Up for a challenge? Oh, go on then......

I often talk in this blog about stroke-rehab being full of small steps. Well, this week I feel as if I've taken two huge leaps into the unknown.

Firstly, I've really stepped up training for my charity 5km run next month (details of the event and how to donate are at uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MartinWarrillow). Up until the weekend, I was mainly intending to wing it and think that a combination of running, walking and staggering would get me to the finishing line. But now I've paid my registration fee to the organisers, my attitude has changed.

An intense 90 minutes with therapist Emily Smedley on Monday morning, during which I did more serious running than ever before, and ran faster than ever before, has helped to change my attitude. Now I've started running daily around the Tamworth Castle Grounds, just over the road from Warrillow Towers and am really enjoying it. All that agony on Emily's treatment couch over the last few months seems to be paying off and I'm now looking forward to my daily run, something which I don't think I've ever said in my entire 51 years.

I'm doing all the relevant exercises and thinking that by the end of September, I should be well up to running the distance if I do it properly. After all, 5km isn't that far, is it?

My second huge leap has been into another piece of 21st-century technology which I had previously avoided. Have you heard of Periscope? It's a Twitter app for iPhones that 'lets you broadcast live video to the world."

I found out about it a few weeks ago through a tech-savvy friend and have been following a small number of people since then, while trying to work out how to use it to broadcast myself. On Sunday evening, I got involved in a Facebook discussion during which various people were challenged by a mutual friend to 'take the plunge' and do our first broadcast. Ever up for a challenge, I said I'd do it and yesterdayTuesday, posted an 18-minute video about my stroke experience. It's not perfect, I suppose it was never going to be, but I've had some positive feedback and I will be posting one a week at least from now on.

The major first-time glitch was that I didn't know how to title the video (I do now - thanks, Chris Marr) but if you get into Periscope and search for me as @warrior martin, you should find it. I hope you find it interesting. Right, now I'm off for a run......