we've come too far to give up who we are....

There's a documentary series - Hospital - on at the moment that was filmed at the beginning of this year at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. It follows the staff and patients of my local hospital as they struggle to cope with the demand of a particularly brutal winter. Watching it is an emotional experience: I get a surge of pride when I see what a wonderful institution the NHS is and how these dedicated staff are able to give the best possible care they can to every patient, but I also get very angry when I see the impact that decades of cuts are having on this service and how they compromise that care at every turn. They say that the more direct experience you have with the NHS, the more you appreciate it.... but it's heart-breaking to see the impossible decisions that doctors are forced to make when we simply don't have the resources to provide the right level of care.

This week followed a surgeon who specialised in head and neck cancers. He loves his job and had extended a six month posting to cover eighteen months, but he was working in a ridiculous short-staffed department of two surgeons (when there should have been four). With his wife already working as a plastic surgeon in the USA, he took the decision to give the department five months' notice that he was going to leave the UK and follow her. Although the NHS is a wonderful and precious thing, he said, in the USA he would have the time and resources to provide a better quality of care to a smaller number of patients. What he didn't say was that this care would only be provided to those with the insurance to be able to pay for that care... which, for all of its failings, is not true of the NHS, even if it's what some of our politicians seem hell-bent on delivering for us.

During the course of this week's programme, we watched this same consultant being asked by the camera team if a delay to surgery to one lady had played a role in her cancer becoming inoperable. Conscious that he was being filmed, he picked his words carefully: well, it's difficult to say for sure and absolutely impossible to prove... but if someone had told me that this is how my mother had been treated, I would be very angry. Enough said, I think. The lady herself was heartbreakingly phlegmatic: "I'm old, I've had a good life, done everything I wanted to do and been to every part of the world I've ever wanted to visit...". I was in pieces watching this on my sofa.

As chance would have it, I was in QMC myself this morning. I stopped injecting Avonex after the possible allergic reaction that I had in January, so this was an appointment to check in with the MS Nurses and the consultant neurologist to decide what we do next. A trip to the MS Clinic is sobering: as I walk into the clinic, I look around the waiting room and see people with walking sticks and wheelchairs. This morning, one lady arrived in an electric wheelchair, accompanied by her carer. She had a big head support that held her head in place, and when she tried to speak to the nurse, she was only able to communicate with moans and grunts rather than actual words. I try not to think about it very hard, but this is what the future might look like for anyone with multiple sclerosis. Meanwhile, I was warmly greeted by the consultant with a cheery "Ah, it's the patient who runs marathons!" I'm a fairly unexceptional runner, but I certainly stand out here.  (My wife would also probably like me to point out at this point that the consultant then apologised to her for not remembering this, but she looked athletic, so was she a runner too? She was thrilled. If an eminent medical professional thinks you look athletic, then.... well, you must be.. right?)

As we left, C. asked me how I felt. I've got a few decisions to make about whether I want to resume my injections, or if I want to continue taking nothing and six monthly MRI scans to check that my disease is continuing to progress as slowly as it has seemed to for the last ten years. Do I want to go back onto the treatment I've been using for the last ten years, or do I want to roll the dice?  It's a tough one.

But how do I feel? Honestly? Well I don't know if I know the answer, or if there are any right answers here, but how do I feel?  Lucky.

I feel lucky.

I'm running the London marathon in a couple of weeks; I'll also be running the Liverpool marathon in May too. We're raising money for the MS Trust. At my appointment today, the nurse who saw me was trained and partially funded by the MS Trust; the leaflets that we were given to take away to help with our decisions are written and produced by the MS Trust. This small charity provides a crucial support to the medical teams that support patients with MS, and they provide support and information to the families of people affected by the disease. I'm so proud that I'm able to do something to help them continue their work and to continue to support the NHS and people with MS.

You can sponsor us here!  The money that you good people have donated so far will make a massive difference to the lives of people with MS and their families.  No one should have to go through this alone.

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/TCK

latch on to the affirmative....

As you might imagine, I've connected with the MS Trust on Facebook.  It seemed a natural thing to do, given that they're an excellent charity and we fundraise for them.  I was thinking that maybe I'd get some updates on the charity's latest work and other news about the various research and breakthroughs that are happening in the world of MS.  I get all of that, but what I wasn't really ready for was the community.

Facebook is many things - not least of which is that it is an appalling time sucker - but one of the things that it is best at is bringing communities of people together.  Whether it's a loose grouping of friends who are scattered around the country and around the world, or whether it's your local parkrun or whatever.... it provides a simple, accessible way to be in contact with lots of like-minded people. To give an example, I really enjoy being a member of the Virtual Runner UK group.  Although formed mainly as a platform for people to discuss the Virtual Runs they've entered - something that I don't really do all that often and only started because it's a local company and have supported the charities of several of my friends, including my own - but it's grown into something much more than that.  In the main, the people drawn to virtual runs are the kind of people who are just getting into running and want to earn medals but are intimidated by the idea of entering an actual race. What the community has grown into is a hugely supportive group of people who are encouraging other people as they take their first steps into a healthier lifestyle.  I think it's brilliant.

In theory, the MS Trust community is something similar: a group of people who have a shared experience and are able to offer each other support and perhaps to share the benefit of their own experiences.  I know from experience that being diagnosed with MS can be a long and frightening process, and it can be very reassuring to talk to other people who have been through the same thing and can tell you that life still goes on.

....except that the problem with this particular community is that, if you believe what you read posted here, it seems like life doesn't go on and that, if it does, it really isn't worth living.  Here's a recent post: "I don't think I want a driverless car. Most of my body seems to be driverless and unresponsive now so the only time I can shift is with my right foot on the Go pedal in the car. I don't want to be deprived of that ability to control moving about as well".  Is it me, or has she really had to reach for the negative there?

