Final Total

Hi all,

Today I received the final total for my sponsorship amount and would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who supported me for this event.

The final total raised was £2,306.12. An amazing effort!

I hope you enjoyed reading the blog along the way and once again thank-you very much.

Cheers,

Ed

Did it! 3hrs38!

So I did it! 3hrs38... Can't really say I enjoyed it, well the occasion I did, but not the run, but it is something I can say I have done and something I can tick off the list!

It was a great day though however being up at 5.30am to get the train into central London and to the starting point wasn't great. Even at that time the trains were packed with runners.

I was amazed by the scale of the operation when we got nearer London and saw the roads being closed and the starting line setup. Once at the starting line-up I had around 45minutes to prepare with a few stretches and some of the free Lucozade.

Then it was time to approach the start line. Once the gun went it took over 6 minutes to cross the line given the volume of people about. It was due to this that it was so hard to get into any sort of rhythm during the first few miles as I found myself dodging in and out of runners trying to stick to my pace.

I was going really well up until 16 miles when I experienced a burst blood blister which caused me to link to the next two miles... I then saw my Mum & Dad waving me on a 21 miles which gave me a boost and it was around about 24 miles when I hit 'the wall' but knowing that I only had an additional two miles to go I was confident that I was going to get through it...

Once I reached the finish line I got to the waiting area and just collapsed in a heap totally shattered!

The hardest part of it all was the next day when my legs didn't belong to me but it was also great to celebrate with a pint of Peroni!

You can all rest easy as I haven't applied for next year's event, I'll be watching it on BBC happy in the knowledge that I have done it already!

Thank you all so much for your kind donations, every penny is greatly appreciated! Thanks to everyone who helped with the fundraising, thanks Laura and my family for all the unwavering support they have given me and finally thanks to Alix Robertson who kindly gave me a sports massage before the big day which helped me no end.

I am still taking sponsorship donations so please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.

Winding down to the BIG DAY

Not much to say on the running front over these last few weeks but I have managed one or two runs which has been updated via my Twitter account @Ed_RNLI_Ldn2012.

Just keeping my body ready for the grueling test on Sunday!

This week is all about the diet now and loading up on carbs to give me the energy to get through the run.

I have been shopping in Tesco and expect to have a lot of pasta, potatoes and chicken over the next few days including a spaghetti bolognaise on Friday! I just have to promise Laura that I won't make it too hot with the chillies!

I hope I can cap a great few weekends after last weekend my team, Sully Sports, claimed the league and cup double by winning the South Wales Senior League and FAW Trophy in the same week!

To win the league we had gone on a 19 game winning run which propelled us to the top of the table and with results going our way were crowned champions last Wednesday.

This was a timely boost before Saturday's FAW trophy final in which we defeated Holyhead Hotspur, a side two tiers up from us in the Welsh pyramid system, 2-1 to claim a fantastic result in this all Wales amateur cup.

Read about our achievement on the FAW website http://www.faw.org.uk/news/FAW84476.ink?newstype=d. You can also see some pictures of the winning dressing room and the cup on our timeline on Twitter.

Make no mistake this was a massive achievement for our club and we can only thank all of the traveling supporters, families and club officials who made the day such a special one.

So it's not much from me this week but I hope to bring you my blog next week, when I give you the news I have completed one of my lifetime ambitions on another enjoyable day.

Please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.

Keeping the Motivation

The countdown is well and truly on but I am now finding it hard to keep my motivation up. Running for over two hours for training is time consuming and can be hard to fit into any persons schedule. However I know that I am on the final step of the journey now so there's no turning back!

So Sunday morning I was up at 7am to get ready for a 7.30am start. I was a bit stiff after football on Saturday but after a good stretch the aches and pains soon went, and a mile into the run I felt good as new with the sun beginning to break through the clouds and breathing in the fresh crisp air. With no-one about and no cars on the roads it was the perfect start to the day and best of all I finished a 10 mile run in just over an hour setting me up for the rest of the day! Follow my route here.

Onto Sunday night and I was supporting Laura at her Bliss Dancers show. This was her 5th show which incorporates dancers of all ages performing Street Dance routines to a packed out Lee Hall in Dinas Powys.

Laura and the Bliss Girls showed their support for my marathon fund raising by organising a raffle which helped raise £224.80 towards my grand total!

What a fantastic effort. Not only was I treated to a great show but also was helped in reaching my goal with a superb donation from them. I can't thank Laura and the Bliss girls enough for their efforts, truly outstanding support. I would also like to give a special mention to Glyn who did the lighting for the show. He donated £50 of his fees to the overall total, an amazing gesture!

