Almost There...

Two days to go. The bags are packed (nearly), the passports and registration documents ready, and our fundraising target has been smashed! Thank you so much to everyone who donated. We are so very, very grateful (especially me, as it means I'm officially allowed to run - yipee!)

The next two days will possibly be the busiest of my life (or maybe a close second to my wedding day and the day before). In my usual nitpicky and over prepared style, I've put together an itinerary of our movements. From 7AM tomorrow, no second of our time goes unaccounted for. We've got to get to the airport, fly to London, get to the marathon Expo to register, get to the hotel to check in, get to the Pasta Party, then get back to the hotel to try to sleep.

On Sunday, Jennifer and I need to leave the hotel just after 7 and get two trains to Greenwich and find our starting positions. Then there's the small and insignificant matter of the race itself. Honestly, it's the last thing I'm worried about, after the travel arrangements and the perils of travelling with an 11 month old. Izzy and her dad will be seeing the sights of London as they wait for us to finish - I hope they get a nice day for wandering around. Jen and I need to try to meet up at some point after the 3 mile mark. We're starting at different areas, since I'm a charity runner and she's a ballot runner, but the courses converge after 3 miles. I hope she doesn't have to wait too long for me :-)We should be finished at the back of 3PM and then we have to limp our way back to Gatwick to catch our flight home - poor Jennifer has work in the morning!

If you want to track my progress on Sunday, you can go here and find me. If it asks for my race number, it's 34934.

The picture below is my marathon training plan - just Sunday to tick off now! At the top is the magnet sent to all runners by the race organisers. You can remove some pieces to  show your final race time. I wonder what it's going to be?

12 days and counting

Now it gets real - and scary! There's less than a fortnight to go, we've run our last long run (a relatively easy 20 miler last week) and the taper has started (the taper is the 2-3 week period before a big race when you scale back the length of your runs to let your body heal, build up fuel reserves, and rest before the race). Our 'long' run this weekend was 12 miles, and next week is 8 -it's amazing that these distances seem really short and easy, when only a few months ago they were still daunting and difficult. The 12 mile run was one I'd wanted to do for three years, since I moved into my current home. From the bottom of my road you can see, in the far distance, the Erskine Bridge. I always had a notion to run to it and run across it, and a few weeks ago I checked the distance - exactly 6 miles from my door, so a perfect 12 miles for an out and back run. The run there was pretty hard and I was struggling a bit, but we eventually reached the bridge. We ran uphill to the centre of the bridge and stopped to take in the view of the Clyde stretching back towards Glasgow, and take a few pictures. We turned around and headed home, and after a mile or so I realised why the run out had been so hard - it had almost all been uphill! For some reason, the fact that we were going downhill on the way back was more obvious than the fact that we were going uphill on the way out had been, so the second half was pretty speedy in comparison!

I've been working with an injury for the last few weeks, which has had me worried about the big day. I've had a pain in my left thigh when walking, which initially gets worse when running but eases off after a couple of miles. Jen and I went for sports massages this week, and the therapist diagnosed it as a problem with the iliotibial band. She gave me stretches to do, and I've been icing it and wearing a support, and it's been much better, so hopefully it'll hold up for the marathon. Unfortunately, the only real cure is rest, so I'll just have to soldier on until after the 22nd of April.

One real benefit of having the marathon to focus on is that I've barely thought about going back to work after maternity leave. I go back on the 30th of April, although I still don't know where I'm going to be working. I'm a teacher and I was on a secondment for 2.5 years before having Izzy, so I had to release my position at my former school. The council do have to find me a post, but it's taking a while to get any answers. To be honest, though, I'm not too worried - I have to go somewhere, and a school is a school, kids are kids, and teaching is teaching - I'm certainly looking forward to being back in front of a class after my time away, and I think all the exercise is keeping me from getting too stressed about it.

We've nearly reached our fundraising target! We're at £1545 out of £1800. We're so close, it really looks like we're going to do it! Thanks so much to everyone who has sponsored us, we really appreciate it and we hope to do you proud a week on Sunday! If you'd like to sponsor us, you can do so here - thank you :-)