Leading from the front. Who said the drugs don’t work…
All because the lady loves Milk Tray…
After my exertions in Bletchley I was temporarily ‘crippled’. I could only climb the stairs on all fours! My hip problem has now been diagnosed as Trochanteric bursitis. It’s not going to kill me, but needs a bit of rest. It meant I sadly had to miss the beautiful sounding Pewsey Downsaround in an attempt to recover.
The ‘rest’ has had it’s chance and hasn’t worked, so I just need to get on with it…
So my other run of the month was the inaugural Milton Keynes marathon (apparently the numerous marathons in nearby Bletchley don’t count). The weather was somewhat typical of these never-ending drought conditions that we’re all having to get used to. I was soaked to the bone before the race had even started. Apparently there was about a month’s worth of rainfall during the day. It felt worse than that due to the driving winds. If Noah had been around today he’d have given up construction of his ark on grounds of health and safety. Despite my continuing injury plight, the cold and wet pushed me on through the pain barrier and I finished in a time of 3:50:31 (687th). The wind and my injury niggles preventing something quicker.
I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to drink it or swim it…!
Sadly 3 more UK servicemen have been killed in action during April. The total number of military deaths since operations began in Afghanistan now stands at 408. Thousands more have suffered life changing injuries which will stay with them for the rest of their lives. They deserve our continued support and gratitude for the rest of their lives.
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As ever thanks for your support, and please forward my note to anyone else who may be interested - many thanks!
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
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Now, asking a student to organise the logistics for a 26 mile run, is a bit like asking a German to create a comedy festival. A typical degree is going to be of marginal use at best in planning a suitable course! And let’s face it, a2:2 in Media Studies, Underwater Basket-weaving, or Equine psychology is of very limited general use to man (nor beast). Unless of course getting into a horse’s head, helps pick the winner of the 2:45 at Uttoxeter!
But to be fair, Cambridge has a better class of student than most. You can tell by the slogans on their running vests….’Revelare pecunia’ or ‘Omnes lagani pistrinae gelate male sapiunt’! The words reinforce their exceptional intellect - and signal future careers in Goldman Sachs…or possibly Dominos!
The race wasn’t started by the Duchess of Cambridge (poor planning and preparation once more on the part of the students)…!
According to Katie Melua there are nine million bicycles in Beijing. I’m not sure she’s counted them. But anyway Cambridge can’t be too far behind. The town is lousy with the two-wheeled menaces. The rules of the Highway code obviously don’t apply to the ‘superior’ cyclists that permeate from every avenue. The fact that you’re emission free of course gives the right to undertake, jump red lights and generally irritate other road (& footpath) users. Sadly they aren’t the only transportational challenge encountered in Cambridge. There are also the level-crossings which pockmark the landscape. Rather unhelpfully the students had placed one of these less than 2 miles into the course. So just as the early congestion bottleneck was easing we had to stop to allow the 9:08 to Kings Cross pass!
First Capital Connect have started to delay my runs as well as my commutes…
Now in what has been the driest Winter since Adam was a lad, the heavens opened before the race started and they remained open for business for the whole day. Dry fields were quickly turned to mud…and then to swamp! Once again my footwear left me ill-equipped as I slid my way along. This was doing nothing for my anticipated PB (although my mud-bath left me with a radiant complexion)! Where the course briefly passed over tarmac, aquaplaning was an interesting challenge. Feeling saturated and cold, the final few miles dragged somewhat – not helped by a second level crossing!
Bedraggled and cold I finished in 3:57:54 which was 59th position.
A relatively quiet month then…I promise I’ll do better in April!
The drought control signs had been washed away…!
Tragically 9 of our servicemen have been killed in hostile action during the past month which takes the total number of military deaths since operations began in Afghanistan to 405. More still have suffered life changing injuries which will affect them for the rest of their lives.
As Theodore Roosevelt said in a speech at Springfield, Illinois in 1903 “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.”
