Supporting me in the Royal Parks half marathon

I've now got my race pack for the Royal Parks Half Marathon next Sunday and it includes a route map and some estimated times that runners might be at each point.

I'm still anticipating that this race might be quite a challenge so it would be great if anybody felt like coming along to cheer me!

You can find the route map on the Race website.

Here is a list of when I expect to roughly be at each point (very hard to predict)  on Sunday 10 October:

Mile 1 - Constitution Hill in Green Park - between 9.50 - 10.05
Mile 2 - By the Houses of Parliament - between 10.00 and 10.17
Mile 3 - at the top of Waterloo Bridge - between 10.10 and 10.29
Mile 4 - the other side of the road to mile 3, near Emankment tube station, around Victoria Embankment gardens - between 10.20 and 10.41
Mile 5 - On the Mall - around 10.35-10.53
Mile 6 - near the Hyde Park corner entrance to Hyde Park on Serpentine Road - between 10.50 and 11.05
Mile 7 - towards the top of West Carriage drive in Hyde Park - between about 11 and 11.17
Mile 8 - you'll have to look at hte map for this, it's in the middle of the park - between 11.15 and 11.29
Mile 9 - kind of parallel with the bottom of park lane but in Hyde Park - between 11.25 and 11.41
Mile 10 - North Carriage drive, not terribly far from Lancaster Gate station - between 11.40 and 11.55
Mile 11 - Look at the map again, it looks like it's sort of a bit in front of Kensington Palace - 11.50-12.05
Mile 12 - Look at the map! - between 11.55 and 12.17
The finish line!!! - at the bottom of Hyde Park, near Knightsbridge tube, where the start was! - between 12.10 and 12.29

Please bear in mind that this might be completely inaccurate.  It's kind of based on something a bit more optimistic than the times that they predict the slowest runners will run in - 12 minute miles.  I'm currently training at about 11.5 minute miles but hope to be maybe slightly faster on the day (bear with me, I'm VERY slow!)  I guess they're probably anticipating that people towards the back will take a long time to get through the start line as well.  The timings above assume I might take up to 10 minutes to cross the start line and hopefully it won't be that long so perhaps arrive a little earlier (the race starts at 9.30).

For the enterprising amongst you, hopefully you will be able to see me at several points and therefore will have some idea of how I'm doing.  Having said that, I'd really appreciate it even if you only came to one point just to give me a brief wave!  It will make all the difference I'm sure!

Thanks everyone and wish me luck!

Item number 31!

For those of you that haven't heard, I've added a 31st thing to do before I'm 30 to my list - get married! Thankfully a couple of items can be adapted around it, including the one about going on an expensive holiday (honeymoon) and getting a dress tailored to fit me (wedding dress).  It is likely to happen in Spring next year though, but I'm determined that it won't get in the way of all of the other things that I'm planning to do before next June.  It'll just make that bit busier!

Update on progress and sponsorship plea

First and foremost – an apology. I’ve been very slow to blog recently. But this hasn’t meant that I’m not continuing to tick off my list. Waiting in the wings (in my head) are blog posts about Sir John Soane’s museum, and about Dickens house. In addition, I’ve recently made a start on reading Anna Korenina and there are a few other activities that will count towards my list that are starting to be put in motion in one way or another.

Mostly though, I’ve been doing quite a lot of running. My half marathon is a month away (10 October) and my training is going well. These last couple of weeks have been very busy so I haven’t run much but on bank holiday morning I had a lovely early morning run all along the river from Richmond to just past Putney – 9 miles. That’s the furthest I’ve ever run and I struggled with boredom along the way so I felt pretty proud of myself when I finished (and pretty tired and achy afterwards!)

I ran nearly 6 miles before work on Thursday but won’t be able to do a long run now until next weekend when I plan to run 11 miles, the longest distance I’m supposed to do on my training. After that I’ll start to taper and just do shorter runs to keep up my fitness before the big day.  Before the 9 miles I'd been gradually working up with a slightly longer run every weekend and at least one short run and two outdoor workouts during the week.  Even recently when I haven't managed todo long runs so much, I've still been doing my 2 workouts and a short run during the week.

So as you can see, I’ve been working pretty hard at it. If you’re feeling generous, I’d really appreciate your support in this endeavour, either by coming along to support me on the day, or by sponsoring me at www.justgiving.com/Rhiannon-Looseley. The money I raise will go to the Bone Cancer Research Trust.

I'm about halfway to my target as I type this, but I hope to reach it quite soon. Although it would be great to exceed it, if yu want to sponsor me after I've exceeded and wouldn't be able to do so twice in a year (which would be fair enough!) then please save your sponsorship as I hope to run the London marathon for the same charity next year and I think I'll need to raise considerably more then so will definitely need all the support I can get.

Thanks everyone!