I received a lovely email today from a friend. I hope she doesn’t mind being quoted…

“I hear you have had a very difficult couple of weeks. I’m so sorry to hear about your nan, that is really sad news. I hope you are ok. A week including a funeral, car accident and a marathon is quite a week. I hope it goes really well at the marathon on Sunday for you.”

Thank you

So, today is day 200. That’s way more than half way isn’t it?!?! Well it sounds like it!

I’m also over 160 miles ahead of the minimum target. Having to make up 305 miles over the year to hit 1500 is still going to be a challenge though. I’m over half way and still have 144 miles to pick up somewhere. That’s an average of nearly a mile a day for the remaining days!

Tomorrow we travel to Brighton, to spend the weekend there and fit a marathon into the middle. I’m really looking forward to it and just hoping this blooming shoulder injury isn’t going to completely destroy the day!

I think I’m going to head down early tomorrow and catch some of the marathon expo at the Brighton centre. I’ll try and catch up with Steve Cram if possible. We still have a run to do!

I’ll be wearing the 1095miles.com t-shirt on the day, as will Damian. Say hi if you spot either of us, we don’t bite. I’m 1566 and Damian is 800. There’s an iPhone app to track the Brighton marathon and runners you select available HERE for those of you who have one.

Enjoy the run if you’re doing it and best of luck. It’s going to be HOT!

Blogging may be brief and unreliable for the weekend, depending on how much internet time I can get over the next few days.

Wish me luck….!

Andy.

Today’s shoes: Newish Kayano 17′s
Miles today: 3.12
Target: 600
Miles to date: 761.43
“Runners like to train 100 miles per week because it’s a round number. But I think 88 is a lot rounder.”
- Don Kardong

So what have I been doing in the meantime? Well… looking after the twins and trying to work a couple of days a week from Chester mainly, which is why I’ve also missed the Tuesday runs… though I’m hoping to persuade everyone to change that to Wednesdays, in which case I can come back out to play.

Other than that, I’ve been trying, rather unsuccessfully to train for my other challenge, Brighton Marathon, Brighton to London run on one day (52 miles) and London Marathon the following Sunday.

I’d started off okay, got some new trainers, the new version of Brooks Adrenalins which I’ll get round to reviewing this week and had started upping the mileage again.

I’d got up to two runs in a weekend, one of 15 and one of ten when after one Sunday about three weeks ago on the former, I came home to find Laura needing some help, so without cooling down or stretching, I jumped straight into baby duties.

The next day, I was a little sore but thought I could run it off in a few days, so the following Friday, I went out and did 19 miles… oh yes James, well done, bloody great idea. By that afternoon, I couldn’t walk and couldn’t for the next five days… I mean seriously limping around here dragging my foot behind me when I wanted to go anywhere couldn’t walk.

The services of Lillian, my sports masseuse from last year, were called back into action and after some serious drawing of air over teeth, she concluded the tendon fascia that joins the muscle to the bone was being pulled away and advised… yes, the dreaded rest.

The week after, I gingerly tried to go out and got a mile from home before giving up in pain… I was hobbling so much I would only have managed to do more damage to the other leg and took another week off with ice and lots of ibuprofen.

Sunday last, I went out and managed to do six miles with not too many problems, although I was going sloooooooooooow. Welcome back to the world of 11minute miles! And I went to see Lillian again this week who has given me the go-ahead to start building up again.

I was going to run into the Express where Im working today and back, it’s about 14 miles in total, but I’ve now got a stinking cold so have decided to bus it instead.

Hopefully, I’ll be back on the road tomorrow.

The Athens Marathon is approaching at the end of October, as is the Royal Parks half marathon in the middle of the month and it’s been a while since I’ve done a really long run.

One of the things about not doing the challenge any more is that I am able to take rest days and I hope this is going to improve my performance and so I set off yesterday morning at 7am with a spring in my step, despite the cold and drizzle.

My plan was to run the seven miles from home to Green Park, meet up with my pal Dave and a couple of other lads who are also training for the Royal Parks, do eight miles with them and then run as far home as I could.

According to my training program, yesterday should have been a 20 miler but with no real long for a few weeks, I’d decided to settle for 18.

Getting into town was relatively easy, I wasn’t bombing it, but neither was I taking it easy, the few days rest were obviously doing their job.

I hooked up with David and the boys at around eight, luckily, one of them was doing his first half marathon, had not done much training for a few weeks and wanted to take it easy, so we let him set the pace for the eight miles we had to cover.