-To donate click here-
As ever thanks for your support, and please forward my note to anyone else who may be interested - many thanks!
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
It’s been something of a month of worry for me. As we approach the 30th Anniversary of the Falklands War, the Argentinians are once again sabre-rattling. Indeed they’ve already shown hostile intent by sending back Carlos Tevez to Britain. This is Carlos Tevez who earns £200K a week in the UK, but believes he’s been ‘treated like a dog’! I mean, not even Harry Redknapp’s dog earns £200K a week! Send him home…!!
I kicked the month off with Thames Trot – The Boat Race…a 50 mile meander along the banks of the Thames from Iffley to Henley.
To say it was fresh at the start would be something of an understatement. Temperatures in rural Oxfordshire had risen to a balmy minus 10 by the time we started. I think Hell had probably frozen over, and I could swear I’d seen a Woolly Mammoth! But I was wrapped up more snugly than a riddle in a mystery inside an enigma! The chill provided additional motivation to run faster and stay warm. But it was nevertheless very very cold. Whilst hats, gloves et al were doing their job, I’d neglected to protect my face. My teeth were soon in pain…it felt like I was running along chewing on ice cream. And my eye-lashes had frozen stiff!
I’d soon put the discomfort to the back of my mind and was enjoying the scenery. Frosted white fields sandwiching the semi frozen waters of the river.
By mid-morning we runners were joined by some other hardy souls on the river, with rowing boats at regular intervals going through various training routines. Now, other than a passing interest in the sport every 4 years to see the likes of Redgrave and Pincent picking up a medal I don’t profess to be an expert on the sport. But running by these little boats for several hours I was struck by how odd it really is! The basic principle seems to be that there are (typically) 8 burly blokes (called things like Hugo, Tarquin and Marmaduke) rowing backwards, being steered by a little woman sitting at the front of the boat. There must be some real problems parking! All the while, some guy (probably called Hector) is barking instruction through a megaphone whilst sailing his motor boat alongside. Not really a sport is it!? Though we’ll accept the medals in the Summer!
Anyway, back to the running…! The temperatures had nudged just about into positive territory by the middle of the day, but as they fell back again later in the afternoon, so the promised snow arrived. Something of a surreal experience as day turned to night, my path was lit by just my head torch and a white blizzard engulfed my field of vision. Thankfully I only had a few miles left by this point and made it to the bandstand in Henley a little before 6pm, finishing in a time of 8:48:34 (111th place).
Running in a Winter Wonderland..!
I’d thought that my challenge for the day was over…but actually the real test still lay ahead.
After a wait for a train back to Oxford to pick up the car, I then had an 80 mile drive home. I had of course forgotten how our transport infrastructure is crippled by a few inches of snow. The M40 was like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie. Abandoned cars and lorries littered the carriageway. My rear-wheel drive motor was handling like a hovercraft across a glacier. The hills were a real test, and progress was painfully slow. Other than on a race-track I’d never completely lost control of a car before, but twice that night I spun uncontrollably across the carriageway. One 180 degree spin saw me narrowly miss the outside crash barrier, before spiralling across 3 lanes and finishing on the hard shoulder pointing in the wrong direction. I deliberated about spending the night on the motorway (100 motorists ended up doing just that, including Gary Lineker!) but pressed on with even more care. Eventually, and with great relief I reached home just after midnight. A 19 hour day which had been a test in so many ways.
There was to be no rest for the wicked. 5 days later and it was time for my second annual Quadzilla (4 marathons in 4 days). Boy was it still cold too! 5 days weren’t long to recover from my Thames ordeal, so my Day 1 time of 3:54:19 was all the more satisfying. It was my 3rd quickest marathon ever, highlighting that my extra recent training was paying off. The next 3 days were a little slower. More snow on day 2 didn’t exactly help! Times of 4:06:06; 4:05:22; and 4:06:01 over the next 3 days did show some great consistency. My total time of 16:11:48 (average of 4:02:57 over the 4 days) was a whole 54 minutes quicker than I managed last year. Though I’d dropped from 10th to 12th place overall with a much larger field!
