Not Quite a Marathon... But please sponsor me!

So, my sinuses have continued on their mission to produce copious amounts of luminous green gunge. However, any thought of slacking off and not getting a few more miles covered went out of the window thanks to my inspiring friend Justine, who completed the London Marathon today (her first) in 3:57:42, despite struggling with injury for the last couple of months. Not only that, but she has also raised nearly £5000 for the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young, which I know is very close to her heart. An incredible achievement, and I hope you don't mind indulging me with a Strava map and photo that I am very jealous of..

If anyone is interested in Justine's story then her fundraising page is here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=justineshotton

Justine is not the only person I know whose family has been affected by sudden cardiac death, and this is a very worthy charity, so if you have a couple of pounds weighing down your wallet/purse then you know what to do.

Huge kudos to anybody else who ran in London today - in comparison my evening 10km was just a walk in the park! If you've been paying attention to my runs then you'll notice that I'm pretty boring as far as route-selection goes. Running the same loop appeals to my slight OCD tendencies and helps me a lot to pace a run, as I now know where all the kilometre splits come and exactly what is around the corner. I am aware that some people would find this approach intensely dull, but I think that one of the key things about training is finding a routine that suits you. If that involves trailblazing a new route on a regular basis then that's (literally) the way forward.

Anyway, thanks to the inspiration of those runners this morning I decided to laugh in the face (full) of mucus and trot out around my standard 10km loop. A couple of minutes faster than yesterday, but still quite a challenge given my bunged-up airways. It also appears that hay fever season has kicked in, which means that for the next few months my runs will all involve a decent amount of wheezing. Fortunately I have an inhaler which keeps things pretty well under control, and I'll mainly be concentrating on longer runs at slower pace this summer, but anybody who's experienced that feeling of a tight chest whilst running will know that it's not the nicest of feelings!

I'll be hoping to manage a few more runs this week before a long run next week whilst I'm on my annual spring visit to Torquay with the Old Hill/Wordsley bell ringers. By then this cold should be properly cleared and I can stride out a bit further than I've managed this weekend.

Finally, as I mentioned yesterday, I have changed my nominated charity to MacMillan Cancer Support - this was necessary because unfortunately Maggie's are not supporting entries to this particular race this year. Therefore, I switched to the other charity that Sam said had been helpful for them over the past few months since his diagnosis. There is now a sponsorship link to the right of this post and I'll be plugging this on the blog and via Facebook plenty over the next few months. If you would like to sponsor me then please visit my JustGiving page, any donation will be very welcome, no matter how big or small. I've also linked to the MacMillan homepage at the bottom right of the page, so do pay them a visit to find out more about what they do.

If you've made it this far, well done! Hope you've all had a great weekend and I'll be updating again soon.

Stephen