UPDATE 01/05/2012

Whew, as I sit here its a week or so after the marathon, I think I'm just about recovered from the whole process. I completed it in 5hrs 22min, which was a bit outside my target time of 4 and a half hours but you can never plan for everything that happens on the day! What it does mean is that much to Hannah's disgust I'm probably going to have to do another marathon in the future to try to get that time down below 5 hours!

It was a brilliant day irrelevant of the time it took me and I want to say a huge thank you to my support team on the day. Hannah, Mum, Dad, Auntie, Mel, Barbara,Wendy & the girls, Amy, Debs and Rach - thank you soooo much for being there, and especially for getting around London to see me multiple times which I imagine was probably more stressful than I had it running the thing!

A final huge thank you to everyone who has sponsored me, or if you're reading this about to sponsor me then thanks in advance. The amount I've raised is absolutely brilliant and I've completely smashed not only my original target of £1,600, but also my stretch target of £1,900. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Steph x

UPDATE 20/04/2012

Well it's finally here! Just two days to go and I'll actually be running my first ever marathon for Whizz-Kidz. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to everyone who has already donated, my total raised is going up every day which is amazing. However, the more money I can raise the more kids that can be helped. So please dig deep and donate and you never know it could be your donation that pushes me over my target.

I had the opportunity last week to go down to the Birmingham Ambassador Club to meet some of the kids and they made me feel very welcome so a massive thanks to the kids who let me tag along with their campaigning session and get them together for a group photo. And thanks to Catherine for allowing me to come along to her session, Amy for accommodating me in the afternoon group, Jess for taking photos and giving me a bit of general Whizz-Kidz background and Charli for putting me in contact with Catherine in the first place.  It was amazing to see what a difference the money I'm raising can make, and I hope to go back to their next session to give them a final total from my sponsorship and show them my medal and any photos that I've got.

Well that's it from me for now, please continue to donate what you can. I'm off to Italy with Hannah for a week following the race to rest and recover so I might not be able to update post-race, but I'll be back soon with pictures and my finishing time.

Cheers,

Stephanie

UPDATE 19/03/2012

Second (and last) pre-marathon race completed yesterday down in Surrey. A nice little 20 mile race starting at the Top Gear test track at Dunsfold and then going out into the countryside for a 10 mile lap and then repeating the same again. The weather forecast beforehand was for biblical levels of rain, actual weather on the day - glorious sunshine! I should know better as Water Resources Manager to never expect rain at the moment what with the current drought conditions.

It was a challenging day certainly, my first run at that distance, fairly warm weather as I said, and also a few hills in there to make it interesting. Highlight of the day has to be running round the track whilst a massive helicopter landed in the middle!

So all completed in 3hrs 26 minutes which leaves me bang on track to complete the marathon in 4 and a half hours. Please, please, please keep donating though, every little really does help and with just over a month to go I'm just over half way to my target amount

Cheers

Stephanie

UPDATE 05/03/2012

Well the training appears to be going well, I ran the Eastbourne Half Marathon yesterday in 2hrs 10 minutes which knocked a massive 27 minutes off my personal best from last summer!

All donations are gratefully received and will make a massive difference to my total so please give whatever you can afford. Please trust me that I'm doing all that I can to get ready for this huge challenge and your money will go to a great cause.

Stephanie

Update!

So what's been going on since I last blogged? Well as you can see from posting dates, quite a lot of time has passed since then! When I last posted I had just had a fairly good week, I followed that up with a parkrun PB at a new run for Hannah (girlfriend) and I in Gunnersbury, London. Then I had headed off on the Tuesday for my first session with the Wolves and Bilston Athletics Club based out of Aldersley stadium. This had gone really well, a hard session of hill training but nice to run with other people for a change. But two days later disaster struck and I fell off my bike whilst cycling to work. For normal people this would be fine but if you're like me with historically bad back then it’s not ideal. My chiropractor banned me from exercise for 2-3 weeks and everything ground to a halt.

Whilst this was going on I had been starting to be pro-active about my sponsorship target, my justgiving page was up and running and I had plenty of ideas to raise the cash. I'd got a few of my family to start me off with sponsorship but it was getting close to Christmas and I was feeling a bit uncomfortable about asking people to sponsor me when they had presents etc to buy. Instead I stole a game idea off Lydie who works for me and 'Where in the world is Santa?' was born. This involves a grid over a map of the world, sell squares for £1 each and you raise £100 with a £20 prize for the winner. This went very well and I managed to sell out the board the week before Christmas. Santa was eventually found about 400 miles off the coast of South Georgia and the Southern Sandwich Islands. This gave me a nice lump sum to add to the sponsors I had already got online. I further boosted this over the Christmas by having 3 dress-down days in my office between Christmas and New Year, which raised a further £70 to add to my growing total. Not bad when you consider how few people actually work in my office and how many people are off during Christmas-time!

During this time I was starting up the running again, culminating in an 8 mile run Christmas morning. I got a few strange looks believe me, but in my defense I needed to run either Christmas day or Boxing day and I know I would rather run without a massive Christmas dinner digesting in my stomach!