So that was 4 marathons and an Ultra completed in 8 days. At this rate of progress, I still think there’s time to grab a place in Team GB for Brazil 2016!
To hell and back 4 days running, just to get a hoody…
I’ve upped my training schedule, running 20+ miles every weekend now (rudely interrupted by 2 weeks of manflu since the Quadzilla). The value of sensible pre/during and post race nutrition is also making a real difference and helping to shrink recovery times (quite important when running back to back days)!
The importance of properly rehydrating after a race should never be underestimated…
As I battle to bring down my race times, pushing myself further and faster the motivation comes from the thought that we still have 10,000 servicemen and women working tirelessly in grim conditions, exposed to daily danger, and suffering on-going casualties. 398 have now died on active service in Afghanistan with 1000’s more seriously wounded.
-To donate click here-
As ever thanks for your support, and please forward my note to anyone else who may be interested - many thanks!
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
OR TEXT KELL99 (£10, £5, £3, £2, or £1) to 70070 - Your text is free!
E-mail: Richard@Midasmarathon.com
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Dear Supporters,
As the calendar turns to the British Olympic year I’m continuing to run, jog and stagger my way around the UK in an altogether less glamorous and certainly less athletic manner. Our brave service personnel continue to suffer significant casualties on a far too frequent basis – so another year of personal challenge beckons, raising much needed funds for their support…
If something’s worth doing once, it’s worth repeating. Indeed recycling’s all the rage these days…whether it’s Paul Scholes’ return from retirement, Britain’s reinvented Splendid Isolation foreign policy or the recurrence of England cricketing capitulations there’s a certain nostalgic sense of security in safe and familiar territory.
So for the second time in 3 years I got the year going by completing the 43 mile Country to Capital run from the beautiful village of Wendover, through the Chilterns and into the heart of London.
Indeed Wendover too is to be blessed with some nostalgia – at least if you get dewy-eyed at the prospect of the surrounding area being treated with a World War I battlefield makeover. For the route of Britain’s latest engineering triumph will smash through the quintessentially English landscape – in order to get us to Birmingham 40 minutes sooner. Now I’ve been to Birmingham many times. Getting there 40 minutes earlier means spending 40 minutes longer there and I’m not sure who in their right mind would really want to do that?!
Of course I’m neglecting the financial benefits. The £33 Billion price tag will I’m sure be returned several-fold. A little bit like Eurotunnel…which cost double the original estimate to build and saw the owners ultimately go bust 12 years after it opened…and that was all in the name of getting to France a little more quickly (which means spending longer there…and I’m not sure who in their right mind really wants to do that either)!
It didn’t look like this in the brochures..!
Anyway I digress.
The race started under clear chilly skies, so it wasn’t an occasion for hanging around. I was out the blocks quicker than an Italian cruise liner captain could get off his sinking ship! Although to be fair I didn’t think it right to push any of the women or children out of my way as I ran down Wendover High Street.
Not what l’d normally wear to the pub…
With the advantage of having run the route previously, though considerably greater edge of having the directions stored in my GPS I was able to avoid time consuming map reading (not to mention the inevitability of getting lost).
My preparation rewarded me handsomely. Finishing before the setting of the sun meant I didn’t require my head-torch or glow sticks and I ended up knocking nearly an hour off my first attempt, with a time of 7:30:12 (64th). More to the point I had an extra hour of liquid-carb replenishment time to make use of!
Finishing faster than a speeding train (I would have been even quicker, but for leaves on the path)…
Four further UK personnel have paid with their lives in the past month taking the total to 397 since the conflict started. Thousands have suffered life-changing injuries. Whilst the debate around excessive executive pay continues to rage, it’s a sobering thought that most of these young men and women will earn less in their entire career than the annual bonus payments of many top execs. But then it’s not really about the money for most of them – but the least they deserve is our help when harm comes their way.
