A church worth running 26.2 miles for

On Sunday 13th Oct our Church Treasurer ran the Kingston Marathon in aid of church funds.

Thank you so much to all who have been so generous in sponsoring him (to add yours retoactively please email here.)

Cheques should be made payable to St Andrew's PCC and sent to St Andrew's Vicarage, 10 St Andrew's Road, London W14 9SX

Thank you very much indeed for your generosity.

We have already raised sponsorship of £890 !

Race Report

I adopted a new running style - much less leg movement, lower arms, very slow breathing, and a new approach to the run [Walk while you're Ahead]. It paid off. I came in in 3h46m32 which is >25min better than my previous Personal Best of 4h12m10s. I'm convinced I could have done 3h44m55 if I'd either stuck more rigorously to the plan (ie walked more) or been willing to cripple myself - but sub 3h45 is a good target for London 2003.

My occasional running partner Natalia took Katy's place (officially) and did her 16 in a leisurely (for her) 1h55. Natalia took a pre-start and a finish photo (above).

[for those who don't know, and are interested, Walk while you're Ahead means:

a. Set a realistic target pace with target times for each mile.

b. When you reach the mile marker ahead of the target, WALK until the time you should have reached the mile marker.

Results: always refreshed, less bored, you know you have something in reserve and you know you will hit your target time it you stick to the plan]

The course was 3 loops of 8 miles with an extra loop of 2.6 inserted into the first loop. Each loop went over Kingston Bridge and Hampton Court Bridge so was quite picturesque. There was also an 8-miler starting 25mins later and a 16miler starting 55 minutes later. I was passed by quite a few 8 milers [and couldn't resist speeding up a bit to overtake some of them just to check that my legs were still working - probably cost me 1.6 mins :-( ] and some 16 milers, but also passed some 16 milers in my 3rd lap.

When I walked I texted times to Chrissie's mobile so I have some record of the times at various mile markers. I think I did negative splits - that was the plan, but I didn't stick to it quite as well as I should.