I've talked on here before about how there's an unfortunate tendency for blogs on MS to turn into pity parties.  Whilst I understand that what people choose to write about isn't necessarily their whole experience and that it can be therapeutic to just let it all out as a form of primal scream therapy... frankly, I don't have much patience for it.  What good does it do you to wallow?  In the final analysis, what's important is what you have, not what you've lost, isn't it? None of us have any control over this illness and mourning a life you can no longer lead just seems to me like a massive waste of the time you have left.  I don't mind people talking about their own experiences, but it drives me crazy when it all degenerates into a kind of "oh, poor me" or a "nobody knows the troubles I've seen" competition. Let's be clear: in that competition there are only losers.

I realise that I'm wide open to people dismissing my opinion on this as irrelevant: it's easy for me to have that attitude when I'm still able to run marathons, isn't it?  ("There's always someone like you who can run marathons or climb mountains.  I can't even get out of my front door", as someone once sneered at me).  There's clearly an element of truth in that, but you have a choice, don't you?  You can choose to be positive and to try and live your life with what you've got, or you can choose to be negative and to wallow in the injustice of what you've lost.  When I read the "29 things that only people with MS will understand", I genuinely don't understand why everyone else is commenting things like "So true, so true", when all I can wonder is why these people are defining themselves with these labels.  I like to think that, if things were ever to get worse for me, that I'd cut my cloth according to my circumstances and try to make the best of it.

Hopefully, I'll never have to find out.

...but the MS Trust group is awash with negativity.  Even when people are asking relatively benign questions and posting links ("What do you think of this?" and so on), the comments are often miserable and small-minded.  Someone actually posted the other day asking for people to try and be positive and to share something nice that had happened in their lives, and all he got in return was people telling him they couldn't because nothing nice had happened in their lives.  Really?  Oh come on.  It then degenerated into people slagging off the people who did post nice things.

If you ever see me commenting "So true" underneath a meme like any of these, please find me and slap me.  Even if any of these things are part of your experience, they're not true all of the time, are they?  This last one?  I fall over when I run, but I pick myself back up and I keep on running.

Isn't that how any of us should try and live our lives?

As the song says:

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom, down to the minimum
Otherwise pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

can I get an amen?

our work is never over...

Today marks the start of MS Awareness Week.



The MS Trust has an ambition to make sure that everyone with multiple sclerosis in the UK has access to an MS nurse.  As they explain on their website:

"MS specialist nurses are vital for people living with MS. They can help them adjust to diagnosis, consider complicated treatment options, manage a wide range of symptoms and learn to live well with an unpredictable, often debilitating, lifelong condition.

"Without MS nurses, people with MS may have to manage difficult symptoms alone. They may also have to rely on expensive emergency care when their symptoms get worse.

"MS Trust research into nursing levels across the UK has found around two-thirds of the 108,000 people with MS in the UK live in areas where there aren’t enough MS nurses."

I'm lucky enough to have access to MS nurses in Nottingham. In fact, these nurses have provided me with more care and attention than the neurologists that I see. It was an MS nurse who taught me how to inject; it was an MS nurse who provided me with access to physiotherapy and orthotics to help me keep running; it was an MS nurse who provided me with the letter that enabled me to convince a doctor in Australia to pass me fit to dive in a dive medical in Cairns (he wasn't sure, but Maxine telling him that everything would be fine made all the difference.  I sent her a postcard from the Great Barrier Reef that she still mentions from time to time).  Above all, it's the MS nurses who are my first phonecall if anything happens and who provide my access to the NHS.  They're wonderful, and I was shocked when I heard that my younger brother didn't have access to an MS nurse where he used to live in Northamptonshire and was instead forced to deal directly with drugs company funded nurses.

That's not cool.

The MS Trust is a brilliant charity, and providing everyone with MS in the UK access to an MS nurse is a fantastic ambition... more than that, it's an ambition that I'm keen to support.

So....

Exactly 365 days ago, C. and I ran the London Marathon for the second time to raise money for the MS Trust. Between the marathon in 2015 and the one last year, we raised something in excess of £20,000. That's not too shabby and helps a very worthwhile charity make a real difference to the lives of people with MS.

We've had a year off fundraising and off marathons this year, and I've had a few problems with my legs that have affected my running and the way I feel about my running.  But you know what? I want a target and I want to make a difference... so we're going to run the London marathon again in 2018 (if the MS Trust will have us, obviously.  Even if we get in on the ballot, we'll still be fundraising).

I ran 2015 side-by-side with my wife, but crossed the finish line knowing that I wanted to run it on my own.  I ran 40 minutes faster in 2016, but I've got very little desire to push my body that hard this time around.  Things have changed physically for me, and I want to take on this challenge to prove to myself one more time that I've got the mental strength to complete another marathon.... running again with my wife, if she'll put up with me.  I only have to look around the waiting room at an MS clinic to know how lucky I am. My legs might be a bit weird at the moment, but I'm running a half marathon this coming weekend and I know I still have a lot to be thankful for.  I want to use some of that to try and raise some money that will really make a difference to the lives of people diagnosed with this horrible bloody condition.

I think this one might be emotional.

#strongerthanMS #364daystogo

angel is a centrefold...

As well as my legs feeling a bit weird over the last few weeks, I had a late night yesterday and as a consequence was absolutely shattered all day today.  I injected on Tuesday night as normal and Wednesday morning was one of those days where I woke up feeling as though a giant invisible hand was pushing me back into the mattress.  The day was a bit of a struggle, but because I'm stubborn, I attended the first of the season's interval sessions at the Embankment that evening.  I didn't feel great then and the late night just finished me off.  I didn't even really do anything too exciting and actually ended the evening at about 1am sitting on my kitchen floor trying to work out why my newly installed bicycle tyre looked wonky.... but it's been a long week and I paid the price for my exertions today.

Rock and roll, eh?

As you know, running is the one thing that really makes me feel like I'm sticking two fingers up to my MS.  I may not be moving as far or as fast as I would like, but the very fact that I'm moving at all makes me feel better about myself.  I was planning on attending tonight's interval session at the track run by that athletics club I joined a couple of months ago.  I always feel a little bit out of my depth and like an imposter, but I'm also usually very glad that I went (once the session is over, of course!)

