1:46

1 hour 46 minutes for the Silverstone half-marathon - not too bad at all! Especially when you consider we took it relatively easy in the last quarter to stave off injury, ran through a full on hale storm and colossal icy winds AND started 18 minutes late and therefore had to overtake some 4,500 people on an often thin and windy course.

Great fun, though I think I can speak for both Jules and myself that the legs are feeling more than a weeny bit tight.

I'm going for a 20 mile LSJ (long-slow-jog) next week. If that goes ok you never know this marathon thing might just get run. In a very weird way I am really looking forward to it!

PAIN but PROGRESS

A few small runs, a good long one from Liverpool Street to Clapham, a nasty flu bug and a big nights dancing in Dusseldorf took me to this weekend in ok shape.

I forgot to add a very frustrating calf strain that knocked me out for a few days and my buddy Dave being knocked out for a while by a slipped knee type thing....urgggh!

A good 8km warm up yesterday for the longest run I have ever done. Fealt good this morning and set-off on my own with a positive aim - to add least run a half-marathon. Jules (Arnie if he reappears) and I are running the Silverstone half next week and I wanted to put myself in a position when I could run a decent race. Not setting out to risk injury, but a reaonsable race at a comfortable/reaching uncomfortable pace none-the-less.

Bi-weekly run passed speakers-corner





To cut things short, I ran approx 25km today. From Southwark to Vauxhall to Westminster through St James Park to Green Park to Hyde Park to Notting Hill all the way back to Westminster to London Bridge and all the way back on the South Bank to the Wellington by Waterloo to watch England crush French hopes of a Grand Slam.



Glorious day and a really good run. For the first time a reached that state of pace by pace pain. After about 20km it began to hurt and I realisd for the first time just how hard the real thing is going to be in just 6 weeks from today. Pain... but it fealt good. Hard to explain it. In the glorious sunlight to beating music it just makes you feal alive!

Nex week the half, then going to try a 20 miler and then we will see where we arer. Hopefully Dave will be back so the running can be joined by some more debt strewn economic colapse talk though doubt is significant and the pace is perhaps a bit more significant without such mental puzzles.

To the even more important news. An email around my old department has raised about another $180. It is about right to approach some amtes, family friends, family and an outside chance of significant funds from a certain committee I am approaching and we're starting to get somewhere. I really hope a reaonsable sum will be raised for those awesom kids!!

Circa: 300km

$500 (neat numbers but they need to increase with JUST 6 WEEKS TO GO!!!)

Stepping It Up via the Holy Land and some Goulash

Ok, I admit it, I have been bad at keeping up with this blog over the last few weeks. On the bright side I have not been so bad at keeping up with the running. I started the New Year with a nasty flu bug but eventually clocked up a few good gym sessions and good weekend runs with Dave before a wee trip away.

During this cold start to the year I also had the great fortune to meet up with Shukla Bose, the Founder of the Parikrma Humanity Foundation (less you should forget the fantastic cause I am running for). She was over from Bangalore for a few days and we discussed plans to raise money and awareness for the charity. Apparently the kids are doing great. The main aim of the foundation right now is to get together enough funds to set up a college for the kids to higher part of their schooling before university. This institution would bring together kids from all the Parikrma schools in Bangalore and be a significant step towards achieving more of Parikrma's very ambitious aims!

Running. Well no, that was on a brief hold at the end of January as I took a trip to Israel (and Jordon for a day). That is a story for another forum but an relevant reference here would be just that. Lashings of hummus, constant walking through the twisting old city of Jerusalem, trekking up Masada and through the canyon defences into and around the wonders of Petra, some all night dancing at Kibbutz party and diving into the red sea were positive steps. On my final day though, I strapped on the shitty old trainers I had on me and just ran. My location was a peaceful and beautiful moshaf just outside of Modiiin and my word it is a place to run. A boulder encrusted landscape of hill and tree. The combination of rain, arduous ascents jumping from rock-to-rock, over thorn bush and into mud that caked so thoroughly that my shoes tripled in weight, gave a rocky'esque training collage feeling as you hit the top of the hill to stare out to the sea in the far distance - only difference being I am comparably tiny, not in that good a shape or rippling in any way and did not quite make it to the top of some of those hills without stopping. A cracking experience none the less, but painful!

So back from holy land and some pretty good training. Two to three runs in the week and a consistently good long run at the weekends. Since then Dave and myself (and Jules on occasion) have done Clapham common, Wandsworth common, the central parks and perhaps my favourite run so far - Greenwich.We managed a full half-marathon in not a completely shabby time (well ok a couple of hours) without killing ourselves. Was just one of those days when the sun in shining, the legs are bouncing and there is no real motivation to stop. From the millennium dome (sorry now the "O2" the hell they want to call it), up and over and around all the Greenwich parks an to the observatory. For anyone who ahs not been there, pick a clear day and go see what I believe to be the best outside view of London you can get - breath taking. Plus, for those of us who chose to spend most of our time not in East London it gives a great new view of the city - from Canary Wharf, over to the City, the West end and up to the hills. Then a whim, a bit of coercing of Dave and we ran all the way back to Waterloo. Good run, but not such pretty locations if anyone can work out the obvious route.

