An extended thank you

Anyone who knows me personally will know that I spent the first four months of this year training to run my first (and potentially last) marathon, with my brother, Matt. I thought Tales of Timler would be as good a place as any to thank absolutely everyone who sponsored us and put up with the constant pestering and training logs on Facebook. With your help, we managed to raise £1,165 for clinical trials at The Christie hospital in Manchester, which I hope will have made a difference for someone out there.

Your support was a huge motivator, whether that be dragging our asses out of bed in February when the mercury was well below zero or in those final six miles when all I could think of was stopping (little did I know what was to come when the picture above was taken). Setting the target at £1,000 was optimistic on my part and I can only thank you all for getting behind us.

The day itself is a bit of a blur. Unsurprisingly, we went off a little quick and, while I don't think I fully hit 'The Wall', the last hour was an absolute battle to just keep running. Note: If you ever want to know what having a lengthy Gollum-esque argument with yourself sounds like, run 26 miles. While my day didn't end fantastically (I threw up a lot after the finish line), I'm really proud to have finally achieved something I've been promising to do since I was little and, should the right opportunity (London 2014) come up, I may foolishly decide to try and better my time. My only regret is that I didn't start Tales of Timler soon enough to document our training... and I suppose it would have been nice to have had Heather Smalls personally sing me over the finish line.