4 women. 1 team. 45 miles. 1 day.

What does it mean? The four women are: (from left on photo) - Sue McDonagh, Dawn Lee, Karen (Captain K) Ingram and Paula Wooding, and we are The Team.

We're taking part in the Four Inns Race across the Pennines from Holmbridge to Buxton, a total distance of 45 miles - to be walked in a single day - Saturday 31st March 2007. Yes, you read that correctly - WALKED! But not just any old walking - we are Nordic Walking!

Karen and Paula run Barefoot Studio, and as part of their many talents are Nordic Walking Instructors, a fantastic exercise which not only takes advantage of the wonderful outdoors but uses almost your whole body to do so - using Nordic Walking Poles is low impact and relieves your joints of about 30% of the stress impact of walking, and as a bonus uses up about 40% more calories than ordinary pole-less walking. It's also faster, gives you stability on the variety of terrain we'll be covering, and aids both climbs and descents.

It's a huge challenge, and we are taking 6 months to prepare for it. Strength and cardiovascular training together with progressively longer and more arduous walks are to be teamed with micro navigation skills which we can also carry out in the dark, as the event will begin at about 4am, and will continue into the dark of the evening.

We expect to finish in 14 hours.

We chose MacMillans as we're all practical girls and truly believe in the effectiveness of the charity. Also Sue is a cancer survivor (and had a replacement hip 2 years ago - she's bionic really, but still expects to be pulled up the hills by the other 3), and all 4 of us have lost someone dear to us to cancer.

Other than that, we are ordinary lasses trying to combine running our businesses, families and lives with throwing ourselves into a training programme to enable us to raise a target of £45,000 - a thousand pounds a mile. Please support us - thank you all so much for your kindness! You can keep up with our progress on the team blog: barefoot-studio.blogspot.com.

You can make a secure online donate by clicking here - any amount is appreciated.