A series of Tubes

So. I’m going to walk the Tube lines. Overground, I hasten to add, and the point of the walk isn’t to follow the tunnels precisely. What I’m hoping to do is walk between stations and try to cover as many lines as possible end-to-end in a single day.

For some, that’s going to be very easy – the Waterloo and City line, for instance, is about 2 miles long in total. For others, it’s going to be very, very hard. I’m hoping to train to a point where I can walk 25-30 miles in a day – and that’s no small task, believe me, because I’ve never done any sort of systematic exercise before.

For most of my life, the most important things I’ve focussed on have been mental challenges. I’ve fought mental health issues and battled to stay strong in all sorts of ways, but I’ve neglected my body in the process. Thanks to a huge array of charities and professionals, including mental health charity Mind, I’m finally in a place where I don’t have to worry http://laparkan.com/buy-sildenafil/ about my brain so much any more – and it’s time to try a physical challenge for a change.

But I don’t want this to just be a simple get-fit-for-the-new-year resolution. I want a real challenge – and in the process I want to give something back. So I’m asking people to sponsor me in my madness, and give money to Mind. The best way to do this is by donating here, but if you’d rather not donate online you can email me at mary@aseriesoftubes.co.uk, or come along to a Tube station during one of my walks and donate in person.

The name of the challenge, “A Series of Tubes”, is simultaneously a pretty accurate description of what I’m doing and a nod to US Senator Ted Stevens, who notoriously described the internet that way while discussing problems he’d had with email going wrong. It’s a hilariously wrong description of how the internet works, and it strikes me that it’s also a pleasingly close-but-not-quite wrong-headed description of how the brain works too.