...in which I am proud of myself.
Yesterday (April 19th 2015) was the Greater Manchester Marathon, which I signed up to run in last September. I've been training for 6.5 months, 3 runs a week without fail (except for one period where I had a dodgy knee), plus at least 1 (and usually 2 or 3) visits to the gym a week.
Here's me before the race:
And here I am after with my daughter:
(Nobody ever calls me Christopher except my mother, but that's what they'd printed on the bib).
I completed the marathon in 3 hours, 46 minutes and 13 seconds; I had to take 2 loo breaks, so without those I would probably have been close to my target time of 3:30. I'm still really happy with my time - to get under 4 hours in a first marathon is a huge achievement (in fact just to finish a marathon is a huge achievement), and for someone that took nearly 3 hours to run a half marathon 4 years ago it shows a massive improvement in fitness.
I'll almost certainly sign up for next year's event too, to see if I can improve my time - the event was well organised (although they could definitely have done with more loos at the start!) and the support around the course was tremendous.
Lots of people have told me I should be proud of myself, and I am - I worked really hard with my training, and I feel like it really paid off.
But it wasn't all about me - the main point of this (apart from letting me show off a bit) was to raise money for the Isabelle Lottie foundation, which provides help and support for children and young people diagnosed with brain tumours. If you'd like to donate, please head over to my BT MyDonate page:
Thank you!
Chris.
