Eyeball My Balls...

When I’m out and about running, quite often a song pops up and starts playing in my head. It’s to the tune of Abba’s ‘Money, Money, Money’, but the lyrics have been changed somewhat:

“Running, Running, Running, done lots of running, in a fat man’s world.”

The strangest thing about it is that I haven’t consciously devised any of it; I can’t remember the last time I heard the Abba original, and I certainly didn’t sit down to pen some alternative lyrics just to entertain me on my evening’s jog. It just pops up randomly, uninvited and unexpected, plays itself round perhaps twice or thrice, and then disappears again. The amateur psychologist in me wonders what the meaning of it is (assuming that there actually is a meaning and it’s not just some bullshit my beer-frazzled brain has manifested). Does it mean that I think I’m fat, and that I’m running to reduce the cake/beer that has settled around my midriff? Or does mean that I’m running to escape from a world of fat men? Perhaps it’s neither. Who cares.

Anyway, it’s not the only strange thing that’s happened since I’ve started training for the Marathon:

 People Look at Your Junk

In a way, I suppose I’m partly to blame for this. When I first started training in November I very quickly realised that not only was it pretty nippy outside, but that it was going to get considerably more brass monkeys over the coming months. Alas, I traded in the shorts for a lovely pair running tights, and despite the fact that I bought them almost entirely to stave off the wintry evenings, I absolutely love them. Not only do they keep the cold at bay, but they’re also extremely comfortable. I now have two sets, a full length pair and a three-quarter pair, and during our recent sub-zero dip in temperature I was wearing both at the same time.

But here’s the thing: My two pork pies and miniature trumpet are constantly on display. This isn’t an entirely new thing to me as I started cycling a few years back and that also involves quite a bit of Lycra-wearing, but it’s different on a bike, because you’re sitting down and hunched. People would have to try pretty damn hard to get a good look at your John Thomas whilst you’re in that position, especially as you’re whizzing by at 20mph. But with running you’re generally –hopefully -in an upright position, and your Cuthbert is not only smack-bang dead centre, but is also doing its own little side-to-side dance in perfect time to your footsteps. And people’s eyes just seem to go there.

I don’t think it’s necessarily an entirely conscious decision on behalf the person to have a little look; you can almost see their thought process sometimes:

“Hmmm….oh look, a runner…….wearing tights…….I wonder if you can see his…Yep, there it is”.

Once the deed is done, and the crotch has been well and truly looked at, you can see a flicker of fear on the face on the looker as they realise what they’re doing. Just after they realise they’re glaring at your groin, they look to see if I realise they’re glaring at my groin (which I do, because I’ve become almost too acutely aware of the situation). And not only do I realise they’re glaring at my groin, but I also realise that they realise that they’re glaring at my groin. The rabbit hole goes even deeper, because they then realise that I realise that they realise, and the whole thing is an awkward mess of strange, silent glances. Fortunately, because I’m running in one direction and they're walking in the opposite direction, the whole scenario is normally over in two seconds, and the feeling of awkwardness passes until the next person decides to help themselves to a free eyeful of bollock.

Even more oddly, the men are just as guilty as the women. I can sort of see why a women would take a look, because a member of the opposite sex has his genitals on display, and woman are evolutionarily predisposed to check out a possible mate’s belongings as a sign of their virility (phew, I’m so glad I went with the scientific approach – my first draft was “because all women are sluts and love cock”). But, assuming that not all the men I pass in the street are gay (unless they are all gay and they get together to work out what routes I run specifically to get a glimpse of my nylon-shrouded penis – but why would I think that?) then it poses an interesting Freudian question: Why are heterosexual men looking at my willy?

And, as hard as it is for to me admit, I’m not overly well endowed (My brother says that when I was very little I was “all sack”), but, on a good day, in a well heated room, I’d say I’m a thou or two above average. (I’m also a grower, not a show-er, but that’s for another time). But obviously, once I step outside into minus one conditions, I am very liable to appear under average, to anyone that cares to look. Which, apparently, is everybody.

Anyway, I’ve used quite a number of curse words and penis euphemisms in the previous few paragraphs, and I’m aware that my parents & parents-in-law occasionally read this, so I’ll end it here. Knob.

Ps. Please sponsor me, it’s for cancer: www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw

Thanks for reading

X

Race Oddity.....