Add a weekend of careful dieting in Budapest (wild boar, stag, goulash and dumplings) and another great run last weekend from Waterloo to Notting Hill and back again and I am just about here and now.Just over two months to go and a lot of hard work to do. I have done a lot of talking to people about the cause I am running about without collecting cash so far. This will have to transist and I just hope I have some success. Then we have a stepped up training routine, the more than regular double figure days at work and another wee trip away to a mate's 30th in Deutschland and I think I might just have my work cut out!Double figure hours a day I am having to pull at work at present.


Circa:240 km run
$310 raised (now to start raising seriously)
and a desire to now write this blog on a weekly basis as all the interesting stuff is still to come!

A larded bumpy blip but New Year awaits!

Events have led to no recent entry onto this diary. These will be exposed shortly but first the good bit - the running.

11 December - another great run. Bassett and I met up in St Johns Wood and ran and ran. Over to, through and around Regents Park, up Primrose Hill (not as big as I thought but oh what views), round and up to Hampstead Heath, up, up to the top of Parliament Hill (on a clear day like this simply jaw droppingly nice), down, over to the ladyfriend playing football, begun to seize up and then round the hills and all the way back again to St Johns Wood for a deserved sausage sandwich and play on the new Wii. Two of London's biggest hills and 14km. Great day!

18 December - pretty great. We ran all the way from Waterloo/Southwark, to Notting Hill and Back again. Getting on for half a mararthon through the parks with all their greenery, serenity and ducks. Only downer of the 18th was running into a tree and pretty much knocking myself out. Less said about that the better beyond a couple of concussed days, some bleeding, a trip to the Minor Injuries Clinic at Barts and still receeding scrapes that are not best. Neither is coming into a respectable work for the second time in a month with a black eye. Even if they are not pub-brawl related, people jump to conclusions. Trees and footie boots are big enough obstacles for me.

Actually this needs slightly more information as this is the downer part. That added to the run in and run down to Christmas after no holiday for four months and no curreng Gym (finally finished last week) meant running was not much on the agenda. Add to that the excesses of the last few days of festive festivities and I like many others am feeling rather sodden, gluuttey and larded down. The positives left to focus on are a new year when I am supposed to get all fit, healthy and focused, along with a general feeling that this year might as well be a damn good'un.

Add to all this that I have the fortune of meeting that fantastic woman who set up and runs Parikrma at the start of January, some trips to Greece, Israel and Hungary in Jan/Feb and an array of training regimes to choose from pretty damn quickly should make the winter blues fall away.... oh well not fall away but at least part!

The we have that so waited for Marathon!

In the bag:
84km and $160

Not too bad

Arnie and I finally started our joint training for the 26 miles 385 yards (I understand that the marathon only became that distance from 1924 and that the actual distance from Marathon to Athens - the route on which the legend arose- is "only" 21.4 miles), by a leisurely 11km run or so from Waterloo up through Westminster, St James' Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Notting Hill Holland Park, Kensington and finally down to Earls Court. A beautiful day that just sets you right after the week before. The highlight of this for me was seeing Speakers Corner for the first time (legendary corner of Hyde Park where, as I found out, people tend to shout at each other).

Anyway won't waste anymore time when the 4th day of the Ashes is approaching except to start a couple of tallys that will hopefully rise quite significantly over the coming 4 months:

Money raised for Parikrma: $150
Distance covered: 52km

NB: the km count includes those couple of recent runs with Dave and Jules since in aid of a bit of necessary pre-prep training!

YEEEEESSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Checking my mailbox this afternoon still worse for ware after last nights mildly messy work xmas party I had reason to jump up and down and wear an inane grin that has barely released its grip all day - I AM IN THE LONDON MARATHON.

I knew it as soon as I saw the rather large letter - it would be cruel to give so much info to someone who failed on the ballot. I just cannot believe my luck. I mean you have to wait 5 years of failed ballots before automatic entry and I got it first time. Its simply bloody excellent. Here is a challenge and one I relish. I came back from a year away last year hardened in my reslove to not just let life fly by when starting work and this is my way of doing it. A new challenge, a new test and a whole new type of experience. Brilliant.

This means I can raise money for a charity of my choice and an amazingly worthy charity it is. The Parikrma foundation. A charity that not only takes 100's of kids from the poorest slums in Bangalore (India), feeds them, educates them and stuffs them full of confidence to take on the world, but aims to fundamentally change the school system in the world's second most populous country. They round off the job by aiming to guarentee every child a place at university. I have no negative word for this organization that holds a very special place in my heart after working with the kids next year and now I have the opportunity to repay just a small amount of what they have given me. I believe it just costs $150 per child per year and I will start off my fundraising by putting that sum in myself. You have to start somewhere. Just think if only $1500 was raised that still takes a young child from one of the most poverty stricken backgrounds in the world to having an opportunity to take on the world. What a wonderful gift to be able to give.

More details of the charity and how anyone can support them will follow. For now I better get out running. Tomorrow I will put on the shoes, meet Arnie and see how far our feet and lardy bodies will take us...