Final Stretch

The London Marathon is getting dangerously close now. All my excitement is turning into nervousness. As the big day approaches, I am making sure that I am get plenty of relaxation, eating plenty of carbohydrates (I love my pasta) and getting plenty of sleep.

Yesterday I attended the London Marathon Expo at the ExCeL Centre (whoops, that's tautology, I think the "Ce" in "ExCeL" stands for "centre" but don't quote me on that) just as I did last year. It was much the same - I came to register my place in the race, collect my running number (this year it's 33743 for those who wish to follow my progress on their diePhones or Blackcurrants or whatever gadgets the cool kids are using these days), collect my kit bag, and collect the chip that records my official finishing time. I also had my name printed on my running vest, so again, spectators on Sunday can cheer or jeer when they see me, whatever they prefer.

Running vest with my name on it.

There were hundreds of stands with different people selling different products, much of it all overpriced and rather unnecessary (certainly for the marathon as it's only a few days away and won't be of much use to me now) but each to their own, I guess.

Again, as I did last year, I helped myself to tons of freebies, and I made sure to wear a coat with deep pockets. I must have put dozens of sweets inside those pockets. They're not just any old sweets though - they are energy sweets, that help keep you going, and those will come in handy around 13 or 14 miles when fatigue begins to set in.



The fundraising has been going well. I've raised almost £1500 online so far (see http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/martinpampel) and the sweepstake that I did at work, in which my colleagues have to guess my finishing time, with £1 per guess, has raised about £110. Minus a prize of £26 from the kitty for the closest guess, that's roughly £80-£85, which is very impressive indeed, as there were about 80 participants, most of them making one guess. To be fair, a number of them had already sponsored me online, so I could not expect them to donate substantially more than they already had. Some colleagues decided to hedge their bets and make five guesses, which was great. Overall there's a lot of similar times there, obviously based on my previous finishing time of 4:47:47 and most of these guesses are roughly 1-30 minutes faster, which seems reasonable. A few have guessed completion times in the 3:30-3:50 region. I have to admire their confidence in me, but those times are somewhat unrealistic, though not exactly unattainable. I'm just grateful that they were good sports and happy to give a minute of their time and a pound of their money. A few colleagues (not so much colleagues, as I don't know their names but see them around) didn't want to participate and made a few poor excuses to try to get out of taking part, but they were very much in the minority. The rest of them were good sports.

The wheels are in motion for the charity quiz. I have got the hall booked, posters have been distributed, and the questions have been written by me and a friend. I wrote 100 questions, he wrote 100 questions, then we chose an equal number of the best ones that each of us had written for each round. It will be on the 13th May in a local hall in Manchester where I live when I'm not back in Essex to see the family, and I hope that the people that attend will have an enjoyable evening that is entertaining and informative. I have also planned a raffle. I've managed to get hold of some merchandise from work and a few complimentary tickets from businesses in town. I did try some bigger corporations in Manchester about the possibility of them being able to donate a prize that could be raffled off, but unfortunately they turned down my request. Still, if you don't ask, you don't get. I asked, and still didn't get. But hey, I tried.

Right, well, this is it. Time to consume some more pasta.

Cold War

How bloody annoying. I appear to have caught acute viral nasopharyngitis. AKA: The common cold. How utterly, incredibly annoying, so close to the marathon. The worst part of this is that I have absolutely no idea how I got the cold in the first place. Was it from training out in the cold? Was it from being in close proximity to a cold sufferer?

I'm hoping that I'll recover by Sunday, but I'm taking no chances. I've taken every possible action to try to get rid of the cold. Blowing my nose, wearing as many clothes as possible to sweat it out, overdosing on Ibuprofen and antihistamines, steam treatments, bowls of hot soup, mugs of hot Ribena, I'm even drinking tea. And I don't even like tea. It's just tepid brown water. I'd probably fail a drugs test, the amount of substances I've consumed.