As ever please pass on my details to anyone else who may be keen to support - many thanks!
Best wishes,
Richard
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
Donate: http://www.justgiving.com/MidasMarathon
Phone: 07901 000729 or 01462 670202
E-mail: Richard@Midasmarathon.com
Web: www.MidasMarathon.com
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As the year meanders slowly to a close, there was time for just one race on the Christmas menu – a 33 mile trail run along the Dorset coast. It sounded like an idyllic little jaunt to finish the year off. It turned out to be about as pleasant as a long weekend in Pyongyang. Or Hartlepool. Although to be fair North Korean society is far more tolerant than that seen in Hartlepool. At least the Koreans have never hung a monkey. So far as we’re aware…!
My race prep hadn’t extended beyond booking some overnight accommodation. And once checked into Poole’s Premier hotel (everything Premier, but the price) I decided I probably should read the race instructions I’d been helpfully sent.
My first warning sign was the race overview which described its difficulty as ‘severe’! Just the usual inconsequential health and safety nonsense I assumed. As indeed I reasoned was the 2 page disclaimer I had to put my name to. It all seemed a little excessive for what was after all only a baby run!
The pre-race briefing the following morning really caught my attention though. Not so much that I had none of the ‘mandatory’ kit (first aid supplies, emergency blanket, whistle, blah blah blah) more the fact that the route of the race passed through a live-firing range (Lulworth). It was a Saturday so there would be no one practicing (and as we all know the MOD ran out of money for real bullets months ago – but a squaddie jumping from behind a bush and shouting bang would nevertheless have been a little unsettling)! Of more concern was the unexploded ordinance that was said to litter the area. So long as I didn’t stray from the path I’d be fine. That’s OK then I thought, ‘cause I never get lost!
Anyway the race got under way, and 33 miles of adventure laid in front of me. A journey which took in nearly 7,000 feet of climb! That’s the equivalent of about 11 Gherkins! For Northern readers, The Gherkin is a tall office block - thats some where us Southerners go to do something called ‘work’. It’s a bit like your ‘dole’, except we have to do it every day. We do things like selling commodities we don’t own or buying currencies we don’t wish to spend - generating huge bonuses we never actually ‘earned’. But anyway for those of you north of Watford Gap, it’s about as high as 14 Blackpool Towers (and without the lift)! And thats a lot of climbing.
It didn’t take long for me to realise that one piece of mandatory kit was in fact a necessity. We were told that trail shoes were required (think snow chains for your feet). I was there in my gleaming white road shoes (which in fairness have served me well across a variety of terrain).
Dorset’s Jurassic coast. A misnomer. Not a single dinosaur in sight …
It was like trying to run across a glacier. Within the first hour I’d fallen over 4 times, and was staggering around with the dexterity of Bambi after a night on the tiles with Gazza. My footwear was clearly a mistake. I’m still unclear about the best way to negotiate the downhill stretches. My eventual preferred style was side ways skateboard-esque. I say ‘style’, there was of course none. I had the grace of a drunken uncle at a wedding trying to dance after several too many…. And I should know!
To some extent the downhill stretches were less problematic. At least gravity was my friend. Going up some of the cliffs was horrific. I had to climb places a mountain goat would fear to tread (& there were none so dumb as to be up there). Crawling up a cliff face on all 4’s isn’t really my idea of running!
The cliffs were huge …
It really wasn’t going well. As I continued to slip-slide my way along the course I wistfully thought that one slip too many and the air-ambulance could come to my rescue and end the ordeal. I wasn’t to be so fortunate.
At least I managed to avoid treading on any unexploded tanks shells. It was eerie though running through a graveyard filled with the rusting hulks of once mighty battle tanks.
