At 8am on 29th March 2019 I will begin (and hopefully finish) the first of seven marathons that I am doing that week. I am trying to raise money for East Anglian Children’s Hospice a charity very close to my heart.
What am I actually doing?
Over seven days, I am running seven marathons in seven different countries, solo. Each day I will be running 26.2 miles in a race against the clock as I try and finish each run in time to shower (hopefully) and get on a flight to the next destination.
My first run is in London, following the route from Greenwich to Hyde park. I then fly to Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Venice, Geneva and Sardinia (Not strictly a country but don’t tell anyone).
Why am I doing this?
I like to push myself, make a positive difference to people and help raise money along the way. EACH is an incredible charity and the work they do for children with life limiting conditions is unbelievable and humbling. I want to help. A link to their site is here https://www.each.org.uk.
What training regime have you been following in the build-up to this challenge? Has anything interesting or unusual happened during training?
As a personality, planning is not a strong point. I’ve still got to book 4 of the seven hotels! Unsurprisingly, therefore I have not followed a strict training regime in the buildup. I am regularly running 40 miles a week and did a 45 mile run from Wendover to London in January to get some distance in my legs. Frustratingly due to all the running my achillies has started to get a bit angry with me. Training is now tough as I don’t want to make it worse but also don’t want to stop the running.
How tough will it be?
I have done some long runs in the past. However these runs have been easy in comparison to my adventure in March and April of this year for a number of reasons:
1. I am doing the entire trip solo. I am used to running in groups with support. Being alone will be a real learning for me and will take a different type of determination than previous runs. I know it will be incredibly difficult to drive myself every day to do this with no one else there. It’s also quite risky if anything for wrong (fingers crossed that it won’t)
2. The logistics are a nightmare. Finding flights which are at the right time and getting to the airport everyday by around 1pm puts added pressure on me for each run. I will need to average sub 4 hour marathons on most days. Finding places to shower and hotels which will hold my bags while I run is a new problem for me and on top of that there are the language barriers (I am just about proficient in English). All of this puts a huge additional pressure compared to what I have done previously.
3. The risk of injury, fatigue and DVT. Running 183 miles is going to take it’s toll. I’m going to have to be very careful and clever with my food and sleep and keep moving on my flights.
What would I love you to do?
Please please help by sharing and donating even a tiny amount. It all makes and incredible difference.
https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/FlumeTraining
Thank-you
Raoul x
