Supporting Epilepsy Action Blog

BUPA London 10km

On Bank Holiday Monday, 31st May I joined thousands of other runners in glorious weather at Green Park, to run 10km around some of London’s finest streets, buildings and monuments, in aid of my favourite charity Epilepsy Action.

I was a late entrant, having only entered after getting back from Canada, so my thanks to Epilepsy Action for getting me a place.

The BUPA London 10km is incredibly well organised with zoned starts and staggered start times, so despite having around 9,000 runners at no point did the course feel congested.

Starting in Birdcage Walk in front of Buckingham Palace, the route takes in Parliament Square, down the Embankment, past the London Eye, the Tate Gallery, Monument, the Bank of England, St Paul’s Cathedral, Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square (where you can also see a 4 tonne, 3 meter high and 4 meter long Ship in a Bottle on the Fourth Plinth!), and past Admiralty Arch to finish in The Mall.

Despite virtually no training for this, I was feeling pretty fit from Expedition training and plodded around in a fairly respectable 54 mins 58 secs, enjoying myself thoroughly all the way with lots of supporters cheering us along.

My only gripe is that the only photo I could have of me running in the event, was provided by the official contracted photographers, who wanted to charge £20 for a single (downloaded) picture!

So instead, see below pictures of the impressive Ship in a Bottle from the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square!

Keeping Busy

Well, I've been back in the UK - and back at work - for 6 weeks now, but managed to squeeze a holiday to Cornwall in to catch up with friends, do some walking and sailing, but most of all relax and reflect.

As you can imagine I had a lot of frustration to burn off, partially as I had been training for so long and so hard, and what helped to keep me sane and focus this unused energy was signing up for a few small challenges over the coming weeks and months.

The first of these will be the BUPA London 10km, which I'm running tomorrow for Epilepsy Action.

Next weekend I'm taking part in a 28 mile one-day walk in the Cotswolds organsied by the charity St Basils.  I'm not too familiar with this part of Britain so it'll be interesting as well as being a good warm up for my next challenge two weeks later...

... some of you may recall The Itex from last year - a 48.1 mile one-day walk around the island of Jersey.  There is also a slightly shorter Itex around Guernsey, but I'm only doing the Jersey one (it's enough!).  This is on 19th June and I'm really looking forward to the challenge again, hoping for good weather and aiming to beat my time last year of 15 hours 8 mins.

I've also signed up for the Great Parks half-marathon in London - which I'll run for Epilepsy Action - later in the year.

Check back in the coming weeks for photos of these walking challenges and to see how I get on!