Marathon in a day

[OutAlongTheRiver]

I have a friend from previous job who switched from excellent rugby playing to serious marathon running in 2011 - with target of 52 marathons in a year, all run in under 3hrs 45. He succeeded and had many adventures along the way - including being given free flights to NY before he even had a place in the marathon and then ending up featured in their run programme.

As well as being a good guy, he campaigns on mental health issues to raise awareness of male deaths by suicide, since his father killed himself after history of depression.

He's now set up a programme called "Marathon in a Day" which is a virtual marathon that you take part in, with the proviso that you run the marathon distance in any way you wish, provided you complete the distance within a 24 hour period over the weekend of 1-3 September. Part of this is about funding and awareness raising for mental health, part is about breaking up the marathon distance so it's less daunting for newbies. I liked it when i first heard

This chimed with my thinking that our Twitten Run (up and down all 12 twittens in Lewes on Sunday morning) could be run multiple times to make up a half marathon or even a full one.

So cavalierly I have proposed this - accepted by the MiaD folks (they were actually full, since they have limit since need to verify all data submitted) - and will be doing 9 Twitten Runs over the Saturday afternoon (from 1pm) and Sunday morning (finishing before 1pm).

I'll start and finish each run from Ground Coffee/The Lansdown Arms - so that the distance is just short of 5km (it needs to be 4.7km to divide into 9 runs). And run every 90 mins from 1pm on Sat (to total of 5 runs) and from 7.30am on Sun (to total of 4).

Folks are joining me on one or more of the loops - so my partner Paula is up for some, speedy but injury prone Nick Williams, Baz the Haff (whom we shepherded round the Downland 5 last year and CC5 wrote up), Rick Curtis who can run forever and runs Ground Coffee. Plus the usual folks, since number 7 will coincide with the usual 9am Sunday run.

Jokingly with Tom Roper (Moyleman Chief Marsall) I had suggested a swim in Pells between each - but that was really in jest ... but plunge at end of 9th run on Sunday will be nice to look forward to.

With the amount of climb involved, I'm wondering just how much it will add up to ... actually just calculated it as 1350m ... based on around 150m per loop.

So. Will report back here on how it's gone. Pip pip!