First 1000 miles in Tanzania Challenge

Well it's taken nearly 11 weeks, but I have achieved my first 1000 miles for the Tanzania Challenge. Only 5,614 still to go! The distance represents the land mileage to travel between London and Dar es salaam in Tanzania. In June 2016 I will be flying there for real, but in the meantime I aim to run, cycle & walk the equivalent distance. With the summer coming I will hopefully be able to clock up a few more miles than usual.

This is part of my fundraising ideas for Raleigh International, although sponsorship is slow. As we get closer I will organise some fundraising events, but it seems a bit too early to do so at the moment. Anyway off on the bike tomorrow to get a few more precious miles under the belt.

Milton Keynes Marathon

My second road marathon was to be a fairly local one, at Milton Keynes. It was reasonably cool to start, but got hotter as the day progressed, so not necessarily ideal conditions. Added to this was a recurring blister on the sole of my foot which meant it was a bit more painful running that I would have liked.

My second half was as usual slower, without putting in the right level of training I guess I'll never achieve the negative split others always go on about. Given all these moans I managed to finish in 4 hours 14 minutes & 45 seconds. This was 9 minutes & 39 seconds faster than the Guernsey Marathon back in August 2014! So if I got my act together I should be able to get below the 4 hours.

There were plenty of people to cheer us on and my wife managed to get to several points on the ruin to help keep me moving. The finish was at the MK Dons stadium, where we ran into the stadium and around most of the track beside the pitch. It was a good feeling and when I saw the finish line I managed to find the reserves to take a few scalps in the final yards. A great race, maybe next year but I need to think about the Raleigh International Expedition to Tanzania which will see me setting off in early June.