“This is NOT fun!” - Training for a marathon

Our Chichester Service Manager Jo is running the Brighton Marathon in aid of MSH. We join her as she bravely (or foolishly) pulls on her running shoes and heads out into the rain.

Training: Week 2

Distance: 7 miles

Time until marathon: 12 weeks

Training for and running a marathon is horrible.

The last time I ran a marathon was 10 years ago, around the time of a big birthday, and I had helpfully forgotten quite how horrible it was! Since then I have had two children and celebrated another big birthday, eating a LOT of cake in between. Also, last February I did a fantastic job of severing my Achilles tendon...

However, I’m not letting this defeat me - I see every day the amazing work that my colleagues do supporting women who are survivors of domestic abuse as well as women who are in difficulty or crisis. I am so proud to be raising money for this charity and am doing it for all the women that we have supported as well as my amazing colleagues and our wonderful volunteers.

Training diary

This week the ‘real’ training has kicked in, I have started interval training in my shorter runs to build up pace and stamina. (Basically, run as fast as you can until you are nearly sick, recover for a few seconds, repeat numerous times until you are actually sick).

I am also doing one run of hill intervals where I find a big hill (luckily there are many around here!) and do the whole run really fast, recover, repeat thing, but up a hill. THIS IS NOT FUN!

But if I am going to get anywhere near my 2013 time I need to improve my pace. If you are interested I would like to run the marathon in 4 hours and so to do this I need to be running a 9 minute mile. I am currently at an 11 minute mile so I have a LOT of work to do.

This week’s long run was 7 miles which was OK, but 26.2 miles feels like an incredibly long way away right now!

Knowing that I am raising money for such an amazing cause that makes a real difference to women's lives is the thing that will keep me putting on my trainers and heading out into the wind/rain/sleet/snow/hail [insert awful running weather here] time after time and running mile after mile.

Even when it really hurts.

And my toe-nails are falling off. (You're very welcome!)

A slightly sad piece of news is that during our 7 mile run I knew that my nearly 14-year-old training companion Bess would not be training for her third marathon.

Whilst she is super keen, being completely deaf, quite blind and very slow it is definitely time for her to hang up her marathon training lead …

However I still have my boy Buddy who will be accompanying me on all my runs.

It’s his first marathon and he is loving all the extra mileage.

How to sponsor me

If you can, please make this all worthwhile and sponsor me! I cannot overstate the motivational impact this has. Literally every penny I raise will be spent supporting women, keeping women safe, helping them to rebuild their lives and thrive not just survive.

Visit my Fundraising page: Jo’s Marathon for MSH (peoplesfundraising.com)