The White Heat of Technology

Day:         14
Distance: 13.8 km
Time:        1:14:18 secs

The first run of the new year was done back in Essex. As a starting point I based the run on the Billericay 10k route and then improvised an additional 4km so as to meet the goal of 75 mins as laid down by my training plan.

I decided to use the Run Keeper App on my wife's iphone to track my run for the first time. Up until this point I'd been mapping my runs, after I'd done them, on http://www.walkjogrun.net/. WJR is a good website but as my training plan calls for progressively longer distances it is taking me longer to map out the route I've followed, so I figured that an app that tracks my run as I do it was just what I needed. All that was required was for me to get a decent GPS signal, press start and then head off for 75 minutes of running.

As I was running round I began to reappraise my self-assigned status as a Luddite (see definition in the very first post on this blog). Here I was running round with an ipod strapped to my left arm listening to a playlist I'd created, with an iphone in my pocket measuring my every move thanks to the wonders of GPS and at the end of it I'd be adding my own voice to 'blogosphere' in order to record what I had done. All in all, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. At the dawn of the second decade of the 21st Century I had finally made my peace with the technological advances that I had held in contempt until very recently.

The air of post-Millennial self-satisfaction came to an abrupt halt though when I retrieved the iphone from my pocket and discovered that Run Keeper had recorded just 3 seconds of the 4,458 that I'd been running for! Apparently, I'd left a crucial stage out at the beginning - I hadn't locked the damn phone. Luckily, I was wearing a running watch throughout so I knew how long the run had taken but I still needed to turn to walkjogrun to track the route I'd followed.

Clearly, giving up my Luddite ways is going to take some time yet.

London (Marathon) Calling

What better way to celebrate turning 30 next year than putting myself through 26 miles 385 yards of physical pain and emotional torment? Well, I could have a party or organise the pub crawl to end all pub crawls, but that's going to have to wait until after 17th April 2011.


I'd always been sceptical about running a marathon. Obviously, it's an unbelievable achievement but much like scoring the winning goal in a Cup final, walking on the Moon or finding a cure for cancer it was an achievement that I could never realistically see adorning my CV. Over the last couple of years I've got into running and found, to my amazement, that I'm actually pretty good at it. I've now run numerous 10k races and I ran the Brentwood Half Marathon earlier this year so I now feel that I'm ready to tackle the aforementioned 26 miles 385 yards (or, for any European readers out there 42.195 kilometres).


Thanks should go to my employer, GfK NOP, for giving me a place in next year's London Marathon. I'll be running on behalf of Diabetes UK, who I hope to raise loads of money for. I'll be setting up a justgiving site in the New Year.


Much like marathons, I'd always been sceptical about writing a blog. I'm a self-confessed Luddite and have often wondered what people's motivations were in setting up blogs. My motivation is that I really want to document the progress that I make whilst training for the marathon and having a blog seemed like the best way to do it. This blog is intended to be an online diary that records my progress through my training plan right up to the big day. I'll also take the time to discuss such crucial elements of my training plan as the play list I'm developing to help keep me running on the day.


I'm not so vain as to suppose that many people, if any, will read this blog but in a way that's not the point. Much as I'd love people to read this and post their opinions I'll be happy to simply have a record of what I'm going to be doing over the next few months.