Plodding on

No excuses for carrying a bulky water bottle on races now.

The main news to report, and you know this already, is that my near final total (still a couple of stragglers to come, possibly) is £1,008.38. Not bad for an hour’s work. Many thanks once again to all (and indeed sundry) for stumping up their hard-earned cash.

Further proof of my participation can be found by going to http://www1.sportcam.net/site3/public/browse.php?event=673&competitor=cf0f3e96-4b3d-4d54-9428-9b3da3a6c7c3&mode=full. Not sure I’ll order any prints at their exorbitant prices but they make interesting viewing.

Speaking of cash, as we were a minute ago, this whole sponsorship thing is very tricky. Who do you ask? Can you hassle them? Why do some people ‘pledge’ by email rather than going directly to the website? I appreciate that sites such as justgiving.com have made the whole process much easier but I’m very glad that, following my ONE sponsorship run a year rule, I don’t have to go through the begging process again for another 6 months at least.

Nothing much has happened since the run about 10 days ago. The only exercise I’ve taken has been a fairly hot and immensely enjoyable game of indoor 5-a-side last Thursday. I was due to do a run on Saturday night but, having spent a day with the girls, returned home exhausted and fell asleep on the sofa just after Brian McBride (one of only three Fulham players representing the mighty whites at this years World Cup) got elbowed by an over eager Italian defender.

Hoping to get at least 30 minutes on the treadmill at work this afternoon as last night I increased my ‘organised runs to do by the end of 2006’ by 50%. I’ve now got 3 little beauties of varying scariness lined up. They are as follows:

http://www.thebritish10klondon.co.uk/

This is the British 10k run on Sunday 2nd July at 9.35am (please don’t let it be hot). The website will give you all the details you need. Currently doing it alone (although possibly with a neighbour) and my reason for doing it is very, very simple. I want to do a 10k without walking. I honestly don’t care if I do it in 1 hour or 1 hour 30 as long as I run (or plod) all the way round. It is however in under 2 weeks so I need to get back into training pretty damn soon hence treadmill this afternoon.

http://www.jpmorganchasecc.com/events.php?city_id=10

This is the JPMorganChase Corporate Challenge on Thursday 6th July at 6.45 pm which describes itself as a 5.6km run-walk in Battersea Park. I’m doing this with Garry, Anthony and Tim from work and for some reason we’ve all set ourselves target times. From memory their target times are something like 22, 23 and 24 minutes! Mine is 33 minutes which won’t be easy at all. Should be interesting.

http://www.humanrace.co.uk/festival/index.html

This final one is a bit scary. It’s an 8.2 mile race along Kingston on the morning of Sunday 8th October. In an example of running before you can plod I booked into this ages ago as I thought it would be a decent step up from the BUPA Capital 10k also giving me 4 months extra training. I’m now dreading it but have persuaded Mark H (in my mobile I have numbers for Mark A, Mark H, Mark N, Mark R, Mark S, Mark C and I thought John was a common name) and Alma to join me whilst Andrea and Neal will be doing the 16 mile version on the same morning. Nutters.