Oh my legs...
It's done. I took a bit longer than I thought I would (2 hours 50 minutes 51 seconds, as you're asking) but I made it round and then nearly cried at the end. Now I'm sitting at home under a blanket, with ice packs on my shins and my medal round my neck.
Thanks very much to all of you who have sponsored me. I'm going to keep this page open a little while longer to see if I can snare some stragglers but I really do appreciate all your support - I never thought I'd make over £500!
I'm going to give myself a break now of one week, before I get going on training for the Edinburgh Marathon next May.
UPDATE
As well as all the delightful people below who have donated online, I'm also very grateful to the people who still deal in cold, hard cash, namely
my Aunty Anne & Uncle Rod,
my Grandma,
Ian Lewis
Frank & Sandra Barnes
Rhiannon Jones
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I'm not a runner. In cross country at school I'd be one of the ones walking in the back gate of Olchfa School, muddied and utterly apathetic, willfully ignoring Mrs Ryan's thankless shouts of "Come on, girls, make an effort."
Well, I'm making the effort now (and, curiously, training at the same gym as Mrs Ryan). I'm running the Cardiff Half Marathon on Sunday, October 18 and here's why:
Since the beginning of this year I've been working with a charity called Nacoa - the National Association for Children of Alcoholics. They are a Childline-like helpline, based in Bristol, with an army of volunteers fielding over 36,000 calls every year from children and adults who are living with or have lived with an alcoholic parent or parents. As I'm not based in Bristol I can't be a helpline volunteer but I've tried to do my bit, which has chiefly involved writing press releases for them and helping staff fundraising events... and now running the half marathon to raise money. I never thought I'd be able to do a half marathon, but have never found a charity that I've felt this passionately about before.
I became involved with Nacoa shortly after my father died last December, following years of alcoholism. It was a long and difficult experience, but I'm acutely aware of how fortunate I was to have my mum, sisters and brother-in-law around. A majority of people living with an alcoholic parent - who are thought to number over 1.5 million in the UK - are nowhere near as lucky as I am to have such a supportive, open and strong family... and that's where Nacoa comes in. The volunteers are trained to listen to and counsel the callers, some of whom have been as young as seven and others who are grown adults. I know how difficult living with extreme alcoholism is, but what I don't know is how difficult it must be to live with when it is the dirty, shameful secret that no one mentions, when there's no one to vent with or share the anger and sadness. I became involved with the charity to try to help those people and the money I raise through this half marathon will go towards training new volunteers, to help expand the number of lines available and to generally keep this tiny but absolutely crucial charity going.
It took a mercifully short time after my father's death for me to forget the person he became and remember who he was: a hilarious, eccentric, massively intelligent, enormously creative, encyclopedically musical nut, with penchants for walking sticks, chicken satay, silly hats, stupid walks and anything to do with the oil industry - and that's who I'll be remembering when I'm trudging through Cardiff in the rain.
I wanted some sort of good to come out of his premature shuffling off and so I'm pleading with you to part with even just a few pennies and sponsor me. I know requests for sponsorship come round all the time and get rather tiresome, but training for this race and completing it has taken and will take a heck of a lot of effort from my lumbering, non-running self. If I can capture just a couple of you then there's a teeny tiny charity in Bristol that will be very grateful.
For more information on Nacoa visit: www.nacoa.org.uk
Great big thanks,
Mary
