I have a long way to go to meet my fundraising target for the marathon which is less than two weeks away.
Right now, I would happily pay £750 not to run, so to make sure I go through the pain of covering the full 26 miles please help to raise more than that for the RNIB.
If you would like to participate in my pain, by donating, please click on the ‘Sponsor Me’ text which will take you through to my Justgiving page.
Thanks
Well not so much found, as being rather portly I am easy to spot, but found out about myself.
Firstly, and most importantly being middle-aged I can’t run like I could 20 years ago. This realisation alone has helped with the training process.
On Friday morning I was down in Devon and went out for a training run with my dad. He wasn’t running, he was on his bike. This wasn’t because he is in his seventies but because I didn’t want him to jog home before me.
We went out around a five mile course, and ignoring the tortoise and hare rule, I set off at an unsustainable pace. Needless to say the first Devonian rolling hill I came to had me gasping for breath and clutching my sides.
The training manuals tell you to keep a bit in reserve and attack the hills. If I had a bulldozer I would flatten the buggers.
But a lesson was learned and today I went out for a longer run and set off at a pace much more suited to a man of my girth. An hour later I was home, and with plenty in the tank.
I have also learned that I am terrible at running in the mornings and that if I am near animals before I run, it tends to set off my childhood asthma, not a good attribute for a marathon runner.
So my task in April is simple. My legs have to tell my head that I’m 46 not 26 and to slow the hell down, I have to persuade the organisers to fire the starting gun at lunchtime, not 9.00 a.m. and I have to empty the capital of household pets.
Providing I can achieve that, the 26 miles are a formality.