We ended up doing a huge figure of eight around Hyde Park before rounding Buckingham Palace through Green Park, down the Mall to Trafalgar Square and down Whitehall, past Downing Street to Westminster Tube. It was all at a rather leisurely pace of around 10.5mins a mile.

We split up here and I headed back over Westminster Bridge to South London, we were at around the 15mile mark and I knew that every mile I could add on from now on was in the bank as training for Athens.

I decided to pick up the pace again for a mile or two but coming into where Oval starts to meet Brixton, I was getting less and less hopeful of being able to do any more than 18: my glutes and calves were on fire, though I was glad to feel mentally really strong.

In Brixton, just by the bus stop where busses come back to Streatham, I’d had enough. I’d slowed right down by now and decided to call it a day, jumping straight onto a bus – bugger it, I’ll stretch at home I thought. Bad idea.

By the time I was back in Streatham, I’d totally seized up and it was much too late to stretch out, so it was a hot bath for an hour and lots of neurofen through the day.

I’m aching like heck this morning and just glad to think I don’t have to do three miles – though poor Andy is probably about half way through his run at the moment!

Ankle 1: After his bike incident on Friday, Damian and I spoke this evening and he’s officially out of the running as it were for Sunday’s Great North Run, due to ankle pain of the highest order.

Ankle 2: My better half Elaine is suffering from a stretched Achilles or somesuch ailment according to Doctor Legg too so she’s unsure of her position for Sunday as well!

So there you have it. The week before the start of the mad running challenge and luckily I’m ok to run. Assuming the ankle issues don’t spread, and I get rid of this annoying cold I’m suffering, Great North Run here I come. I’ll be wearing my 1095miles.com t-shirt with pride, so if you see me on the run, do say hello!

This week has been my first week at *proper* work for about four years now (having been truly studious for longer than I expected to be) so I’m a bit bushed. Getting up five days a week is hard if you’re out of practice and although it’s only induction stuff at the moment, attending to it for a whole day is a stretch too.

In other news, it’s nice to hear that the Sense Holidays Team are going to be joining us on Tuesday for some moral and cheering support and there are a few other people coming for the run too. How about you?

See you there…fingers crossed!

Please support my fundraising efforts for Sense here – VirginMoneyGiving
Thanks, it’s appreciated!

Yesterday was a pretty interesting day on the course, we were doing a ‘training in alternative environments’ module and went to the local park and started devising programs with just tennis balls, park benches, a few cones, a football and a few dynabands (they’re the stretchy elastic things). By the end of the day, we’d gathered quite a crowd watching us.

Today I had two exams in the morning, Exercise and Fitness Knowledge Level 3 and Nutrition and Weight Management and, to be honest, I think with everything else going on, I probably bit off more than I could chew by booking them both on the same day. I think I did ok on Nutrition but the other one I might just squeeze through, I might not…. the pass mark is 75 per cent so relatively high.

Having the exams this morning meant I did some last minute brushing up from 5am and so I decided to leave the run until this evening for a change – but first I had to do a chore.

One of the things we’ve had done to the house is have a new kitchen floor laid and we had three packs of floor panels left over and they had to be returned to B&Q for a refund. Guess who tried to pick them up all at once? Yes me, and I’ve either pulled a muscle in my chest or bruised a rib when I bear hugged them to lift them at the same time.

So as well as the sore legs, I hobbled another run this evening with a very sore right chest as well… and the faster I ran, the heavier I breathed and the more I hurt. Roll on the day off!

Miles today: 3.5
Target: 1086
Miles to date: 1,506.65
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Today’s run

There was a slight problem with this though when I got out of bed, every bit of my legs ached from all the gym work of the last few days. My glutes were so tight you could have cracked the proverbial nuts, my calves were in agony and my hamstrings felt tighter than Rafa Nadal’s racket strings. In short, I was in agony.

Teeth gritted I set off on a local four mile route I’ve done loads of times, down Green Lane, past Thornton Heath station and back down London Road to home. By the time I was getting back to Norbury, about 3.2miles in, my legs were screaming for me to stop – LOUDLY.

There was a point when I convinced myself it was what I should do, what the heck if I ended the day on 1495.5 miles, I’d beat the target tomorrow.

Of course, I’m a bit more bloody minded than that, waiting until I got to exactly four and stopping and walking the last half mile or so to home, or should that be limping.

