Running to a marathon? by monkeymax

So I am now 39 days from the marathon and staring into the abyss.

So far I have completed my first ever off road Duathlon (horrific and painful and over 3 and a half hours long) I scraped a sub 45 10k and I have clocked up hundreds of miles in training (furthest being a slow 20 miler in 2:59). This Sunday sees me attempting the looping Finchley 20 and hopefully walking away happier than the last 20 miler.

I have hit highs and lows in my training this time, lows I've never before witnessed in running. I have felt severe fatigue and had to rest for days, had strange pains and injurys that appeared and dissappeared with no real reasoning.. but I know on April 15th I will complete this run. Along my journey I have also picked up some help in the unlikely form of a Facebook group. What started out as a group to rcord my training runs for Brighton has now become a support network that tell me to rest when I need to, recover when its best and even the best pace to be running training runs at. The Brighton Training Group is a group of like minded runners, all training towards running Brighton. Some are first timers, some chasing a PB and others that have been running longer than I've been around. As a group we have now bought bright blue wristbands emblazened with the group slogan BOSH (to BOSH is to achieve something over what you intended i.e. a great run will be described as '4 miles done -BOSH'). hoefully the bands will help me spot those who have helped so much in my preperation of this event.  

My fundraising is going well and I am currenlty just £350 off my first £1000 target. The Charity I am running for is now on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/sclerodermauk) and Twitter (@sclerodermauk). Please follow and spread the word.

Hopefully the next time I write here it will be to tell you of how great my marathon was, show off my medal and tell you about the next set of crazy races I have signed up to do.