This evening, I reluctantly decided that I should probably give it a miss.  I like to think that I can push through fatigue most of the time, but I've been head-swimmingly, bone-achingly tired all day and just didn't think it was a good idea... especially since my fall the other day.

Naturally, my masochistic streak now means that I just feel lazy and weak for not going. My urge to punish myself is strong indeed.

Still, to cheer me up, I received a leaflet through the post today from the MS Trust.

I've always felt as though I had unexplored potential as a page three pinup and, at last, my dream has become a reality!

(...and please also note my wife's backside making a guest appearance stage left)

I'm fairly sure that this will soon be a collector's item, so my advice would be to grab hold of a copy as soon as you can. Available in all good hospitals and MS Clinics across the land.

If you feel that the value of this publication could be greatly enhanced by a signature, then I will be more than happy to oblige. If you ask her nicely, my wife might also scrawl her name across her delightfully betutu-d derrière for you too.

And she might sign the picture too.

centerfold...

I've had some post from the MS Trust.

It's a little pamphlet suggesting ways that you can raise money to support what is a very worth charity indeed.  My wife is a trustee now, you know. There's a Survival skills weekend, a Grand Canyon Trek, an Alps Trek, an Iceland Trek, a Sahara Trek, a Great Wall of China Trek, a Kilimanjaro Trek... lots of Treks.

Don't fancy that? How about cycling? You can cycle London to Paris, the Prudential Ride London-Surrey 100, London to Brighton, the MS Circuit Challenge at Goodwood.

No? How about skydiving, a reindeer rally, attending a massive garden party, baking a cake for a Christmas Cake Off or maybe just painting yourself blue?  It's all here.

What about running?  Well,  let's see: you can do the British 10k London Run, the Great North Run.....

....oh, wait a minute.... what's this?

Oh man.  That guy gets everywhere.

But you know, there's a reminder in the back of the booklet about why we do these things:

"Because we receive no government funding, we rely on our supporters to fund our vital work.  People like you, who donate or take part in events like the ones in this brochure, contribute one third of our total income.  All the pennies, all the pounds you collect by running, cycling, partying or baking, really add up.

"The funds you raise will make a difference today for people living with MS.  You could help fund a new MS nurse for people who are currently having to manage MS alone.

"You could help train and support every MS specialist nurse in the UK to make a difference for hundreds of thousands of people with MS.

"And you could help to make sure that there's reliable, trustworthy information available to help everyone with MS make decisions that are right for them."

And as Lucy says here, you have a chance to prove that love for life can prevail over illness.

More power to them, I say.  All of the runners, cyclists, trekkers, bakers, jumpers.... the whole damn lot of them.

I won't do what you tell me...

#oneinamillion

Last Sunday, along with around 39,000 other people, I ran the London Marathon. 26.2 miles is a distance that demands respect and requires months of mental and physical preparation. Every single person who finishes a marathon has achieved something extraordinary.

I’m not like other runners. I have multiple sclerosis and I have lost 15% of the muscle on the left-hand side of my body and much of the flexibility in my left ankle. When I run, this weakness puts pressure through my knee and my hip; the left side of my body drops as I get tired; I begin to scuff my foot as I take a stride, sometimes resulting in falls. To combat this, and to keep running, I wear an ankle cuff with an elastic tether that hooks into my shoe to try to prevent my foot dropping. I certainly have fewer tumbles when I wear it, but the cuff scars my ankle as I run and the transferred pressure onto my foot often leaves me with pressure sores and blisters. A widespread loss of sensation across my body means that I can’t feel my feet and suffer from a dislocating numbness in the muscles of my thighs. I run with a distinct lurch as my body tries to protect my weaker side and I have to grit my teeth to fight off a fatigue that goes beyond tired muscles; I wake up in the night as the muscles in my legs spasm and cramp.

Frankly, it’s amazing that I can run at all, never mind finish a marathon. Why do I do it? Because every run I complete is sticking two fingers up to this horrible condition; proof that I might have a progressive neurological condition with no cure, but that I haven’t let it beat me.

I’m not dead yet.

I’m not a fool and I know what this disease can do. I’ve been in enough MS clinics to see the walking sticks and the wheelchairs and to know that I’ve been distinctly lucky so far. To many people with MS, a marathon is an impossibility. To some, it’s a triumph just to get out of the house. Together with my wife, I’ve raised nearly £12,500 for the MS Trust this year. That’s a humbling amount of money that will make a massive difference to the lives of people affected by MS. As well as running this marathon for myself, I run for them.

Take that, multiple sclerosis.

Thanks for being part of our journey at the 2016 Virgin London Marathon.

You can still sponsor us here: http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

this is why...

The MS Trust tweeted about me today, and I just got an anonymous donation on our page just now with the message, "I can't run to catch the bus, glad you can and you are doing this for us. Good luck.".

That basically just made me burst into tears because that really brings it home. Fundraising is a truly humbling experience on almost every level. If I ever needed any motivation to get through the miles, then this is it. It also gives me good reason to be thankful that I'm still physically capable of doing this at all.

Thank you, everyone, for all these donations. It really does make a difference to the lives of people who suffer from this horrible condition.

Please keep them coming. 32 days to go.

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

have no fear, the camera is here....

Exciting news!  The London Marathon website have unveiled the four bloggers who will be officially writing for them in the run-up to this year's race:

"Meet the runners who will be sharing their training journey to the start line on Sunday 24 April in a regular blog. Follow their journeys as they complete their training and look ahead to race day as they each plot their course to hitting their goals in London! From the high of a new training PB to the low of a missed run due to illness or injury, training for a marathon is never easy, but it’s immensely rewarding, so don’t forget to support and follow our runners every step of the way".

Hey....wait a minute!  One of those ugly mugs looks familiar.  Him in the blue tutu and MS Trust running vest.

What's he got to say for himself?