When this whole marathon-thingummy-bob started back in October, I mentally broke it down into a three parts: The training, the fundraising, and writing this blog. At the time, I imagined the first two elements would be the hardest, and the blog writing would just happen quite naturally. As it turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The training, though hard in the sense that I get tired when I do it, and it’s mostly cold and wet, isn’t tough in an ‘I don’t want to do this today’ sort of way; I’m actually really enjoying it. Not only can I sense improvement as the weeks go on and the miles increase, but I’m starting to feel slimmer and lither. Plus, I can eat more cakes now and not feel guilty about it. The fundraising, as well, is going swimmingly (or runningly – see what I did there! I’m so awesome). With the help of friends and family we’ve managed to organise a major event which will hopefully raise a substantial portion of the target, and meanwhile lots is coming in from personal donations, because, as it turns out, people are incredibly generous. Many of the donations on my fundraising site have surprised me not because of the amount that the individual has donated, but because of the fact that they have donated at all. Quite a few of the donations have come from family members and Facebook friends that I haven’t spoken to (in an actual face-to-face situation) for many years, or in some cases, ever. And the fact that these people are willing to take money out of their pockets and time out of their day in order to sponsor me fills me with an enormous sense of wellbeing. Obviously, Facebook and social networking in general provides an excellent tool with which to try and entice people to sponsor you, but in many ways it is still a passive interface. All of those that have read my plight on Facebook and have chosen to sponsor me have done so completely out of their own choice, and that somehow makes every pound they’ve donated even more worthwhile. Ever felt that you want to restore your own faith in the goodness of human nature? Then try raising money for charity.

Anyway, the point I was originally getting at was about…elephants…wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t. It was about how I thought it would be easy to write a blog and it turns out it’s not. Yeah, that’s it.

When I first started writing the blog, I made a promise to myself that, even though it is a running blog of sorts,  I would try to make it interesting, and hopefully, if the timing was right and the winding is blowing in the right direction, a little bit funny. I didn’t want it to end up an actual diary of my running:

‘Ran 4.32 miles today at 9.12 minutes per mile. Wore my fluorescent long sleeve top with three-quarter length running tights. Saw three dogs.’

See? Boring.

I have no desire to produce a blog that is uninteresting and written purely for the sake of writing; it would be extremely tedious for me, and incredibly ignored by most of you. And I’d also hate the idea that I spent an hour or two writing a blog that would be not be read, let alone enjoyed, by anyone. Happily, the last blog I wrote (come on, you know the one, you’ve probably read it several times, and have it printed out so that you can re-read your favourite bits) was by far the most successful yet, in terms of the volume of readership, the number of re-links posted, and the amount of donations (assuming there was a correlation). And because that last blog was the most successful, it’s made writing the next one (i.e. this one) even harder, because I obviously want it to be better, to have continual improvement, in much the same way as the training and the fundraising seems to be getting better all the time. The trouble is, it’s becoming harder and harder to find interesting things to write about, which is why you now find yourself reading a blog about writing a blog.

So, despite that sentence I wrote 208 words ago, here is how the running is going: On each of the last three Sundays I have a completed a 10 mile run, and for the next two Sundays I’m going to up it to half marathon distance (13.1 miles). After that, it goes up to 15, then 18, and then 20 miles. There is short recess the week after for the Brentwood Half Marathon, and then it’s back up to 20. For the three weeks between that run and the actual London Marathon, I start the ‘taper’ process, which brings the weekly mileage down and allows the body to rebuild itself for the big one. As I write, I have a moderate knee twinge, which worries me slightly.

This is a post I recently put on Facebook, in case you missed it:

15 years ago our mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, a condition that, if not treated with the right amount of care & support, would have taken her from us. By our mum's own admission, had it not been for Macmillan Cancer Support she doubts she would have had the strength to make it. On the 21st of April I'm going to try and run the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon, and in doing so I intend to raise as much money as possible for Macmillan. No amount of money is ever going to be equal to having our mum here with us, but hopefully, in a very small way, I can begin to repay the huge debt of gratitude I feel I owe to them.

But I need your help. If you went to my Just Giving site and donated a couple of pounds, you would be helping millions of people currently diagnosed with cancer. And don’t think that a couple of quid wouldn’t make a difference. Macmillan survives off those donating just two or three pounds just as much as those donating ten and twenty pounds.

Thanks for reading.

www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw

Happy No Beer

I wrote this pre-Christmas, but didn’t have a chance to post as it was on my work PC. The training schedule has now started, and is going well; I’ll post with a more thorough update soon. Enjoy!

