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Tag: running

Posted
October 5, 2022
Category
London Marathon, Uncategorized
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Getting by with a little help from my friends: Recovering from injury to running a surprise marathon for South London Special League

On Sunday 2 October 2022, I joined thousands of other runners in London and across the globe in the Virtual London Marathon. 26.2 miles in aid of a new PowerChair for Greenwich Powerchair Football Club (GPFC). 

But, as I tentatively laced up my trainers to join my friend Rachel Mai-Jones on her specially designed course along the Thames Path, I had no idea how far round I’d actually get. 

I had done zero Marathon training due to badly inuring my left leg during my first week of training in June.

But once I was out with Rachel on Marathon Sunday, crossing part of the main London Marathon route, I slowly started to relax, enjoy every step and be purely in the moment. I wasn’t running for a time.

(L-R – Blackheath road closures, Woolwich Road before the London Marathon arrived, Woolwich Road after the London Marathon has passed through.)

I was running purely for the enjoyment, being with my friends, dissolving into something bigger than myself, raising money for our local charity, South London Special League.

Rachel had designed a beautiful Virtual Marathon – including tea and home-baked fruit cake stops along the way from her mobile support van! We ran along some of the main London Marathon route in Greenwich and Woolwich followed by a gloriously sunny loop with friends along the Thames Path from Woolwich to the Thamesmead Pumping Station and back.

It was a magical day, showing me what’s possible when we all pull together. Being in the present moment with friends, their positive energy driving me on from injury, running together for a great cause.

Donate towards a new powerchair for Greenwich Powerchair Football club here.

Posted
March 20, 2022
Category
Music, running
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‘The future of the future will still contain the past’

Sunday March 20th 2020 – 16km run. Home, Greenwich Park, Limehouse Basin and back.

Sixteenth and 21st century timelines colliding. The Queen’s House. The ever-expanding Canary Wharf, wealth rising upwards towards the heavens.

It’s a world which seems faster, harder, more negative than ever with relentless 24 hour news cycles priming us to fight and flight and panic.

Running and raving helps me cope. First of all to 21 Years with Groove Armada Disc 1, celebrating the weekend, the sunshine, harness and project positive energy in a world full of painful contradictions.

And then the iconic, soul shredding house classic Junk Science by Deep Dish for the trip back home. This album circles back to zero point with its shuddering deep bass lines reaching deep into my brain and out into space.

Timeless, floating, endlessly resonating from its launch in 1998 to now:

‘Mohammed is Jesus is Buddha is love is the way I see it.’

‘Stranded in your American dream/ Of a Polaroid lie I have never seen/ I’m living…‘

Music, mirror, reality slide.

‘The future of the future will still contain the past. Time goes slow and time goes fast…’

The final kilometre home was my fatest – the hypnotic house beasts of Sushi giving new life to tired legs.

Beats dropped in the right place at the right time connecting and unlocking hidden energy.

Everything, everyone, connected at source.

Posted
March 6, 2022
Category
running
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Sunday March 7, 2022 – 14.5km

The Thames at low tide. Running through Limehouse, past mud banks, luxury flats and glimpses of a lost dockyard past. I’m listening to the haunting, heartbreaking strains of Agnes Obel’s Familiar.

The sun glints crystals on the water. A sudden mood shift from my running playlist to Erasures’s euphoric Give a Little Respect .

A small terrier barks and rears up. Its lead is nearly choking it, it’s trying to attack a much bigger dog, who stares down at it with benign confusion. Above them, their owners start to trade angry words. A potential war is started, averted when the bigger dog gently nudges his owner who walks him around and away.

The wind chases the clouds and hides the sun. I’m now listening to Dostoevsky and the Russian Soul. As a young man, Fyodor Dostoevsky found himself in front of a firing squad. For 10 endless minutes, he thought he was about to die. His sentence was commuted to hard labour and military service. Dostoevsky’s observations during his time in Siberia, revealing the deep contradictions of our human souls: the peasants, brutish, violent, yet capable of unexpected kindness, the deep rooted fear of ‘the other’; the need to define ourselves by what we are not; Russia is not the West, the West is not Russia.

