parkrunfans blog: The Hanley parkrun Half Marathon

parkrunfans blog: The Hanley parkrun Half Marathon: In case you are worried by the title, this isn't a parkrun rebellion against the 5km Saturday morning challenge. We just wanted to...

A call to arms!

Hello readers of my blog, this post may come across as a bit of a rant; its not intended to be such. More like me venting some frustrations.

As part of any fund raising campaign you try to gain as much coverage in the local media as possible and the bigger the fund raising event the more you try to push it out there and get people talking about it in the hope that it will bring in extra donations to the cause.

I got some disappointing news this week that BBC Radio Stoke are unable to give me air time as it clashes with Sport Relief and the news on the Olympic Torch relay. There are too many running news items!

When planning this years 6 Towns Run X2 I took into consideration lots of factors including trying to plan the timing around the big news items for the year. The Queens diamond jubilee, the torch relay through the city and off course the Olympics. In fact you’d be amazed at the level of planning that’s gone into the 6 Towns Run X2.

Pete Morgan (host of the breakfast show) will give me some shout outs which I’m thankful for but I’m slightly miffed that Sport Relief has pushed my endeavour out of the news.

Sport Relief does do a terrific job and raises huge sums of money and is ultimately responsible for my crazy running antics, as it was Eddie Izzard’s marathon running for Sport Relief that inspired me to do something good with my passion for running and willingness to put my health on the line for a good cause; so I’ll not diss anything or anyone that is out there trying hard to do good.

But what I want to get across is that I’m raising money for the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice in Stoke-on-Trent and that any money raised will directly affect the lives of local families who have a sick or life limited child.

I want to help to make peoples lives better and I can run ok so why not run a half marathon each day for 12 days in the hope it inspires people donate cash to the hospice and help them make every moment count and help me finish my challenge with a smile on my face knowing I’ve done something good for others.

So dear supporters, its up to us now to get the message out there and let people know what I’m doing.

So please like my face book page www.facebook.com /The-6-Towns-Run-X-2

follow me on Twitter @6townsrunner and share this blog.

If you have any media contacts then please feel free to contact them and ask for coverage. Its always been my belief that the more people who know what I’m doing the greater the chance of rising a good amount of money for the Donna Louise Trust.

I start running on Wednesday the 28^th, and if you think this is a good thing that I’m doing then lets get the story out there.

Thank you

In other news I’m relaxed ahead of the start which is just 4 days away as I write this blog.

All the hard training work is done now and I’m collecting a few last minute bits from my sport nutrition sponsor Bee Health Foods in Cheadle to help support me on the runs next week. I’m getting donations in daily at the moment which is really helping me. The T-shirts have gone down a storm and I can see me ordering more next week. So wish me luck and please tell everyone you know about my mad plan to run 12 half marathons in 12 days.

Cheers

Phil

http://www.justgiving.com/6Townsrunx2

Can you remember when you first saw the sky?

Imagine what it must be like as a new born baby to be taken outside for the first time, when your parents take you home from the hospital and you glimpse the sky for the very first time. You feel the chill of the air for the first time. It must be an amazing moment in our young lives; and something we very soon take for granted.

But when as a young new born you become ill, just as I did. Do your parents ever think “this could be the last time my baby feels the warmth of the sun or sees the outside world”?

At about 8 weeks old I started crying 2 hours after a feed.

I was taken to the doctor who said it was probably colic.

At three months old I started passing blood in my bowel motions and went to the Accident Unit, from there my parents had to take me to Bucknall Hospital and I stayed in their isolation ward.
The next day I was transferred to Cheethams Childrens Ward at the City General Hospital.
I wasn’t to see the sky for another 3 months.

My Mum now takes up the story:-

I used to catch the 10 o clock bus to the hospital and stay with you all day until your Dad finished work, he would stay about an hour and then we went home for our tea.
We kept asking what was wrong with you but they kept saying that until they were sure they didn’t want to say anything.

You were put on a drip which started out in your arms, then your legs and finally in your head.

You had bloody diarrhoea most of the time and you were losing a lot of weight until one nurse suggested that you be given ‘Bengers’. This was something like Complan and overnight you gained 8 ounces.
Sometimes we could not see the blood but it was still there, they call this occult blood because its hidden.

