Monday catch up

Well folks, the London Marathon is all over for another year and I made it round in one piece. Because phone signals were poor on the actual day, below are a few snaps I took before the race and one from when I got home with my finishers medal.

I would have liked to have taken some images around the course, especially when I came up to Tower Bridge which was incredibly brilliant to see when I rounded the corner, however I was worried that if I stopped, I would find it hard to get going again.

I finally finished with a time of 5hrs 49mins which was 49mins outside of my desired finish time, however I'm not going to let this bother me as at least I completed it where others didn't.

My heart goes out to all those runners who pulled up exhausted or injured and couldn't complete the race. It must have been heartbreaking for them, however they can come back next year and finish it.

As for me, this was probably my one and only Marathon. 26.2 miles is just a bit too far for my knee to handle. I look forward to doing some more 10km and Half marathons in the future and I will be looking to do more for Save the Children over the rest of the year.

Thanks for taking the time to read this blog over the past year. It may have been a little sporadic at times but we got there in the end!

Take care of yourselves and maybe, if I do this again, we'll pick this blog back up!

Kind Regards,
Jon.

It's almost time!

The team meets up!

Race Day!

It is 06:15 am on sunday morning, about to eat my porridge and head off to greenwich for the start.

All the training and hard work comes to an end today.

Here goes!

We're here!

Finally arrived, so close now I can smell it :-)

The journey begins

We are in the taxi and on our way to leeds to catch the 7 am train to London.

It's finally here!

Boston tragedy

So yesterday we saw on the news the actions of a coward ruining the lives of thousands of people. We do not yet know the who, or the why behind the attack, however our thoughts go out to those affected.

I agree with the decision to go ahead with the London Marathon on Sunday. We cannot be bowed by these senseless acts. I will run with the same determination that I had always planned on doing.

Terrorists are pathetic cowards and will never win. Together we are stronger and will overcome anything they may throw at us.

With five days to go, I will put this out of my mind until it is all over, hoping that swift justice will be brought to the perpetrators.

Stay safe people, there are some evil people out there in the world.

Jon.

Inspiration

So, this was waiting for me when I came into the office this morning. Thanks you guys!

Phew, what a weekend...!

After a week of working away from home and not getting any serious training in, coupled with a horrible dose of Manflu! I've finally managed to get out two days in a row to get some more miles in the Marathon bank!

Saturday saw a simple 10km circuit to get back into the swing of things which I managed to do in just over an hour. I can't seem to break the sub 1hr mark for the 10km, but as I'm not built for speed I'm not going to let it bother me too much :) I'll concentrate on PB's once I have this marathon licked.

Today saw me stretch out again and get some serious distance under the belt. A nice steady 14miles on the North Cave/South Cave loop in 2hrs 45mins... I had planned on going for 16miles but this damn cold really started to hurt with about 4miles to go, so had to give up on that plan until next weekend. Manflu, grr.. where's the Lemsip when I need it :)

So all in all, not a bad weekend to get back into things. Still have more to do and with only 49 days to the big event, time and tide waits for no man... onwards and upwards to get more miles in the bank.

Also, I wanted to make another special mention to Fay Murray and my company - Reckitt Benckiser. Not only have they paid for my gym membership through all this, but as I did not require the use of the personal trainer, they have allowed me to put £200 from the original budget towards the cost of a hotel over the weekend. I could not be more grateful for this as it is a huge weight off my mind as I keep preparing for the event. :)

Anyway, details of today's run can be found below. For those that used to like laughing at my playlists, unfortunately these no longer pull through since I switched to using the Garmin watch, however I can confirm that the tunes were awesome as always! ;)

And finally, if you haven't already done so, please please please consider donating whatever you can to Save The Children though my Just Giving page link on the right. I still have a long way to go and every pound raised helps keep me going.

Kind Regards,
Jon.

Thank you.

The generosity of my company never ceases to amaze me! Huge thanks to Fay Murray for all her support.

today's activity

So, earlier I mentioned about going for a run using my new Garmin 410 GPS watch that my wife bought me for my birthday. It was a good steady run over a 15 mile course and although not my quickest effort (too much birthday food!) it was another milestone on the way to the London Marathon which is fast approaching!

Here is the output from Garmin Connect, which is quite frankly brilliant, and a lot more detailed than Endomondo Pro :)


As always, links to my Just Giving page are over on the right and anything you can spare to help me reach my sponsorship target is gratefully received for a superb charity!

Eight weeks to go now, so my training is stepping up a gear from tomorrow. Keep checking back for further updates!

Thanks for reading and don't forget to sponsor me!!

Jon.

8 weeks to go!

So last Friday was my birthday and my amazing wife got me this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Garmin-Forerunner-Sportswatch-Heart-Monitor/dp/B0046BTK14/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361092158&sr=8-1

I am so happy, this thing is superb. So, today i am going to try it out with a nice 15mile run to see how it performs.

The Garmin website also offers a training centre and has given me a full daily schedule for training for the last 8 weeks before the big day!

So I'm all sorted now, have the kit and the plan... just need to get it done :-)

Back later with the results of the run...

Jon.

Week 2 training catch up

Hi all,

This is a post that I started writing on Saturday but my computer crashed and I lost it all.

So to recap my week... very busy at work with trips to London and a two day conference/boot camp here in Harworth taking up a lot of my time.

So with that in mind, I hit the gym hard again on Saturday with a 3hr session involving a 10km run followed by core strength training before a quick 3km run to finish. Fair to say this was a hard session for me to complete but I felt brilliant after it.

However, I failed to take into account just how much this session took out of me as when I got home, I promptly fell asleep in the armchair and had one very unhappy wife to deal with afterwards :o( - sorry dear!

Still, the session did me good fitness wise, getting me back onto the path to success. I then followed that up with a steady 10mile run on the Sunday. I set myself a target of beating a previous time over this distance of 1h 53mins, however on this occasion I did not succeed, finishing in 1hr 59mins. I don't think that is so bad given the slow down of training over Xmas and the fact that I did such a heavy session at the gym the day before!! Gives me room to improve!

Anyway, I now only have 13wks left to the big day which is all too real. I have a training plan to stick to, so as the snow is now falling, I'll be moving that to the gym to keep it up.

If you haven't already, please visit the link on the right -> to my Just Giving page and please donate whatever you can. Save the Children is an excellent cause and well worthy of your hard earned cash. :o)

Thanks,
Jon.

Happy New Year

Well hello and welcome back, new year and a new starts with the training. By my own admission, December had been a pretty bad month training wise. Busy weeks at work and getting the house and kids prepped for Xmas pretty much swallowed up any free time I had :-(

However, as I realised yesterday, I now only have 14weeks left to the big day - eek with a capital E! So I really have to pick up the pace now and get this training moving along.

So with that in mind, today was my first gym visit of 2013! And boy was that a session to blow away the cobwebs! 2.5hrs of intense strength and cardio... feel very refreshed and more than a little tired! Tomorrow will see me attempt another 13mile run around the villages. Have to get my time down to something sensible!

On Friday I confirmed my participation in the Marathon and put my estimated completion time down at 4hrs 45mins. I would love to smash that if I can

As always, thanks for reading and please sponsor me through the links on the right.

Jon.