After all, tomorrow is another marathon day

One more day to go! This is it, now. Third marathon in three consecutive years. All the hard work in training has been done, and it's up to me to put in a good performance tomorrow.

I attended the London Marathon Expo at ExCeL in the Docklands yesterday (as I did in previous years) and got my name printed onto my running vest, although the letters of "MARTIN" have come out slightly smaller than I would have liked. I spent most of the morning wandering around the Expo, looking at the various stalls and listening to people advertising marathons in other parts of the country or in other countries, and trying to sell me running equipment, energy food, etcetera that I didn't really want or need.

More and more people have sponsored me with the marathon getting closer and I should make my target now, and hopefully even exceed it. I set up another sweepstake at work, asking people to guess my finishing time in the marathon, for £1 per guess. Nearly 200 employees at the corporation took part, so a lot of money was raised! I have my quiz evening in two weeks' time and I expect to raise even more money then.

£200 in the money mug!

People have been asking me "are you going to beat your finishing time last year, Martin? Are you? Are you?" I don't know. I wasn't setting out to finish in a faster time. I just wanted to raise more money and take part again. Now I feel under pressure to be better than last year, and it's a pressure that I don't really want or need. The fundraising is more important to me, so if I perform better than last year, then great, but if not, I won't be too bothered about it. With the death of a 23-year-old runner in the Brighton Marathon last week, and the death of a young lady in last year's London Marathon, as well as the horrible events of last Monday's terrorist attack at the Boston Marathon, I think there are more important things to be worrying about than how quickly I finish, so it's good to have a sense of perspective.

One thing is for sure, I will endeavour to do my very best. So I would like to end by thanking all of my supporters and sponsors for their kind donations and good wishes. I would also like to wish my fellow runners (including my cousin Darren, my uncle Mark and his uncle Paul, who is again the oldest runner in this year's race at the age of 88) all the best for tomorrow, and hope that the event is a safe and enjoyable one for all participants and spectators.

My running number - 49914.
I am not a number, I am a free man!

You can follow my progress (or lack of) as my running number is 49914 and if you wish to sponsor me, my JustGiving page is here: http://www.justgiving.com/martinpampel

Boston bombing

The excitement of the upcoming London Marathon has turned into a period of shock, sadness and disbelief at recent events.

Yesterday, at around 14:50 local time, three people were killed and dozens injured in a twin bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Of the three murdered, one was an eight year-old boy called Martin.

Even though I was not in Boston and have never even been, and even though I only found out through watching the news last night, the story has shocked me to the very core. I just can't get my head around how this could happen at such an event, or anywhere else for that matter. Why anybody would want to bomb runners and spectators at a marathon is beyond me. I cannot for the life of me see any reasons. There's no military, financial or strategic reason to do this, so the only conclusion that I can jump to is that someone, or some people, simply wanted to kill and injure as many people as possible. Pointless, utterly senseless violence. Whether it is an act of domestic or foreign terrorism, or the work of an individual or a terrorist group remains to be seen, but I hope that the perpetrators are caught and duly punished.

The security measures for the London Marathon have always been stringent but I expect that they will be re-examined just to ensure that all participants and spectators on Sunday are completely safe. I am not worried and I have nothing to fear (in regard to terrorism anyway). I will feel no more or less safe than I did during the last two marathons, and I know that the police will do as brilliant a job in policing the event as they have every single year. The horrible news of yesterday has only made me more determined to start and finish the race on Sunday, as an act of defiance against the terrorist scum, and as a show of solidarity to our friends across the pond who have been affected by this atrocity.

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Twelve days to go until the London Marathon. I have completed the last of my long runs and started tapering down the exercise to allow me to recover and take it easy before the big day, so that my body is in peak condition.

My sponsorship has now exceeded £1000, I have attempted several runs in my green Whizz-Kidz vest, my friend Sam and I are in the process of organising a fundraising quiz evening, for which I have been able to obtain a number of very exciting and sought-after prizes, and I have also received my running number for the race - it's 49914. I am not sure what the numbers mean. I think they're either completely arbitrary or sorted by charity, but last year I was 33743 and in 2011 I was 46411.

In short, everything is coming along nicely as we head into the last few days before the Marathon. I am excited, although it is a nervous sort of anticipation. I will just do my best and just keep on running, even when my heart, head, legs and feet tell me to stop.

In the meantime, if you wish to sponsor me, here is the link to my JustGiving page: http://www.justgiving.com/martinpampel

April Come I Will

With less than a month to go until the London Marathon, things are really hotting up. Unlike the weather which remains colder than a witch's tit. Whatever that means. At any rate, coming back from a run, my nipples seem to be semi-permanently hard from the cold. I have never known it to be so cold this late into March. I hope that there is an increase in temperature in April and on Marathon Day. Even a slight increase would be welcome.

