Endure 24 is only 12 days away.

For those of you unaware of what Endure 24 actually is, let me explain. It is a 24 hour team relay race. The idea is you complete as many 5 mile laps as you can; starting at noon on Saturday, finishing at noon on Sunday. There’s music, entertainment, showers, massages, catering and camping; it’s Glastonbury for runners.

In fact, it is a god damn 24 hour running party in the woods.

How cool is that?

We’ve entered in the small team category and are ready to conquer the course; 4 highly trained elite athletes….er…wait a minute…actually….4 undertrained plodding joggers.

May I present Team Scrambled Legs…

I must point out that we don’t normally look this angry. It was the outcome of a particularly bad pub quiz.

As for preparations for Endure we have the basic camping stuff, loads of running gear and even have the start of a list of things to get…

Any advice for the weekend would be greatly appreciated.

It has been 5 days since I completed the Milton Keynes Marathon. I have only just regained enough strength to type.

This is my second marathon, my first being London 10 years ago. They don’t get any easier. For anyone reading this who has never run a marathon, in fact even if you have, you’ll already know: 26.2 miles is a bloody long way.

I am not about to bore you with a mile by mile account; I’ll give you the edited highlights:

• At the start I met Ben, the fella running 401 consecutive marathons, lovely bloke. I thought people that did these ridiculous marathon after marathon things ran them really slow. It turns out they don’t. He finished in about 4.30. Every marathon he does he finishes around 4.30. That is incredible.
• I was slightly concerned that the route would take you along the various dual carriages and roundabouts (of which there are a lot) of Milton Keynes. Turns out the first 7 miles or so on the road, the rest through parks, skirting along canals, round lakes, a pleasant marathon all in all.
• A slightly weird day on the weather front. Bit cold and windy to start with. Very hot about two hours in, before making it to the finish before heavy rain.
• At around about mile 12 I did my good deed for the day. As I was jogging along, trying to think of anything else except how tired my legs were feeling, I saw a man keel over to the side and collapse on the grass, about 30 yards ahead of me. By the time I got up to where he was, a lovely couple of runners had already stopped and were in the process of putting him in the recovery position. I stopped to see if they needed help. Clearly they did. Then it dawned on me that I remembered running past a marshall a few hundred yards back. So off I went. Running the wrong way. Running the wrong way for about 300 yards. Told the marshall what had happened, waited a bit for a cyclist marshall to appear before showing him where the fella lay. I was in the middle of a marathon myself so didn’t hang about; hopefully all was well.

Completed all 26.2 miles in 4.42 – slightly slower than 10 years ago – found the last 4 or 5 miles very difficult. Probably was a bit short of training miles if I’m honest – been very busy this year. But overall really pleased. My reward: a nice bit of bling and a rather fetching cow t-shirt (Milton Keynes has a thing about cows – don’t ask).

I was also raising a few quid for Peterborough Branch of Samaritans. I’m thinking about £600 raised all in all. If you’re reading this and thinking ‘Damn it, I really wanted to sponsor him’ – you still can. Click here. Cheers.

One final point: never again.

Update: £583 raised.

It would seem appropriate that on the day of the London Marathon I update you on my training progress for, the equally prestigious, Milton Keynes Marathon.

With only 8 days to go I’m in the process of tapering training.

Although if you are a regular reader of this blog you’re probably questioning my use of the word ‘tapering’. Tapering suggests that I’ve done a lot of training. I’ve struggled with time and motivation to get enough training in.

Last Sunday was going to be a long run but had signed up to do the Lincoln 10k with the OH – it was her first 10k – smashed it!

So the weeks long run was postponed (yet again) – I’m pretty good at making up excuses not to run far.

Having said that, I did manage a 20-miler on Tuesday. It did nearly kill me – felt a bit ill after, that was accompanied by a bout of the shakes – but I put that down to the fact that it was after a full day at work. Well I’m hoping so.

This was followed by a gentle 3-miler on Wednesday to check the legs still worked. I had no adverse reactions to the long run and legs recovered well.

I didn’t do Parkrun on Saturday morning – I was on babysitting duty whilst Helen and Marie tackled the Peterborough course – although I did manage a gentle 4 mile dog jog in the afternoon.

