Moose and Shanks

As I sit down to write this the reality of what I’ve just agreed to it’s finally starting to sink in. After a conversation with a friend of mine earlier today I have now agreed to do a half marathon next May for as part of Run Gatwick! 

This is the bit in a tv show where it fades to black and the caption reads, 1 week earlier!

So a little bit of background in the last few weeks Dave, a friend and former colleague of mine tragically committed suicide on the railway. What he was suffering with, and what he was going through no one really knows, he did keep himself to himself and evidently kept an awful lot to himself, but it has hit both myself and my former colleagues at East Croydon depot pretty hard, and from a message earlier today, my friend Mags said that she was keen to look at doing the Run Gatwick event in aid of the charity MIND in honour of our friend Dave. I was still on the fence regarding doing a run especially anything longer than 5K that’s the maximum I’ve ever done, even in my time in the Navy and recently only ever ran a park run and also bit of a casual running following a program on RUNNA.

Now Moose is a bit of a keen runner and has done some long distances in the past including the London marathon 9 years ago and is obsessed with runDisney so she does know just a bit about running! She suggested that if I was to sign up for the half marathon distance she would do likewise.

And just a few short hours ago there I was a run Gatwick webpage signing up both myself and Moose for a half a marathon on the 10th May next year. Naturally when it did ask if you wanted bling and a medal of course I said yes, I even ordered both of us the official finishers T-shirts so that might be a little bit embarrassing if I don’t complete it! Lol!

People who know me will know I’m not wanting to do things by half, so straight after signing up for the event I’m onto the RUNNA app and seeing what sort of program it will decide for me. We’ve got several months to go until the actual event, so I plump for a 16 week program with two runs a week doing the progressive and tempo runs on the early part of the week and saving the long run fun for Fridays needless, to say some of these long distance runs do scare me but that’s the whole point. There’s no point in signing up to do half marathon if I’m not prepared to put in the hard yards.

Now for the most part, this program will sit collecting dust until the middle of January. Still plenty of time to go and right now I’m working my way through a general 10k plan (which does in itself feature some long runs!) which culminates in mid December .

The aim will be to keep you all updated with our progress leading up to what will be a great achievement!