The long weekend runs have continued, averaging about 20 miles each weekend. This Sunday, I was "only" able to manage 17 miles. For some reason, I just didn't have the strength, and in hindsight, it was probably better that I called it a day and finished the run, rather than carry on and risk injuring myself. I made up for it by doing a longer-than-usual short run on Tuesday. All in all, I've run a total of more than 630 miles in my training for this marathon, which is more than I had trained at this point last year and the year before. These 630 miles make up roughly the distance between London and Milan. All in all, I think the total distance covered since I began training for my very first marathon is around 2000 miles - that would be roughly the distance between London and Beirut. Hopefully by mentioning Milan and Beirut in this paragraph, the Milan and Beirut tourist boards might offer me a free holiday?

The sponsorship is increasing, and I am now up to nearly £1000. It has definitely been harder raising the donations this time round but I am grateful for whatever I can get, sponsorship-wise. I have had a few donations from anonymous donors. If only there were some way of finding out who they were, so I could give them a big thank-you and shake their hand. The best way of giving is to give and not let others know that you have given, so I expect they're not in it for the thanks or the fame, just an act of genuine kindness.

We've seen a picture of me with the new running vest - here's a picture of me actually modelling it. If I may say so, I think green really suits me.

Jolly green runner

Vested Interest

Under six weeks to go and less than forty days now. The Marathon slowly creeps up on us.

The fundraising is showing signs of improving, and I have now exceeded a quarter of my target, thanks to some very generous sponsors. I haven't even had to resort to much emotional blackmail or anything. I have pulled out all the stops in attempting to get as much sponsorship as I can. I'm organising another quiz night in which I will also be writing and asking the questions. I have put up posters and sponsorship forms in the apartment building in which I live, and also on all the floors at work, though some humorless spoilsport keeps taking down the poster and form on the first floor. Must be someone I insulted in a previous job.

The training is still going very well, with another long run completed at the weekend. I thought I might have picked up a slight groin strain but my fears appear to be baseless and in fact, complete rubbish because I went for another run today with no ill effects. Even though we are now in the middle of March (not quite Spring yet - that'll be when it's the vernal equinox - March 20th) the temperatures have not really improved. It is still bitterly cold, and this is not helped by the especially chilly winds. I await the day when I can finally go out for a run without having to wear a jacket over my running shirt, but I shan't get my hopes up just yet.

From running shirt to running vest, I have just received my Whizz-Kidz vest from the charity. It's a lovely bright shade of green. Green is the new black, or so they say. At any rate, while I'm running the London Marathon in that little number, even my friends in Manchester should be able to see me.

Here's a little picture to whet your appetite.

I'm so vain, I probably think those pictures are of me.

I can run for miles and miles and miles

Just about fifty days until the London Marathon now.

In the whole of February, I have run more than a hundred miles, and this is more than I accumulated in February 2012 and in February 2011, so there’s no doubt about my ability to put in the extra effort.

I am not yet wavering in my motivation to go out on long runs or get out of bed at an insane hour to get a few miles in before going to work. A lot of other people would probably have tired of the endless running by this point, but I seem to have this uncanny knack of being able to focus on a task and see it through to the very end. My manager at work has commented on my admirable knuckling-down skills. I treat pretty much every task I do with the same level of determination and dedication.

Last weekend I was back in Essex, visiting family and friends. Went to a school friend’s stag party on the Saturday. There I indulged in the usual stag party “activities” and had a few drinks but not too many because after arriving home at 1am, I was out of bed again at 7am to do another long run at 9:30am. 

Virtually all of my training over the last three years I have done alone. Every step on every pavement, all by myself, alone with just my thoughts, and the only interaction I have with fellow human beings are when I pass some other runner or get shouted at by drivers to "watch where I'm f*cking going." That’s the kind of person I am, really. I prefer to run by myself at my own pace, with nobody to hold me back and slow me down, or speed past me and make me exhausted trying to catch up. However, last Sunday, I changed all that and decided to run with my uncle and cousin, both of whom are also running the London Marathon. 

It was nice to have a bit of company for a change, even though I did not run alongside them for most of the time because I was a fair bit faster than both of them. Whenever I ran past them, I would carry on to the end of the road and run back to where they were, run alongside them and carry on again. By doing this, I was able to run a total of 18 miles even though I had run on exactly the same streets as my uncle who had done 13.