Even Mr T has a better tank than this…
There was a time cut-off for the Ultra. I missed it by 2 minutes. I had the option of sweet-talking the stewards into allowing me to continue which would have meant completing the final few miles in the dark (& I didn’t have a head-torch, infra-red goggles or white cane) or taking the soft option and finishing just the marathon course instead. As tired as I was both mentally and physically, I made the only sensible choice. It wasn’t just possible I’d come to serious grief if I continued it was probable. And whilst the risk itself was seductive, it wouldn’t have been fair to organisers, marshals and potentially the rescue services to have gone on.
So for the first time I quit. I ambled the final few miles of the marathon course (thanks to Graham Robins for the company). And finished in a ridiculous time of 6:13:44 in 98th place. Plenty others didn’t finish at all.
The only silver-lining was that I made it home in time to see The Champions beat Aston Villa. A small consolation only as we always beat the Villa!
The face of a quitter …
So another year draws to an end. I’ve raced just shy of 750 miles finishing 14 Ultras and 5 ‘normal’ marathons. I’m another year older, but clearly none the wiser.
Today there remains more than 9,000 UK personnel serving in Afghanistan. In the past 12 months, 45 have paid with their lives. Since the start of the war 393 have now died there. Inevitably it’s only a matter of time before yet another grim milestone of 400 is reached. Countless others have suffered life-changing injuries.
It’s not time to hang up the trainers just yet….A busy ‘To do’ list for next year, including a World Record to break!
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
OR TEXT KELL99 (£10, £5, £3, £2, or £1) to 70070 - Your text is free!
In a month in which we’ve seen Egypt become a near democracy, and Italy a near dictatorship (at least I assume that’s the correct parlance when an EU autocrat takes charge) I thought I’d also try and turn things on their head. So whilst I’ll come to the marathon I did run, I also spectated and helped organise one to get a different perspective.
My hypothesis was that watching other clowns run 26.2 miles would be eminently easier than running the distance myself… After 7 hours of standing around a cold park observing, I’m not altogether sure that’s the case!
But the marathon in question was well worth supporting. The Enigma Poppy day marathon was very much a one-off. At 11:11am on the 11th hour of 11th day of 11th month in the year 2011 (after our 2 minutes of silence at 11:00) I fired the starting pistol - quite possibly breaking a number of firearms (or at least noise) regulations in the process. In total £600 was raised for various forces’ charities making it a very worthwhile day indeed.
I did feel that I’d missed out a little, but I reckoned I’d have finished in about 4 hours and therefore been placed 25th! Not a bad ‘virtual result’, which I used to justify my liquid carb replenishment session later that evening!
Anyone got the time…?
I couldn’t let the month pass without at least a modest run, so I ended November with another engagement in Essex. I have too many friends and connections with Essex to make any cheap jibes (& the last thing I want is a stiletto in the side of my head). Indeed a lot of people knock Essex, failing to recognise the sophisticated nuances and subtleties of the local dialect for example… So to the race - ‘The Frozen Fat Ass 50K’! I rest my case.
One of the by-products of my stint on the Poppy Day sidelines was that I’d picked up a touch of man-flu. Given that climbing the stairs had become an arduous chore, I’d swerved any hint of training for a couple of weeks. Now, there is a school of thought that would tell you it’s madness to run 30-odd miles in anything but the finest of fettle. I’d say that’s fools talk - but a more thorough pre-race prep was called for - so I turned the car heaters to ‘eleven’, downed a mug of Lemsip and swallowed a couple of Beechams…and was good to go! (Other cold and flu remedies are available, although happy to receive any support from GSK or Reckitt Benckiser if anyone has any contacts!!)
And I am glad that I did. Otherwise I may never have visited places like Fingringhoe or Layer De La Haye (I’m sure he’s a boxer?!). Genuinely there’s some beautiful parts to the county - which seem a million miles from the images of Dale Farm and Bas Vegas more synonymous with Essex! One other discovery…Quicksand! I didn’t even realise such stuff existed in the UK, but apparently it’s quite abundant around Colchester! Totes amaze!
If the ‘travellers’ of Dale Farm are still looking for somewhere to camp…
Plenty of reason for me to continue to put one foot in front of another in support of our brave troops.
