April 21, 2010 at 11:27 am · Filed under Running
Last year Phil Packer took 14 days to drag himself around the London marathon route. That’s a slow time but coming only 13 months after being paralysed while on active duty in Basra it’s an immense achievement and the best way to respond to the pronouncement “you’ll never walk again”.
While I’m tucked away under my duvet this Sunday morning, thousands of nervous people will be congregating in Greenwich eagerly waiting for the challenge of a lifetime. I imagine most will start off running but a good few will find themselves hobbling towards the end. Phil will be there with them again but this year he is back aiming to complete all 26 miles in 26 hours.
Phil has dedicated each and every mile to a different charity. His first mile is in aid of arthritis research UK and he’ll be joined by Catherine Bull a young arthritis sufferer who had a hip replacement at the age of 20.
I’ll wake up in time to see many of these heroes crossing the finish line having conquered their own personal battles over the last 26 miles and I know now that I’ll end up in tears and feel inspired to put in yet another entry into the ballot.
Here’s the link to Phil’s fundraising website.
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June 22, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event
Call that a bike ride….?
At one point I thought we were actually going to be walking all the way to Brighton.
Experienced L2B’ers had warned me to start the event early but I’m too lazy to get up for a 6am start. I may have had a leisurely 8:30am kick off but I very quickly regretted it. We just never seemed to get going. We crawled through Tooting and Mitcham and out towards the M25 and 3 hours and 20 mins later the garmin beeped to tell me we had just about escaped London.
3 hours and 20 minutes with a bike and we’d only travelled 19 miles and what’s more we were walking already.
The very first sign of an incline and the whole pedal pumping mass ground to a complete standstill. There was no room to weave in and out so everyone one from lycra clad mountain goats to mums on old shoppers had to dismount and walk.
Given the rather lame nature of the incline it was disheartening to say the least. I’m the worlds slowest runner but yesterday I barely managed to cycle above my half marathon pace.
I think there were something like 4 or 5 hillocks marked on the route map and all were fairly inconsequential except for the final horror – Ditchling Beacon.
The crowds must have thinned at some point because I did manage to get back on the bike and for a few brief miles I actually felt the wind in my face and enjoyed the freedom of a crazy hell for leather descent.
The route, which I’ll illustrate when I’ve got it uploaded, had the potential to be a really enjoyable jaunt into Brighton. Apart from the few little bumps that I’ve already belittled it felt like a 54 mile descent to the sea. There was a heck of a lot of high speed freewheeling to be done but I suppose sharing country lanes with 27,000 other cyclists was never going to feel much better than getting stuck behind a convoy of caravans on a bank holiday exodus from Bridlington.
Ditcling Beacon arrived eventually and the one time I hoped for a blockade of walkers, so I could just excuse myself from the trouble of attempting the ascent, they all appeared to have adopted the “walkers to the left” etiquette. There was a clearish path up and I had to attempt it. I didn’t get too far up though before I lost my rhythm bobbing in and out of bailing bikers and I joined them. It was a tough long walk up so I can only imagine it was a challenging ride.
From this vantage point I could see the sea and Dave said he could smell the pier. I thought he said, “Can you smell the beer?” and I actually thought I could. It gave me a little burst of joy and I blasted my way down onto the slip road into the town and didn’t rest until I found myself with beer and chips in hand.
Damn fine chips they were too.
The t-shirt can be viewed on the events page.
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Last year Phil Packer took 14 days to drag himself around the London marathon route. That’s a slow time but coming only 13 months after being paralysed while on active duty in Basra it’s an immense achievement and the best way to respond to the pronouncement “you’ll never walk again”.
