Day 606

 OK so about last night.....

 For the most part the 30 or so of us who had turned up (out of a possible 130) sat around the perimeter of a conference room making polite conversation with the people next to us, luckily for me this was FMG and a perfectly pleasant man who ran the Great North Run last year and who's training is going well.  Less lucky for the girl sat opposite us who was sandwiched between two blokes discussing their training at length and bestowing the virtues of a recently purchased foam roller.

After about an hour of talking amongst ourselves, oh and FMG solving the conundrum of how to get the mulled wine out of the tea urn when the volume isn't sufficient to pour out of tap and one sip later wishing she hadn't, it started.

An introduction, a pep talk from Snowy - an 1972 Olympian decathlete, previous Barnardo's boy and friend of Daley Thompson who will take the training day (which incidentally will concentrate on how to warm up properly because Snowy has never run a marathon, at 71 and with two replacement knees is never going to run a marathon, and thinks we're nuts for even thinking about it), a brief insight into the work carried out at one of their centres by an employee and fellow runner, an opportunity to write a good luck message to ourselves in a book and, approximately twenty minutes after it began, it was finished.  As motivational, get to know each other and feel like you're part of a team events go it was about as flat as the deflated balloons they had lying on one of the tables.

Bottom line, I'm going to get to run the marathon and children in need of help will have benefited because of it, but I'm struggling to disassociate last night from the marathon itself and feel that all my illusions about how exciting it will be have been shattered.  An email in from Barnardo's today saying how lovely it was to meet us yesterday (by which read hand us a name badge) and a request for any suggestions as to how they could improve the event.  In my current mood I thought it best to refrain from replying!


London -129
Total Distance covered     1024.7 miles
Gym Attendance = 12 (Target 20 by Christmas!)