Beware the Knee of Doom

First, the good news (and exceedingly good news it is!) - we have hit the £2k mark and our fundraising total currently stands at £2,055.33. For this I must say a big thank you to my parents for organising an army of sponsors and helping them to put their sponsorship onto our fundraising page. Ta Ma & Pa. Of course, thanks also to everyone else who has sponsored us!

The bad news is that James has hurt his knee. It isn't even Man Knee (or whatever the patellar equivalent of Man Flu is). In fact, it is so bad that he is going to see the physio on Friday. We are hoping, of course, that the physio will say "stop being a wuss and get on with it", but the worst case scenario is that I will beat James in the marathon because he will have to jog/walk/crawl. If, on the other hand, the physio says he will be fine to run the marathon so long as he doesn't run for the next two weeks, I will then face the prospect of doing "the 20-miler" on my own. This is quite a daunting prospect, even though I ran all the way to Ikea on my own at the weekend. I bought a nice bath mat in a lovely sage green colour. Running to somewhere in particular is actually quite a good way to get around. I didn't beat the bus to Ikea or anything, but it wasn't that much slower really. I'm not sure where I will go for my 20 mile run. I'm quite tempted to get public transport to somewhere 20 miles away and just run home so I can then immediately sit on my lovely new sofa (if I can get the cat off it - he seems to think we bought it especially for him!)

I think that's all for now - updates on "Kneegate" will be forthcoming toward the end of the week - and, in the meantime, if you would like to sponsor James' knee to get better, please visit our fundraising page!

One Month and Counting

I really can't believe it - there is now just one month to go until the marathon. In fact, as I'm writing this at 7 pm, I'm hoping that one month from now I will be sitting down somewhere warm and dry with a pint of Hoegaarden in front of me, having completed the challenge I set myself a year ago (effectively, since that's when the ballot entries opened). I will be basking in the glory of my achievement and flashing my medal at all whom I meet. In truth, I shall probably be in agony and slightly delirious. I will have started hallucinating around the 20-mile mark and, hopefully, will have not given in to the huge temptation to stop and sit down when I hit "The Wall" - the point when your muscles realise they have no glycogen left to burn and you are forced to survive the last few miles fuelled by fat stores and adrenalin. In my last post, I mentioned wanting to get on with it - now I really do want to just get on with it. I probably need these last few weeks of training if I'm to do my best, but equally I have surpassed the minimum training distance that all the books and plans say you must have achieved in order to get round a marathon, so bring it on!

By the way, the picture's of our cat, Ozzy, telling us exactly what he thinks of this running malarkey!

One of my friends, on reading about our Kilomathon exploits, complained to me that it was us two who prevented him from leaving his house that Sunday. I responded that it clearly was just James and me who had caused this inconvenience as we had run past his house, put on an invisibility cloak and run back again and then repeated this process several thousand times with the sole purpose of annoying him. I'm not sure where exactly he lives, but I think it's more at the Derby end than the Nottingham end of the run and the likelihood of me being able to perform such a feat having run 15-odd miles is pretty small. And my invisibility cloak hasn't arrived from Amazon yet.

Another friend asked me the other day why I'd chosen to run one of the longest marathons. After a 15 minute discussion on the history of the marathon distance (more on that later) it was clear that she still did not quite get it that in order for it to be called a marathon, it had to be a distance of 26 miles 385 yards. Anything less than this was *not* a marathon and anything more than this was also *not* a marathon, but could be classed as an *ultra* marathon. The thought did cross my mind that, in terms of time, at least, London is one of the longest marathons - because they still allow people to record a time up to 9 hours after the start (and in special circumstances, several weeks later!), whereas other marathons have a cut-off after 5 or 6 hours, it is possible to make the London marathon last longer and still count as a finisher. Talk about getting value for money...!