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Please forward this note to anyone else who you think may be interested - many thanks!
Richard
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon
OR TEXT KELL99 (£10, £5, £3, £2, or £1) to 70070 - Your text is free!
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Frozen Fat Ass 50K - 27th November 2011
Hardly any getting lost - just 53K run! 6hrs 14mins - 5th=
Eh up! How’s tha doin’? There’s just time before I go trick or treating to share my latest update…
The start of the month took me to the county of my birth, Yorkshire. Now I should make it clear I’ve never owned a whippet or a flat cap, but technically I am still a Yorkshireman.
It has to be said Yorkshire is a strange place. To start with they speak ‘Yorkshire’ an odd dialect utilising a 25 letter alphabet. Some say the first casualty of war is the truth. Apparently the first casualty of the War of the Roses was the letter ‘H’. ‘Appen it’s not the most important letter of the alphabet…
Then there are some of the weird pastimes. It’s apparently quite normal for a Yorkshireman to build a loft in his garden… Then populate it with vermin! In fact a pigeon seems to be considered part of the family!
Indeed there is the story of the illegal immigrant from ‘Uddersfield who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet pigeon called Percy!
Anyway onto the race itself - 35 miles of rugged countryside around Ripon, incorporating bogs, moors and some very big hills! I’d taken my pre-race prep very seriously - My Sat-Nav was fully charged, checkpoint coordinates pre-programmed, and superfluous map tucked safely away.
Whilst others studied their maps, I made time for some Angry Birds…
So the race began in unseasonably high temperatures which quickly climbed into the mid-twenties. Very soon though there was trouble at t’ mill - My brilliant technological master plan rapidly unravelling with a lack of satellite signal combined with my drowning of said Sat-Nav at the first drinks station! Eeh by gum!
Time for plan B (or as I prefer to call it, Plan A+). So I retrieved my map and set about working on a more conventional approach. This too was flawed - it appeared I only had a basic map and was missing the more detailed directions. So not for the first time I had to tag on to a group of far better prepared runners…Plan A++ (Blimey the more you change these plans the better they sound)!!
My newfound strategy worked really rather well, and I was very grateful that my new ‘team-mates’ safely brought me round the complete course. It was right & proper that we crossed the finish line together…but I couldn’t contain my competitive instinct and sprinted the final quarter mile leaving my compradores trailing in my wake. I finished 17th from a field of 50 in a time of 7:29:21 (which seemed a whole lot better than 21st equal)! I was ‘appy as a pig in muck!
Well I’ll go to’t foot of’t stairs - I’ve won a jammy dodger …
My other race of the month was a - just a garden variety 26.2 mile marathon. Brentwood was my first ever marathon 2 years ago, so there was a nostalgic reason for my return to Essex. The other big attraction was the course… 12 laps of Weald Country Park - meaning it was impossible even for me to get lost!
It’s a cross country undulating circuit so not one for a PB but I set my sights on bettering my time of 2 years earlier of 4:14.
I hadn’t trained for such a ‘short sprint’ for some time, and my legs were screaming with pain by the end. My finishing time of 3:13:39 was a major achievement - mitigated somewhat by me adjusting my watch from BST half-way through the race! But I was still very happy even with an hour added on top….a whole 21 seconds inside my course and distance record (34th out of 93 runners)!Brentwood marathon completed - But I wasn’t confident of meeting the Sugar Hut’s dress code…
As Armistice Day quickly approaches once more, it’s another chance to reflect on the amazing men and women defending our freedoms in a dusty hell-hole half way round the globe…
-To donate click here-As ever please forward this note to anyone else who may be interested – many thanks! Best wishes,
Richard
Richard Kell
Midas Marathon Donate: http://www.justgiving.com/MidasMarathon
OR TEXT KELL99 (£10, £5, £3, £2, or £1) to 70070 - Your text is free!
Phone: 07901 000729 or 01462 670202
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