Nations endlessly going to war. We act against our own best interests in the name of abstract concepts like freedom. And yet at the same time, we are capable of showing great kindness and compassion.

Literature holding a hopeful mirror up to reality.

Weekend running – time, space, meditate.

Posted
November 1, 2021
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Uncategorized
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London Marathon: Over £9,000 raised for South London Special League!

Our original target was £2,000 to provide weekly tennis sessions in Greenwich Park. Thanks to the phenomenal support from our family, friends, community, the Westcombe News and Blackheath and Westcombe Ward who donated £4,500, we have raised more than four times this amount.

L-R – Cath Farrant, Olwen Davies, Helen Marley-Hutchinson, Rachel-Mai-Jones, Miren Davies

Sharon Brokenshire, MBE, Director and Founder of South London Special League says the extra money will go towards new Powerchairs for Greenwich Powerchair Football Club. (GPFC):


“Greenwich Powerchair Football Club play in the  South England Region League and travel each weekend to matches. It is essential we are able to provide modern competitive equipment for our players.

The 10 Powerchairs are getting old and expensive to maintain. A new Powerchair costs over £7,000 and the Marathon money will go towards buying new Powerchairs.

Powerchair Football is a skilful, fast-moving game, enabling physically disabled players to play football at whatever level they desire – at a really competitive level, or just enjoy being part of the game. Many players prior to Powerchair Football lived solitary and isolated lives; the health and wellbeing improvements are enormous and can be seen at every game.”

A huge Thank You to everybody who supported our appeal – every penny is making a direct, positive impact on people’s lives, providing much needed opportunities for our diverse, disabled community of all ages to meet friends, get fit and have fun.

We hope to see the Powerchair team in action one weekend soon. In the meantime, there’s still time to donate to our Marathon Appeal.

.

Matthew Pennycook MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, visits Greenwich PFC

Posted
October 31, 2021
Category
Westcombe News
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Local Newspaper, Big Impact: Westcombe News’ support helps quadruple original fundraising target

Our 2021 London Marathon Appeal for South London Special League was the first story in the Westcombe News’ new Sport, Mental Health and Fitness section in September 2021 and since then, the paper has featured us each month:

We provided our Virtual Marathon route in October 2021 and the amazing fundraising result in November 2021.

The Westcombe News has a circulation of over 3,000 highly engaged local residents. It’s a local newspaper with a big impact. It helped us smash our initial South London Special League fundraising target of £2,000 and raise it to more than £9,000.

We’ll be providing regular updates of the positive impact this money is having in our local community in upcoming editions of the Westcombe News.

Posted
August 7, 2021
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Uncategorized
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London Marathon 2021: Saturday August 7, 23km

Running for South London Special League

Outside the conditions were wet.

Cloudburst, torrential downpour, heavy rain, mist.

Inside my head, I was deep inside the world of provincial Russia, listening to Michael Frayn’s radio adaptation of Anton Chekov’s Wild Honey.

David Tennant stars as village schoolmaster Platonov. He’s the man who seems to have it it all. Wit, intelligence, a comfortable and respectable life, and the attentions of four beautiful women.

Platonov tells other people how to live their life. When challenged on why he hasn’t made more of his own, he replies, “I lie here like a stone and people walk into me.”

Frustrated dreams, farce, tragi-comedy, life in all its varied colours constantly intervene.

Exactly the kind of recognisable, beautiful escapism you need when the rain keeps falling and you have 23km to run before home.

Posted
August 4, 2021
Category
London Marathon, running
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London Marathon: Monday August 2 – 15km

The run where I found that elusive, mysterious link between conditions and performance.

The right weather. A warm summer sunrise, the light sprinkling the Thames with diamonds.

The right music. Mathew Herbert’s 1998 classic Around the House

The right track: In the Kitchen

The right motivation: training for the London Marathon, fundraising for local charity South London Special League.

And I’m running strong and fast and nothing can stop me. Work worries, life worries – they all fall away for a little while.

And this is why I do this, why so many of us do this, to push ourselves, to motivate each other, to give something back.

Training Block 2 has officially begun.