Whether I have recovered by Sunday or not, I hope that it does not affect my performance. One thing that may well hinder me is the weather. I hear that rain has been forecast. I'm fairly prepared for this because the bulk of my training has been done up in Manchester, where, since I moved up there last year, I've had more rainy days than hot dinners. However, when I trained in the rain, I wore a jacket with a hood over my shirt. On Sunday I will be wearing a rather skimpy vest. I can't wear a jacket because if it's zipped up, my running number will be obscured (this is not allowed) and if it isn't zipped up, it will flap around as I run, and it will be severely distracting for me, and will get in the way of my fellow runners.
And when the race is over, if it has been raining the whole race through, I will probably have caught an even worse cold.



Training news, and I have done my last training run, so that brings the months of backbreaking pain and agony to a close. Time to rest my body parts for Sunday, as I'm not going to get any fitter than I already am. This is it now, the hard work is over. I just have to cross the start line, run twenty-six miles and cross the finish line. The end is near.



So, in terms of training and fundraising, everything is going OK. Can't complain. Well, I can, but I won't. I may have a cold but at least I'm not injured.

Where There's Willpower, There's A Way

We're well into April now and the London Marathon is just 12 days away. I've continued toning down the training, having done 12 miles on Sunday and I've currently raised over £1200 so far. I see a pattern of twelves emerging, oddly.

My further plans for fundraising are also underway and I should quite easily raise the required funds for the charity -- although it still looks unlikely I'll beat last year's amount of £3500, barring some sort of last-minute sponsorship from a generous anonymous millionaire, or unless the quiz and other fundraising activities bring in more money than expected. At least I have a fairly decent chance of beating last year's finishing time. I've put in a lot of hard work over the last six months and racked up a quite impressive 600 miles of training. As long as I stay uninjured, everything will be fine.

The physical preparation is done, now for the mental preparation. It's all in the mind, as they say. If my legs start to give up at 20 miles, hopefully sheer willpower and determination will see me through. Even if my body screams at me to stop, I will fight the desire to stop for a bit (I accept a small amount of walking might be necessary, but it's better than coming to a complete stop), and instead just focus on my goal of getting to end and beating last year's time. If I use my mind to push on through when the going gets tough, who knows what I can achieve?

Fundamental Fundraising

25 days to go! It's getting nearer now.
I've done all of my very long runs and am now starting to taper down the exercise. As the physical exertion has gone down, the donations have gone up and I have now raised over £1000. I don't think I'm going to beat last year's total of £3500 but the challenge is still to beat last year's finishing time of 4 hours, 47 minutes, which I don't think is beyond me. If my training is anything to go by, I should quite easily beat that time, unless I'm injured or the weather or day's conditions somehow hinder my performance.

My fundraising alternatives to getting people to visit the following page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/martinpampel
are coming to fruition. I'm in discussion with some local people about using a hall to host a quiz evening (a few weeks after the marathon - but that doesn't matter; as I will have hopefully completed the marathon, people might be more willing to part with their cash, knowing that I have already done what was needed to earn their money) and I have started a sweepstake at work, where my colleagues have to guess what my finishing time will be, and they are allowed as many guesses as they like, but it's £1 a guess, and whoever has the closest guess to my actual finishing time will win £26 - a pound a mile.

As for aches and pains - my feet are all right now, it's my knees that are currently sore. It seems that my body parts are, one by one, conspiring to stop me from running the marathon. Weirdly, I did my 20-mile run on Saturday afternoon, and I was fine when I finished, yet it was yesterday, Tuesday, when I started feeling an odd sensation in my knees, so it can't have been caused by the running, so maybe it'll go away as suddenly as it came about.

Pretty Taper

As of tomorrow, it will be thirty days and exactly one month to the London Marathon. So far, all is going well. I have had a few niggling little injury setbacks but have recovered from them, and am hoping that I remain injury-free for the rest of my training. At the weekend, I will do another long run of twenty miles, give or take, and from there, begin tapering - that is, running less and resting more. This is where I will be gradually winding down the training and doing fewer miles with each week, decreasing the total mileage by roughly 20% from the previous week. I will cut out any part of my training in which hills or major inclines are present, so as to avoid damaging my muscles.

