charity | Matt Gets Running

Bristol 10K 2011

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The Bristol 10K was my first race, this time last year. It’s a good, fun race, with a whole lot of people — 9,000 finished this year — and it’s right on my doorstep. It only takes me twenty minutes to get to the start line, and then we run right back past my flat and run out along the Portway, my default jogging route.

Last year I ran the whole way around with my friend Mike. This year I did it solo (though Mike met me at the end to take me for our now-traditional post-race Rocotillos milkshake!)

Running solo, and having done two half-marathons in the meantime, the race felt quite different from last year. For a start, I wasn’t the least bit nervous. Once you’ve done 21K a couple of times, a 10K is distinctly less intimidating.

It felt significantly easier, in fact, all the way around. I kept up a very steady pace, except for putting on a bit of speed here a couple of times to see what it felt like (not that sustainable, sadly!) And I just kept going, knowing I had plenty of distance in reserve, and enjoying the atmosphere.

And the costumes. The team (I’m guessing husband and wife) who jogged past as policeman and convict, joined with handcuffs; the “three amigos” with their sombreros and inflatable horses (mules?); the breasts bobbing along for breast cancer, and the Royal Engineers (I think), in uniform rather than costume, who did it with big heavy packs on. Crazy people.

On the downside, I don’t know whether it was lack of speed practice, lack of a running partner, or just the extra weight I’m carrying this time around, I came in at 01:11:15, which is 1 minute 47 slower than last year’s time. Still, that’s just motivation to train a bit harder for next year’s race!

On the upside, I’ve raised at least £135 for St. Peter’s Hospice, thanks to some generous donations from lovely people. Work will double that, so that’s a very decent £270 minimum for the hospice. Thank you, most excellent sponsors!

The next big race I’ve got planned will be the Bristol Half Marathon in September. I need to knuckle down and do some training and lose some weight for that! Maybe I can beat my personal best from the Bath Half…

I’ll leave you with a picture of my 10K medal, as it’s a really nice one — much more decorative than last year’s! I’m really building up quite a collection now…

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Run-Up to the 2011 Bristol 10K

It has not been a brilliant run-up to the Bristol 10K. I feel pretty good, mind you, and I’m sure there’ll be no problem doing it. But I’d had hopes of losing more weight (I’ve plateaued since I was ill a few weeks ago. I’m well now, just not back on the wagon.) And I should have run a bit more, recently.

I would say that things keep on getting in the way, but let’s face it, a quick practice run takes about 40 minutes, and I’m sure I’ve had more than 40 minutes of extra spare time in the last few weeks. I need to work on that, and figure out what’s going on. And practice getting back on the diet wagon when I fall off, too. Bah.

Anyway. The Bristol 10K. It’s this Sunday! I’ve just kicked off my donations page at Just Giving, which you can find here if you’d like to help the lovely people at St. Peter’s Hospice. And my day-job employers have very kindly agreed to match the money I raise, up to a maximum total of £250, so at the moment, anything you give counts double 🙂

My aims for this year? Well, I’d like to beat last year’s time. I’m not sure how realistic that is, as I don’t seem to have got much faster over the last year, but it’s good to have an aim, isn’t it? Last year’s time was 1 hour, 9 minutes and 28 seconds, so anything faster than that will probably make me happy.

I’ll almost certainly be running with RunKeeper, so you can track me as I go around, if you’re interested. I’ll be starting some time between 9:45 and 10am, and you should be able to see a red dot moving around a map of Bristol on my RunKeeper profile page between then and whenever I finally stagger over the finish line.

I’m sure I’ll post an update here after the event, so — more to follow on Sunday!

Charridy Update

A very heartfelt thanks to everyone who sponsored my Bath Half run. The RNLI are a great cause, and they need all the donations they can get.

All in all, you donated £120 at my Just Giving page. My employer kindly matched those donations, and with that, plus the Gift Aid that can be claimed back from UK personal tax payers, minus Just Giving’s 5% fee, I think the grand total for the RNLI works out at £252.75, which is fab!

As for me, I’ll be off for a jog this weekend, and will probably be posting about a Cunning Plan I have to lose some weight before the Bristol 10K rolls around in May, and about a related gadget I just bought…

“Thank you” image by woodleywonderworks, as created by Wordle.

Beating the Weather

I’m sitting in a café writing this blog entry, looking smugly out at the weather I would have been slogging wetly through if I’d gone out for my normal Sunday run.

It’s a typically British Spring selection of random sunshine, showers and hail out there, rotating about every five minutes. Nice. Luckily, I took a look out of the window yesterday, clocked the nice sunshine, and nipped out for a quick 5K then, instead. It was lovely and bright and mild yesterday, perfect jogging weather.

That was probably my last jog before Sunday’s half marathon, unless I particularly fancy a short evening run at some point this week. I’ll try to walk to work rather than take the boat as much as I can, though, just to keep the legs ticking over.

