Somewhere not Palmers Green

There's something to be said for taking a mid-training break somewhere sunny, overseas and near a beach. And that something is "Oh bloody hell, where am I going to be able to run which doesn't involve toiling up a gravity-defying clifftop incline, plodding over strength-sapping sand dunes for miles, or ending up on the barbed-wire strewn building site of a would-be holiday resort apparently abandoned some time in the mid-1980s?"
I'm not a huge fan of trying out experimental new courses for my runs. For me, familiarity breeds content, not contempt. I like to know where I'm going and what horrors lie ahead of me. And while going running while on holiday always seems like a good idea in theory, in practice it usually means getting up at about 6.00 in the morning so you can be finished while the temperature is still in the "stiflingly uncomfortable" range and before it hits the "actually might pass out" level.

Not Palmers Green on a wet Wednesday

This is a long-winded way of saying I spent the last week on Gran Canaria, off the coast of Africa. There are worse places to run, it's true. The broad, flat beach promenades are lovely - and would have been perfect if they could have just joined up without the steep hills in between. And some of the views from the coastal paths were simply stunning - you don't get panoramas like this (see right) when you're plodding round Palmers Green on a wet Wednesday afternoon, I can tell you.
What Palmers Green does have, however, are pavements for running on. Everywhere. No roads where I'm forced to run in the frighteningly narrow gap between the crash barrier and the Canarian car drivers whose haughty disdain for the speed limit would gladden the heart of many a former Top Gear presenter. Or roads where the pedestrian space is effectively a dirt track sporadically riddled with rocks the size of small meteorites. So if my 15-mile long run was about a minute-a-mile slower than it ought to have been (and sadly, it was), I'm blaming the conditions.

Also not Palmers Green

I arrived home from the Canaries to find an email from the charity I'm running for, the MND Association. They contact me every Friday with helpful tips and advice, and rather less helpful recommendations of how far I should have got with my training by this stage. It's very kind of them, though I could probably do without them entitling their emails with the  foreboding "X WEEKS TO GO!" (where x < any number which would represent the lowest amount of weeks in which I might feel ready to run a marathon). Chaps, I know it's only six weeks to go. Reminding me isn't helping.

I'm also getting handy tips from the lovely people at Virgin Money (the backers of the London Marathon), one of which actually made me laugh out loud. This is one of their top ten motivational tips. 

Don't take the "all or nothing" approach, they advise.If you’re short on time, they say, (err, yup) or really not feeling up to a long session (it's like they're reading my mind), just go for a shorter run for however long you feel you can spare (I'm extremely cool with this so far). And then they quote "legendary running author Dr George Sheehan" (nope, never heard of him either, but apparently he was huge in the recreational running world in his day) to ask the apparently rhetorical question “Have you ever felt worse after a run?”

Hahahahahaha. Umm. Guys? Not sure how to break this to you. But yes. Frequently. Usually in a region running anywhere north of my ankles and south of my hips, with particular poignancy in areas such as my lower calves, upper right hamstring and the whole of my groin. 

Don't get me wrong, running has its moments. But right after a gruelling training session when you've expended every last ounce of stamina and effort you have, and your legs are moving with all the gymnastic joie de vivre of an arthritic sloth, is not one of them.

On that note, it's time for my 16-mile long run of the week. I can literally hear the "FIVE WEEKS TO GO" email being prepared, ready to flutter into my inbox on Friday. Can't wait.

My Hero

So I wanted to tell you a bit more about why I'm running the London Marathon, and what (or rather who) I'm running it for. He's a man named Eric Rivers, one of the bravest men I've ever known, who died just over three years ago of the crippling, cruel condition Motor Neurone Disease - a man I'm proud and privileged to have called a friend.

Eric was one of those people who made everyone around him smile and feel better about themselves. A keen and excellent cricketer, he loved nothing more than sport, his friends and - above all - his wife and daughters whom he adored. He was a man who loved life. And then MND came along and took away all of that.
Some of you may remember Eric - he became well-known nationally when he and his family were featured on Nick Knowles' DIY SOS programme. The episode in which Knowles' team rebuilt the Rivers' Enfield home is emotionally wrought even by DIY SOS's standards. But what really came across in the broadcast was Eric's shining intelligence, his quiet courage in the face of adversity, his devotion to his family and above all, his utter humanity. If you can find it on iPlayer, I'd urge you to watch it.
Eric took the fight to the disease which was destroying his body, delaying its progress far longer than the doctors had predicted was possible. By the end, MND had taken everything it could - his mobility, his speech, even his ability to breathe properly. But it could never take his mind or his spirit - he was able to keep communicating via eye movements and a special computer, and even managed to maintain an active social media presence! The wisdom and courage of his writing in his last months will always stay with me.
Eric, and fighting MND, is pretty much the reason I started running in charity events. When I did my first half-marathon for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Eric and his family were in the crowd, part of the charity's "cheer squad" spurring on their runners at the Royal Parks course. Sometimes when I'm training, and I feel like I'm at my last gasp and I can't go on, I think of Eric and how he'd have coped. And then the rest is easy. Well, easier anyway.
So if you can, please do help me fight back against MND on Eric's behalf. I'll be running the marathon for the MNDA - a fine organisation that finances medical research to combat this incurable monster of a disease, and supports the people and families torn apart by it.  
You can donate via Justgiving by clicking on this link . I'd really like to raise at least £1000 in Eric's memory - that's enough to fund a specialist communication app for eight MND sufferers for a whole year, or pay for a month's worth of laboratory equipment for research into a cure. That's real differences being made to people's lives.
Thanks for reading this far, and putting up me with getting all serious on you. Next time - more mildly amusing stories about the calamities of marathon training. I promise 

PS. You can find out more about MND and the MNDA here mndassociation.org