I know it sounds ludicrous - why spend the last few weeks of marathon training by taking it easy? The idea is to let the body recover for the big race so that you (by which I mean I) will be in peak physical condition for the marathon and have plenty of energy and the muscles are able to repair themselves.

A lot of runners make the fatal (well, not literally fatal) mistake of not tapering. You need those last few weeks to give the body time to heal itself and store energy, and to recover physically and mentally from all the months of training. There's not much more you can do in the last few weeks if you have already spent the previous months training intensively. Why over-exert yourself, get injured and ruin everything?

So, once the weekend and the long run are over, I will be progressively slowing things down - not putting a stop to them altogether - just gradually easing up.

On With The Shoe

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I was considering buying a new pair of running shoes to replace my current pair that were still in good condition but probably needed replacing, just to be on the safe side. Yesterday I bought a new pair of running shoes from the same shop that I had bought my old pair, some 18 months ago. I felt the shop had given me some useful advice in buying my shoes last time and felt comfortable going back there again.

I tried on a few pairs of size nine running shoes from a variety of different brands but in the end, went for the Saucony (I don't know if it's pronounced Sau-KOH-nee, Sau-son-NEE, or Sau-SOH-nee; I've only ever seen that name written down, and the lady in the shop didn't know what the pronunciation was either).

My old Mizuno

My new Saucony

The new shoes were very comfortable and I noticed that they felt padded and were cushioning my feet more than my old ones, so clearly the padding had been significantly worn away in the older shoes. I ran for a few miles in the new shoes so as to wear into them. Haven't completely shaken off the slight foot injury that I picked up last week but it is improving. With only about forty days to go until the marathon, I am desperately trying to avoid getting injured this close to the race. So I need to compromise between doing my training and resting and taking it easy.

My shoes aren't the only piece of running gear that's new - I also received my running vest with my chosen charity's name on it. Here's a picture of me modelling it (excuse the hair, I've been meaning to get it cut - the hair on my head, that is):

Me sporting my running vest for this year's marathon.

I like the new vest. It has some nice, vibrant colours. A lovely blue, a pure white and a little bit of pink too. The pink is especially nice. Only a person as confident in his heterosexuality as I am can get away with wearing pink without people asking questions. Ahem. I liked the turquoise and yellow vest that I wore in last year's marathon. That was a lovely little number. I can't decide whether I prefer this year's vest or not, because they are both very nice vests. It's a size medium, which I thought was my size, but it appears to be a little bit big for me. Not a problem though. It will sag a little, and as a result, not touch my 'nippular area,' so I will be less likely to suffer from chafing and bleeding nipples during the marathon.


As the marathon draws nearer, the sponsorship money has been coming in. I have been telling anybody who'll listen about the marathon and reminding them about sponsorship, albeit with the subtlety of a brick through a plate-glass window. Most of them have kindly agreed to sponsor me. Indeed, some of them already have sponsored me now. I've raised over £700 - thanks to everybody for their kind donations. Other people are yet to sponsor me, including a few people I call close friends. One even emailed me to tell me that I had "a cheek" to ask him for sponsorship. I guess generosity has never been his strong point. I don't think he's opened his wallet since 1994. Didn't stop him from telling me that I should sponsor him for a 10k walk in May though.

Martin's Big Feat

Another foot-related pun in the title (I swear the titles are better than the actual material in the posts that follow).

