leyton.org

I was in a meeting recently regarding the forthcoming Glasgow parkrun, and one of the Pollok park representatives asked if I’d support the effort by Friends of Linn park to bring a pebble beach picnic area and improved pathways to the park. 

I love Linn park – it’s Glasgow’s second biggest park, after Pollok, and absolutely delightful. It’s also one of it’s least well known. When I ran through there recently with some fellow runners, many commented that they’d never been to the park, and it boasts a few beautiful outlooks over the Cart. More about the park at the councils website.

The effort by the Friends of Linn park is competing with another project to win funding from the Big Lottery People’s millions, so needs people to phone up and support it. Lines open on Monday 24th from 9am, to midnight. Details on STV Scotland Today on the 24th, and via biglotteryfund.org.uk/peoplesmillions. There’s also more on the Linn park website.

I’m pleased to be able to say that this Sunday Frances will be running her very first 5k race, in order to support her friend Maggie, who is currently battling cancer. Maggie has had a tough time of it, but is being incredibly inspirational, as well as brave, by fighting back and helping raise awareness all that she can. Indeed, this will be the second year she’s taken part in her local Race For Life event, and will be supported by Frances and a good number of her other friends.

You can read more about Maggie, and why she’s running, at her Race For Life sponsorship page. It’s a difficult read, but still very inspirational stuff. As with all the other Race For Life events, it’s for the excellent Cancer Research charity. So if you can spare some money to make a donation – of any size – it’d make a big difference, and really help Maggie, Frances and her friends on their run this Sunday.

Sadly though I’m not going to be there to cheer Frances and her friends on as I’m running in a different race that day, in the the MHFS 10K in Glasgow. This event is doing a great job in itself of raising awareness of men’s health issues. I’m sure she’ll do very well: She’s been putting in some decent training, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms she’s not about to take up running, but I’m still quietly enjoying seeing her running shoes by the door

We didn’t have a wedding list for our wedding. We’d set up home together years ago, and couldn’t really think of things we really wanted to ask for. So instead of getting “best” crockery we’d not use very often or at all (we both much prefer informal meals), we instead encouraged guests to make a donation to either Macmillan or the Alzheimer’s Society. These are both causes that Frances and I support. Alzheimer’s and cancer has affected our families and friends, and supporting these causes through our “wedding list” seemed a great way to help.

This week we finally got around to sending off the donations, cheques and tax-efficient donation forms we’d received. We’re absolutely delighted to report that we raised a grand total of £572.50p for Macmillan, and £322.50p for the Alzheimer’s Society.

So a massive thank you to everybody for their generosity!

• www.macmillan.org.uk
• www.alzheimers.org.uk

I’ve just received an e-mail announcing that entries for the 2008 Men’s Health Forum Scotland (MHFS) 10k run are open with a nice discount for early entrants (and maybe some low-number prestige, or is that just me .

It takes place on June 15th 2008 (That’s Fathers Day!), in Bellahouston Park, and it is apparently the only 10k race specifically for men in the UK, so it’s quite special. They’re hoping to attract around 3,500 men this year.

I ran the race last year, and was pleased as punch to have run it in 53:56 (under my target of 55m). With this weekends 10k time 9 minutes faster than that, at 45:01, it’ll be the first time I’ve run the same race since taking up running, so a great way of seeing how I’ve improved over the course of a year.

The event is also a brilliant way to bringing men’s health issues to public attention. More on the goals of MHFS at their website.

Earlier today I finally got around to posting off all the sponsorship forms and outstanding money I’d received for my sponsored run of the 2007 Glasgow Half Marathon. I ran it in aid of The Prostate Cancer Charity.

I’m really pleased to be able to say that the Grand Total raised comes to £3,324.20p!

Marvellous stuff, and I just want to say, one last time, a huge THANKYOU to everybody who sponsored me (many of you via the excellent justgiving service), cheered me along, or offered words of encouragement. Very much appreciated.

I was particularly touched to hear stories from a number of friends and supporters who explained how they had been affected by Prostate Cancer, be it friends, family or themselves. It’s a condition that creeps up, and awareness of the symptoms is really one of the best things we can all do. If caught early enough, it’s got very effective treatments, as my own father can testify.

Once again, a huge thank you to everybody.

First and foremost: Thank you all so much for all your support!