 –JB 08/01/13

I’ve been doing my pre-training training for just over two months now, averaging between fifteen and twenty miles a week, and so far I’ve managed to do without an iPod or any other type of audio input to keep the boredom away.  Instead, I think about stuff.

Here are the top seven things that occupy my thoughts during the cold wintery evenings:

1)      Becoming Lame

There are countless injuries and afflictions that can affect a runner, such as shin splints, runner’s knee, IT band syndrome, and a whole host of other ligament, tendon, and muscle related problems. Due to the nature of the training, at some point I expect to be affected by at least one, but probably multiple, of these afflictions. Depending on a number of factors, such as when the injury hits and the severity of the pain, I am hoping that I would be able to recover in time to continue the training and complete the marathon.  The very scary thing is that if the timing is wrong and/or the injury is too severe for me to be able to compete in, let alone complete, the 26.2 mile course, then all of the training and fundraising will have been for nothing.

Well, that isn’t quite right. The money I’d have raised will still go to Macmillan, and they’ll probably be just as happy with the donations as they would be if I’d actually run the event. And I’d still be much fitter and – hopefully – slimmer due to the months of training. But the main focus and reason for both the training and fundraising would be gone.

I’m doing all I can to hopefully avoid an injury: warming up, warming down, stretching, not pushing the pace, only increasing weekly distances by 10%, taking rest days, etc. But I’m more than aware that I can do all this and still get a niggle. As I write I have a minor ankle twinge, but I also know that I’ve run further this weekend than any previous one, so hopefully a day or two off should see the tightness recede. In general, whether I get an injury or not is in the hands of the running Gods, and therefore I should probably just stop worrying about it. But I probably won’t.

2)      A Face in the Crowd

Running can be fairly boring. At the moment, I’m only running up to eight miles, which is about an hour and a bit, so it’s not really long enough to get too bored. But come February and March time I’ll be running roughly triple that distance, so I fully expect some modicum of tedium. Still though, I intend to try and stay iPod-less throughout my entire training, as I don’t intend to use one on the day, and one of the biggest ‘rules’ of marathon running is that you don’t do anything on the day that you don’t do in training.

So why don’t I intend to use an iPod on the day? Well, because almost all of the past Marathoners I have spoken to have said how great the crowd is and how there’s too much to look at and take in. This seems to make sense to me; I’d have been training for this day for the last six months, so I want to ‘enjoy’ it as much as possible.

But there’s another factor that everyone seems to agree is a huge driving force in getting you round the course, and that is having a loved one there to cheer you on. So I’m told, when the going gets tough and you start to flag, there’s nothing like the thought of getting to see your wife, child, parents, etc in the next couple miles to drive you on. I experienced this from the other side during the 2012 Marathon when my better half, my parents-in-law and I went to watch my sister-in-law. We saw her first at 13 miles, and then at 22 miles, and the joy and relief on Angela’s face when she saw her loved ones (and me!) was evident. My wife and my parents have all promised to come and watch this year’s marathon, and I’ve asked them to stand at the same mile markers. Mile 13 is a good one as it’s the halfway point, and gets you ‘over the hump’. Most marathoners say they found the first 13 relatively easy, and it was after halfway mark that aches started to set in. Mile 22 is also a great target point, as it is about then the going starts to get really tough, and also when the dreaded ‘wall’ is supposed to kick in, so it’s a great idea to have someone there to spur you on for the last four miles.

3)      Toilet Training

I’ll make no bones about this; I like a poo as much as the next man. In fact, I’d go as far to say I enjoy a poo probably more than the next man. And running, of course, tends to free things up a bit, if you catch my meaning. There is actually a syndrome called Runner’s Trots, whereby after a couple of miles of running the sufferer starts to feel the pangs of an oncoming turd. A running friend of mine who suffers from the syndrome told me that on many of his runs he is almost ‘hanging out of the back’, which conjures all sorts of delightful images.

Fortunately, despite the fact I’m incredibly regular, it doesn’t seem to affect me so much. When I first started running in earnest a couple of months ago I had a few bouts of it, and though it never actually came to the point of accidental browning, it was still quite uncomfortable. I found that by cutting out the majority of my dairy intake it drastically subsided (and by ‘cutting out’ I mean not having three-quarters of a pint of milk on my Crunchy Nuts in the morning).