One day when we got home I couldn’t settle and so we came back to the hospital and you were just lying there shivering.  You’d had a high temperature all day and so the nurses had put a fan on you.  That was the night we nearly lost you.

One day I went to our GP and told him that I wanted to know if my baby was going to die because you did not seem to be getting any better and no-one would tell us anything.  He seemed quite upset by my question and offered me a cigarette and both of us smoked a cigarette in his surgery!
He phoned the hospital and asked the consultant if he could tell us what was wrong and what the outcome might be and it was only then that they started talking about a milk allergy.

Then your consultant went on holiday and a different consultant was doing the ward rounds instead and one day he just said that he thought you should come home.

You were at home for a couple of weeks and you got a chest infection and ended up back in hospital for two weeks. 
Then you got diarrhoea again and this kept happening, you would come home and then have to go back in.  I think you spent almost 6 months of your first year in hospital.

 It was several weeks before we were told that you were allergic to milk.

I can now drink milk and am a perfectly healthy individual but I’m one of the lucky one’s. I got better, some don’t. Some children are not so fortunate and this is where the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice is so vitally important.
They help to make sure that each child has a full and happy life for as long as they are with us; and this is one of the main reasons I’m willing to put my body on the line and run 12 half marathons in 12 days for them.

The work they do is some of the most valuable and if through my running I can help them continue this work and help others through difficult times then it will be worth all the aches and pains I’ll go through as I push my body beyond what its capable of and run 157 miles over 12 days.

If you’d like to support me then please have a look at my JustGiving Page http://www.justgiving.com/6Townsrunx2

And remember to look at the sky and try to imagine what that must be like if it’s the first time you’re looking at it. Life is amazing and so are you.

Thank You

A short biography of the 6 Towns Run

I run in Stoke-on-Trent, it’s a city in Staffordshire and for people who aren’t familiar with Stoke-on-Trent it’s actually made up of 6 individual and quite unique towns.

In 2010 the city celebrated its centenary having been formed by a federation of the six separate towns in 1910. The settlement from which the federated town (it was not a city until 1925) took its name was Stoke-upon-Trent, where the administration and railway station were located. After the union, Hanley emerged as the primary commercial centre in the city and is now the city centre. The Towns are from north to south, Tunstall, Burslem (known as the mother town), Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton.

 In March that year while at home in front of the TV I watched a Sport relief program about Eddie Izzard who is a hilarious comedian that I love. Though this program was no joke as Eddie had taken it upon himself to run 42 marathons in 50 days with just 5 weeks training!

 It inspired me and I immediately started thinking what I could do within my home city. The year before I’d ran the Tree Tops 10k which is a charity race for the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice in Stoke-on-Trent. I raised £100 for them from that race.

So it was easy for me to say “hey how about I run an endurance event for the children’s hospice”!

And so as part of the year long centenary events I developed the 6 Towns Running challenge and mapped out a half marathon distance run through each town careful not to over lap too much with the other towns and created The 6 Towns Run. 6 half marathons in 6 towns in 6 days!

It was a huge success and I raised just over £1000 for the hospice.

Throughout 2011 I always had it in mind to do another charity run in 2012 and by October / November time I’d decided I’d bring back the 6 Towns Run and run 12 in 2012.

As the Donna Louise Hospice is the only children’s hospice in North Staffordshire and South Cheshire and with twice the amount of half marathons to run this time I could take the 6 Towns Run out to new places.

So I’m very pleased to be running through Newcastle-under-Lyme, the Staffordshire Moorlands and South Cheshire as well as running new routes through Stoke-on-Trent and revisit some of my original 6 Towns Run routes too.

I started training at the beginning of December 2011 and now as I edge ever closer to the start date of 28^th March all I can say is “bring it on. I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be”

Please support me and help make this worthwhile http://www.justgiving.com/6Townsrunx2 please give what you can.

I’ve been working so hard to achieve this and I promise you that no matter what condition I’m in; if I have to crawl, hop or drag myself around. I will do this and complete 12 half marathons in 12 days (157.2 miles).

Mind games + Vibrations of life

This is my second blog about my new running challenge to run 12 half marathon distance runs over 12 days and I want to share with you some of the things I think about when I’m running or just thoughts I have about running. Please let me know what you think or what goes through your mind when you run.

