Apologies for the paucity of posts recently; due to injury I haven’t been able to paddle and I’ve been rather busy, for all the wrong reasons (i.e. work). Anyway, here follows some news, generally of the good kind;
My body seems to be more or less fixed now, having been subjected to a couple of test paddles. Yesterday I paddled my creek boat in the tide race at Peveril Point (Swanage). My broken shoulder tweaked minimally and I found I had full range of movement. This is quite a good thing, as in two weeks I have chartered a small aircraft to fly a group of us into a remote river in western Nepal; I’m definitely keen to have a functioning shoulder for this undertaking. I am however slightly concerned at the lack of UK whitewater paddling I’ve done (i.e. zero) to prepare for this expedition; even if my shoulder hadn’t been out of action, the rivers have all been dry since Christmas.
I am completely overwhelmed by the generous support I’ve had for my marathon plans; an amazing amount of money has been donated to Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team Ashburton so far; many thanks for this. Given that (due to working abroad and then a bout of man flu) I haven’t actually done a great deal of training in the past couple of weeks (and also that I’ll be in Nepal for a couple of weeks before the marathon), I have worried more than once whether I can actually do this thing. This morning I ventured out to attempt the rather epic run mapped below, involving 19 miles of hills with over 2000 foot of ascent along the way. I survived the route, completing it in 8 minute miles. More importantly I (mostly) enjoyed it, especially ascending the final and highest hill, 664 foot Swyre Head. This is undoubtedly one of my favourite spots and I took a few moments out to snap the photo above on my mobile phone. The bottom line is, after this run I now believe that I must be capable of achieving the full marathon. Touch wood!!!
A related topic; I also managed to secure a little extra money to support the work of the Dartmoor SRT Ashburton. A photograph of mine showing my good friend Chris was displayed in most of the national daily newspapers, the BBC and their websites after his accident. It had been ‘borrowed’ from one of my websites by a news agency and sold on to the media outlets mentioned above. After some discussion of options, the news agency offered to donate a sum of money to Dartmoor Mountain Rescue Services, and I have accepted this arrangement and received their cheque.
All good.
A good outcome for the photo business Mark. And impressive running too.
S