We ran along the streets of Chingford and Woodford Green. All very pleasant, despite the cold, and a welcome change of scene. There was this very nice pond in Chingford, and I did three circuits of the pond. I could have run twenty miles if I had wanted to, just running round and round that pond. It's a rather nice little pond.  One can tire of running up and down the same old streets all the time. After a while, the streets just repeat themselves like the background to a cheaply made Hanna-Barbera cartoon, so it was a joy to run somewhere different. I would do it a bit more often but tend not to run to areas that I am not familiar with, just in case I get lost, so it was a good thing that I had some company.

I'm preparing for another long run this weekend. We're going into the month of March now, so this is where the runs get longer and more intense, before I start tapering down in April. Surprisingly, I haven't managed to injure myself again but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. This is my big problem, a slight lack of confidence in my own ability. Each time I go out for a run, I constantly worry to myself: "is this going to be the one where I get injured and my leg breaks/knee pops/foot falls off/I die?"

A run do

The date of the London Marathon is (very slowly) getting closer; it's sixty days away and we're coming up to two months to D-Day. Or should that be M-Day?

The training is still going well and in the last few weekends I have run twenty miles. Adding this to my short midweek runs, I have already totalled more than eighty miles this month alone. Providing I stay injury-free, I think I'm on course to challenge my personal best set in last year's marathon. Whether I beat it or not is anybody's guess.

My last long run was a nice one. I decided to shake things up and try a new route for once. After running the six miles to Bury, instead of turning back towards home, I continued on to a nice little town called Ramsbottom, another four miles in a northerly direction, before then heading back ten miles to my apartment, making a nice round twenty miles, all in all. Ramsbottom, now my favourite place name, second only to Cockfosters. I have never run to Cockfosters before, nor have I ever been there, but there's always a first time for everything.

The weather has started to improve a little. We've actually had sun for four days in a row, which means something is bound to go horribly wrong soon. A snowstorm, with 25 inches of snow probably. The temperature has started to get a little warmer as well, although it was freezing cold when I went for a run at 7am today, and stupidly forgot to wear gloves, which meant that by the time I returned to my flat after running seven miles, my fingers felt like they were frostbitten.

Fundraising is going well, albeit slowly. So far I have been sponsored by 13 donors, for an amount not far off £300, about 13% of my £2000 target. I hope I get more sponsors and I'm not stuck on 13 donors and 13% as I'm extremely superstitious. Probably means it'll take me 13 hours to finish the marathon.
Anyway, the amount raised - so far, so good, but it could be a bit more. After running this race twice before, my friends are probably fed up of having to sponsor me again. My running tales about running from Manchester to Bury and back again, or even the fact that I'm doing my third marathon in three years are no longer impressing anybody. Nobody cares. It's getting so that I'd have to run it backwards or naked, in order to get a bit of interest and appreciation for what I'm doing!
No, I am not doing the Marathon naked. Over my dead body. Then again, the ancient Greeks ran naked, and if it's good enough for the ancient Greeks, who gave us the Olympic Games, democracy, science, the theatre, architecture, sculpture, philosophy, among other things, then it's good enough for me. Although I'm not sure if the original marathon run from the Battle of Marathon to Athens by Pheidippides was done in the nude. Perhaps I could be the first.

If anybody reading this would like to sponsor me, please do so at: http://www.justgiving.com/martinpampel - don't do it for me, do it for the kids! Help a very worthy cause. Please. Think of the children.

Sore Spot

I have managed to complete several long runs in the last couple of weeks, largely thanks to my training programme not being interrupted by snow or injury. After running twenty miles yesterday, I am in pain. In fact, sheer agony, but I am not injured.

It is not my feet or knees that hurt, but my inner thighs, which are extremely sore from my shorts rubbing against my skin for the last two hours of the run. The friction has more or less scraped off some skin on my legs. In my three years of running, I have never had a chafing anywhere near as bad as this. The pain was horrendous, and it felt like someone was taking a cheese grater to my legs, and looking at the rash on my legs now, it does look like someone has attempted to shave me with a cheese grater.

They say a picture paints a thousand words, so hopefully this image will demonstrate the amount of pain that I am in:

Having a shower afterwards was pure torture and felt like I was washing my legs with sulphuric acid. Oddly though, given that it is a more common chafing complaint, my nipples are absolutely fine, no problems there.

My legs are still very sore and for most of today and last night, I have been walking slightly bow-legged. People will start to think I've got rickets or I've soiled myself. However, I'm prepared for next time as I went to the supermarket this morning and bought several tubs of Vaseline, ready to slather all over my legs and other sensitive areas.

Snow Excuse

Things have steadily improved with my training. Since my last update, I successfully completed a seventeen-mile run (albeit with a few stops along the way - taking nearly a month out injured meant I wasn't quite as fit as I could have been) and I'm happy to say that my feet seem to be fine and that I have (so far) not had a recurrence of that annoying foot injury.

