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.