Nonetheless, I’m aware there will be a few extra factors on the morning on the 21^st of April 2013, such as nerves, and, well, nerves, so I will be accompanied my good friend Imodium, should the need arise.

4)      Tee-Total

I’ll make no bones about this; I like a glass of wine of much as the next man. In fact, I’d go as far to say I enjoy a glass of wine probably more than the next man. Copying-and-pasting-whole-sentences aside, I’m aware that post NYE celebrations I will need to totally curb my alcohol intake for around four months. It will be the longest I’ve gone without a drink since I started drinking, which makes me sound much more like an alcoholic than it should.

My current drinking is roughly thus: I’ll have a glass or two of wine – mostly red – in the evening with dinner, almost every evening. At the weekend I’ll possible have a little more, perhaps a whole a bottle of wine, and probably a couple of beers. On the other hand, if I’ve been out gigging with the band, or the wife and I have been out and I’ve driven, then I won’t have anything to drink at all.

However, I’m under absolutely no illusions about my current drinking habits, which are well in excess of what they should be. Training for a marathon aside, I could do without the nightly tipples, and should also cut down on the weekend binging. Lots of people probably won’t agree with this paragraph, but that is probably because they are trying to justify their own drinking habits, which is up to them. I don’t think the sort of drinking I do, or that lots of others do, can really be called alcoholism, in the sense of the stereotypical alcoholic, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t actually some form of dependence or reliance evident, even if that only manifests itself as unwinding after a day at work.

 I’m actually really interested as to how my body and general health is going to react when I stop the drinking on the 2^nd of January. It will probably help me lose some weight, as I’ll be knocking between 2000 and 3000 calories a week on the head. I should also get better blood flow and immunity from colds and flu, etc. But there will also be some negatives to get over, such as (and this is going to sound silly)….. not having a drink every evening. I drink because I enjoy the taste, and because of the feeling being intoxicated gives me, and I’m going to give that up, which is going to be difficult.  

5)      Repeat Performance

I’ve said all along that this probably be the only time I’ll run the London Marathon. The wife and I don’t have any children yet, but even so I often find it difficult to find the time for training, and have to fits runs in as and when I have a free hour or so. I can only imagine that when we have sprogs any free time will be totally digested by teaching my children how to make a half decent bong out of an empty two-litre coke bottle and a bit of hosepipe (that’s what you do with kids, right?). If I was to enter the marathon again it have to be through the ballot system rather than a charity place, as the fundraising for a charity place can be nearly as consuming as the actual training itself.

6)      Target Setting

Quite a few people have asked me what time I’d like to get round the course in, and it can be answered on two levels. When I’m feeling brave I’ll say I’ll want to get round in about four hours and ten minutes, which is an time I’ve calculated I can finish in if I can maintain a constant pace of one mile every nine and half minutes. As I write, this sounds fairly doable, as most of my training runs are at about the nine-minutes per mile mark, and general marathon guidelines say you should aim at a pace that is slightly slower than your training pace.

If I’m not feeling brave, then my answer is that I just want to finish the race. Several people I know have had very clear targets for their finish time, and then, on the day, it has all gone to pot. This could happen for a variety of reasons, such as nerves, being a bit under the weather, starting too quick, getting a small injury, and a whole bunch of other reasonable excuses. So, if everything goes right for me on the morning on the marathon, then yeah, I hope to do just over four hours. If not, then who knows.

7)      Race Day Tictacs

I’ve already started to plan what I think I’ll have with me while I’m running, as obviously you want to keep general baggage down to a minimum for reasons of weight and comfort. So far my current inventory looks like this: a few Ibuprofens, to stave off any pains or aches that crop up; a few Imodium instants, to stave off any shits or poos that crap up; some small sugary treats, a running watch, and…….well, that’s it. Obviously, I’ll be wearing some clothes, including my personalised running vest that Macmillan provides. I was tempted to get ‘TWAT’ printed on mine rather than my name, just to see how many the crowd were would cheer “Come on Twat!”, but I’m not sure they’d allow that. I’m still undecided about whether or not I’m going to carry a phone with me, as my phone is a pretty weighty piece of kit, and as silly as sounds, that extra weight can really add up over the course of 26.2 miles. But then, I’d quite like to be able to contact people, particularly at the end when I’ll probably want to meet up with the wife and the folks, and with 40,000 runners and a quarter of a million spectators the chances of bumping into your loved ones are pretty slim. So, it’s a small but on-going concern.