I read all the time about footballers pulling hamstrings – I think it might be what’s happened. The inner side of my left thigh is as sore as eff and I’m back on the brufen.

Come in Andy, your time approaches!

Miles today: 4
Target: 1080
Miles to date: 1,500.15
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

Today’s run

While I’m enjoying the new site and Im excited about Andy taking it on another level, the amount of spam I’ve had to field as comments is quite unbelievable… it’s not even clever stuff where someone just puts ‘keep on running’ or something and then puts their own website but real off-the-wall stuff, some of it quite ranty as well… I have no idea what they are thinking about when they post it, but it aint getting through…

Miles today: 3
Target: 1044
Miles to date: 1,460.68
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

The run

Late last night, I started testing migrating the blog from being hosted by wordpress.com to wordpress.org. While most people will now be going ‘huh?’ it’s quite a big change.

WordPress.com allows you to host blogs on their servers but in exchange for the free hosting, you are quite restricted as what you can do with the design. With wordpress.org, you have to pay to have the site hosted somewhere else but then you can fiddle about all you like.

I’d just got the new site ready by last night and decided to do the swap this morning when I got up…. but then I couldn’t get it to work and spent an hour trying to put it right before deciding to give up, re-direct everything to the old site and try again.

The problem with all this was that it ate away at half the morning meaning I went out running later than I expected but with still enough time to get back, get ready and head into town for a shift at The Express.

What I hadn’t taken into account was that Laura had arranged for a central heating engineer to come at 8am this morning and so I had to get around, do the run and get back before he turned up or there was no chance of a shower. Running this evening was also out of the question as I’m reviewing a hotel in central London and it was impractical to bring kit into town so late.

I had about 15 minutes to get out and do the run, obviously an impossible time limit to do three miles but I still set off as quick as my aching legs from Sunday would take me (that’s not very fast by the way).

The result was me getting back with really aching shins … but at least I just managed to get a hot shower.

Miles today: 3
Target: 1038
Miles to date: 1,454.68
Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

The run

I got it back on yesterday but couldn’t get the Sky TV on as well – for some reason, Sky insist that you have it connected to a phone line… probably to flog you stuff like movies and the QVC channel.

Anyway, I was up at six, trying to fix it, annoying Laura who was trying to sleep and getting more irate at my inability to attach a new phone plug to a cable. I ended up cutting the cable back so  many times, it ended up being too short and so it all had to be re-laid.

The run at least dissipated some of my frustration and anger. It was a muggy day, no sun but low cloud, really heavy as though it wanted to summer thunder but couldn’t.

The result was that body temperature elevated from pissing about relaying the cable, I sweated like a b******* all the way around Tooting Common… and at one point pulled up with a really tight pain in my adductors, the inside of the thigh. Quite weird but I managed to run it o

Only 28 more runs to go now.

The best thing about doing this blog has been meeting other people through cyber space I would never have met. Three immediately spring to mind

Andy Ratcliffe who is taking on the challenge next month from me. We met via the blog, he came on the 1095th mile run and we have stayed in touch ever since. Great lad and I am so glad he’s taking on the challenge so I dont feel compelled to carry on running.

Kelly Taylor.  An American lady who started commenting on my posts just when I was beginning to feel like no one was listening and it was time to give up. She recently completed her first 5k on a C25K program. Well done Kelly (follow her blog here)

Alex Kyprianou. Alex is a Brit who has become an Aussie, living in Melbourne for the last 18 years. We’ve been in touch via email – a top bloke who is going to wear a 1095miles.com tee at his next 10k. His excellent blog is here

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5.6
Target: 1008
Miles to date: 1,395.50

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here

For some reason, on the Tube into work, I started sneezing… no rhyme nor reason, but I could not stop. And I still haven’t stopped more than 12 hours after first one. I reckon I must have done in excess of 100 sneezes and been through a whole box of Kleenex, but I don’t feel ill. Quite bizarre, unless I have got hayfever for the first time in my life.

The good thing is, it at least has taken my mind off another annoying niggle that has cropped up from nowhere. On my left foot, just before the toes, there’s a small stabbing pain that sends just a little jolt up my leg with every step I take. Again, no idea what it is, but it shouldn’t stop me running.

Click here for a link to Garmin Connect for a map and details of the run

Miles today: 5
Target: 963
Miles to date: 1,316.25

Please donate to my chosen charities by clicking here