The time has gone by since the last blog update and we are now in the month of March. There has been a slight amelioration in the quality of the weather and the temperature. I say "slight," it's barely noticeable up here where rainy days are ten a penny. I went for a run on Sunday afternoon, observing that the sun had come out, and being of the impression that the weather was pleasant and that it would be a good day. Unfortunately, it was deceptively sunny because it was still rather cold, and about 25 minutes into the run, it began to rain. Ten minutes after this, the rain stopped, the sun emerged from wherever it had temporarily disappeared, and dried up the wetness caused by the rain, and a little that had been caused by excessive sweating. So far, so good, and I continued my run. Six miles in, I decided to take a little detour and venture further North. I ran past Bury and into a small town called Walmersley. Just as I had completed the eighth mile, it began to rain again. Not in the same way as before, though - this was torrential rain, an absolute downpour. It was like the heavens had opened and some giant creature from above had decided to urinate on me continuously for half an hour. At the end of this constant soaking, I was thoroughly drenched, looking like a drowned kitten. Eventually the sun reappeared and I carried on running. That's the thing with weather. It doesn't matter whether the weather is sunny or rainy or even snowy during the marathon - you have to run it, whatever the weather is like. You can't let a bit of inclement weather defeat you. I'm not that easily defeated anyway. In fact, I think I prefer rain to excessive sunshine, as too much heat makes me dehydrate and sweat even more profusely.

Anyway, the run continued and the rain stayed away for the rest of the duration that I was outside. At some point, about 17 or 18 miles in, I began to feel a slight pain in the back of my foot. I carried on running because I was only a short distance from home, but once I arrived at my flat, the pain was more pronounced and it did start to hurt a bit. I rested my foot and gave it some ice treatment and kept it elevated, saw a physiotherapist the next day, who rather optimistically told me that my leg and foot were fine and that I could go for a run the very next day. I chose not to take his advice and rest the foot a bit longer, and decided this morning to do a "short" run of 5 miles. The run was fine. I did feel a slight twinge as I'm still in recovery, but no pain, so hopefully I'm on the mend. My feet are still attached to the end of my legs, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm OK. It might be time to replace my running shoes as I have got a good 800 miles or so out of them, possibly even 1000 miles, and perhaps that is the reason why my feet are feeling a bit tender occasionally. I can't see any major signs of wear and tear and I'm not entirely certain how often one should change their running shoes, as surely that depends on the person's weight and gait and the frequency and distance of their running.
Then again, perhaps my shoes are absolutely fine and not at all worn out, in which case I'd be spending £100 for nothing, but £100 on a new pair of running shoes is a better price to pay than £200 for some physiotherapy sessions if I get injured again. I'm not a skinflint, it's not the money. I'm just very attached to my current pair of trainers. They've been with me every step of the way of this journey. Quite literally. It will be hard to replace them. But there's no room for sentimentality. Time to get a new pair. Better to be safe than sorry.

No Train, No Pain

After a very cold last couple of weeks, the weather, and more importantly, the temperature, have slowly started to improve. The sun might even make an appearance soon. Perish the thought. In a few weeks' time, I might even be able to venture out on a run without having to wear gloves and a hat!

So far, the training is going well. I'm having to sacrifice more of my personal time to be able to fit in some of the running. I woke up at 6am on Tuesday morning to go for an eight-mile run. After that, I showered, dressed, and was straight out to work, and seemingly managed to stay on my feet and awake for the whole day. Now I have to find some time this weekend to fit in a 15-20 mile run. Quite frankly, after a hard week slaving away at the office, I could do with a rest at the weekend. At least I can find the motivation to get out of bed and do something, which is more than can be said for my flatmate who struggles to emerge from his pit before 3pm.

It is now just under two months to go until the London Marathon, and also just under 60 days, so the pressure is mounting. For most first-time runners, this is where the hard work really begins; the distances of the long runs get longer and longer. I already experienced this last year and have completed a few long runs over the last few weekends over the last couple of months. What concerns me most of all is that it is almost a year since I injured my achilles tendon and I am desperate not to get myself injured again this year. Each time I go out on a run, I wonder to myself "is this going to be the run where my knees give in and I finally lose the use of my legs?"
The sad fact is that after many weeks of rigorous training, there is every chance that I will end up carrying a slight niggling injury, but it's how I manage that slight injury that makes all the difference. As soon as I feel that something is wrong, I'll stop running and as soon as I feel the slightest of injuries, I'll rest. It's just difficult knowing what to do when a slight injury comes along because you want to rest it so that it gets better, but you also want to train, for fear that going too long without running will impede your progress. So I'll try and come to a good old-fashioned British compromise by not over-exerting myself, but still doing plenty of training. With the Marathon being less than two months away, it feels like it's coming ever closer, but yet still feels like a long way away - plenty of time in which to get myself injured. Sometimes I wish the Marathon could be taking place this weekend so that I can get the bloody thing over and done with. I feel ready enough to do the 26 miles (+ 385 yards) now if it were possible.