This has been a fairly hefty post, so thanks for reading.

Big thanks to all those who have sponsored me so far. You are all genuinely very generous people, and every pound you’ve donated is hugely appreciated.

If you’d like to sponsor me please go to www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw. It takes almost no time at all. Alternatively you can donate via your mobile – just text JIMB79 and your donation amount to 70070.

Thanks. X

Brass Tacks...

It's been a short while since my last blog, and I'm sure you've been missing me. In truth, and as I predicted during one of the earlier blogs, there has been very little to report in last few weeks. One item of note was that I managed to complete the Billericay 10k in 47:53, not only smashing my previous personal best of 51:45, but also achieving the milestone target of a sub-50 minute 10K. I was especially pleased with this as the weather was bucketing felines and canines, and for much of the race we were running in poodles up to our ankles. Apart from that, my training has settled into quite a comfortable routine; In general, I'm running twice in the week, of distances between three and five miles, and then doing a longer one on a Sunday, normally around the eight-mile mark. I'll need to start building the miles up slightly more than this over the next 6 weeks, as I need to be running around 20 miles a week before starting the training proper, so I'll add in another midweek run to make up the shortfall.

It does seem to be creeping up fairly quickly though. What seems only a short time ago I was thinking to myself that I had ages before the training programme was due to start, but now that Christmas is only a sneeze away I am already starting to feel some pressure, and not just about the training, but about the fund-raising too. I won't try to pretend that my whole raison d'etre  for doing the marathon is to raise funds for Macmillan; there is also the fulfillment of a personal ambition, and the enforced target in order to keep up a fitness routine. But I won't lie, raising money by convincing people to hand over cash that they've earned has to be a major part of the my life for the next six months. So here goes.....

If you've watched the television or listened to the radio over the last five years then you already know the statistic: One In Three.

Think for a second about the two people in the world that are closest to you. If you're of a similar age to me then there's a good chance that those two people are your spouse and your child. Alternatively, the two people may be your mum and dad, or your siblings, or perhaps your best friends. Now imagine that it was mathematically defined that one of the three of you would contract a terrible disease that would affect your life in every way possible. It may cause you to give up work, and if you're self employed this means that you would be unable to provide for your family. It may make you so weak that you become unable to care for your children to an appropiate degree. It could cause you lose you hair, or become painfully and uncomfortably thin. Now imagine that there's an 80% chance that the disease you've contracted will slowly kill you until you are dead. And don't forget, that this is not neccesarily you; you may have to watch it happen to your husband, or your daughter, or your father, or your friend, and there's not a single thing you can do to save them.

And here's the thing: That One In Three statistic is actually bullshit.

It stems from a survey completed quite a few years ago, and since then the figure has risen considerably. The actual figure is now two in five people, or 40% (one in three equals 33.3%). The fact that this percentage has risen might seem fairly strange, considering how the amount of people smoking has dramatically fallen over the last ten years, but that is a naive attitude. Though firing up a Marlboro Light will indeed increase the chance of getting cancer, it is unfortunately not an exhaustive club. Other things that aid the onset of cancer include, but is not limited to: sunbathing, living near a road, being overweight, your genetic make-up, and......getting older.

How many of those things apply to you? Probably most, if not all.

Fortunately, we are lucky enough to live on a planet where people care enough to try and make life easier for people who suffer from deadly diseases. Some of this help involves researching into the disease in order to come up with cures and ways of catching the disease early. Other types of help involve trying to help those who already have the disease, by providing solutions and care that fill in the gaps in their life that cancer has caused.

Macmillan are a cancer charity of the latter type. For instance, they can provide clothes for sufferers that can no longer wear their clothes due the dramatic weight loss that cancer can cause, or they can also provide hair-pieces for those that have undergone chemotherapy. One of the major services they provide are the Macmillan nurses, who can sit with cancer victims and their families, giving advice, talking them through their options, or perhaps just lending a listening ear. Such as they did when my mum had cancer.


Now, the previous handful of paragraphs are, without doubt, pretty depressing. It's not nice to imagine your loved ones being ill from anything, let alone cancer, but I personally find it majorly uplifting that there are organisations out there that are set-up to help people. What's even more uplifting is that many of these organisations, such as Macmillan, are funded by the likes of you and I; Just normal people who are prepared to give up a small amount of money, and an even smaller amount of time, in order to help other people.