This takes my fund raising to over £1,000 but I am still in need of another £1,300 to get to the total required. I am hoping to organise some other events both before and after the marathon so please keep an eye on my Twitter account @Ed_RNLI_Ldn2012 for more information.

Please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.

A month to go!

A month to go and training is going well. This week I have been combining running and gym work to build up stamina. Mostly on the bike and some weights but with the amount of cardio I've been doing I don't expect to be building muscle any time soon!

I am hoping to do a 20 mile run this weekend which is going to put me in good stead for the big day and I hope to do two more of these before having a week off a with a week to go to get rid of any niggling injuries which always seem to spring up when you're running such distances

At least this week I haven't had to get up at 5.30am to pound the pavements, my training schedule has thankfully been a bit more normal.

I hope you have all read page 12 of the Barry & District this week which reports on my exploits @FFTDeli last Friday, an extremely successful day! I also received another boost to my fund raising this week with some monies from a cake sale in the contact center, my thanks to Eira Carroll for this, and some other extremely generous donations from friends and family.

To keep track of all my runs, please follow me on twitter @Ed_RNLI_Ldn2012.

Please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.

Rolls and Running

Apologies for the delay this week but I thought I would leave the blog until today. The reason? Because today was the day that I attempted working in the Deli to help raise money for my Marathon bid.

What a day it was! It was a 10am start and after a cup of tea I thought this is relatively easy, standing behind the counter and having a chat... Little did I realise all the work of everyone else going on around me, people taking and making orders whilst I am giving it the big 'I am'!

Come two hours later I was covered in Chicken tikka, flour and butter, and desperately trying to remember whether the lady at the front of the queue had asked for all the salad or just cucumber and lettuce, and whether she wanted onions or not!!!

I had to get to grips with the weighing scales, the meat slicer, whether I had one of the sharp knives or not, and how long the panini machine cooked for!

I would like to say I took it all in my stride but that would be a lie as I was plainly out of my depth but I think I did OK, no real complaints, apart from the beef, mustard and egg mayo concoction I managed to make (which was actually quite nice!) but was rejected out of hand by a horrified customer! Ooops...

What is great though is the fact that, thanks to the generosity of all the customers, I managed to raise £139.22 for the RNLI. An excellent total!

I would like to thank Nathan and Sarah of Food for Thought Deli for giving me the opportunity to help out, and to all of the girls for helping me through the day...... At least I was quicker at making a chicken tikka baguette than Natalie, and that was on my first (and last) day!!!

Running wise, this week I am back to my normal routine. However Tuesday was slightly different because I was up at 5.30am to get the miles in!

This was because I didn't have time in the evening for my usual circuit. One thing I still challenge to this day is how your body can even function at that time! I must be mad..

To keep track of all my runs, please follow me on twitter @Ed_RNLI_Ldn2012. Thanks for the continued support!


Please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.

Back to the training & Cake Sale

Back to the training this week as I have now had nearly two weeks off from running. If you are a regular reader of the blog then you'll know I took a week out to give me legs some time to recover, however this proved to be mis-timed because the following week I caught a chest infection which stopped me from training altogether.

This week I am now back fit and healthy so am now going to step up the training to take it to the next level!

I have worked out that I now have just over six weeks to get myself in tip top shape before the marathon.

I have already run 17/18 miles on a couple of occasions and would now like to hit the full distance (or close to it) to make sure that I will be able to complete to course on the big day, therefore over the next few weeks I hope to get a least three 20+ mile runs in.

Keep an eye on my twitter feeds @Ed_RNLI_Ldn2012 as I hope to bring some new routes and these will show on here with links to mapmyrun.com for you to check them out.

My fundraising efforts also need to step up as I still need to raise around £1,300 of my £2,300 total. Last week we organised a cake sale in work which raised £88.50. Thank you to everyone who supported the day and bought a cake, with special thanks going to Louise Llewellyn-Jones and Luke Collard who helped organise the event and to my Mum, Louise and Tracey Lewis who also baked cakes for the day!

Next week I am working Friday lunchtime in the Deli on High Street, Barry to help raise awareness and collect some money. Come and buy a sandwich, make a donation, and watch me struggle to make the rolls! I'll be like a fish out of water and am sure I'll be in for some wind ups from the Deli crew.

Please see my sponsorship link here if you wish to donate to my London Marathon cause for the RNLI. I need to raise £2,300! All donations are gratefully accepted! Thank you for your support.