Age: 41
Location: Nottingham
Occupation: Activity Planning Manager
Running history: I hated running at school, but somehow got the bug as I got older and now run 5 days a week and about 1000 miles a year. My younger self would probably hate me, especially as I run instead of having lie-ins these days. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009, but this has made me more determined than ever to keep running because I'm stubborn and refuse to be beaten.
Target: To enjoy myself all the way around and to raise as much money as I can for the MS Trust
Loves... cake, pie and beer. Maybe this is the other reason I run so much....

41? Well, that's a bloody lie for starters!

Well, his first blog has been published.  To be honest, with 33 days to go, it's a little bit late to be following him every step of the way through training, but better late than never, eh?

I'll copy it down here, but I suppose you can always go and look at it in-situ for yourself, if you like.

--

My name is Tim and I’m a runner. I haven’t always considered myself a runner and it still seems odd to say it out loud now, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to deny. I loathed cross-country runs at school and used to walk as often as I thought I could get away with it.

And yet, here I am about to run my second ever marathon and my second in London. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to run one marathon could be regarded as unfortunate, but to run two looks like carelessness.

Completing a marathon is an achievement for anybody: 26.2 miles is a distance that demands respect and should never be undertaken lightly. To be perfectly honest, a marathon is something that I thought would be completely beyond me. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009 after first developing symptoms in 2005. It’s an unpredictable disease that affects everyone differently, but for me it mainly brought pins and needles, fatigue, numbness and a loss of muscle strength in the left-hand side of my body. I thought I might have to give up running for good in 2013 as I picked up a succession of injuries in the hip, knee and foot on my left side - injuries that were all caused by that underlying weakness.

Fast forward to April 2015, and I was lining up on Blackheath to run my first ever marathon. How on earth did I get there? Well, freakish luck in getting a ballot place at my first attempt aside, we can probably chalk it up to a combination of determination, a stubborn refusal to give in and let the damn disease beat me and the support of lots of wonderful people in my running life, not least my amazing wife, who ran the whole marathon and almost every step of the training by my side.

I know how lucky I am: at every MS clinic I attend, I see people in the waiting room at the hospital with their walking sticks and their wheelchairs. I know exactly what kind of damage this disease can wreak to a person’s body and to their life. No one can say for sure if any of these things lie in my future, but knowing what could happen makes me doubly determined to wring every last drop out of life and to push myself as hard as I can for as long as I can. I’m also determined to raise as much money as I can through my running to support a charity very close to my heart: The MS Trust. https://www.mstrust.org.uk/

Training hasn’t been easy this year, but I know that every mile I run and every penny I raise will go towards helping people cope with the uncertainty of a diagnosis with MS.

You can find my sponsorship page here: http://virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

Or if you want to support me and earn a really cool, glow-in-the-dark Darth Maul medal, then details of my Virtual Run are here: http://www.virtualrunneruk.com/enter-revengesixth

--

What a big head, eh?  Just who does he think he is?

it's a long way to the top...

It was kind of a busy weekend.

It started early on Saturday morning, when I took a break from my marathon training to make my debut as Run Director at Colwick parkrun.  I love parkrun. I avoided going for about a year because I thought I knew myself too well, and that a timed 5km run would see me want to flog myself relentlessly every week.  It was like that for a few weeks, but after a little while, I discovered that I actually enjoyed volunteering more than I did the actual running.  Parkrun is incredibly inclusive and welcomes people of all shapes and sizes and all speeds.  More than that, Colwick is a real community.  What started with guiding Terry, over the course of about 15 months or so, ultimately culminated with me taking hold of the megaphone.  We had a record attendance too, with some 366 runners - a good 125 or so more than we normally get and comfortably more than our previous biggest attendance.

Of course, I didn't do this on my own. I was carefully prepared through the week by a very attentive member of the core team, and then a crack team of volunteers took over as I ponced about with the megaphone.

It was a good morning.  Here's the run report I wrote.  I enjoyed it so much that I'm also doing it all again on 2nd April.

Straight after that - after a short detour to solve a minor crisis at work - we drove down to Bath to take part in the half marathon.  It's supposed to be flat and fast, but the purpose of taking part wasn't to race but to practice race conditions for the marathon.  Obviously, I was running quite a lot faster than marathon pace, but I consciously eased down a little after halfway.... but still managed to accidentally improve my PB by 40 seconds.  Good job I didn't stop for a pee, eh?  I don't really race half marathons any more. In fact, I think that PB comes from the last one I ran hard... the Robin Hood in 2012.  Running is a very relative thing, and I"m aware that lots of people would quite like to have a PB of 1:51:19, but I'm actually slightly embarrassed because I actually think it should be at least 5 minutes faster. Another time, perhaps.

Still, it was a nice weekend with a couple of nights away in a nice town.

Training has been a bit of a grind this year, and it was nice to break it up a bit with a mere 13.1 miles with 15,000 other people instead of running on my own around the Big Track alongside the Trent.  In spite of the London Marathon Facebook page saying that it was nearly time to taper, the next few weeks contain all of my longest training runs: 18 miles this Sunday, then 20 miles, then 22 miles... so there's still a fair way to go before the starting line just yet.

Ah well.  Soon be done.

This is what it's all about, of course. We're raising money for the MS Trust, and you can sponsor us here...

hood famous..

At around about the same time as I committed to the MS Trust that I would run the marathon for them again, I stumbled across something from the London Marathon team.  I can't remember if it was an email, on their website or in their magazine or what... but they were asking for people to put themselves forward to be one of their official bloggers.

I actually applied for this last year, but clearly nothing came of it.  I can remember looking at the six people they had chosen, although I didn't subsequently look at any of their posts because I didn't really think anything more about it.

I applied again.

