Category: My Marathon Diary

Posted on

My Marathon Diary – part two

Alice Snape marathon
Me in my new running gear, taken at Christmas at my parent’s house in the midlands.

Editor Things&Ink editor Alice Snape is currently in training for the London Marathon 2015, she’s running for Sarcoma UK. Read more in her first Marathon diary entry.

Part two of my marathon diary – and it’s just a short entry documenting an early morning run…

Monday morning, 19 January 2015: It’s 7am, and I am forcing myself to go for a run before a freelance shift at Hello! magazine.

I am already awake as my alarm sounds at 6.15am. I lay in bed for 10 minutes visualising myself running outside in the cold. I try to figure out if I have the energy to run, can I be bothered? It’s so early. I try to remember how much I love running, and the after buzz that sets me up for the rest of the day ahead. It’s this that makes me get out of bed (even though I would definitely rather stay under the duvet with my hot water bottle).

I go to the kitchen – it’s still dark outside… I have a pre-run banana, spoonful of peanut butter and a cup of earl grey tea… As I watch BBC breakfast and and do my warm-up stretches, I hope it might get light before I leave the house – it doesn’t. I dress in my running thermals and manage to set off at 7am… I always have a few pre-run butterflies in my stomach, even if I know I won’t be out for long.

I only want to do a short run, but I manage to set off at a good pace – for me a really good pace is a 9-minute mile – and I really feel like my lungs are working hard. I struggle for the first ten minutes as I get into stride. As I run into mile 2, I try and assess my body, how each part feels, which muscles are straining and how my feet feel. I decide I feel strong and keep up the pace. My body feels warm, even though the air is freezing cold.

I run through the streets of Brixton, although I decide not to run my usual round of Brockwell Park – it looked too dark and scary. So I wind round a few different streets and end with a lap of Ruskin Park – which is just round the corner from my house. The sun is finally coming up by this point and it is starting to get light.

I complete five miles, and by the end I am happy – I run the last ten minutes at a slightly slower pace. My cheeks are red, I am sweating and I know I will feel an after-run glow for the rest of the day. I do a cool-down walk to my house, and complete some stretches before I get showered and ready for the day ahead.

Read part one of My Marathon Diary to find out why I am running for the cancer charity Sarcoma UK. And please sponsor me on my justgiving page. More updates coming soon, as I build up my longer runs. Wish me luck.

 

 

Posted on

Running the London Marathon for Sarcoma UK

Part 1 of Things&Ink editor Alice Snape’s Marathon Diary…

Around three weeks ago, I got the news that I had been waiting for…  I had been accepted to run the London Marathon 2015 for the cancer charity Sarcoma UK …

My heart filled with a mix of excitement, fear and happiness. Excitement, as running the marathon has always been one of those things I want to achieve, and fear, as I have never run close to that distance in my life. I have slowly been building my fitness levels over the past five months, and really enjoying the benefits of leading a healthy lifestyle. But a marathon is a whole new level entirely and I am ready for the challenge (I hope). It feels like the right time to do it and for a charity that is very close to my heart.

Alice Snape running for Sarcoma UK

Let me tell you a little bit about why I applied to run the London Marathon for Sarcoma UK.  My boyfriend’s sister, Katherine, died from Sarcoma over three years ago, in fact she died just a few short months before James and I met. James and his mum, Glenys, support the work of Sarcoma UK to help other families who are affected by Sarcoma. I never knew Katherine, although over the years that James and I have been together, I have slowly learnt more about her – what sort of person she was and her likes and dislikes. In some way, I guess I want to fundraise for Sarcoma to pay tribute to Katherine, who I never met,  but so wish I could have. This is also the reason, why I chose to give all the profits from ‘Miniature Ink’ (the collaborative exhibition with Atomica gallery to celebrate Things&Ink’s two year birthday) to the charity.

But on a very selfish level, I also want to run the marathon, I want to see if I can physically achieve it. To see if I can run the entire distance and do it in a time that I can feel proud of… I am currently on week 3 of the official London Marathon training plan, and I am enjoying being competitive with myself. Beating my own times, and gradually building up the time and distance I can run. (I recently downloaded the RunKeeper app and completely obsessed with miles per minute and figuring out what my “race pace” might be).

So I am running this marathon for Katherine, for James and his mum, for those who are affected by Sarcoma, to support the work of this wonderful charity and, mostly, for myself, because I want to say I have ran a marathon, and also because I want to say that I ran it for Sarcoma UK. So please give as little or as much as you can, so that I can think of all those pennies when I am doing training runs in the cold and dark over winter… Here’s a link to my justgiving page.

I will be keeping you all updated on how my training is going over the coming months in ‘My Marathon Diary’ on this blog, so please offer words of support and encouragement…

Find out more about Sarcoma UK, on their website, www.sarcoma.org.uk, and in previous blog posts.