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Well as my week off draws to an end I find myself with nothing other to blog about than some form of exercise, a 10k run today, my first attempt at this distance against the clock.  I estimated from a previous run that I was around the 55 min mark for the distance.  So was pleasantly surprised to clock 51:30, quite reasonable I thought.

So what was my original motivation to get physical and sporty.  7 and a half years ago when Mum died I wanted to to something for cancer charities.  Give something back, especially to Macmillan Cancer Support who helped Mum in her last weeks.  It took me a while to find the right challenges.

I got back into mountain biking and foolishly decided to ride the 50 mile Great Nottingham bike ride, a road event on a mountain bike.  It was tough going for a fat bloke but I raised over £150 for my efforts.  This road based event wetted my appetite somewhat and it wasn't long before I purchased a road bike and started racking up some mileage.

On the start line for the c2c

Next up in 2010 was the coast to coast event.  I rode from one side of England (Whitehaven) to the other (Sunderland) with Dad over two days, again for Macmillan, this time raising nearly £300.  See my c2c blog here (clicky clicky).

So what's next?  I didn't have anything planned for this year, but following our close friends loss of their 12 day old daughter who had serious heart problems diagnosed prior to her birth, a half marathon is a distinct possibility.  I was looking at running this distance this year as a personal challenge, but our friends and their family are all in training to run the Cardiff half marathon in October, and have invited me (and Kelly) to join them.  Some of us are experienced runners, some (like me) are new to the game and others are still yet to tread the pavements in their unused brand new shiny trainers.  Whatever our ability we all have our own personal targets for the run, but one shared reason for doing it.

They have nominated the charity Little Hearts Matter for this run so it is important to us all to reach our own personal targets thus raising some hard cash for this charity.  I will of course be pestering everyone I know for cash when the time comes.  My target..... under 2 hours will do for me.