If you'd like to be one of these wonderful people, you can go to my Just Giving page (http://www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw) and donate whatever you'd like. It genuinely only takes a few minutes, and I can assure you it will give you lift today.

Alternatively, you can text a donation by sending 'JIMB79' and the amount you'd like (eg, '£10') to 70070.

Many thanks for reading.

James

Why 10K.......

A couple of weeks ago I decided it was high time to step up and run in an actual competition. Not only is it more enjoyable to run with other people, but I think it's probably a good idea to practice learning to pace yourself in a race, as it becomes much harder when there's other competitors all around running at different speeds. So long-term friend and recent cycling buddy Jason Lilley and I signed ourselves up for a local 10k running event. 10k is quite a nice distance, as it's long enough to make it worthwhile, and short enough to keep it interesting (exactly like my penis). The weather was on our side, but unfortunately the landscape was not, and it is not flirting with understatement to say we both found it pretty tough going. Though I didn't actually stop running at any stage, at some points it felt I could crawl on my belly faster than I was actually running. Nonetheless, I achieved a personal best time of 51 minutes and 45 seconds.

To put that time in perspective: Mo Farah's personal best is 26 minutes and 46 seconds, which is roughly half the time of mine, and Alistair Brownlee completed his 10k in the recent Olympic triathlon in just over 29 minutes, and that was after a mile and a half swim and and 40k bike ride (a marathon on a bike in other words). However, for someone at my age and running level it still wasn't a bad time, and I was pleased to note that I finished before many club runners. I'd been toying with the idea of joining a running club to aid my marathon training, but after seeing many of the club members I decided against it. They all seemed a bit too geeky, and just...not cool.

Flash forward one week, and Lilley and I have signed up for another event of a fairly different nature. This would be a 90 mile cycle ride around around Essex, and I was definitely fearing this one much more than the previous week's 10k. 90 miles is long way, even on a road bike, and we would be looking at at least six hours continual riding. The morning of the ride we checked the weather, and, upon seeing that rain was forecast for the afternoon, decided to plump for the medium route, which was 'only' 60 miles. I don't think either of us were particularly disappointed to cut our ride down by a third, and the thought of riding out in heavy rain for a couple hours firmed up the decision. Again, the climbs proved much tougher than we expected, but we made it round in four hours, which is a fairly respectable 15mph average, and only one puncture.

I had sort of hoped that the cycle ride would give me an insight into what it is like to exercise for four hours non stop, as that is the sort of time I hope to complete the marathon in. But I think there are too many differences between the disciplines of cycling and running to make the experiment valid. After the ride was finished I didn't feel particularly tired or achy, and could have carried on had the desire arose. I somehow don't imagine I'll feel like that after completeing the 26.2 miles of the London marathon. I think one of the major differences between cycling and running (apart from the fact that you're sitting down) is that when you get tired on a bike you can stop pedalling for a bit and the bike will carry on moving. It doesn't work like that with running; if you stop your legs moving you tend to fall over.

Onwardly speaking, this week I'll be taking part in a cross country 10k with my little sister (Alan), and next week a group of us are doing the Billericay 10K, in which I intend to break a sub-50 minutes time using the pace-making skills of Douglas Pleydell.

If you've read this blog and enjoyed it (or hated it) then please go to my Just Giving page and donate some money, all the funds go to Macmillan Cancer Support. And as a bonus I'll give you big sloppy kiss on the cheek next time I see you. http://www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw

Thanks for reading!

James


 

'Grate' To See You...

Hello, and welcome, to my second blog about running the marathon. Not much has really changed since the last/first blog, but for reasons I outlined previously, my intention was always to continue writing even if I had very little to say (some people have the same philosophy about their mouth). It does make me wonder what I'm going include in the blog in a couple of months time when all I'm doing is running every other day. It won't be interesting, either for me or the reader, to see "Went running again" every week, but hopefully by then I should have bursting pus from blisters or the classic bleeding nipples to report. Fun times ahead!

Went to the chiropodist last week, and my feet were nowhere near as bad as I thought. A bit of grinding here, and a bit of filing there, and I'm now the proud owner of feet that as smooth as a baby's...er..feet? Perhaps baby's feet are smoother, I don't know, but you get the idea. The chiropodist also noted that I have very little arch on the sole of foot, so I can now tick off 'flat footed' on the list of things that make for bad running (I've already ticked 'bow-legged' and 'a bit overweight').