They ask you to put down a few details about yourself and to say why you think you should be picked.  Here's what I put:

"I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009, four years after first developing symptoms. MS is a chronic, incurable condition that it affects people in all sorts of insidious ways....but I want everyone to know that a diagnosis doesn't have to be the end of life as you know it; I want to challenge people's preconceptions of what the condition is and what it means for the people who have it. When you receive news like that, you have a choice: you can either wallow and mope about the things you’ve lost and can no longer do, or you can get on with life and focus on what you can do. In 2012, I was reduced to running 3 miles a week because of issues related to my MS and thought my running days were over. Three years later, I ran my first marathon with my wife at London in 2015 (raising £7200 for the MS Trust). I’m doing the whole thing again in 2016. I've been lucky with how MS has affected me, as I can see by looking around in the waiting room of every clinic I attend, but a marathon is still a massive, exhausting challenge... but that's true for every single person who runs one. Come along on the journey with me as I stumble and curse my way through the long, lonely miles to the starting line. I’ve been blogging since 2004, and I’d be delighted to share my journey on the London Marathon website!"

Nothing you haven't heard before, right?

I mailed it off and put it out of my mind.  Earlier this week, I got an email out of the blue telling me that I was one of the people selected to blog the 2016 London Marathon.  Out of 50,000 people with entries, I was one of six chosen.  The email pointed me at last year's blogs, to have a look at their profiles and to use them as a model to for one I needed to write and send back in.  Looking at them now, it looks as though they didn't have much luck.... I don't think a single one of them blogged about the actual race, and a couple of them didn't manage to put up an entry beyond January.  Perhaps one of the key reasons for my selection is that, if I'm anything, I've got ten year long track record of regularly putting up blog posts!

I don't think they actually want very much: probably about three posts between the end of February and the event itself, and one afterwards to say how it went.  In return, as well as the obvious opportunity to stoke my own ego, I get to boost the profile of the MS Trust and to float our sponsorship link in front of a few more people and hope that some of them bite and make a donation.  It can't hurt, anyway.

Apparently I'm also going to get a boatload of free London Marathon Adidas training kit and running shoes, and a bunch of stuff from Lucozade.  Expect pictures of me kitted out even more like a total tool than normal, and expect a load of repetition of shit I've written about on here so often that you could probably recite it back in your sleep.

Good times.

I'm going skiing on Saturday, so I'm actually going to leave my trainers behind for a week.  Before then though, I've taken the day off work tomorrow so that I can squeeze in an 18 mile run.  I don't think this is the kind of day off that my younger self quite imagined.  I might get a haircut too.

I could fascinate...

Marathon training is a funny thing.

Well, I say funny, but what I actually mean is all-consuming. I’m in week 6 of a 16 week programme that culminates in the 26.2 miles from Blackheath Common to the Mall on 24th April, but already, most of the time when I’m not actually running is spent thinking about my next big run. I’ll give you an example: my training programme says that my long midweek run this week needs to cover 8 miles. For the sake of time-efficiency, at the moment I’m breaking my long mid-week run up into two pieces by running the 3.6 miles to the office in the morning and the 3.6 miles home in the evening. This isn’t quite the same thing as running 7 miles all in one go, but the mileage is the same and the run home in particular is good training on tired legs. As these runs soon start to peak over 10 miles, I think I’m going to just run them in one go in the evenings when I get home from work, but for now I’m happy enough to break it up.

There’s a problem. As I’m sure you can probably work out for yourself, 3.6 miles plus 3.6 miles does not equal 8 miles. As anyone who has trained to a programme like this before, you can add miles to your training runs, but you can’t run less than you have scheduled. For me at least, it’s really important that I line up at the start of my marathon knowing that I haven’t taken any shortcuts and that I’ve put in the mileage required to be able to get me around the course in one piece.

So this morning, I got up into my running kit, ran to the doctor’s surgery for an appointment. It's on the way to work, but once I was done there, I ran back on myself to add another mile or so to my run before heading into work.  That way, I could make make sure that my total this evening covered the full 8 miles. Ridiculous, right?  And I had to plan that out in advance and everything, you know. And as I was planning that, I was simultaneously mapping out my route for my Sunday 16 miler in my head: a long loop of the Embankment from Lady Bay bridge is about 6 miles. If I run that and then throw in a 10 mile Big Track loop, that will be my miles covered. Job done. I should get another few hours of “Wolf Hall” done too.

You see?  All-consuming.

I’m going skiing in a couple of weeks. We’re going Saturday to Saturday, so this means that I can get my long run in on the Sunday after we get back, but that I need to cover my long run before we go. So.... I’ve taken that Friday off so that I can fit an 18 miler in before we go. That's what normal people do with their holiday time, right? If you’re interested, I’ll tell you the route I’m considering.

No? Suit yourselves.

I’ll still be taking my running gear to Austria, obviously… but I think I can cope with missing the midweek runs as long as I have the long runs covered.

So yeah, I think it’s fair to say that I’m spending an awful lot of time at the moment either running, or thinking about running. The really worrying part is that I’ve still got ten more weeks of this to go and the mileage is only getting bigger from here.

Just as long as I’m not boring anyone though, yeah?

We’re running to raise money for the MS Trust. You can sponsor us here:

http://virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

we ran a miracle mile...

I know I talk about running on here a lot.  Well, let's be perfectly honest: now that I'm marathon training, I think it's fair to say that I talk about running a lot.  In fact, I talk about little else but running.  Well, I guess I'm not going to apologise for that.

One thing that I don't do all that often is to trumpet our sponsorship site.  We're running London again this year to raise money for the MS Trust, but although all financial support is most welcome, one of the things I was keen not to do too much this year was to rely on my friends to raise the money we need to hit our target.  There are so many good charities, and I know that everybody gets asked for donations all the time.  It's hard.

We raised £7,200 last year, and the vast majority of that came from people we know putting their hands in their pockets and making a donation.  It was a truly humbling experience to have all those people show us how much they supported us by donating to our charity.  This year, I wanted to do things a little bit differently, and to try and give people something for their money. I was thinking cake sales, raffles and perhaps a silent auction or something.   Luckily for us, our friends at Virtual Runner gave us a couple of runs that meant that we were basically up to £4,000 before I'd even started training.  (Incidentally, there are still a few places left on the Revenge of the Sixth run.  Who doesn't want a glow-in-the-dark Darth Maul medal? Enter HERE!)