I’m pleased to report that I successfully completed the Glasgow Half Marathon, and have so far raised £1,504.20. My company had pledged to match up to the target of £1,500, so the total raised for The Prostate Cancer Charity comes to £3,004.20, and money is still coming in!

I really mean it when I say I could not have done it without the huge support I’ve received from your sponsorship, your messages, and your words of encouragement. It really made a big difference along the way.

Frances’s family turned out bright and early on the day to lend a lot of welcome support to me, and all the other runners along the route, and even captured some mug shots of me along the way. You can see them here

Conditions were pretty perfect for running. Nice and overcast, no rain, and a slight cooling breeze. Highlights included the run across the Kingston Bridge (the M8 motorway bridge through Glasgow), which is familiar to everybody up here and gives great views over Glasgow. Having a few lanes set aside for us was great fun. Plenty of pipers along the route encouraged us along, as did various shops as well as lots of fancy dress, the beautiful sites of Glasgow’s south-side, including my local training parks, and nice wide traffic-free roads.

In the end I managed the course with an official time of 1hr 52 mins 38 seconds (3 seconds faster than my own watch!), so exceeded the two hour challenge I’d set myself (So some of you who challenged me to do that in exchange for a bit more sponsorship now get to dig that little bit deeper . That puts me in position 2,541, which is safely in the first half (39th percentile) of all finishers, another goal I’d been secretly hoping to achieve!

The donation page is open for a while longer, so if you were holding on to find out if I actually completed the run before sponsoring me, now is your chance!

http://www.justgiving.com/richardleyton

There’s a supplement (PDF link) in Glasgow’s Evening Times, and the full race breakdown is here (PDF again) at the runglasgow website.

A pictorial follows tomorrow at http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/run

Once again, huge thanks to everybody who lent their support to me. Every little bit helped, and all for such a good cause!

Only a few days left to the half marathon now! Sunday 2nd September at 10am. Pleased to say that I received my race pack on Monday, so have checked everything out and put it somewhere nice and safe.

I entered three months ago, and at the time I was initially rather apprehensive about whether I’d even be able to manage it. However lots of training and a few build-up events have really helped get me enthusiastic about it, no matter how I do. I went for my last long-ish (12km) run last night. So much for the taper! It is easier going from now on. Just a couple of light runs over the next few days and I’m there. Lots of Pasta to be eaten towards the end of the week too!

The only negative in the process has been what seems rather sluggish pre-race organisation. It took a long time to get confirmation through about my entry (I didn’t want to start raising sponsorship until I had that confirmed), and that the race packs arrived with less than a week to go doesn’t help with the nerves at all. Discussions at the fetcheverone forum indicate some folk still haven’t received their packs yet, have had different answers depending on who they speak to, and the idea of having to pick up numbers/chips on the day without even being certain you’ll get a number could well put folk off without their packs from coming at all. Hopefully it’ll be ok on the day, and it’s just delayed mail.

Oh, and the fact that the trains from my local station only start at 9.27am on Sunday, which isn’t early enough for me (even though it only takes 10 minutes to get in to town, and 5 minutes from the station). So will probably go via another station (at the wonderfully titled ‘Crossmyloof’), or bus. Although SPT have provided free bus passes, I don’t like or trust buses to be reliable. Plus the pass is only for two of the three main bus operators. Frustratingly we don’t have a unified bus ticket system here in Glasgow. I’m sure it makes sense to somebody, somewhere. Just not the customers. Grrr.

Back on the positives, and I’ve so far managed to raise just over £1,300. My parents are doing the rounds with a paper form in my home village of Priddy, so I don’t yet know what will come out of that, but hopeful given awareness of Prostate Cancer is heightened there as so many folk knew my father was going through it and helping out with trips to the hospital for his radiotherapy. So the £1,500 target feels very achievable. Double that figure up with my own company donation, and around £3,000 for such a good and relevant cause: I’ve been quite taken aback and touched by the comments I’ve received from sponsors about how it’s touched their friends and family too. It’ll be an added incentive on the run to do as well as I can.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not the only person raising sponsorship for charity at the moment (See the widget to the right here). I just recently managed to stumble on an very impressive endeavour by people in from my home village of Priddy to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust in memory of Lizzie Berkeley.