Which brings us right up to date. This morning I did a lovely early morning run in the sun through the local fields and woods: 9 miles. The last long(ish) run before the marathon. It felt good this morning. Even if I was a tad wind swept.

I’m still not entirely sure where I am in regards of times – I think a sub-4 is probably just out of reach. If I beat my previous marathon time of 4.29 I’ll be well happy.

That just leaves me to mention the charity I’m raising a few quid for…

It is a really worthwhile cause, click here if you have a few quid to spare. Cheers.

A week since the last marathon training blog post update. Now just to recap: one week ago my longest run was 17 miles. So one week on and I’d imagine you’re thinking that has moved to 19 or even 20 miles. Wrong. 

It has been a dodgy week to say the least. It’s been the last week of the Easter hols and as much as it was a good opportunity to get some miles under my belt, it never actually happened for a number of different reasons: workshop at school, overnight duty with the Samaritans and the never-ending allotment jobs.

Friday was long run day – mainly because I was going to be away for the weekend celebrating a couple of important birthdays with my brother and sister. 

Friday morning I set off, I had a very basic idea of where the run was going to take me. I wasn’t really feeling it, but was well aware that I needed a few more miles in the legs before the actual race. It was a reasonably bright start to the run, warm with only a 15% chance of rain. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that I got rained on. I was at the woods at the time and it actually chucked it down. I soon found myself sheltering under a tree as an almighty storm passed…..

  
I look pretty happy with the situation and actually I seem quite dry looking. Although I can assure you that I was far from dry. 

This was only about 7 miles into the run. I was wet and cold, so had the idea to run to the gym and do a bit on the treadmill. This I did. Didn’t help. Definitely wasn’t feeling it after all that. Ran home.

Total mileage = 9.45

Always next weekend.

On a more positive note; had a great night celebrating my little sister’s 40th and my big brother’s 50th….

  

26 days!? Where has the time gone? It only seems like yesterday when I entered the Milton Keynes Marathon. I remember thinking to myself: plenty of time to train for it. I even scoured the Internet for a training plan that I could follow. It seemed doable. In reality it wasn’t. I’ve struggled to fit in the runs.

However, I have managed to get some longer runs in. A few weeks ago I did a half-marathon, last week I managed 15 miles and yesterday I did 17 long miles. 

  
Which considering how busy I’ve been lately with everything – I’m pretty happy. Away again this weekend so I’ll be attempting to fit the long run in Friday morning – 19ish miles is the plan. Then it’s back to school for Y11’s last 7 weeks at school – this is always a very busy term. 

This blog post will leave you feeling one of two ways* – confused or impressed. This will depend entirely on how you came by this little tiny space on the World Wide Web.

Firstly, if you came here hoping to see ‘progress’ in my marathon training you may be feeling totally confused. You may have been expecting to see the latest mileage run, or my pace per mile, or even my inner most thoughts about the whole process. Sorry. 

However, if you came upon this blog post with no preconceptions or ideas about what the hell you’ve stumbled upon, or perhaps you are revisiting wanting to know the latest episode in my amazing life, prepare to be impressed…

I’m an allotment holder and have been for round about 8 months. This is going to be the first real opportunity to grow stuff after spending the end of last summer clearing what was a very overgrown plot.

Since then visits to the allotment have been few are far between, for a number of reasons:

1. It was winter and there was nothing growing. Yes, I know I should have been preparing the ground and stuff, but the winter is really cold.
2. Initially we didn’t have a shed – we had to lug everything down in the car – not good for motivation. Again, a pretty pathetic excuse.
3. Never really had the time – I know, this does not bode well for the future.

But:

1. It is now Spring and a lot warmer. 
2. We have a shed and all the stuff is in it. 
3. End of term holidays mean a couple of weeks to get on top of said bloody allotment.

The morning was spent weeding. Weeding and weeding and weeding. The result is an allotment that looks, in part, like an allotment. Not a ‘they know what they’re doing’ allotment, but an allotment all the same.

  
The afternoon was spent at a garden centre buying some stuff to plant. This whole growing things lark might actually work. Impressed?

* it is likely that it may leave you feeling more than just one of two feelings depending on how you feel about allotments.