Sue Keogh writes:
Step one: Husband says you should run a marathon once in your lifetime. Points out that Arthur Rank House Hospice have places. That'll be the hospice who cared for my Mum in her final few days and who I can never quite thank enough.
Step two: Apply for a charity place without really giving it much thought. On the bit where they ask how you will raise the money, explain that you'll run a series of workshops in digital marketing in your spare time, without giving that much thought either.
Step three, five days later: Get confirmation from the hospice that you have a place in the 2017 London Marathon. Ooops.
So, in early December I started setting dates for the digital marketing workshops. I gave them the hilarious hashtag #RunDMSue. Then, over a whiskey and too many biscuits at some point between Christmas and New Year, I found a training plan online and merrily put all the dates into the diary. Easy!
New Year's Day, fun's over. Time to start training. It rained.
(Image removed)
And I know you'll find this difficult to believe, but training for a marathon is hard work. I'm no stranger to running, having done the Royal Parks Half a couple of times, plus various 10ks and other half marathons, but this is another level.
The long Sunday runs were fine - cold, but at least there was daylight, and I had a fun time running to nearby villages and exploring. Chasing trains. Stumbling upon historical re-enactments. Chatting to herons. That sort of thing.
Whereas the weekday evenings were pretty miserable. It's dark! So often I was restricted to boring old cul de sacs purely because there were streetlights and wide stretches of pavement, but where it's difficult to relax into the run because you can't really see where you're going.
But the workshops gave me a real boost during all of this. Each one was a milestone, and I worked out each time how much further I'd run. By the time I got to the fourth one, I'd run the equivalent of Cambridge to Carmarthen.
Read the rest of this post here.