Running and I. We’re not best mates.
Regardless, I’m running a marathon.
In April 2016, I’m running the London Marathon in memory of Hannah Lindfield. You can read more about Hannah in my first post here.
Running and I.
You’d probably expect that having committed to running a marathon, I’d be some kind of running enthusiast. Unfortunately, no.
Here’s a brief, and abridged, history of my running career.
Obviously, as a kid, I did all the normal running. Running into furniture. Running down hills and falling on my face. Running around in circles in the playground for the sheer joy of it. Running away from the bigger kids. Running after the smaller kids. You know, childhood running.
Back then it wasn’t about fitness, or challenging yourself. It was about running because walking was rubbish. And slow. And you can’t take your bike to school (at least in Wales). So what else are you going to do on your lunch break?
But, with age, that joy fades.
At age 11 I fell out with my PE teacher.
He couldn’t understand why I refused to partake in running the 400m in his sports day warm-up session. I couldn’t understand why you’d run around a 400m track to end up back where you started. There’s no joy in that.
Why not just stand still?
We agreed to disagree.
I did play a lot of sport.
I played in goal for my school hockey team, at hooker for the rugby team and at centre in the O-Line for my University American Football team (DEMONS!). For those of you less familiar with the above, each of these positions require the least running in their respective sports.
In fact playing ‘centre’ in American Football requires you to toss a ball between your legs. And then try and push the fat bloke standing opposite you over. For about 5 seconds. Then you get a rest. (It’s great).
A half marathon or two.
It does get better from there. I’ve since run the Bath Half marathon twice. Hitting times of 2hrs 27 mins (2013) and 2 hrs 12 mins (2014). Not incredible times, but progress nonetheless. I remember reaching the end of both races and thinking:
Why?
How on earth people gather the motivation to run a Half Marathon twice back to back (without a years break in-between) seemed unfathomable.
To be clear, I dislike running. But you’d probably gathered that by now.
A challenge
Why run a marathon?
Well, it’s a challenge. Here are my motivations:
- A quarter century. I’m turning 25 in the run up to the 2016 London Marathon. That’s half way to fifty. Time to do something extreme.
- To make friends with running. As you can see, we’ve had our differences. If I’m going to run as much as I’ll need to to complete the 26 miles, we’d better stay friends post marathon.
- In memory of my cousin Hannah. She died last year aged 23, and faced many much harder challenges than running for a few hours. I’m raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital — who gave her incredible support.
A dream — by Hannah Lindfield
I am dreaming to shoot to the moon
What if I miss?
Can I be a star?
Preparing for London 2016
Over the 6 months between then and now I’ll be blogging about my progress and my relationship with running.
Up until now I’ve ran about once a week and cycle to work semi-regularly (a bit more since I got my marathon place). I wouldn’t class myself an athlete. In fact the NHS body mass index helpfully informs me that I’m overweight — so it looks like I’ve got some work to do.
I’m also a big fan of a couple of pairs of pints. So I’m trying to cut down on that. Apparently vodka has fewer calories.
Apparently.
You can follow my progress on Strava here.
You can follow my Medium Blog here.
Most importantly — please read about why I’m running and, if you can, please do donate to my charity Great Ormond Street Hospital here.
