11 weeks today

I will be in a bus heading towards the start of the trek and our adventures in China will be underway. Lynsey and I are arriving a day earlier than everybody else as we arranged our own flight to Beijing to enable us to fly back from Hong Kong to Edinburgh. We are flying with Air France and land early on Friday evening leaving us around 24 hours to explore Beijing before heading back to the airport to meet our fellow trekkers. The wonder of modern technology that is facebook has allowed us to interact with some of our fellow trekkers already so at least the ice will be partly broken. I hope my status updates haven't alarmed them too much!
Now that I am in training mode for the 10k my drinking days are over till early May. The advantages of this have surprised me, so much so that I was up at 8am this morning (unheard of for a regular Saturday) and had two really productive hours before meeting Lynsey for a coffee. We had our usual gossip and catch up then chewed over some ideas for China and decided what needed to be done when. The jist is we need to book accommodation for our first night in Beijing then we can sort out our visas then decide when and where we are going to go after the trek ends. We do have a vague plan and definitely want to go to Shanghai, Xian and River Li area before making our way to Hong Kong for our flight home.
Hopefully the visas won't be too tricky as we can visit the Chinese Consulate in Edinburgh. As aliens to China we need to get a tourist visa which we can apply for after the 19th April (three months before we are due to fly home) I need to get some passport pictures done and also fill out the potentially tricky form before we can do this. I will actually look quite different in these photos compared to my passport photo (naturally I detest this picture, I have browny long hair) but hopefully I will pass for the same person!
After coffee we walked along to Tiso armed with my Christmas vouchers and money from my folks to check out some gear for the trip. After some research in the flat I decided upon a particular rucksack and happily found one that fitted my requirements perfectly on the Tiso website and even better when I found it in the shop it had £20 off! One purchase down quite a few to go including suitable footwear, a rather important purchase! After trying on a couple of trainer type shoes I think I know what I want but since my vouchers had been gobbled up I decided I could buy some elsewhere for cheaper. As I said to the assistant I can't imagine myself becoming a hiking fanatic so I'd rather have something lightweight and preferably nice to look at!
Tomorrow I am determined to go out for a run so will have a very early night tonight. Odd behaviour for a Saturday but necessary. I bought a new armband holder for my ipod today so at least I have a new accessory to try out, a good incentive for the morning! 3 weeks until the 10k and I can't even run 3ks...hope it's not too little too late!