The West Mendip Way Super Challenge sounds like a really tough challenge: They’re running a total of 16 miles in three sections, and given it’s on the paths of the West Mendip Way, it’s not going to be an easy run!

The group behind it are the Mendip Hills Hash House Harriers. Hash House Harriers have been described as “a group of drinkers with a running problem“. It sounds like a lot of fun – certainly a change from some of the really rather serious (and unresponsive to my nods and waves) runners I get a bit wound up about on some of my training runs (I should stress, they’re in the minority: most runners I encounter are happy to say hello or at least wave back). I’m hoping to take part in a run next time I’m back in Priddy. My friend Jake, and his mum, are keen regulars.

In the meantime, best wishes to everybody taking part in the super challenge.

Yesterday I started merrily sending out e-mails to family, friends, colleagues and pretty much everybody I can think of, to ask if they’ll consider sponsoring me for my half-marathon run in September. I’ve already been delighted to have heard from a number of readers who are keen to sponsor me based on my earlier posts, so it’s only fair that I pop something up on this website! There’s a special website widget (oh, you lucky people!) in my sidebar now which you can use, or you can have a read about what I’ve been saying in the e-mail:

I’m writing to ask if you’ll consider sponsoring me in support of The Prostate Cancer charity when I run my first ever half-marathon, in Glasgow on the 2nd September, 2007. My father was diagnosed with Prostate Cancer a few years back. Thanks to the medical and scientific advances in recent years, as well as his talking to the Doctor about the symptoms early on, he’s since made a full recovery.

However I think it’s vital to both try and help improve the funding into research and treatment of this condition, and help raise awareness of it: I didn’t realise but it’s the most common form of cancer in men: 1 in 6 men will be affected by it in their lifetime.

So if you’d like to sponsor me please visit this URL:

http://www.justgiving.com/richardleyton

For an easy way of donating, and also very tax effective! An extra 28% is added by the government if you’re a UK taxpayer!. I’ve also discovered that my consulting company will match your main donation, so there is plenty of incentive to dig deep!

I’m hoping to try and raise £500 from friends, family, colleagues and anybody else that might be interested in supporting a great cause. A donation of any size will help bring me closer to that goal, so I’ll be grateful for any amount that you can help with.

Some of you will know that I’ve been running for fun since September last year, inspired by the runners in the 2006 half marathon who went past our house (many of whom were running for charity). I’d thought about running plenty of times before, but that inspiration usually left when I turned my back on the runners! This time it was different, and it’s certainly been tough: I’ve still got a long way to go in my training!

Needless to say, I’ve been writing about much of this on my website, and will continue to do so as I build up to the half marathon in September: The 2006 Run, My first run, My first race, and my running album.

There’s also more to be found out about Prostate Cancer here: http://www.prostate-cancer.org.uk/.

Thanks again for your time, and your support!

Kind Regards,

Richard

Update I should confess – just in case! – that there’s a ‘reasonable’ limit on the company matching amount of £2,500: It’s my own company after all, and I’m actually starting to worry a little! Hope that’s not beyond what folk think I can raise, especially given my initial target of £500 has now been revised up to £1500 due to the immense generosity of friends and family so far!

Shaggy Blog Stories is a collection of weblog writings collated into a book, the profits of which will be donated to Red Nose Day.

I feel I have to say that I do find the whole ‘organised national charity day with television tie-in’ thing a little, well, forced and tiresome (At least RND folk deserve some credit for doing it bi-annualy, unlike ‘Children in Need’…). Perhaps it’s because I already give consistently to charities that I feel are worthy, across the charity spectrum, that I feel just a little bit irked to be on the receiving end of enforced jollity and some implied guilt that I should still be helping out with the effort. Bah.

So, right, I’ve bought the book. You should too. But no red nose on me, ok? And I’ll be watching anything but the BBC tonight. That’ll teach ‘em.

It’s also interesting to see how the whole lulu thing hangs together. On-demand publishing has oft been mentioned as an up and coming technology that could revolutionise an industry. The extreme version is walking to a machine, selecting the book you want, and out it comes in a matter of minutes. It won’t be the end of book shops, but would simply be an end to ‘out of print’. lulu.com is a start, and it’s certainly a great way for up and coming authors to get their books out, without having to deal with publishing houses. Sure, prices aren’t as competitive, but the flexibility makes for a great starting point.

More on the book here, and at troubled-diva.com