Roll back the months, to sometime late summer 2012. It's payday, it's late, and I'm looking at the computer screen with a credit card in my hand. An online race entry.

Somehow, I've managed to drink just the right amount to be excited at a frankly crazy and improbable dream-plan, yet not enough that I've lost the ability to type my card number into the boxes on the screen.

This, as many people know, is danger territory.

Roll forward to now, well February 2013, as I'm typing this. I'm training more regularly, I'm upping my mileage, and I've got a groovy running buddy to keep me going when the going get tough. Step forward, the fleet-footed zephyr that is Mr Jon Ritchie. 

Together, we seem to form "The Dashing Accountants", for two main reasons...

a) By reason of our running, we are dashing (well, sort of)

b) By reason of our jobs, we are accountants

Neither of us has run this kind of distance before - I've only been running since the end of 2011, and in essence it's a bit of a trial run at a midlife crisis (I don't think I'm old enough for a proper one yet).

If you've stumbled on this through some other portal, you can check out the preparations at my blog, pursuedbyangrybees.wordpress.com 

So, The Wall - what's it all about? Well, in a nutshell it's two days to run from pretty much one end of Hadrian's Wall to the other. It starts at Carlisle Castle on the morning of 22nd June and, via an overnight camp at Vindolanda, it will end at The Baltic on Gateshead Quays sometime on 23rd June.

It's long, it's immense, and it's quite frankly a little scary, but I try not to think too hard about the scary bits because they're ...well... scary. Still, dumb enthusiasm and blind excitement are just two of the many tools at my disposal to get me through.