The Ice Age Cometh

It is February and it is cold. The big freeze is tightening its grip on the country and here where I am, it is very cold indeed. It is -3°C tonight, and although I only really understand temperature on the Fahrenheit scale, I am reliably informed that -3°C is extremely cold. Not quite as bad as the extreme cold weather they've been getting on the continent, but still very cold.

I was in London at the weekend and did a 15-mile run on Saturday. A few hours later, it started snowing. A few hours after that, we had several inches of snow. It disrupted my journey home from Central London that night. The Central Line on the London Underground was suspended because of the snowy conditions and I had to take a bus home, a journey that took at least two and a half hours. Then, when I got off at the nearest bus stop to me (a mile-and-a-half away from where I live), I approached the taxi office to book a taxi for the rest of the journey home, only to be told that there wouldn't be any taxis available for 90 minutes. Frustrated, I walked home, trudging through the snow. So I'm exceptionally annoyed that my evening was disrupted by the snow. The snow also inconvenienced me on my journey back to Manchester the next day, which seemingly took forever and a day. 

The snow has also hampered my running progress because a similar amount of snow fell up in Manchester too, and it still has not completely melted away. In fact, some parts of the pavement where I live up here are still icy and snow-covered. Even if there were no snow, the sub-zero temperatures alone are enough to discourage me from venturing out for a short run.

After waiting (im)patiently for a few days, I decided to brave the cold and the ice and go for a run after work. I did six-and-a-quarter miles, making sure to watch where I was going, so that I didn't slip on any icy patches on the pavement. Fortunately the conditions weren't as icy as I thought they would be. It was still freezing though, absolutely frostbite and pneumonia-inducing cold. Wearing two layers of clothing while out running made absolutely no difference whatsoever. I cannot wait until the month of March comes along and temperatures begin to rise again. Not too much, mind you. I can't run in sweltering hot weather. I just need a happy medium. Lukewarm temperatures. No rain, no snow, only a modicum of sun.

Writer's Blog

Hello again.

I meant to update sooner but had a few problems with this blog. About this time last week, I tried to visit the blog so that I could write another post, only to find that the entire blog had been deleted because of "unsuitable content." I have absolutely idea what was meant by that because I cannot for the life of me recall uploading anything to the site that wasn't a long ramble about my training activities. I suspect that somebody might have attempted to hack in and upload something pornographic, but I haven't seen any evidence of this. Very strange.

Anyway, to restore my blog to its former glory and get it back on the Interweb again, I had to follow a series of complex procedures and reset my password at least twice. Due to a complete and utter lack of imagination, I was going to choose "penis" as my password, but a message popped up saying "Sorry, your password isn't long enough." So I changed my password to something more suitable, but then just half an hour ago, when I was logging on to the blog, I couldn't remember what it was that I had changed my password to. As a result, I had to go through another elaborate and protracted process to change my password again and regain access to my blog. Now that I have got back into my blog, I've forgotten exactly what it was that I meant to write.

The main topics were along these lines:
1) I have begun touting for sponsorship and have raised nearly £300 now, with a little help from my friends, colleagues, cousins and an uncle. Thank you to everybody who has donated so far. If you would like to sponsor me, you may do so here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/martinpampel 
Any donation will be gratefully accepted, no matter how small.

2) I haven't come up with an idea yet for a fundraising event to supplement the sponsorship forms/online sponsorship page. I have been meaning to organise some sort of quiz night but haven't made any real effort to get this off the ground. Quite frankly, it's hard enough finding the time and energy to run several miles, but I will get round to doing it. I just need some encouragement and a few friends to also give a couple of hours of their time to help me out with it.

3) My training is going very well so far (famous last words!) and I ran twenty miles at the weekend. I am being careful not to overdo the exercise.

4) I think that's it.