Lest week I was told by someone that I was mad to be doing so much running and gave me an example of a friend of this person who was a strong runner and athlete who in later life needed to have both hips replaced as a result of her running.

Now I’m not the world’s most confident person and there are times in my life when I’m full of insecurities and for about 5 maybe 6 seconds I doubted myself and wondered if my legs would fall completely off when I hit my 60s!

Then I remembered what a friend of mine once said; “never die wondering”

Andy is a very good runner and I mean “very good” and he has never let the metal bars which keep his ankle together stop him from living to his maximum.

He is @andywg on Twitter and like so many of my running friends on Twitter (you know who you are) has inspired me to; 1 keep going, 2 go harder and 3 never doubt my own ability. I can do this, YOU CAN DO IT. No matter what you want to do, don’t be told by others that you can’t have that, or that you’ll never become that person. YOU CAN.

 When I run those are the kind of positive affirmations I’m constantly saying to myself. I find my mind wonders through my past to my school days and I think about how some teachers more or less said I’d never amount to much as an adult. During careers counselling it was the same, but in the back of my mind I never believed them. I always believed in myself.

I often wish I could go back to my old high school and stand on the stage in morning assembly and tell the whole school this simple message, “always believe in yourself, no matter what anyone says; if you have a dream you must follow it, chase it down, grab the opportunity with both hands and hold on to it so tightly that your hands go red.

Self belief combined with hard work and the willingness to make sacrifice’s will get you to where you want to be, or help that person locked inside yourself break free.

Though I’ve said I don’t believe I’m the most confident guy, there is one thing which through the years has never changed and that’s my self belief.

For those that know me well you’ll know that I’m not someone who talks the talk but you’ll know that when I say I’m going to do something, you can take that to the bank. I don’t say something until I’m (fairly) clear in my mind that I can do it which is why I will give you a gold plated cast iron guarantee that I’ll run 157+ miles over 12 consecutive days in little over a month from now.

It may not seem like a huge challenge to some as I know a lot of great charity runners who go to extraordinary lengths for their chosen charity. People such as Mark Allison who in 2013 will run across Australia running about 41 miles each day! Now that’s impressive and I’m very proud to be running this years Great North Run as part of Marks team, catch him on Twitter @rungeordierun

But what I’m doing is hard for me, I’m not an elite runner, I’ve been working towards this since the start of December now and though I’m close to my peak fitness I know I’ve still got a lot of hard training runs ahead of me.
But I like to say that “nothing in life that’s worth doing is easy” and wanting to bring money in to the only children’s hospice in North Staffordshire and South Cheshire is worth the hardship and the long winter runs in the cold and the rain.

I wonder if people tell Mark Allison he’s crazy to run so much, and I wonder what he does to challenge that view. All I do to challenge them is to make it my life’s work to keep proving the nay Sayers wrong. I am so more then you said I would be!

This is a great running quote which I like “Most people run a race to see who is the fastest, I run a race to see who has the most guts”.

In 2005 I wrote “Vibrations of life” to describe to others one of the ways I feel alive and connected to life and I've added that to thsi blog. Please have a read.

And this is the link to my just giving account http://www.justgiving.com/6Townsrunx2

That’s one of the ways you can support me on my runs.

Thanks for reading and I’ll try to make the next blog a bit more bite sized and not such an epic.

Phil

Vibrations of life!

Planet Earth is rotating at a constant speed of over 1000 miles per hour.

We don't feel the Earth’s rotation because everything else is moving with us and because the motion is very smooth. It's kind of like sitting in a car and reading a book or playing a game. If the car is going very smoothly, with no stops or bumps, and you don't look out the window, you wouldn't know you were moving.

    Imagine if you could feel the vibrations of the planet spinning beneath your feet! Imagine if the further from home you travel the greater the vibration, and the further from your comfort zones you are the stronger the spinning gets; to the point that you have to hang on by your finger tips with the world rushing past you at 1000 miles an hour.

    Draw a circle in your mind, in the centre is your comfort zone, your daily life, the dull mundane of existence. Here you feel still and lifeless.

Move further from the centre point and travel out to the edges of the circle and feel the vibrations getting stronger, feel the pull of the journey, out here on the extreme edge of life is where we find the buzz, the adrenaline, the wanderlust, the reason for that existence. Out here we are truly alive.   