No sooner had I got back into the swing of things with the training, then factors beyond my control threatened to derail everything. On Friday it snowed heavily, and even though it had stopped by Friday evening, it meant that the long run that I had planned for the weekend would be out of the question.

Perhaps I could have seen the snow as a blessing in disguise and used it as an opportunity to get some much-needed rest and relaxation, curling up in the foetal position in the warmth of my home, but no, not me. The glutton for punishment that I am, on Saturday I decided to go outside and run in the snow, in the biting cold. I was never going to exceed ten miles in that sort of weather, with that amount of snow on the ground, but I felt that any running was better than no running at all.

So, defying all common sense, and a number of comments such as "you must be bloody mad", "you'll slip over in that", and "don't say I didn't warn you", I put on my trainers and ran around my local park, where the snow was more than a couple of inches thick. There, I learned one important lesson: running through snow is not as easy as it looks. Sylvester Stallone made it appear perfectly simple when training in Rocky IV. For me, I felt more like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.

I managed six-and-a-half miles. It was an exhausting six-and-a-half miles, but in the snow, I was working much harder than I usually do. I had to raise my knees up higher, I had to move my ankles a bit more and it gave my body and joints a much-needed workout that I wouldn't get from the usual surfaces on which I run. I also had to be more cautious about slipping or tripping. As it was, I never once slipped. The snow that had just fallen acted as a nice shock absorber and I think my body felt all the better for that run, physically exhausting as it was.

Having "only" accomplished six-and-a-half miles on Saturday, I went out again for another run this morning. Over Saturday night and this morning, more snow had fallen. However, this snow had covered most of the pavements so I was able to run along the pavements without worrying about slipping on ice as there was a fair covering of snow. I again managed six-and-a-half miles, bringing my weekend total to thirteen miles, which is fairly close to what I would have liked to achieved in a single session, but two lots of six-and-a-half miles in the snow is good enough for me.

Hopefully the snow will have cleared up by next weekend so I can get some more "proper" running done. On the other hand, if there is freak weather in April when the Marathon comes, and it snows heavily the day before, then at least I will be adequately prepared to run in those conditions should that situation arise! Mind you, the organisers would probably just cancel the event...

Painful running, my foot!

I haven't updated in a while. How remiss of me.

There has not been much to talk about except that tomorrow will be 100 days until the big day (the London Marathon, not my wedding. Honestly, who'd want to marry me?)
In the meantime, I have gradually been increasing the distance on my long runs at the weekend and trying desperately to avoid getting myself injured. Again.

There was a setback in December when the big toe on my right foot began to hurt through all of the running. It happened during a 15-mile run but I did the sensible thing by resting my foot when I got home, elevating it, putting ice on it. Then all would be well, and I would go out for another run the following weekend. It would begin smoothly, only for the toe to start hurting and the pain to kick in after about two miles into the run. I would rest it again for another week, and run again the following week, with a nice pleasant start, only for the toe to start playing up again after only two miles. I just kept getting a pain in the foot each time I ran, despite resting for a week.

I realised the problem must be more serious than I thought, so I sought advice from my doctor and I  then (reluctantly) rested the foot for two weeks. That was the hardest thing ever, going two weeks without doing any running whatsoever. I felt so guilty for not exercising, emotionally beating myself up for my enforced laziness and feeling jealous of all my other friends who were running out in the freezing cold, while there I was, in my warm lounge, watching the telly with my foot up.

So, two weeks later, I was ready to run again. After a short three-mile run on a treadmill on Christmas Day, my feet did not feel any ill effects. After a four-mile run the very next day, there were again no adverse effects. Later that week, I did six miles, and the following weekend this went up to twelve miles, again, with no resultant pain. A bit of aching in the feet, but no actual pain. So after taking some time out through injury, I'm starting to get back on track. I'm a little bit worried that I've missed out on some vital training, but the worst thing to do would be to rush back into my training and try to make up for lost time - that'll only lead to injury again and I'd be right back to where I started from.

I guess it seems I'm not as fit as I used to be. Actually, let me correct myself. I am as fit as I used to be, in terms of my health and stamina. However, my body just doesn't seem to be able to stand up to this sort of punishment and my feet aching after every run is probably my body trying to tell me something. It's perhaps no wonder, really. Each run I do, my feet (even in well-cushioned shoes) are pounding down on the pavement thousands of times. It's about equal to the force of 20,000 atomic bombs being dropped. OK, it's not quite that strong, but seriously, there is a lot of pressure being put on these feet of mine, all the more so, given that this will be the third consecutive year in which I'm running the marathon. I may be running for a disabled children's charity, but if I'm not careful, it'll be me needing the wheelchair.