hi again!

[pam]

hi andy,

it's been awhile...glad to see you're back posting.

my marathon training is going reasonably well. had a ten-miler on sunday. but it was so hot that we had to walk half of the last three miles. no big deal, though.

i didn't know you belonged to the dead runners list! the big list? or a european one?

fundraising has ground to a halt, with $700 to go. ah well, i still have two months for that.

must go finish reading your diary now,
pam!

[El Gordo]

Hi Pam

Great to hear from you again. Yay!

Good news about the training. As you may have gathered from my log, mine isn't going well. Not going at all, in fact. If you've placed a large wager on me to to win the Dublin Marathon, I have some bad news for you. The start line is beginning to look like a long way away, never mind the finish line.

I subscribed to the Dead Runners list a while back. To be honest, I don't often read it, but the digest arrrives each morning and sometimes I scan through. I went hunting for them after you mentioned them in one of your blog entries. (For anyone interested, do a search for "Dead Runners" and you'll get their homepage.)

I can't recall now whether or not I've contributed to your leukemia fund? I certainly meant to. Let me know if I haven't yet, and I'll do so.

Have you considered using a service like Justgiving (http://www.justgiving.com). I don't know if you have to be based in the UK. If so, there may be an American version. (And if there isn't, you should start one - it sounds like a lucrative business...)

Do stay in touch, and good luck with the training. Did you go for the Hal Higdon program in the end?

Andy

[pam]

Oh, Andy...

It's not the end of the world if you don't end up doing the Dublin Marathon. Everyone here training for the Marine Corps Marathon is worried about the cutoff - you have to be at mile 21 by some certain time that corresponds to a 14 min/mile pace. One friend who has never done a marathon is seriously panicking, and even when I assure her that I even made it to the 21 mile mark in FLM in well under that pace (do you consider 13:30 well under that pace? well, i do!) so certainly she can. Hmm, and they call it the "People's Marathon." Well, not the "Slow People's Marathon."

Oops, off the subject. Not sure where that came from.

I'm envious that you can enter the FLM so easily (well, the lottery anyway) but with my currently unemployed status, I'm not sure I will be able to afford the $500 that it costs for an overseas entry plus three nights of a hotel. (Unfortunately, you have to book into an expensive hotel to get an entry. Sheesh. I'd rather put my chances in the lottery!) So we'll see if I do make it to London next April, though I'm absolutely determined.

I'll stop blathering now. Unfortunately, over here there aren't any decent fundraising sites like JustGiving. Ah well. And, though I hate to mention it, I'd love a donation. I'm kind of stuck right now.


pam

[El Gordo]

http://www.pyjammy.com/tnt/donate/index.html

Right everyone, that's the place to go to, to make a donation to Pam's leukemia fund. To learn more about why she's doing it, go to http://www.pyjammy.com/tnt/ . It's a great cause, and well worth a few quid from all of us.

How's New Orleans at the moment? It's bloomin' hot in London. We were all sent home this morning as there was a power-cut, so no PCs were working. What a shame...

We can certainly enter the FLM easily, but have very little chance of getting in through the ballot. Well, about a 1 in 6 chance. I didn't realise that you had to book a package to get a London place. Do check that out. If you can get a place, we can sort you out with some cheap or even free accommodation, I'm sure.

Quite a few marathons have these cut-offs though often they're a threat that's not carried through. In any case, your friend should definitely make the cutoff point. Even if she's struggling to maintain 14min/mile pace by Mile 21, she will, I'm sure have clocked up enough faster miles by that time to give her a cushion. Tell her to stop panicking and listen carefully to Uncle Andy.

That said, the marathon is full of self-doubt and fear as well as elation. And it's how it should be. After she's crossed the line, tears streaming, she'll be hugely grateful that she made the decision to carry on. Didn't someone say something like "Everything I know I learnt from doing a marathon..." Or was that me? I don't know, but make sure she gets the message. Without these crises, there can't be the same sense of triumph.

I've just started running again (HURRAH!), so I think I'd beter nip out to the pub to celebrate. Don't tell me off - remember that I'm likely to make a bigger donation after I've had a few beers.

Stay in touch

Andy

[El Gordo]

Pam - don't accuse me of not trying. After 20 minutes of trying to set up a Paypal account, I've given up.

I'll try again tomorrow. Oooh, I don't much like PayPal. I'm not certain why I have to set up an account just to pay someone else?

Grrrrrrrrrr. Anyway, I don't understand its privacy conditions, and it's now telling me that there's already an account set up with this credit card number. Well, if there is, I guess it's my account, so we'll try again in a day or two.

Andy

[pam]

Oh, it's okay if it's too much trouble! I don't want to be a pain! But it's okay because...

I've raised all my money! Woo hoo! $3400! Yay!

So really, it's fine.

(You can donate later, when I set up the "Send Pam to London" charity. Kidding.)

Training is going well, did 12 miles on Sunday. On hills.

And believe it or not, it's cooler in New Orleans than in London! I never thought that would happen. Is it humid there, though? It may feel hotter here, though. But still! I can't imagine!

pam

[El Gordo]

You raised all the money? Wow - how did you manage that? Sorry, perhaps I shouldn't ask....

But well done Pam, that must be a load off your mind. Now all that's left is to run 26.2 miles.....

I'll definitely donate, don't worry.

Cheers

Andy