Treadmill Marathon @ Bentalls Centre Kingston

Well, I thought I would update my blog in the same month as I did the actual event!!!
On Saturday I did a treadmill marathon in the main entrance area of the Bentalls Centre in Kingston town centre. This was another fundraiser to support Shooting Star CHASE Childrens Hospice (SSC), and was planned before I had done the 4 marathons in 24hrs challenge last month, I was just hopeful I would have recovered enough to run another marathon, thankfully recovery had gone ok since the 16th/17th April's BIG run.
I was meant to start the run at 10am, but we couldn't actually get the treadmill going, so about 12:00 my wife took the kids for a McDonalds as a treat, when they came back we managed to get the treadmill going. I kind of wished I had eaten a McDonalds as well as I could hear my stomach rumbling. So about 12:20 I asked my son to start the treadmill for me, which he duly did and whizzed me upto 17kmh (bit too fast!!!!).
The centre had been a bit quiet in the morning but it really started to get busy as the afternoon went by, people were interested in the info board SSC had put up about my 4 Marathons in 24hrs last month and also about what I was doing to-day as well. I was lucky as a whole load of volunteers from SSC were on hand for the duration to stand with collection buckets and answer peoples questions about what/why/how etc.

Plenty of teenagers asking how far I was running, or how far a Marathon was, one lad, when I told him how far 4 marathons was told me I was 'Hench', not sure if that is good or bad!! The run I knew was going to tough mentally as I really don't like treadmill running, and it certainly made me ache in different areas to normal, or possibly just that this was the furthest I had run in over a month. The run itself passed without too much drama, although the last 10k took foorreevveerr to go past. I was glad that a few friends popped along during the afternoon to show there support, which was really appreciated.

Total time for the run 3hrs47mins (seemed a lot, lot longer), and I have just found out to-day that we raised £1,010 in total, which is fantastic. Another good fundraising event for SSC.

Ranelagh Half Marathon - Sun 8th May

My good friend Rob managed to get me an entry from one of his running club who wasn't able to run. So as the race is only 5miles away and with a free entry I thought it a good idea to give the legs an outing to see how recovery has gone since my big run.
In short, bit warm, went out at 1:27 pace for first 3miles, this felt much harder than it should, so slowed to about 7 to 7.10pace. Kept to this for the rest of the run, definitely noticed how the warmer weather increases the Heart Rate as my HR at 7 to 7.10 pace was about 10bpm higher than normal. At about 11.5miles caught up with a runner who I had spoken to at the start who had said he wanted to do sub 1:35. He was struggling a bit so I did my best to run with him and encourage him to keep going as he was ahead of schedule, he did well and hung in there to finish with me in 1:33.40. Easy 1mile jog back to car and home.

Still a bit of recovery to go until I can look at having a full out attack on my Half/Mara PB's but this will come. Very happy how well I recovered overall, only 1 week off after the VLM x 4 and then 20miles run the next week, so this is a good sign. Events are going to come fairly thick and fast now, some really good events coming up that I am looking forward to.