Looks like I’ve raised £40 for the RNLI already — thanks folks! — which isn’t bad in a couple of days. I shall throw some begging tweets and Facebook status updates out this week and see if I can get a few more donations before the day 🙂

How Not to Train for a Half Marathon

From recent experience, here are a few tips on how not to train for a half marathon:

Pick a half-marathon that’s run at the beginning of March. This makes sure you have to keep training through the freezing, dark winter months. The Bath Half Marathon is an ideal choice.
Pick an over-ambitious training plan that has you running three times a week, even on Boxing Day. Make sure it’s a group plan, using something like a RunKeeper FitnessClass, so you can see lots of other people sticking to the plan all over the world, while you’re failing dismally.
Get stressed out by the spectre of an approaching Christmas, with all the shopping and other worries that it entails. Also develop a niggling ache while running. This two annoyances combined should let you decide to take the whole of December off from running, which is clearly excellent training.
Take up drinking again just before winter, thus ensuring you write off a few Saturdays where you could otherwise be running by drinking too much the night before at various Christmas parties.
Speaking of Christmas, try putting on nearly a stone in weight by over-indulging in December and carrying on eating at that kind of level post-Christmas, too. Even though you wanted to lose weight before the half-marathon, not gain it.
Be sure to get ill a few times. If you can come down with a cold before Christmas, something gastric between Christmas and New Year, and then follow that by another bad cold in January, that’s about perfect.
Make sure you pick a year where it rains a lot at weekends, especially if your normal favourite route takes you along towpaths that flood easily, and through forest paths that turn into foot-deep mudbaths after a shower.
In February, if you arrange for your job to go crazy with reporting deadlines, and also get the auditors in to double-check everything you’ve done recently, that’s excellent icing on your cake of bad training.

Sigh.

On the plus side, despite this blog being quiet, I have managed to run a bit in the last few weeks. I’ve not been out in the evenings — running is so much easier in daylight! — but a couple of weekends ago I ran 7K, last weekend I ran 8K, and yesterday I ran 10K.

Well, I say “ran”; the first couple of weeks I had to stop for a couple of breathers and walk up the hill, because my late-January cold was still lingering on and affecting my breathing. But yesterday I made a conscious effort to jog, albeit very slowly, all the way up the big hill in Leigh Woods, and I felt a lot better for jogging a decent continuous distance.

Especially as it’s now only a couple of weeks to the Bath Half!

Speaking of which, I’ve just set up my Just Giving page, where you can sponsor me to help out my chosen charity, the RNLI. A very worthy cause, and I’m not just saying that because one of my university friends now helps to crew the Clovelly Lifeboat!

Finally! Santas!

Although this was only meant to be a 2K fun-run, actually getting to the start line felt more like a marathon. But finally, after finding a suit that actually fit me, and after the first attempt was called off due to ice, the Bristol Santas on the Run race for Children’s Hospice South West went ahead on Sunday.

It would have been a fairly surreal sight in December, with hundreds of Santas (and their little helpers) jogging around the harbourside — the route went through Millennium Square, across Pero’s Bridge and around the bit of harbour between the bridge and the Centre a couple of times, then back to the Lloyds Amphitheatre — but in late January it seemed extra-weird.

Still, plenty of the original entrants turned up to this re-arranged event, and paraded around to confused looks from passers-by. And lots of money will hopefully be raised for a worthy cause…

Here’s a picture of the start line, which gives you some idea of the spectacle 🙂

Santas on the Run 2010, Bristol (as run in January 2011!) — Santa Start Line

That was the only running I did over the weekend, and it was at least 3K shorter than a normal weekend run for me. But it was also my birthday weekend, and I was away from home for most of it, so I don’t feel too guilty. Having said that, I feel like I may have gone down with a cold now, so maybe I should have what opportunities I had to get out running.

Oh well. Hopefully I’ll be better by next weekend, and I can try a longer run to practice for the Bath Half…

Fatter than Santa

Photo on 2010-11-04 at 22.52.jpg When someone at work emailed me about Santas on the Run, it didn’t take me long to sign up. I mean, for only a tenner you get to run around Bristol city centre in a Santa costume with a bunch of other nutcases without actually being arrested. And you get to keep the Santa suit afterwards! Bargain!

Unfortunately, this decision ended up dinging my self-confidence. This evening I arrived home from work to find a parcel on the doorstep — it was the race pack from Santas on the Run. In it was their “adult” Santa Suit (no, nothing filthy, it’s just that the only size choices were “adult” and “child”.) And that’s where my problems started.

Because it turns out that running Santa Suits, like most other running clothing, are sized for fit, slim people.

I can’t even get the trousers all the way up my legs. There’s no way I can run in the thing. SAD FACE.

So, yeah, it’s official: I’m lardier than Santa. This made me really rather unhappy. It’s a bit of a bruise to your ego when a charity implies that you’re fatter than the world’s most famous jolly fat bloke. I could have cried. Well, okay, maybe not. But I could have sat down and eaten ice cream all evening with a forlorn look on my face.

