Amateur runner, fuelled by cake and real ale
Something very, very odd happened last month. Something that has literally never, ever happened before, and probably will never happen ever again. Something that left me feeling oddly elated, yet totally deflated at exactly the same time.
For the first time ever, the wheel landed on my number. I was in. I had a golden ticket. At long long last, a London ballot success. RideLondon wanted me, but this time I didn’t want them.
So there we are. Just look at the post title up there – we’ve done it. Following the completion of the RideLondon-Surrey 100 at the end of last month, we’ve now covered 1000 miles for motor neurone disease, and with events still to spare. A target we thought ridiculously over optimistic last November when we first began dreaming up this mad year of challenges is in the bag and we can all sit here and be extremely proud of the fact that we’ve achieved the aim of carrying ourselves through nothing more than human horsepower (and malt loaf) the equivalent of from Leamington Spa to Lake Garda. And best of all, we’ve raised nearly double our original target of £3000 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association.
It’s been quite a year.
It’s 8am and the four of us are in Whitehaven, stood in the early morning drizzle with the back wheels of our bicycles plonked in the Irish Sea. It’s gloomy, it’s dark. It’s a little bit chilly with a fairly ripe breeze on our backs. It most definitely does not feel like early July. The main event of our 1000 miles for MND challenge is about to start and none of us are remotely looking forward to what lies ahead. None of us can believe this day is actually here.
This Saturday morning four of us will dip the wheels of our bikes into the sea in Whitehaven on the western coast of England and attempt to pedal 140-odd miles to Sunderland before tea time on Sunday to do the same over there on the eastern coast.
The Stockton Duathlon on April 24th 2016 was the second event on our calendar and Jonny’s first, and with three participants alongside him it means following their successful completion of run / bike / run a fortnight or so ago we now stand at 111.4 miles, just under a tenth of our mammoth total in the bag. Here’s his story of how it all went.
Why we are all doing what it is that we are all doing The picture above is of two of my favourite men. I’ve known Jonny since 2003. We met at university, lived together after university and have spent several years after university sitting around talking absolute drivel to each other. I’ve known his Dad, Neil, almost…
Happy new year folks! So here we are again, it’s time for the now traditional start-of-year blog. Hitting all these well-worn subjects from years gone by: Hope you had a good Christmas The weather is rubbish The weather has been rubbish all Christmas I’m doing loads of running again Most of this has taken place in really, really rubbish weather…
It’s been a long time coming this one. One of the last personal ambitions left since starting this little blog up all those years ago: a two-wheeled century. 100 miles on a pushbike. I’ve blogged about it, I’ve worried about it, I’ve put it off, I’ve blogged about it again. I’ve been rejected by ballots,…
Now that the dust has settled on my whirlwind spin round Yorkshire, it’s time to look at the bigger picture. I’ve said a few times now: this is just the start of it. A warmup. Testing the water. Finding out a bit about myself. It’s all a bit like when I took my first steps…
After becoming a running idiot all the way back in 2007, I’ve now got 25 running events under my belt. And yet somehow I’ve always seemed to just about dodge any horrific weather while I’m out there racing. There’s been a few near misses along the way, don’t get me wrong; I live in the…
