First an announcement – my new fundraising target is £7,500! But why this particular figure? It’s my lucky number…of course not. This target is now directly linked with the NSPCC Childline service. I was shocked to find it costs them around £30,000 a DAY to run. Therefore my new target of £7,500 could pay to run the Childline for an average 6 hours. As Childline receives a call every 25 seconds, in 6 hours they could receive over 720 calls from children needing their help. I want to help them to be there for those children. Let’s do this!
The last few weeks haven’t exactly gone to plan. But this is all part of it right? First I became ill but just managed to keep up the running regime. I then noticed food was drastically effecting my energy levels in ways I’ve never experienced before and was feeling light headedness, shakiness in the hands, constantly feeling down and not wanting to do anything. After cutting sugars this still had no effect so I went off carbs for 4 days which, touch wood, has worked wonders! I’m now back on the carb train and feel relatively normal.
I’ve also had to go through a sports medical so work can give me the formal sign off and support me with the marketing of the event. I thought this would be relatively straight forward. But upon the GP listening to my heart they said they heard a murmur which should be checked out with an echocardiogram, which would’ve been fine if I had opted in for our works private medical insurance. I ended up having 4 GPs listen to my heart, with 2 saying they could hear a murmur, and the other two saying it sounded all gravy. With mixed reports I had two ECGs done. The first one showed abnormal QRS complex in V1 & 2 (enlarged right ventricle) but the second I was told looked normal. Fortunately work said they would pay for the echocardiogram and I’m happy to say I have a normal functioning heart! It was pretty interesting to see my heart beating…
And then the fear that’s always in the back of a runners mind, injury, played its hand (hopefully the only one it has during my challenge!). The classic ‘runners knee’ has caught me out by surprise (or maybe not with my pronation & collapsed arches…). I’ve been a week without running but I’m starting to feel it’s on the mend. I’ve seen 3 different physios, with the last one being the lead endurance physio for British Athletics, who ruled out any muscle/tendon/ligament/bone causes for the pain and has given some solid advice. Due to this slight issue, I’m rethinking my running strategy. Instead of the 25:5 minutes of running-walking, I’m now considering 15:15 to limit the strain on my knee/hip. There’s going to be more walking than I intended, but I got to keep in mind that I’m doing this for all the children NSPCC supports – run, walk or crawl I’ll do it for them!
On top of all this I’m in the process of buying my first property and tight deadlines at work which have all added to the fun – I’ve been viewing it as great mental training. I also had a funny instance where I ordered the Garmin Fenix 5 Plus (which I’m hoping will navigate me through the whole route with its Maps feature) but instead Amazon sent me 4 Max Factor Loose powder tins – maybe they want me to look my best while running?
Also, check out this great poster my Dad put together:
If anyone wants to join me, please check out my route and let me know. I will also be having a live tracker to make it easier for people to come join!