Back to training

Well Tewkesbury half is complete and now onto training for London tewkesbury was a really good run starting in the town and moving out into the country side the run was going really really well with my pace owing as planned with 3 miles to go for some reason I sprung a nose bleed which is never good while running but I kept my head down and continued to power through while throwing water into my face to try and clear it. With a mile and half to go my legs were wanting to stop but knowing I was nearly there I upped my pace slightly. I turned the final corner and sprinted the last 150meters smashing my personal best by over 6 minutes bringing my new official pb to 1 hour 59 mins and 16 seconds so this has set my bar even higher than planned now the idea is to really hit the training hard try and get a stone of weight off and work on building up my core strength. The plan is to be doing a couple of 6 mile runs each week along with a Sunday morn run of at least 10 miles if I want to beat my pb again then I am really going to have to pile the miles in. I want to get into the mid 1 50s for London so bring on the pain.

And the team is complete

Well that's it - all you eager people itching to join us in our marathon in a month quest (I know you were all secretly queueing up even if you weren't openly volunteering!), I'm afraid its over - we now have taken the final Royal Parks place for the NRAS. So welcome to the team Jen Avila, a workmate of my wife, who managed to make it successfully round the London Marathon Course this year in aid of Shelter.

So a team of 25 are taking part in the Great North Run and 10 in the Royal Parks Half Marathon for the NRAS. And of those, the marathon in a month team have managed to get 6 places for each run, with 9 of us taking part. Our final target is set at £4,800. Please post these blogs wherever you can, and let people know about the blog, the virginmoneygiving page (link at top and bottom of the page) and exactly what a stupidly ridiculous challenge we are trying to complete.

To highlight the stupidity of the situation, I include below a picture of my celebrity body double! Just think how hard it would be to heave that mass round two half marathons! (Pleasant isn't it)

So please, spread the word, and if any of you can spare even a pound towards the cause - we would all be very thankful

Motivations back.....but the fitness isnt quite there yet!

Well, in the last couple of weeks, Ive failed miserably with any training at all! Knowing that the first half marathon is creaping up really hasnt helped and until Tuesday, I hadn't gone running for a good couple of weeks.

Im happy to say, that with persuasion and pushing from friends and family, Tuesday and Thursday I've done training runs of 30 and 35 minutes and finally am starting to feel the motivation is coming back - the next step, two weekend runs of 30 and 40 minutes to see if Im really starting to get somewhere.

You will see on the right of the blog, some vital stats have been added, admitedly with TBC's on a lot of them for the time being. This is so that you guys that are sponsoring, watching, reading and following can see the levels of past running we have all done - we are all true amateurs, and although a lot of people may find doing one or two half marathons in a period of time easy - it's certainly not for any of us.

Over the next few weeks, Im going to share not only the training, but also a few past experiences from the runs I've taken part in, along with some of the more memoriable moments - for good and bad.

But to start - an example of the level of fitness currently being displayed by such fine atheletes. I wear a heart monitor to check everything is ok when I run. The idea - get your heart rate over the 80% mark to get a good work out. Over 95% and it bleeps to tell you to stop as you are pushing yourself too far. So........when preparing for a run a couple of weeks ago, I was shocked when it started bleeping telling me to stop........especially given I hadnt even started running yet - all I was doing was bending over to try and do my shoelaces up!!!! Hopefully - the training and subsequent weight loss will ensure I dont suffer this sort of embarrassment again!!!

Good luck with the training everyone.

Sponsorship request

Hi all hope the training is all going well I have had an ok week I did a 11 and a half run on Sunday and then a 6 mile one on Wednesday. I am planning on doing another 6 tomorrow and hopefully have a full on week this week as I only have 2 weeks today until the tewkesbury half marathon. I am thinking of putting together some sort of official letter to ask some companies for sponsorship I would like to include a picture of each of the members of the team wearing there NRAS running vest I know that we are not going to be able to meet up for this so if everyone is happy with me doing this then could people send me a pic Darren has my email address there are a few big companies who I work with alot that I know would love to put some money towards this great cause. In the letter I would like to include a quote from simone if she is happy with that along with information on exactly what we are doing all of this obviously on propper NRAS headed note paper. What does everyone think? Please let me know.