    Next time you find yourself in a new place, alone and far from home. Stand still for just a couple of minutes and feel the vibrations of your world rushing and swirling around you. Bask in the knowledge that you are more alive out here then you could ever be in the centre of the circle!

And when, at journey’s end you start to feel the vibration less, remember that day in a far distant land when you felt life coursing through your body, though you may find your self back in the centre one day. It will never be a comfort zone again, and you’ll not be afraid to venture out from that centre point when the call to travel takes over you once again; as it always does, time and time again…………..

©PDThomas2012

So the 6 Towns run is back on!

Seems along time since I wrote a blog post about running for the Donna Louise Children’s Hospice but here we go again.

Its 2012 so why not run 12 half marathons in 12 days to raise much needed funds for the only children’s hospice in North Staffordshire and South Cheshire?

Why? Well why not?

I spent much of 2011 thinking of challenges I could do this year for the hospice and eventually settled on bringing back the 6 Towns run but X 2, meaning I’m doubling my runs from 6 half marathons to 12, and like in 2010 they are in consecutive days without rest days.

I made the final decision to go for this at the start of December last year and have been steadily building up my training since then.

If I’m honest I don’t do a great deal of planning with regards to training, but for those that may like to know how I go about getting into shape to run 13.1 miles everyday for 12 days I’ll give some details here.

In the last third of 2011 I’d been running and racing well and so I had the luxury of a good foundation of base fitness on which to build.

With regards to my specific challenge I just need to run, and run; and then run a bit more.

Basically I need lots of time on my feet pounding out the miles.

For the original 6 Towns run in 2010 I got to a point where I could comfortably run up to 50 miles over 5 days. 10 miles everyday. I thought if I can do that I can do 13.1 every day for 6 days.

And the training philosophy for this years big 12 runs is no different other then I’ll get to a position where I’m able to run about 70+ miles in a week.

Right now I’m on 40+ miles and this is my acclimatisation phase. I have not increased things for two weeks now and will actually taper off slightly in the next two weeks.

Though I must admit some of that is due to a race I’d like to do well in and so want to have fresh legs for that too.

I have 3 or 4 races before the 12 runs start at the end of March but the Alsager 5 will be my only one I treat as a race.

From then on I’ll be trying to keep a lid on my competitive side as I don’t want to be foolish and pick up a knock on the lead up to my charity runs.

After the race I will steadily build up the miles again but never by more then 5% each week. On top of the running I try my best to fit two gym sessions in each week where I work on leg strength and lots of stretching; I also work on knee alignment using light weights and step ups on a stepper which helps keep an old injury under control.

I’m introducing more core workouts too and will try to do some upper body work just so I don’t look so scrawny. Sorry for the vanity!

I also do a spin class and at least one long swim each week to cross train. Plus the swim is relaxing too.

So that’s what I’m doing to get myself into shape so I can run 157 miles over 12 days without any part of me falling off.

I’m committed to this but your support will help enormously.

Follow me on Twitter at @6townsrunner or find me on Facebook at The 6 Towns Run X 2

Cheers > Phil

The 30th Bupa Great North Run. Sunday 19 September 2010.

The highs and lows of my first great run!

Sunday the 19th of September didn’t start out like any other racing morning; for one thing I was in a hotel overlooking the River Tyne and its Iconic bridges.
As I looked out of my second floor window at 8.30 to see if it was raining I could already see runners wearing bin bags moving on mass down the road, all heading in one direction.

To the start of the 30th Bupa Great North Run, the world’s biggest half marathon. I gulped at the thought of what lay ahead for me over the course of the next few hours.
My head was filled with the music "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)" which only added to the growing fear in my mind about the race.

I stuck to my usual pre race rituals and foods. A cup of coffee and a big bowl of bran flakes and some apple juice at least 2 hours before the start has been my tried and tested formula to keep going during races and runs for the last 2 years now.

So at around 9.20; I and my other half Kedren who had run the 2008 GNR, joined the ever growing throng of runners now snaking its way through the retail centre of Newcastle.

By the time I got down to the Kilometre long starting area, the wheel chair race had just started and the elite women were about to kick off.

