Hello campers how are we all? Good weekend? I don’t mind telling you I've had a busy, busy few days. Half-term is always delightfully exhausting, but I have also been working quite a bit too, which has been a terrible shock. As a result I am nursing a sore throat and croaky voice. My husband thinks it is a godsend, because I can’t really talk much. I’m pretty sure my kids agree, although they are being a little more sympathetic.

I am rather moodily blaming it on all the training I’ve been doing recently. I’ve been pounding the parks and streets so much, it’s reminding me of my training for the marathon. Long, lonely runs on crisp winter days, with only the iPod and The Alan Parsons Project for company. Honestly I’m making it sound way better than it actually is.... But when it isn’t hideously cold and when my legs and calfs in particular don’t ache, well it is strangely enjoyable, which is sort of how I feel about the Alan Parsons Project......

But having staggered up to 5 miles on my long runs now, I am bang on course for the Kingston 8.2 mile Breakfast Run and of course the big one, the Edinburgh Marathon.......... relay leg of 4.7 miles in May. I am looking forward to that immensely, especially the bit when I join the field at 21 or so miles with a spring in my step and a song in my heart, as everyone else is starting to feel knackered. At least that is the plan. In theory I should be much fresher than my running colleagues. But then again, speed is hardly my strong point and you are talking to the woman who was so famously passed by all four of the Wombles after just a few miles in London, as well as a giant pasty, two enormous speakers and a human centipede, all by the time I got to Tower Bridge.

But of course it's the taking part that counts here and it's all for a great cause. I am running for Help the Hospices again, just as I did for the London Marathon in 2005. And seeing as Lee Dixon and Les Ferdinand have been blogging so entertainingly about their fund-raising antics in tackling the Dallaglio Cycle Slam (Sport Relief and the Dallaglio Foundation will be the main beneficiaries), I thought it was high time I steered you to my Just Giving page too, which I created just last night. Anything gratefully received. I know I’m not doing the whole race this time, but there will be a team of ne’re do wells like myself, all sweating profusely to raise some money for people who could really use it. So come on, have a heart and throw us a few quid. I promise it will be much appreciated. Right I am off to errr do another run. No really I am. I think I might run all the way to the chemist and back for some throat lozenges.....