Instead I went out and did some more walk/run training. Which I think is working, as I did 6K in 45 minutes, so around 7:30mins/kilometre, which is better than I usually do when I’m running all the way. (And as a bonus I hit the iTunes Genius and for once it generated me a fantastic running playlist, which I’ve now saved.) And I came back feeling a lot happier.

Anyway. When I get over the crushing disappointment of Santa Suitgate, maybe I’ll think of a way to still take part in this race. Although hiring a Santa suit that’s actually Santa sized might be going a bit too far for a 2K run…

Bristol Half Marathon 2010

Today’s half marathon — my first — went pretty well all round. I was a bit worried by the amount of rain I could hear before I set out, but it turned into occasional drizzle for the race, which is perfect jogging weather, really — no need to worry about overheating.

I kept jogging from the start line all the way around, with a few-minute interlude queuing for the toilet right at the end of the Portway section — this may be Too Much Information, but frankly I’ve always had a bit of a shy bladder, so weeing in the bushes as 10,000 other people jog past is quite difficult for me. Shame there weren’t more portaloos, really, I could have done without hanging around in a queue for as long as I did…

I felt fine through the whole Portway section, and only really started flagging when we got to around the eighth mile, at the start of Cumberland Road. I grabbed a Lucozade thingy from the helpful army people handing them out around there, though, and also ate half my Mule energy bar thing as I trogged down Cumberland Road and into town. I don’t know if that really helped — frankly I’m not keen to try a control experiment of doing another half marathon without them!

The city section was definitely the hardest. My thighs were starting to become a bid leaden, plus you have to jog within about half a mile of the finish line, but go past it and on a circuitous route around Queen Square, through Redcliffe and around Castle Park and back. That last hill up Wine Street was a bit of a killer.

Still, the good thing about the city section is that there are people here there and everywhere cheering you on, and reminding you that there’s only three miles left to go, then only two miles left to go, then finally you’re on the last mile and you know you’re going to finish.

I kept jogging all the way to the end, though I didn’t have anything left for a final burst of speed. It was all I could do to keep standing up, frankly.

I saw a few familiar faces, mostly from Twitter, on the way around, meeting @jorence on the way to the start, waving at @mikeotaylor on the way past the starting line, and apparently @parryphernalia saw me coming through the finish, though I was too intent on just keeping going without actually dying to notice… Apologies if you saw me and waved and I carried on oblivious; I was trying to stay vaguely aware of my surroundings, but it’s quite easy to descend into “tunnel vision” as you go along.

Looks like my time will be somewhere around three hours; my RunKeeper log suggests 3:03:38, but I did set it off a little in advance of hitting the starting line, so I can’t be sure whether I’ll be over or under 3 hours. But frankly, who cares? I just ran my first half marathon!

EDIT: whoo hoo! Just checked the website, and my official time is now in. I must have set my timer off a fair bit in advance of the start, as it turns out, as my time was… 02:53:43! So, comfortably under three hours, and I’m very happy indeed with that.

Of the non-Twitter people, the ones I was expecting to see didn’t let me down. My friends Mike and Jess were there near the finish to cheer me on, and picked me up afterwards to walk me up to Rocotillos and buy me one of their utterly deadly milkshakes — this time I had a cookie dough milkshake, extra thick, and I think that pretty much replaced all of the 2,362 calories I’d just burned off, according to the RunKeeper log.

So, a success all round! No injuries, no blisters. Some fairly serious aches, though. I’ve just emerged gingerly from a very long Radox bath, and I’ve taken tomorrow off work so I don’t have to do much more than lie around on a sofa watching telly, which is probably all I’ll be good for…

Thanks to everyone who sponsored me. Looks like I’ll end up raising more than £500 for Cancer Research, once my company matches the donations, which is fantastic.

Anyway. I just mentioned a sofa and a telly, didn’t I? Sounds like a good idea right now…

Half Marathon Countdown

So, I reckon it’s about five weeks until the Bristol Half Marathon.

*Gulp*.

So, please help motivate me to keep on running, no matter what the weather (and in the UK on the 5th September, let’s face it, it could be anything from a heatwave to a hailstorm) by sponsoring me to run for my chosen charity, Cancer Research UK:

All donations, big or small, gratefully appreciated. Thanks!

Pants in the Park

Ah, yes, the hottest day of the year. Just the time to get out into the sunshine at nearly noon and run 5 kilometres wearing y‑fronts. Oh yes. Although I do have a sneaking suspicion that the three laps of the bloody great field we ran around wasn’t quite 5K, but I don’t suppose it was far off.

Anyway, yes a different kind of Sunday run for me today, probably less far than I would normally run of a weekend, but also in much more blazing sunshine than I’d ever voluntarily venture out in. Despite the harshness, we got a fairly good turnout, and everyone managed it, even the intrepid older gent who came in last to a big cheer.

With the donations from my JustGiving page (thanks all!) and the money my company will pony up for me entering, I reckon I raised more than £100 for Prostate UK, which can’t be bad 🙂 I probably won’t be pestering anyone for donations until at least August now, when I’ll be starting fundraising for the half marathon. Which I very much hope is on a nice, cool, September day, preferably with a very light drizzle…