The KNEED to begin !!

My physio team of Ed Blake and Peter Chum (those are his hands!) have performed miracles and in spite of various surgeons advice that this mission would not be possible with my sports battered, and particularly, badly injured right knee – I am up, running and relatively pain-free – its only five miles at the moment but that means I have only got to add another 21.2 in the next 6 months !!

I am also so excited that eminent Professor Greg Whyte (the man who got Cracknell and Fogel to the South Pole, Cheryl Cole et al up Kili and Walliams across the Channel) has agreed to take me on as a challenge ! He and Karen Williams at Sir John Moore’s University in Liverpool will be creating and supervising my training programme.

Greg ran me through the machines and all the aerobic tests last week and I am good to go !

Not going to add much today as the next event will be my visit to the climate chamber at Bisham Abbey on the 25th of this month which will replicate the North Pole and my first exposure to the realities of running in deep Arctic conditions – I purposely have kept the heating off in Hertfordshire to begin my conditioning!

Just a final note for today …. a very very big thank you to the four beautiful nurses at Hospiten in Estepona who sewed my toe back on in August when I managed to detach part of it near the beach !! They only looked about 12 but they were great at ‘needlecraft’ and I won’t even be able to feel the frostbite!

PS – Loads of causes coming in – thank you all so much … we are going to do some good work here. Will let you know as soon as we’ve sorted through so many suggestions.

Am I Mad ?!?!?

 

North Pole Marathon - The First Step

 

My name is Jon Smith and I am going to be 58 next week with very bad knees from too much sport, a broken foot from being stupid on holiday (trying to be 28!) … and I have decided to run my first marathon – at the North Pole !!
So here we go. I don’t want to go over the top but I thought it was worth a blog every few weeks just for the sheer hell of it and to make a few people laugh. The North Pole Marathon itself takes place every year with only 25 participants from around the world. http://www.npmarathon.com Most of whom are uber marathon runners / triathletes (with good knees and two good feet) not marathon virgins like me !
Back home in comfy North West London I run a small public company called First Artist Corporation which manages a number of major sports stars / entertainers and a couple of big theatre marketing companies in London and New York; so I am hoping to achieve some reasonable publicity for the cause.
Ahhh ! now The Cause ….. this is where I need your help.
Ideally I would like to find a young person who is in urgent need of medical treatment who, for whatever reason, cannot seem to achieve that privately or through the NHS or indeed through their own countries medical system. I am hoping  to be able to raise enough funds for this mad marathon attempt to be able to pay for their otherwise unattainable treatment … can you help? do you know anyone who is / will be in that situation ?? I say will be because the marathon does not take place until April 5th 2011 so it may not be possible to find that person / cause until nearer the time.
So now my foot is healing training starts the third week of this month and will no doubt be adventuresome and amusing – I will try and keep the odd person who hits this blog entertained whilst updating our cause and hopefully adding a few of our celebs to the mix and maybe even one or two of the broadcasters who we will try and arm wrestle to support me!
The good news is polar bears don’t normally travel that far north – it’s too cold !!!