• 29. Are we nearly there?

    Mile 26 – Nice and flat and easy. My original estimate of 26 weeks for the treatment was way out. I probably have another 26 weeks to go until, all being well, I start maintenance treatment, but there is no point in wishing your life away. When running a marathon, you try everything you can to avoid thinking about how far there is to go. Better to appreciate that there can be a lot to enjoy during each mile. As I mentioned previously, my G-CSF injections have started this week, to make the stem cells grow like crazy so that they burst out of the bones and into the blood…

  • 28. 100 Marathon Club

    Mile 25 – gentle hills. My one marathon a year in the past isn’t a lot compared to many people. Some that I know have run a marathon each weekend, others have run a hundred or more. Once you get the bug, I guess it’s hard to stop. Putting my treatment ‘marathon’ plan in perspective, I’ll remind you that Multiple Myeloma is not curable, but it is treatable. The ‘finish (for now)’ marker in the plan I have been sharing in previous weeks indicates that I will hopefully get a period of remission before, inevitably, my myeloma stops responding (known as being ‘refractory’) to the treatment, and I then have…

  • 27. Negative splits

    Mile 24 – Flat and easy. A negative split is when you run faster in the second half of a race than in the first. It’s not easy to achieve. It helps that your body is properly warmed up after the first half, and, if you manage it, there is a great feeling of empowerment when you finish the race strongly. Hopefully, I’m about halfway through my initial treatments, counting from the initial diagnosis to the ‘end point’ where I can start maintenance. The first half was mainly chemotherapy, and it has had a big, positive effect on the pain I had been experiencing, while the main event in the…

  • 26. Visualise success

    Mile 23 – Another easy mile, with the wind behind me. Before starting a marathon, picture yourself achieving a successful result: you have bettered your target time, and you can still walk. Then think about everything that must come together for you to have got there. That would include the hydration and nutrition on the way round, so that you feel good at the end. You might also have an eye on the target times at mile markers on your way round. This applies to everything you do: when you go to the supermarket, make sure you have your bags, shopping list and money with you. I suppose bank robbers…

  • 25.Increasing the mileage.

    Mile 22 – Another easy mile, with a downhill gradient helping me along. You guessed it: if you want to run a marathon, then you have to practise running some long distances beforehand, gradually building up the miles each week. You don’t need to achieve the full 26.2 miles: if you can do 23 miles or so, then you will be able to run the whole distance on race day. This has been a good week for increasing my mileage, both on the bike and walking. Having finished my five months of ‘Induction’ chemotherapy, I am practically drug free, and feeling better than I have done for over a year.…

  • 24. Drug testing

    Mile 21 – Nice and flat. Occasionally elite athletes make the headlines with doping scandals, but it’s not something you hear about at my level. Running clubs aren’t like gyms, full of pumped up bodybuilders swapping steroids. Still, I’d better give it a few weeks before I let anyone test me. That’s it for the chemotherapy for a while: I have finished my last week of cycle five, and my tablet consumption is now next to nothing. I’m just on a low dose of the steroid Prednisolone, and I’ll be reducing that over the next couple of weeks. I’m feeling more normal, I have more energy, and my gastric system…

  • 23. Hill training

    Mile 20 – To train for races on hills, it’s best to run up hills. To train for races on the flat, it’s also best to run up hills. I started the week with lots of walking, and an average number of steps over 10,000 each day. My lightheaded feeling wasn’t as bad as usual so, in the spirit of overdoing it, I walked up Wolstonbury Hill on Thursday. I haven’t been able to do that for more than a year, so it felt good to be up there to enjoy the view and to tick it off as a milestone in my recovery. Of course, since doing that my…

  • 22. Training plans

    Mile 19 – Undulating. When you commit to a marathon training plan, it will take over your diary. You will plan your life around fitting in the training runs, especially the longer ones on Sundays, and you will feel very uncomfortable if you haven’t completed the mileage by the end of the week. Vitality Health Insurance motivates you to keep active by offering rewards. You can earn points by recording steps or exercise activities, and by doing so you achieve bronze, silver, gold or platinum status. You are rewarded with free coffees, cinema tickets and a host of discounts. Your premiums for the next year can be cheaper if you…

  • 21. Managing the details

    Mile 18 – Easy downhill slope. As well as preparing your body for the run, you need to be on top of all the ‘admin’ details if you want to enjoy your race. You will need your four lucky safety pins for your race number, and a change of clothes for afterwards (packed in the regulation bag for storage if you want to make use of the bag drop and find your things at the end). No one else is going to manage this for you. One of the ladies at the running club contacted me to say that her husband had been diagnosed with a similar blood cancer at…

  • 20. Reducing waste

    Mile 17 – Getting back on track. Going back a few years, Lucozade (or other sports drink sponsors) would turn up with mountains of bottles of flavoured energy juice at the Brighton marathon. If I picked one up as a runner, I would keep hold of it until I had finished it all, but the majority of people didn’t want a whole bottle: they would take a sip and throw most of it on the ground. This adhesive, sticky mess would be on your trainers, and you could hear the squelching for the next few miles. Come to think of it, it was a good tactic for slowing down those…