As we walked to my starting zone we saw Ant and Dec laughing with the crowd and stopped to take a photo, we then saw a donkey runner!
Well someone in a very good donkey costume. We saw some of the wackiest and wickedest fancy dress outfits as we made out way to zone D.

After a couple of nervous toilet stops in the bushes above the central motorway I said good bye to Keds who I’d meet at the finish in South Shields later and queued to get in to my starting pen with a few hundred other orange numbered runners.

For what ever reason they closed the gate to Zone D and panicked runners then darted forward to zone C only to find we couldn’t get in there as it was too full, by now a few people had climbed over the 6 foot high metal fences.

It was starting to look like a scene from the Hillsborough disaster and my adrenaline kicked in and with a handful of others we sprinted further to the start at zone B and pulled the fences up out of the stands and held them high enough for people to scramble under and into the race.

I went under very quickly and then held the metal post at one end allowing others to crawl under after me.
After a few minutes someone else took my place and my race then started.
I walked forward with the rest to the sounds of Mark Knopfler’s theme which I always find emotional at the best of times.

My aim was to set a new PB as this would be my flattest half marathon course I had run to date and I did the 2010 Potters Arf in 1 hour and 57 minutes so I felt this race held a good chance for me to go one better.

My start couldn’t have gone better, well once I’d got into a starting pen!

To be so far forwards just one zone up from the elite men was maybe a bit too ambitious but it meant I wouldn’t have so many people to push past.

I set off at a steady pace and didn’t feel too hemmed in by slower runners and I also didn’t feel like I was going too slow for the group I was with. The first mile down hill came and went in a blur and I checked my Garmin to make sure my pace wasn’t creeping up into the 6 and 7 minute miles which would be way too quick to go at the start.

I soon crossed the most famous land mark in the race, the Tyne Bridge and set off through a series of under passes as I made steady progress through Gateshead.

I heard the roar of the red arrows fly over the bridge and turned to look for a second and marvel at the spectacle but then it was on up the first hill towards the Gateshead Stadium and then on up to Heworth. Another glance at the Garmin and I was still running at 8.5 minute miles.

Somewhere between miles 4 and 5 I started to feel comfortable with my pace and tried to relax into the race.

My Garmin did seem out by at least point 2 of a mile as it would bleep a while after I’d gone past the mile posts on the course so I wasn’t sure what had gone pear shaped as I’d started it the moment my feet hit the mat at the start.

But I was going well and I hit the 15K mark in 1 hour and 21 minutes, from my Garmin time I hit 10 miles in 1 hour and 25 minutes which is my fastest 10 miles to date.

I was now feeling it and this was a hard tough and gruelling last 3 miles.

I’d got through my gel at mile 7 and eaten a jelly baby and stopped at every water and powerade stop on route in an aid to give my legs and body everything it needed to keep going. Throughout the run the rain held off and it was 15c by the time I hit mile 12.

My legs we’re dead and I had pain etched across my sweat soaked face as came over that hill and the North Sea came into view, I just remember saying thank God.

As I ran along the road with the sea to my right I remember feeling faint and seeing other runners by the side of the road being tended to by medics, I just thought I had to go on and go on at the best speed I could find.

The end soon came into sight and I summoned some energy for a sprint finish after about 600 meters.

I was in a total and complete state of exhaustion at the end and once I’d dropped my timing chip in a bin I limped over to a field and collapsed. I lay on my back for what seemed like an age with the world spinning around me. I then got up and slowly walked over to get my goody bag and medal.

I then went over to the charity tents to meet Keds.
I was feeling very low as I’d not hit my target of beating 1 hour 57:59.
I’d raced around the course in 1 hour and 58:29. 31 seconds off a new PB.

These are my split times 5k - 25:56, 10k - 53:25 and 15k - 1:21:15.

I felt so low but as the day came to a close and we drove back to the hotel in Newcastle I started to feel a real sense of achievement.

Of the 6 competitive half marathons I’ve ran to date this was my second best time and my overall position was 10,728 and this means I had about 30,000 other runners behind me.

A few days later and though the legs still felt painful I really was proud of my achievement and I’m sure I’ll run in future Great North Runs. Maybe even the 60th run in 30 years time at which point I’ll be 65 years young!

Running the 30th Great North Run is my biggest running achievement in my fledgling running career so far.