300km for Dementia UK

Flitwick 10K I hate the word ‘undulating’. Just say ‘hilly’ so that we can all mentally prepare for a race that mainly consists of hills. Magic hills that seem to go up and up but never come down! Flitwick 10k was one of these races. The hills weren’t massive but the 2-3k sections of a steady incline were not my favourite.  It has been two weeks since the Brighton Marathon and one week since me and Raf nearly repeated the Marathon distance walking around Disneyworld. I tried to start running again on Monday but had to stop after two miles due to pain in my knee. Luckily I had an appointment with the physio that afternoon and so she suggested that resting it for a week should help. My rib injury has massively improved and whilst I still haven’t got my full lung capacity back, I am in hardly any pain now and not dependant on painkillers. So I hesitantly signed up for the Flitwick 10k on Friday as I had been leaving it as long as possible to see how my knee was doing. I decided

Holding back the tears at the finish! What a day! I knew that marathon day was not going to be how I originally envisaged when I signed up to the challenge last September. With two months of illness and injury hindering my progress I had to mentally let all aspirations of fast times go and just embrace the marathon journey. And what a journey it was! It all started with a fairly relaxed morning in that there were no kids to worry about and I was staying a ten minute walk from the race start. I got to the start, stood in a half hour queue to go to the toilet and was lined up ready to go at 0945hrs after a karaoke rendition of Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’. The atmosphere was buzzing and I told myself it was just nerves and that I didn’t need to go to the toilet again. However, as soon as I started running I realised that actually I did need to go and so half a mile into the race saw me nipping behind a bush to ‘make myself more comfortable’ before I ran another 25+ miles!. Running th

Well it is two days to the marathon and the nerves are really setting in. Whilst this past months training has been extremely disappointing I am still looking forward to getting out there on Sunday and completing the distance, no matter what! I have been referred to the Physio and after our first consultation she has said that the cartilage surrounding the floating ribs is inflamed and that the two are rubbing together which is causing the pain. She is hopeful that it will burn itself out eventually and that I can continue to train without causing further damage. I do however need to concentrate on keeping myself healthy as the coughing is exacerbating the pain and stopping it from healing. So hopefully with a bit of rest and recuperation after the marathon I will be ready for my next race. As well as this blog, I was asked by Dementia UK to write a Guest Blog for their website about why I was doing this challenge. I got to write about my Grandma and her experience with dementia a

Bedford Parkrun I took ten days off training after the Bedford 20 in the hopes that my rib injury would heal in that time.....it hasn’t. I think it actually might be a bit worse. Every time I laugh or cough (or cry at this point) it exacerbates it. So what to do now? Drug myself up at every opportunity and continue like nothing has changed! Granted this isn’t the greatest of plans and I will probably be in a world of pain after the marathon but I don’t feel like I have a choice. The marathon was the beginning of this challenge; where it all stemmed from and I feel like if I cant complete this marathon then it will all have been a failure. So yesterday I headed to Bedford for another Parkrun in a bid to convince myself that running 5k will be about the same as running as 42k. So I lined up at 0900hrs ready to start and when I started running I felt pretty good. A bit of pain in the ribs but overall very good. That lasted for about half a mile before I started feeling like I was