Odd Thomas Odd Blog

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone that has sponsored me so far. I have reached £150 through the sponsorship site and roughly £80 in verbal pledges, so we are slowly edging towards the £500 mark I hope to raise. Please feel free to send the link to the sponsorship page to people you know!

It was hard work last night, but I did manage to extend my running distance, even if I didn't improve on my time. According to the Google Maps Pedometer , I managed a total of 8.9 miles - that's taking a shorter, 4.45 mile route and running it twice, the second time in reverse. Lap 1: 0:40:04 Lap 2: 0:42:21 ---------------------------- Total time: 1:22:25 On that basis, if I was to continue for the full half-marathon length of 13.1 miles (around the same as running my new route 3 times), and take into account the slower time for the second circuit, I should complete the course in around 2:08:40, so there is hope for me yet to get in under 2 hours!! I just wish my knees weren't so sore.

Woohoo! Doubled the run length today in 1:11:27! Unfortunately, according to Google maps , the route is only 3.8 miles, which means I only managed 7.6 miles :-( Mind you, the Google maps was very useful in helping me find a new route of over 4 miles - will have to use it again for a long-distance weekend run!!

Okay, I'm having something of a motivation issue regarding the running! The week before last, I managed to get up to 6 miles again in 1 hour 2 minutes, but then this past week I have done nothing due to working ridiculous hours in order to try an meet a September deadline - not enough time for what I need to do. I was hoping to go out at the weekend and do an extra long run, but then A&J asked if I wanted to go to St Albans with them on Saturday: since I hadn't seen them for so long, I opted for this! We had a little wander through the park where I took a load of pics , and took a look round the market, before heading down to No.18, an excellent little snack bar down past the Peahen, on the right-hand side. I highly recommend paying a visit and sampling their paninis - certainly the best I've had to date: I've also been told that their milkshakes are something special, too. It could do with smartening up a bit, but I guess things are tight since they have only be...

Training for the Great North Run has been completely pants for the past couple of months. If its not working late, then its doing favours for people, updating the salsa website or, best of all, socialising, getting in the way of dragging my sweaty trainers out of the airing cupboard. In all fairness though, much of this is avoidance tactics - I've never really been one for expending large amounts of energy unecessarily! However, if anything can give a person focus and motivation, it's the realisation that people believe in you and expect you to achieve something. In my case, this came in the form of a £20 donation from one of the girls I used to work with. This is the biggest donation yet and something that I am more than grateful for, considering how tight money can be for students. The donation site now shows £55 in donations and £10 in pledges ... just £435 short of my target!!! According to the registration form I signed, I must raise a minimum of £350 but, like the...

Training seems to be going ok so far. The now regular swimming on Wednesday followed by a flatulence-driven jog home, salsa class on Thursday with a very quiet club - so quiet that Stanners showed the few of us left how to dance Bachata, which came in handy for First Friday the following night! Then Saturday a non-stop 4 mile run that took 38 minutes...and with very little wind! Back to work today and it was very quiet. The customer's new boys were both out so there was just two of us in the office; still ended up working nearly 10 hours though. Running and swimming again tonight but it was quite hard this time and I have figured out that it is the swimming that is building the wind up inside me, so running home tonight was painful. For some reason, I couldn't release any wind this time and by the time I got to the Dome roundabout I was the human equivalent of the Puffer Fish...I think that's as much imagery as you need for tonight!

In my push to train for the Great North Run - and my compulsiveness for sticking to a routine - I included a swim as part of my training last night. Only 1500m, so shorter than normal, but the running more than made up for it. 15 minutes to run to the pool, 45 minutes swimming and 35 minutes running home again. The slightly longer time can be put down to taking a longer route than last week so that I could get above the 4 mile mark, though I will need to check it in the car... Running to the pool made swimming very tough at first, as I found it very difficult to breathe when I started swimming. It wasn't until about the 30th length that my breathing improved, though my stroke was still crap! Similarly, running from the pool was hard at first as a different set of muscles had to get used to being used, but once they realised they didn't have a choice, I was soon jogging along quite happily. I think I am going to have to change my diet though. Soon after I started the retur...