One hit wonders

A 5 mile run last night which was breezy to say the least. I have found that training for a marathon is almost as much mental as it is physical. You are doing something repetative and need to work your mind as well as your body to keep in interesting. My thinhg, of course is music and my running is accompanied by playlists which I make for every conceivable subject. Last nights run was accompanied by a playlist of one hit wonders including:-


Norman Greenbaum Spirit in the Sky
Sugar Hill Gang Rapper's Delight
Big Country In a Big Country
Deee-Lite Groove is in the Heart
The Vapors Turning Japanese
Bow Wow Wow I Want Candy
Crash Test Dummies Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Nena 99 Luftballons
The Mock Turtles Can You Dig It?
Sneaker Pimps - 6 Feet Underground

On the sponsorship side the generosity of the HVA team is as strong as ever and we top £250 before the day is out.

Into Three Figures

With still ovber 6 weeeks to go our first £150 is reached by the kindness of a sponsor - who has asked to remain anonymous who has pledged £50 for my efforts. This places us in a good place to really raise some money for this project. As for the running a 7mile effort yesterday as I explore the rural bit towards Battle.

£75 and Rising

Alan from Seaspace, Jill and Rose from HVA and a person from East Sussex County Council who I have never met all pledge. A million thanks.

£50 so far and thanks

Barely has the blog gone up and our sponsorship has already topped £50 thanks to everyone and keep it coming.

And the money comes in

Mary (one of HVA's administrators and all round good person) is the first to pledge for the saponsorship. Have added a footer to every e-mail and a news item on our web-site to encourage people to donate. Last year we took over 30 young people for the day to Chessington World of Adventure and they had an absolute ball. They asked me to go and it made me enormously pleased to have been the cause of so much pleasure. It sort of made all the "hill-work" which starts early in february worthwhile.

On the training side a 5 mile run last night found the sea kicking up but little wind. The NIKE gadget is still a bit of a novelty but worked well and there are now two runs registered on my personal web-page. Being NIKE you can then manupulate the data to compare all sorts of satatistical information you are gathering at the flick of a switch. At the end of the run an american voice comes through the ipod "your workout has now finished" followed by the voice of tiger woods congratulating me on running my fastest ever mile. Quite how Tiger knew of my efforts and fits in monitoring my progress with the PGA golf tour I know not but nice of him to congratulate me I thought.

In the running

Step two is to enter the race which is done on-line. No going back now but it is a great event for the Town and one I didn't really fully appreciate until I ran the race last year. I have also been thinking about my training regime.

Last year it was all a bit over the place - I just ran the streets of Hastings for a few weeks without much of a sense about how far I was running or, indeed how fast. It was a little like Rocky Balboa out of Rocky II who punches slabs of meet and runs through Philadephia. Having run the marathon last year with extreme tooth-ache wacked out on pain killers, with a stinking cold and not being able to eat for 24 hours it did feel as if I had been in a boxing match.

I feel the time has come to give a little more science to my training. So I am reading a book (Marathon Running for Mortals) which is telling me that last year I made some classic "first timer" mistakes. I now know that you should never train for a marathon by actually running the marathon distance - too damaging on the body - but rather through a sequence of steady runs slightly increasing in length as the weeks go by. I also learnt that you should actually cut back on the running in the last two weeks which was another error on my part.

The other thing I should report is the most amazing little gadget which I bought for £20 which may prove to be a good investment. Basically it consists of a little plug in unit which you attach to you ipod together with a little sensor (shaped rather like an outsized coffee bean) which you attach to your running shoe. It then measures the time, distance and pace per KM or mile. When you finish the run and plug your ipod in it then saves all of your statistics and sends them to a NIKE running website. Amazing. The only flaw is that I think it is a little over generous and seems to think you have run slightly further than you have. My house to Bulverhythe Depot is never 10k - is it? But generally an amazing little gadget. So we shall see how we go and if I can work out the technology I will see if I can post a little link on the blog. So now my training resembles all the scientific approach of Ivan Drago (from Rocky IV) so we shall see.

On the road again...

At the Part Time Youth workers conference I run into Debbie who runs the Saxon Mount Youth Project. As it is marathon time approachiong I have agreed to run it for the young people. I have now registered and am beginning to approach the people I know for some sponsorship. Like last year I have started a blog to keep supporters up to date with the training I am doing, the music I am listening to when I am pounding the streets of Hastings and anything else. You will hopefully find regular updates here so keep checking back every so often and if you want to pledge make a comment here or e-mail me at steve@hvauk.org