Following that I got a bit slack for a few days, as there were plenty of family members to get around and then it was back to work on the Wednesday after Christmas. Hannah was staying at mine between Christmas and New Years as she was off work and so I wasn’t particularly motivated to go out running. My next run out was on Monday 2^nd January, I did an 8 mile long run via Springhill, Wolverhampton. Sadly when mapping out the route on the computer I didn’t think about the fact that somewhere called Springhill might be hilly! There is a massive hill at about 4 miles in which almost finished me off, but in the long run it is really good training especially when built into a longer run. For the purposes of this blog that’s going to be my new week 1. New Year, fresh start and all that. Once I’ve finished this update post, I’ll go back to doing a weekly post.

So I’m almost back up to date now. One thing that I wanted to add was that in one of my earlier posts I was concerned that I still seemed to be running fairly slowly and hadn’t really found my pace yet. The good news is that no longer seems to be true, I’m consistently running faster than I was when I did my half marathon and it can only get better from here.

Week 2 in my new timescale had me completing a 10 mile run as my long one for the week. This was the most I had trained up too when completing my half marathon, and felt long whilst I was completing it. However I know that in the coming weeks I’m going to be wishing that I only had to run 10 miles as the long runs get longer and longer! Running club on the Tuesday was an absolute killer; we tackled possibly the three biggest hills near where I live and then ran the long way back. We did almost seven miles of hills in the end, which was painful but ultimately rewarding.

The week finished up with football on the Thursday and then I had intended on doing parkrun whilst down at Hannah’s for the weekend. However when I woke up Saturday morning my back was hurting a bit from football still, nothing major just a twinge. However one thing I’ve learnt from my many years of back problems it that always listen to a twinge and just leave it rather than trying to push through and causing more damage. I knew that I needed to complete my long run the following day and so skipping a 5k is infinitely better than having to stop a long run early, or causing a bigger problem. Hannah was also very happy that we didn’t have to get up at 7:30 for parkrun and could instead have a nice (and well deserved) lie-in.

One final note in this update post, my sponsorship performance to date:-

Justgiving total = £300

Just textgiving total = £20

Where in the world is Santa? = £100

3x dress down days = £70

Paper sponsorship form = £10

Total raised to date = £500

Not too shabby a start with the sponsorship, once we get past January payday I’ll start sending my justgiving link out, as everyone is broke in January due to the longer month before payday.

One final thing to add is that I’ve got myself on the list at work for our monthly health and safety pay award. Each month that we don’t have a Lost Time Incident (LTI), we donate £1,000 to a charity nominated by the employees, thankfully my marathon is eligible and so fingers crossed we have an LTI free month before May!

Right, I’m bang up to date now so normal blog service will resume!

Week 1

13^th – 19^th November

Miles run – 3.66

Amount raised – £0.00

Outlook – Baby steps

So technically my first run back was on Saturday 12^th however it was easier to start this blog from Sunday to Saturday, so we’re discounting that. Therefore, second run, a cheeky little 5k-ish number to get the legs moving. Nothing much to say really managed a 09:30 or so minute mile which is good, gotta get some speed in my legs during all this training. My half marathon in the summer was sloooooow and I don’t really feel yet that I've found my pace. I always feel like I could be running faster, but then on the other hand I never want to wear myself out too much so I don’t push as hard as I could.

Gemma (housemate) tells me one of her colleagues at work helps to run a local athletics club and that she’s told him about me. I’m going to get his number off her as I think that might be helpful to keep me focussed and push me during my training. No sponsorship effort made yet, only just got the justgiving page updated. Will ask close family and friend to start me off before the hard yards start. Preparing a ‘Where in the World is Santa?’ game ready for December as another way to raise some dosh, I think this is especially good in the month before Christmas when people don’t have a lot of money to spare - £1 a go isn’t too expensive and gets some money in the bank early.

Week 0

6^th – 12^th November

So here it begins, getting ready for training week 1 for the London marathon. First I should start with a bit of background I guess, slightly more detail than my justgiving blurb that I posted for my first message above. I am indeed running the marathon next year, with a couple of friends of mine. First is Justine, my running coach and ambition enabler. Justine is a marathon pro, this will be number 4 for her (London, New York and Berlin so far) and she isn’t starting training until the New Year, whereas for us beginners the training starts now. I had agreed in principal to run the Chicago marathon with Justine next year – she’s on her way to completing the big 5. But when she got her spot in the ballot for London our plans changed slightly. We’re now possibly looking at 2013 for Chicago; however I’ll see how London goes first!

The other person we’re running with is Terry; he’s one of Justine’s friends and completed Berlin with her this September, stating at the end I might add that he was never running again! Terry is going to be my companion on the way around the course I think as I think we’re going to be slightly off Justine’s pace and I’m sure she’d love to beat her previous London effort.

My plan is to start getting the long runs in at least before Christmas, build the weekly mileage up gradually and then push on with a major training plan once January comes around. I must admit since the Duathlon in September I’ve done very little running, the occasional parkrun on a Saturday or gentle jog with Hannah, so I’m not looking forward to this very much, I think it’s going to hurt quite a lot.

I’m going to try to blog weekly to update on progress, miles run, how I feel about everything and how I’m doing on the sponsorship front. I’m hoping that doing this will help me to keep motivated and get through the training during the cold winter months.

So it starts here kids, off we go!