I said above that I would provide more on the history of the marathon distance. I'm not going to go into all the ins and outs of it (primarily because I can't be bothered, but also because there isn't really any concrete information on the distance of the original marathon) but when the marathon was introduced to the modern era Olympic Games in 1896 it was run over a course of about 40km or 25 miles. When the Games were staged in London in 1908, a series of problems (protests that in the last few miles the runners would have to negotiate tram lines and cobblestones) and royal requests meant that the distance was lengthened to 26 miles 586 yards, which comprised 26 miles from the King's private terrace at Windsor Castle to the new White City Stadium, plus a 586 yard lap of the stadium track to finish under the Royal Box in view of Queen Alexandra. In the end, it was discovered that the planned use of the royal entrance to the stadium wouldn't work as there was in fact no access to the track (!) so it was decided to use a different entrance and have the runners go the "wrong" (clockwise) way round the track to finish under the royal box. This reduced the planned distance to 26 miles 385 yards, a completely arbitrary measurement which was eventually adopted by the International Amateur Athletic Federation in 1921 as the official marathon distance. Two of the most important course-lengthening elements were included at the whim of Queen Alexandra - the start on the King's private terrace (so the royal children could look on) and the finish under the Royal Box (so that the Queen herself could see) - and it is for this reason that I, along with thousands of others, will be shouting "God save the Queen" as I go through the 25-mile mark; this has become traditional, as without the meddling of Queen Alexandra, we would all be finishing at that point!

A final thought for this post (before I tell you to sponsor us again) - yet another friend has said that she has enjoyed reading this blog while we've been training for the marathon, so I have to take on another challenge when I've done it so that I can keep blogging. I've thought about swimming the Channel (though I imagine (hope) I'm allergic to goosefat or wetsuits or something) and I've thought about doing an Ironman triathlon (but I can't ride a bike, at least not very well, so that could be tricky)- if you have any ideas of what I could do next, let me know - answers on a postcard...

Oh, er, and PLEASE SPONSOR US!! We're up to £1909.33 now - not far to go to that magical £2,000 mark!

Kilomathon!

We're back! We've had a couple of weeks away from ye olde blog due to quite a few other things going on (mostly me going to Chicago and then both of us going to Manchester immediately thereafter). While I was in Chicago, I did manage to get a run in around the Millennium Park, taking in Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate" sculpture (the Bean) and the Crown Fountain. It was a bit nippy, but at least the snow had been pushed off the paths.

Since we last wrote, we've had a few upheavals in our training regime caused by illness and injury and by James having a new job in Swindon, meaning it is no longer possible for him to get up an hour earlier to run in the morning (he would then technically be getting up before he went to bed). So, I've started running to work and he is now running in the evenings. We're still doing (or attempting to do) our long runs together at the weekends.

This last weekend, we went up to Derby to see my folks because it was my Mum's birthday and Mother's Day (and the dog's birthday!) and to take part in the world's first Kilomathon. What, I hear you cry, is a Kilomathon? It is, apparently, the "perfect race distance" - 26.2km, the same number of kilometres as there are miles in a marathon, which equates to about 16.3 miles. I beg to differ about the perfect race distance thing because I fail to see how anything longer than about a mile could be considered perfect. Well, anyway, perfect or not, the course was 26.2km long and went from Nottingham University to Alvaston Park in Derby. That's right, from Nottingham to Derby. From one city to another city. I ran that far. If you're in any way interested, you can see the route by following this link - if you do take a sneaky-peeky, you will notice that the net elevation of the race was uphill, making it even harder, obviously.

The weather was pretty good and the support from the local people on the course was fantastic - I would like to extend particular thanks to (a) the good people of Sawley, who made sure I didn't go the wrong way at a bit that wasn't signposted or marshalled and (b) the good people of Borrowash, who had come out in force to cheer on the runners and really made a difference to my mood. Although I was pretty near the back of the pack for most of the race, I was well in front of the feared sweeper bus, the purpose of which was to pick up anyone too knackered or injured to keep to a pace faster than 15 minutes per mile. I was also able to pick off many of the said knackered and injured people in the closing stages and finish with a veritable horde behind me in 3:48:48.


James was, as usual, a lot quicker than me, but the difference was diminished by his knee injury from the previous day when Emma the greyhound tripped him over while they were racing each other round the 5-a-side pitch (interesting training technique, racing a greyhound). His finishing time was 3:06:10 (or 3:06:09 if you believe his Garmin rather than the official time). We both really enjoyed the race and would certainly consider doing it again - in spite of the net uphill elevation, the course was actually remarkably flat for most of the way and took in a fair amount of pretty countryside and quaint villages. The organisation was generally pretty good, too, and there were armies of helpers from the Air Cadets and Rainbows hospice charity who worked together really well.


Our next racing challenge is now the London Marathon itself. Part of me just wants to get on with it now. There are less than 6 weeks to go and I'm already looking forward to the post-race sports massage at the Directors' Institute on Pall Mall!

Our fundraising has come on a bit in the last week or so. We are now at £1829.33 - our next big target is the £2k mark; could you be the one to get us there? You can sponsor us by clicking here. Thank you for all your support and good wishes!!