But we are still asking for donations.  I wasn't going to keep going on about it, but this morning, I woke up early: it was the morning after my injection and it was dark and cold and I didn't feel especially great.  But I got up, pulled on my running gear and went out into the freezing morning to run the 3.6 miles to work in the sleet.  This evening, after a full day at work, I pulled on my slightly soggy running gear and ran the 3.6 miles home in the dark - nearly being mowed down along the way by the idiot rowing coaches who cycle along the riverside looking at their boats whilst riding on bicycles with no lights.  I'm not asking for your sympathy because I got into this out of choice.... but I'm getting to the part of my training where the miles really start to rack up and it can feel like a bit of a slog.

I'm doing this marathon partly to prove to myself that I can run 26.2 miles on my own.  I've got multiple sclerosis and it is slowly taking its toll on my ability to run, mainly by wasting the muscles on my left side and reducing the flexibility in my ankle.  Running 500 training miles in four months in order to complete a marathon is the best way that I know to stick two fingers up at this horrible bloody condition.  But I'm also doing it to raise money for a brilliant charity that provides a critical support to people with MS, their families and the medical professionals who care for them.  And you know what, I am going to need your help and support... financial or otherwise.

I'll just leave this here.

YOU CAN SPONSOR US HERE:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

Thanks!

au suivant...

*IMPORTANT VIRTUAL RUN NEWS*

The May the 4th Be With You virtual run has now completely sold out.  Two batches of 500 medals sold out in a matter of hours, raising £2000 for the MS Trust and making a huge dent into our fundraising for the Marathon... before we've even really started.

This was humbling and exciting.

It gets better though: Virtual Runner have announced that they will be hosting another run on May 6th: The Revenge of the Sixth.

Once again, all money raised will be donated to the MS Trust.

This vastly exceeds my expectations and left me completely speechless and left C. in floods of tears when we heard on Friday evening.  This race goes on sale on Tuesday evening at 7pm.  If you fancy the look of that glow in the dark Darth Maul medal, then you probably need to be quick if you want to get yourself entered, as I imagine these will sell out pretty quickly too.

Sometimes people can be amazing.  I know these races are selling out because of Star Wars, but the races are being put on by some very special people who are doing everything they can to help us hit our fundraising targets for a small but very worthwhile charity that is very close to our hearts.

Sometimes, 'thank you' just doesn't seem like enough.

bling...

So, I was all ready to announce to you that the Virtual Run to raise money for our London Marathon fund for the MS Trust went live today....

In case you're not familiar with Virtual Runner, this is a brilliantly simple idea that allows people to enter "races" of varying distances (5km, 10km etc.etc) and then run them in their own time, receiving a medal once they have finished.  Lots of people are intimidated by big, formal race meets, and this enables them to take part as a member of a vibrant virtual community of runners.  The real beauty of this is that it's a not-for-profit thing, and the proceeds for each race go directly to a number of very worthy causes.  Since starting, a little over 2 years ago, they have raised over £50,000 in total now, and are regularly in the top 1% of donors on JustGiving.  It's very impressive.

Lucky for me, Susan - the founder of the site - is a member of my running club, and she has been good enough to find room on their schedule for a race to support our fundraising for the MS Trust.  It's an "any distance" event, due to take place on May 4th... and just take a look at that medal!  My friend Claire, who is also in our running club, has her birthday on May 4th and asked me what I thought of the idea of a Star Wars run as a theme.  Needless to say, I thought it was a brilliant idea, timed to perfection with the release of the new film (these things don't happen by accident, you know).

I was all set to make the big announcement here and to encourage you all to enter.... but the race completely sold out all 500 places in the first two hours of being open to the general public.  It's humbling.  Of course, most of these people are excited about Star Wars, but I'm happy to say that my friends and colleagues have also been really keen to take part because they want to do something to help us to support this fantastic charity.  It's all very humbling.

...and sold out. 500 places with 20% of the entry fee for the race going straight to the MS Trust.  That's £1000 in less than two hours.

Don't worry though: Susan is sourcing more medals as we speak, and hopefully we'll have loads more places to sell in the very near future.  After all, who wouldn't want that medal?  Obviously, from my point of view, the more runners we can get signed up, the better (it's open to international runners too, incidentally).  This goes straight onto my fundraising page for the London Marathon and will go from there directly to the MS Trust.  It's all win for me!  I'll let you know when more places are up for grabs.

Expect invitations to a medal-packing party at some point in early May!

don't need no key to unlock this door...

Well, that's it then: we're committed to running the 2016 London Marathon.

Six months ago, we ran the famous 26.2 mile course from Blackheath to the Mall in a shade under 5 hours.  In six months time, we'll be doing exactly the same thing again.  If ever you needed proof that the human body has a capacity to forget pain, then this is surely it.

The training programme doesn't really start for another couple of months, but you and I both know that training doesn't really stop around here.  Last time around it was a huge challenge and a step into the unknown to see if my body could withstand that sort of mileage.... not just in the run itself, but in the hours and hours of training you do just to be ready on the start line.  I've run 937 miles this year so far, and it's no coincidence at all that 166.9 of them came in March in the month before the marathon itself.  I've lost muscle mass on my left side, and I don't pick my left foot up properly when I get tired because of the loss of strength and a loss of flexibility in my ankle.  I was worried that I might break myself.  That I didn't was in no small part down to the fact that I did the vast majority of those miles in the company of my wife, running at a pace that was slower than I might have liked, but that without a shadow of a doubt helped me through.

But you know what?  I knew almost as soon as we crossed the finishing line together that I was going to run this race again.  You know what else? I also knew that I wanted to do it on my own.  I'm pretty sure that I'm not going to challenge 4 hours, because I really think my body will break.... I reckon I've got a 1:45 half marathon in me, but this is an entirely different kettle of fish.  4.5 hours is a lot more realistic a target, but to be honest, I don't want to set a target at all; I just want the mental and physical challenge of a marathon on my own.  I'll almost certainly go faster than I did the first time, but I'm not going to set myself any targets beyond that.  C. is running again too, and will face the challenge of getting herself around the course on her own with her usual determination.  Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

We're raising money for the MS Trust again for 2016.  We raised £7,200 last time around, and since then I've been lucky enough to get a lot closer to the work that this wonderful charity does.  They may not be as big as some other charities, but they punch well above their weight and play a vital role in both providing support and information for people who are diagnosed with MS and in supporting and educating the MS professionals.  I was lucky enough to be invited to a reception for the MS Trust at the House of Lords a few weeks ago, and a very eminent neurologist gave a talk there saying how much he valued and appreciated the work that the Trust does.

