I was doing the job I pretty well gave up any pretence of doing any walking or taking any other form of exercise. Alright! I was using the Hundred as an excuse not to do any exercise.

Last year I had not done too badly on the walking and I got quite fit, for me that is! I have even got my weight down to nearly eighty kilos. After a winter and spring of inactivity I was back up to ninety-five kilos and was out of breath walking to the shops, they are only about two hundred metres away!

So I am starting from complete scratch. My first walk was of ten kilometres last Saturday (2018/05/16) and I thought that it went surprisingly well. I could still walk after it and I was not stiff the next day, very pleasing.

One hundred miles is one hundred and sixty kilometres so ten kilometres is one sixteenth. If I do twenty kilometres next that will be an eighth of the distance. Forty kilometres is a quarter and so on. You know, I think that I can do this!

The real problem with doing a Hundred is motivation. I find this the real problem with taking any exercise. This blog will help with that and that is the real reason that I chose to do it, despite all the joking I chose to do this and am looking forward to keeping you informed of my progress.

As this is all so public I will not be able to get out of it once I start. Walking one hundred and sixty kilometres will require me to get fit and lose some weight.

The bit about being trans-gender is one hundred per cent true and, as a trans-girl, I need to lose a lot of weight. I want to look good as a female next year and that means losing a lot of weight. This is my main reason for attempting next years Hundred.

Next week I will be able to tell you how I get on with walking twenty kilometres, watch this space!

Phyl Butler