DID IT!

I finished!  In 5 hours 9 minutes..  About £1,500 total raised for the wonderful Katie Piper Foundation.

Tired but FINE.  Hard but FUN.

More later!

xxx

Not long to go!

This week I am back to running and positivity after (another!) short-lived bout of minor illness.  Of all the timing!  Seriously, marathon training is HARD and seems to do some funny things.

Fingers crossed for plain sailing between now and the 6th April.  Gulp.

In excellent news, my lovely friends at the Katie Piper Foundation sent me some nifty iron-on letters for my running top, so that people can cheer me on by name - woo!

Springtime running!

I have recently started a new job and things have been SO busy.  Amid all this, running in what is starting to feel like springtime has been a joy!

Evening runs are now so much lighter!  As are Saturday morning runs!  I was running this week and it occurred to me out of nowhere that I didn't have that bone-cold feeling and frozen hands and ears that have been the norm all winter.

Hoping this sunshine will power me through the last month before marathon time!  I'm optimistic.

Added to this optimism is the AMAZING sponsorship that I have amassed!  So many generous, wonderful people.  My sister is holding a bake sale at work to raise extra cash, as well.  I am totally convinced that running for such a great charity - and keeping everyone's incredible generosity in mind - is going to be a massive inspiration on race day.  (As well as all the good we're doing for the world.)

Hurrah for everything, basically.

Tin Rattling

I would like to preface this by saying I don’t expect you to sponsor me.  (I hope that would be obvious, but I want to make sure I’m being polite about this.)  However, you can if you would like: here.  I would be extremely grateful.  I hope that raising money for a charity that I really believe in will both do some good in the world and help me to make it around that 26.2-mile course.

I am very aware that sometimes it can feel as though we are being constantly bombarded with requests to be sponsored – for everything from a 5K walk to just not having a drink for a little while.  It gets ridiculous, particularly if you work in a big office or other workplace.

I feel that selecting the charities I choose to support is a very personal decision, and I don’t like people trying to pressure that decision.  In case you’re interested, I give small monthly donations to carefully chosen charities, but I am really happy to make one-off donations to people who are doing worthwhile things for great charities – so I hope you don’t mind me asking whether you would like to do the same.

I decided to run the Brighton Marathon for the Katie Piper Foundation because my mum does a lot of work with them.  This means that I have been to some of their events, met some of their team, and seen first-hand the great work that they do – something that feels very important to me.  I honestly wouldn’t have done this if it were for some arbitrary faceless charity, just because I quite fancy running a marathon.

KPF’s work, in a nutshell, is built around the ethos ‘making it easier to live with burns and scars’.  In practice, this means that the aims of the charity are to:

·      improve outcomes for burns survivors

·      deliver – directly or indirectly – intensive, comprehensive burns rehabilitation (post acute care discharge) in the UK

·      support burns survivors throughout their journey of recovery.

Katie is an inspiring woman, to say the least – you may recognise her from the documentaries she has made about both her story and the Foundation.  If you haven’t seen them, I recommend having a watch (should be free on the Channel 4 website, but I’m not sure how/if this works for my international friends).

It sounds fatuous, but many of us really take for granted how much easier life is when you look ‘normal’.  The Katie Piper Foundation’s work is really important and I am happy to do all I can to support it.  Running a marathon is quite a big deal for me and I hope that all my hard work will be worthwhile.

So, a quick recap…  You can find out more about the charity here.

And sponsor me (if you would like to) here.

Thanks very much for reading.