I'll try not to go about it too much, but I have set up a fundraising page:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

As running is about to take up an even greater proportion of my life than it already does, what I can't guarantee is that I won't blather on about the training all the time on here.  Sorry about that, but it's just the way life is going to be for the next six months.

177 days.

Anyone else feel tired just thinking about that?

the lucky and the strong...

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore’. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself”
Haruki Murakami

And so it was that, at around 15:20 on Sunday afternoon, I crossed the finish line of the 2015 London Marathon hand-in-hand with my wife. It took us some 4 hours 59 minutes and 23 seconds to cover the famous 26.2 miles, starting on Blackheath Common and finishing on the Mall. I was pleased to break five hours, but the time was essentially irrelevant: for us this was always going to be about the journey. It’s a journey that I suppose officially started with day#1 of the training programme in January this year, but really started about a year ago, when I made the decision that I was going to try to run a marathon and my wife decided that she wasn’t going to let me do it alone.  She says it was because she didn't want me to hurt myself in training, but I think that secretly she didn't like the thought of me doing a marathon without her (which is the same reason she came skydiving with me in Namibia).  Whatever, I suppose the whys don't really matter all that much now.

Since that moment, we’ve been on a real voyage into unchartered territory, both in terms of the miles we ran and in coming to terms with doing them all together. It was quite an adjustment for both of us, as we both normally run on our own.

 I’m naturally the faster runner, so I had to learn to run more slowly; I’m also apparently something of a stealth runner, moving along almost silently where C. needs to work hard to control her breathing; I almost always run to music too, and I’ve had to put the headphones away. My wife is a very determined woman, and once she got the bit between her teeth and a target in her sights, nothing was going to stop her achieving this. I think it’s been hard for someone as single-minded as that to put herself into my hands as chief pacemaker and route-planner. In addition, to run with me is to enter into my world… and I am merciless on myself, never allowing myself a respite, whatever the weather and however I’m feeling. If you run with me, I will be merciless on you too. But we survived, marriage intact.  Perhaps even stronger.

One of our earliest runs together was at Colwick parkrun, and we fell out after about 2 miles over C. stopping for a walk. Luckily for me and for our running partnership (and our relationship), I resisted the temptation to take off on my own, and we finished together. If we couldn’t agree over two miles, then twenty-six miles has never felt further. But we survived.  More than that, actually I have learned to really enjoy the amount of quality time that we have been spending together when normally we would be apart doing our own things. I also worried that the training might be too much for my body to withstand, but actually it’s been kind of fun once time was taken off the table.... fun in a masochistic sort of a way, anyway.  We’ve shared so much of this experience together.

After all those hours and hours of training, I suppose there’s always the danger that the marathon itself would be something of an anti-climax… and to be perfectly honest, in some ways it was. It was so exciting lining up in the starting pens and to cross the starting line with tens of thousands of other runners in front of a grandstand. It was great too to meet up at our designated meeting point (we were in different start zones) and to settle down into the rhythm of the run. The crowds were mostly amazing, and there were some real high points where we went through some incredible landmarks – the Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge – cheered to the rafters by a packed out crowd. We saw family and friends at key strategic moments and were cheered on by name by complete strangers almost all of the way.

It was great.

 But at the same time, it was a slog. I nearly fell over on Tower Bridge and only stayed upright by nearly yanking my wife’s arm off. By about mile 15, my hips were grinding and my thighs were beginning to burn and I had to look inside for the inspiration to face up to the ten miles that remained. I nearly fell again in Canary Wharf and I started to fall slightly behind C, who looked back anxiously to see how I was doing. I kept going, of course, buoyed by the crowds willing us on and by my wife's strength and determination  By the time we reached the 20 mile marker, I was back in the game. Everything hurt, but a couple of paracetamol had taken the edge off and I was now able to tick down the distances in manageable distances. Six miles: I can do that. Four miles: a normal weekday run. Three miles: a parkrun....  The crowds were thickening too, and you could feel the goodwill and energy pushing you on.

Looking very composed at mile 22

C. was struggling by this point, her asthma starting to make it hard to catch her breath, and we were forced to slow down and occasionally to walk (although I would estimate that we walked for less than 100m of the whole 26.2 miles).  The crowd here was truly amazing, and it was around here that I began to feel slightly overwhelmed by emotion at the way people were shouting out my name and pushing me onwards over the last few miles.

C. was in a world of pain at this point and barely able to think about anything except putting one foot in front of another (she tells me that she barely remembers running past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament at all). I was loving it: sucking up the energy from the crowd and giving them a huge, goofy smile back. POWER! YOU’VE GOT THIS, TIM!

Runners all around me were in all sorts of condition, many pulling themselves along on broken bodies, powered only by bloody-mindedness and the energy from the crowds.  We ran towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, turning right to run down along the Embankment, past Buckingham Palace and finally turning onto the Mall….. 385 yards to go and then… finally…

DONE.
Over.  Four months and hundreds of miles of training. Finished.  We crossed the line hand-in-hand.

We’ve raised (if you include Gift Aid) nearly £6,400 for the MS Trust. This is more than double our target and an amazing, humbling amount of money that will make a massive difference to a small charity.

Thank you. Thank you everyone for your generosity and your encouragement.

Never again?

Well. Never say never.  Someone asked me that question last night and my moment of hesitation before answering told them everything they needed to know.

It’s a long old way though.

tired of waiting....

....and with that little 3.32 mile trundle around the Embankment, marathon training officially ends.

