The plan for the year (so far!) is to run: the Wrexham Half Marathon in February; the Chester Half Marathon in May; the Llandudno 10 Mile in June; and finish off with the Chester Marathon in October .

...and to hopefully raise as much money as possible for Nightingale House Hospice in the process.  The hospice does superb work, offering specialist palliative care to patients and support for families/friends completely free of charge; to find out more please visit their website.

Any donations will be greatly appreciated, regardless of how big or small. Thank you for taking the time to stop by.  Richard. :-)

Anyway, here's my story.....

In December 2009, I ran my first ever proper run - it was a Santa Dash for Nightingale House Hospice around Mold town centre. It was a 3k run, but it seemed more like a 10 mile one at the time… but it was the start of something really important in my life; it was the start of me getting into running.

So in 2010 I started running on some weekends with my friend Mark (I still wasn’t a full on running addict at this point, so the runs were occasional), but by the October I had agreed to run a Half Marathon (the EDF Birmingham Half Marathon). I decided to use this run to raise money for Nightingale House Hospice, partly because of the influence that the Santa Dash had had with my running generally, but mostly because Laura’s (my wife) grandad was due go there; unfortunately he passed away before being admitted but we were still able to see just what a fantastic and important service that the hospice provides.

The race itself didn’t go particularly well, my knee started hurting after about 6-7 miles and the second half of the race was a struggle (in truth, I hadn’t done enough training). Although it wasn’t a great run in many respects, this was the one that got me hooked.

I had to wait until January 2011 for my knee to fully recover, but from then onwards running became a big part of my life. In fact in 2011 I ran three half marathons (Lake Vyrnwy, the Bupa Great Birmingham Run, and Conwy), a 10 mile (Llandudno), a 10k (Flintshire), a 5 mile (Knowle) and ten 5k runs (Brueton, Newport and Heaton parkruns).

So that brings me to where I am now… in 2012 my plan is to run a marathon, a full 26.2 mile race. My actual plan is to run 2 half marathons (Wrexham and Chester), a 10 mile race (Llandudno 10), probably over 1000 miles in the build-up, and then for the hard work to (hopefully!!) pay off on Sunday 7th October when I run the Chester Marathon.

Luckily I won’t be alone in the pain and suffering… Nick and Larry (Brueton parkrun legends and good friends) have already signed up for the marathon and hopefully Brett “Iron Man” Patten will be signing up too.

So there we go - I have a really big challenge ahead of me... but hopefully one that will help raise money for the fantastic cause that is Nightingale House Hospice. 

 

Feel free to read my full runing blog.