I've purchased some running trainers, and as a pre-cursor to the actual purchase I had a gait analysis, which determines which type of trainer you need. Predictably, I needed a pair which straightens up the legs a tad, and I'm sure that anyone who has seen my Rickets-afflicted pins would have guessed that. They weren't exactly cheap either, and what with some of the other bits and bobs I've purchased (such as a GPS watch, and some warm running clothing), one does begin to wonder if the money I've spent on these things would be more functional if I'd have given it straight to the charity. However, I suppose it is for the greater good, and I'm hoping to raise far a greater amount than the cash I've spent on the training, which brings me nicely to....

....the next paragraph. You should be aware that if you are reading this blog (or the previous one), then you are legally obliged to sponsor me with three months worth of your wages. If you do not, then not only will you be not able to read this blog anymore, but you are also very likely to be beheaded. Treason and not-sponsoring-me-after-reading-my-blog are the only two crimes you can still receive capital punishment for, so if you are guilty of the latter then you should probably go www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw and donate three months wages. Or if not that much, than at least anything you can. As well as the joy you will get from the feeling of no longer living in fear of being beheaded, you will also know that the money you have donated will go towards making life better for someone living with a disease that has a high probability of killing them. Macmillan use money to provide many things to sufferers of cancer, from a listening ear to support from a nurse, and it's only charitable donations which allow them to continue to provide this service. So in the words of old Bobby G......



Thanks for reading.

As Mr Davis Says....

So, I've decided to write a blog about running the marathon. Not because I think anyone will be particularly interested (who really wants to hear about how I put Vaseline on my nipples to stop them bleeding?), and not because I particularly fancy myself as much of a writer (I expect much of the blog will be littered with typos and inconsistencies). But I do have my reasons, and they are two-fold:

1. I gained my place in the marathon through a charity rather than the ballot, and therefore I need to raise a significant amount of money. I'm hoping that by keeping this blog going and consistently posting it to Facebook I will be able to persuade the majority of my FB friends to donate as much money as possible to my JustGiving page. The charity is Macmillan, and they are a cancer support service which gives much needed advice and care to people suffering from all types of cancer. They are particularly close to my heart as they helped my mum when she suffered from breast cancer, and I'm hoping that by raising money for them I can repay some of the kindness and help they gave to us during what was an otherwise horrendous time.

2. I hope by making my training progress as transparent as possible it will motivate me to keep going when the going gets tough, cold and tiresome. So if my training starts to fall away and I stop posting blogs, then I'll know that everyone else will know that I've started to fail, and I think that might provide the much needed kick up the sphincter that I need to keep running.

I'll try to keep the blog as light hearted as possible, but I also want to use it as an outlet for any difficulties or frustrations I'm having. They say a problem shared is a problem halved, so if I can share my issues with a couple of hundred FB friends then that may reduce the weight of them somewhat. Just to warn you though, it may not always be pretty. I've been talking to some experienced marathon runners about the various issues they've encountered, and bleeding nipples is only the tip of iceberg (I did consider writing 'tip of the volcano' for a far more vivid analogy). One fellow lost nine of his toe nails during training, and another was telling me tales of blood coming out of his trainers due to broken blisters.

The majority of marathon training programs are sixteen weeks long, so a regimented routine will start around the new year time, and that means I've a got a couple of months to build a base fitness and get some other issues sorted out. My feet, for instance, have more corns than a Green Giant factory, so a couple of visits to the chiropodist are in order (Parmesan cheese, anyone?). I've also inherited a wonderful set of bow legs from my father, which means that I probably over-pronate when I run (all the pressure is on the outsides of the feet), and thus need either 'stability' trainers or shoe inserts ("I stand corrected" said the man in the orthopaedic shoe).

In summary then, if you've read this blog and think that what I'm about to embark upon is not only worthy, but worthy of some of your hard earned money, then visit www.justgiving.com/james-blackshaw and donate anything you can (fiscally speaking, of course). You can then bask in a warm glow, content in the knowledge that you have given money to a charity that succeeds in making life better for people with a disease that affects their life in the most horrible way.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned. My next blog is quite possibly going to be about having vast amounts of excess skin removed from my feet. So you can look forward to that.

James

PS. Does anyone understand the moderately cryptic title to the blog? Answers on a postcode, winner gets a signed photo of my dog.