Between the 1st January this year, when my sixteen week training programme officially started and today, I have covered some 472.6 miles.  As well as all the seemingly endless miles I've done around the river Trent and the Grantham and Nottingham canals, I've even found myself running up a ski hill in France as I attempted to keep putting miles into the bank whilst we were on holiday in March.  I've smashed all my previous records: miles covered in a week, miles covered in a month, longest duration, most calories burned....  For a while, it seemed like I was doing my longest ever run every single week.  I've topped out at 22 miles for now, but on Sunday, I will be smashing that record too as I line up on Blackheath Common for the 26.2 mile amble through London the the Mall.

When I think that it was only a couple of years ago that I thought I would never be able to run further than six miles ever again, it all seems like a bit of a dream.  It might sound trite, but it really does go to show what you can achieve if you put your mind to it.

I still don't know if I'll successfully complete the marathon on Sunday - I guess I'm about to find out.  What I do know is that I didn't think that my body would be able to withstand the rigours of marathon training, and it seems to have handled it all pretty well.  In fact, although all that training sucked up an enormous amount of time and was a huge commitment, I've actually really enjoyed the longer runs.  Even the really long ones.  I think all runners have something of a masochistic streak, but it looks like I really, really enjoy flogging myself.

I would never know that I could achieve any of that unless I had tried.  Sorry to sound like a bad motivational speaker, but that goes for you too, by the way.  Your target might not be a marathon, but there is something you can set your sights on... you know there is.

We've also smashed our fundraising target, for which I can only thank you all.  Your generosity continues to humble me and if I need to find any more motivation for running, it's your kindness and good wishes that will power me round on Sunday.  There's still time to sponsor us too.  CLICK HERE.

The training is over, and now we just count down the time before we actually start running.  In some ways, that's harder than just getting out and doing another run.  You will be able to track our progress on the day on the London Marathon website or by downloading the app from the App Store.  I'm runner number 11637 and C is 26096.  Alternatively, just look out for the blue tutus.

See you on the other side!  Perhaps I'll be able to talk about something else then? No promises....

humbled...

Raising money for charity is a truly humbling experience.

When we knew we were going to be running the marathon, I thought about what kind of a target we should set.  I've raised money running half marathons before, and I like to think I've been pretty good at it.  If you included gift aid, when we ran the Robin Hood half in 2011 we raised a little over £3,000.  When I entered the same race the following year, even though I only had a few weeks to go before the start, I still managed to raise more than £1,250.

Not bad going, I thought.  We can top that, can't we?  Running a full marathon is a much bigger deal, after all.  Shall we start with a target of £3,000 and see how we go?

Well, with a little over a week-and-a-half to go before we line up in London, we've raised over £3,600 (including gift aid) with something like £900 to add from offline fund-matching from work, the money we raised at the cake sale earlier this week and things like that.  There's still time to chase out a few more last-minute donations too.

I reckon that, by the time we've finished, we will have raised something approaching £5,000.  That's a huge amount of money that will make a huge difference to the MS Trust and will help them to reach even more people affected by multiple sclerosis, providing information and support.

I'm delighted.... but it really is humbling.  That money has come from all sorts of people, who have put their hands into their pockets and put an enormous vote of trust in us.  Many of these people will not have heard of the MS Trust before; some may not know that much about multiple sclerosis; it's likely that lots of them might not even know why we're running for the charity.  Hell, some of them are barely more than acquaintances.... but they still decided to make a donation to our charity.  Some went further than that: they baked cakes for us; they chased donations out of people who don't even really know who we are; they took the time to talk to us and to find out about the charity and to see how we were doing with the training.

It's humbling and it's inspiring.

I find it emotional watching the London Marathon on the telly.  With the tens of thousands of other runners and the hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering us on, never mind the legs, you can pretty much guarantee that I'm going to be an emotional wreck by the time we cross the finish line.

You can still sponsor us here!

sugar for my honey....

We had a cake sale at running club tonight.  A few weeks ago, one of our friends there asked me if I would object if they organised one on behalf of our charity - the MS Trust.  As it happens, this kind soul is also running the London Marathon this year, in her case to raise money for a Nottingham charity that provides support for women escaping domestic violence.  It's a charity that's very close to her heart, and she's finally got to run London at the sixth attempt.... and here she was asking if she could raise money for us because she felt it was the best way of repaying us for the donations we both made to her.

I've met some amazing people through running in general and through running club in particular, but tonight was just remarkable from start to finish.  As well as Lisa organising the whole thing, a succession of people arrived for the evening's run carrying cakes they had baked especially for us, and then, when they got back, we raised something over £250 from their donations, with another cake sale happening at the run that takes place on Wednesday night on the other side of the city.

It's humbling.  It's truly humbling.

What amazing people.   Just look at the little cut-out they made to go on the collection jar, complete with tutu.

With about 12 days to go before we line up in Blackheath for the start of the longest run of our lives, there's still time to sponsor us!

CLICK HERE!

Thanks to everyone who has already donated (or baked a cake) - we're well on the way to smashing our target and raising some really meaningful cash for the MS Trust.

good advice....

I've got an appointment with the neurologist on Friday.  Whilst looking for the letter with the details of which clinic in the labyrinthine QMC and when, I discovered a letter from the consultant in sports & exercise medicine that I saw in May 2013.

I saw this guy because of the ongoing problems I was having in my left-side: plantar fascia, ITB, hip.... as the letter indicates, he quickly worked out that there was pretty substantial muscle wastage in my left quadricep and a loss of dorsiflexion in my left ankle, and that most of my problems could be traced to these two things.  Both seemed to be caused by my MS, and so there wasn't really very much he could do for me apart from encourage me to keep on keeping on.

He did have some recommendations though:

"Impressions and Plan: He presents with an interesting history and I am keen to support him in his activities. I think he should continue with mixed activities as a triathlete rather than wholly rely on running.  Furthermore, I have suggested that he does not undertake longer runs when clearly he is at greater risk of worsening foot drop and tripping...."

I shouldn't undertake longer runs.

Hmmm.

Whoops.

My bad.