Inspiring a generation!

The marathon is now less than a month away, and I'm finding more and more of my thoughts are focussed on the marathon. The two main things being 1, whether I'm going to be able to complete it and 2, how the fundraising is going.

This was compounded this week when I received the final correspondence from the race organisers with all the details of registration and my race number. The number to watch out for is 51681. Fingers crossed that it is not also my finishing position!

I think it has annoyed Lynne a little that my attention has been a little elsewhere (as she is used to having my full focus). She said to me yesterday "Gary stop worrying about the marathon and go and spend some quality time with Charlie." I appreciated this reminder to not forget what's important in life, so I went through to Charlie and said to him "Boy go get your shoes on, we're going out for a run!"

I got a mixed reaction to this, there were a few complaints but on the whole once he got the idea that this was happening he was ok with it. We jogged and had a nice we chat on our trip, he learned an important lesson about going to the toilet before going out running and an even had the opportunity to get the all important life lesson regarding peeing against the wind! Despite this stop we finished a 2k run in a rather credible 16 minutes. Lynne laughed as we got home as I was sweating a lot more than him.

He was even aware of the post run ritual of a nice warm bath. Since this was about quality time, him, I and about a half dozen wrestling figures all squeezed into our very small bath, there was barely any room for water. He even suggested that this be repeated next week!

He also learned another important lesson recently thanks to the marathon. A few weeks ago he was in bed and I just decided to go upstairs and check on him to make sure he was sleeping, as I was going up the stairs I smelled the very distinctive smell of deep heat. Getting into the bedroom, I see Charlie with bright red legs having smothered them in deep heat cream. He had put a little cream on and when it got too hot had the idea to cool it down by using more cream which may have been repeated a few times. By the time I got up it had got a little out of hand, I first told him to leave it as it would cool down by itself, he asked how long it would take to cool down I told him about an hour, he almost had a fit "AN HOUR", I spent a few minutes blowing on his legs before he had to resort to a cool shower.

My runs have gone well this week, I ran just under 12 km on Tuesday night feeling a bit sore for the rest of the week. I ran 24km yesterday which I feel okay for considering. When I saw Uncle Paul the physio last week, he was able to work out that my right leg is about half an inch smaller than my left one. I made some small alterations to my shoe which seems to have helped my calf and hip. 

Perhaps I've just been running lop-sided all this time.

Vital Stats

Time run this week -  3 hours 47 minutes
Distance covered this week - 36.2km
Distance covered since beginning of training - 339.7km
Average pace - 6 minutes 16 seconds per kilometre

Donor of the week

People have been very generous this week and the Actuaries Charitable Trust has had some great donations:

First of all a big thank you to our friends Alex and Nargis:

Being donor of the week this week this is the second time in a week that Alex has struck fame, after appearing on TV last week on a programme on ITV called the triplets are coming, he was the surgeon performing some kind of c-section. It was extremely impressive. Thank you Alex and Nargis.

The folks at CPRM, many of my colleagues this week stuck their hand in their own pocket to give to the marathon efforts,  which was extremely appreciated! Many thanks to Neil, Laura, Ami, Helen, Wilma, Maili, Mike, Murray, Lesley, Kabir and Natalie who all donated in the past week.

Here is a picture of most of the company in our best formal business wear!


Also a special thanks must go to my team leader Gareth Evans:

(Gareth showing his usual level of focus on the crazy golf course at last year's actuarial team triathlon)

Gareth has been extremely kind with his contribution, not only by giving a very generous donation but also by donating his winnings from the recent cricket world cup sweep we had in the actuarial team. Gareth, an extremely proud Englishman has been at CPRM for two years now, he is also the current actuarial pudding champion and makes a mean key-lime pie. He is the kind of guy you'd want on your pub quiz team as he knows something about everything and is an all-round decent bloke! I don't say that just because of his donation but also because he'll do my appraisal later in the year!

Thanks Gareth and I hope you have fun on your sabbatical in Peru!

Thanks guys

Please give generously!

We are now less than 4 weeks away from the big day so if you would love the chance to be donor of the week and at the same time help a great cause that contributes to loads of different charities then please go to http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserPage.action?userUrl=therunningactuary&faId=524011&isTeam=false