On the 29th May 2008, Clive and 4 took the plunge and set off on a gruelling bike ride from Bovington to London.

This ride was part of the Great British Bike Ride that was formed by The Help for Heroes charity. They had 300 riders who were riding from the UK over to France then back to meet in London on the 1st June 2008, the whole event helped to raise over 1.2 million pounds.

The story that must be told is the adventure Clive Towell had, Clive is my partner in Charity support .
The first day of the ride as they departed on the first stretch to Winchester, 36 miles into the ride Clive was hit from behind at a rounabout when a cars breaks failed.

Has Luck had it he was knocked to one side out of the way of the car which continued forward. After picking himself off the ground shaken and bruised, he swapped a few insurance details with the driver who was extreamly sorry by the way, he then placed his pretty poorly bike into the back of the safety vehicle, returned to Bovington to his house, picked up a spare bike and then drove bike to the remainder of the team and continued the remaining 140 miles.

I for one take my hat off to Clive for his guts and commitment, what it also proves is that people will do anything for Charity.

Well done to all for your great efforts.

The London marathon is such a prestige event that everyone should consider taking part at least once during their life. It is definitely a "to do before I die" challenge.

Well where do I start, I would like to start by using words like, excellent, amazing, outstanding and emotional. When I started my Charity organisation "Charity Support" it was the kick start to eventually sign up for the London marathon and I am so glad that I did.

When the day comes the aches, pains and for some of us overcoming injuries is all forgotten with the thrill of it all. Arriving at your start point is amazing, you don’t know where to go first or where to look, there is so many sights to take in it gives you a brain overload.
The time then arrives when you have to line up in your zone and the excitement is unexplainable, you don’t have fear or nerves it is all pure excitement.

AND YOU’RE OFF 9 45 comes and the race starts the cheer is deafening, you start to shuffle closer to the start line its time to break into a run and through the streets of London you go. People try and explain to you about the crowd and the support but until you have experienced it for yourself their stories seem like an exaggeration but believe me they are not. You also get told not to train the full distance as the crowd will get you through the final stages, it is all true.

For 99% of the route the crowd must have been 5 deep all clapping and shouting words of encouragement, the only word I can use to describe it is awesome and it will be a part of the day I will never forget.

I finished the marathon in 4 hours 27 minutes and 9 seconds; I was training for a time of 4 hours 30 so I was very pleased to achieve my time, I have to give a massive thank you to Boris Stone for achieving my time as he worked on my injured knee for a week prior to the marathon. Unfortunately my running partner Clive Towell hit the BRICK WALL at 20 miles but still came in at an excellent time of 4 hours 41 minutes 38 seconds.

Would I do it again? The answer is 100% yes and I have registered for the 2009 FLM an hour after finishing on Sunday, further to that both Clive and I have registered and running the Amsterdam marathon on the 19th October. We raised over £3000 for our charities which are Help for Heroes, St Christopher’s Hospice and Age Concern in Weymouth.

I would like to finish by saying if you are having thoughts of doing the Marathon then just do it and sign up, the sense of achievement will be well worth it. If you receive a place please get in contact and let’s make a Team Weymouth for 2009.

Chris Smart of Weymouth who is currently training for the marathon as part of Charity Support has been given a well needed training boost to his 200 mile a month training schedule by Steve Churchhill from the Budmouth gym.

As every runner will know and empathise with, training for any sporting event is not easy, especially the gruelling 26.2 miles of the London marathon. If it was just a case of turning up on the day and running it, that would be great, but it is not as easy as that. I would just like to share with you all a quick insight to what it is like training for a marathon.

The main point is allowing yourself enough time to train for the event, as a soldier I have the added advantage of having to stay reasonably fit at all times, for the individual who is not use to it, time appreciation is imperative. The aim is to find a comfortable pace and build distance on your pace. There is no laid down rule on how much and at what distance you should do, your body will let you know. One of the most important areas of training is allowing your body to recover, If you don’t allow this to happen you will start taking backward steps and incurring injuries.

The training thus far for me has taken it out on my knees with the amount of road running I have been doing. So for me the recovery periods has been very important, but don’t allow yourself to panic train because you don’t feel you are not doing enough or you’re running out of time, this can be detrimental.

If you can, try and find running routes that may have some grassed areas or gravel, just to ease the constant pounding to your knees. I have been lucky this week by receiving a very kind offer from Steve, who said, I'm more than happy to help, having done the marathon a couple of years ago myself I know exactly how difficult the training can be. So I am now allowed to use his Gym 2-3 times a week to run on the soft matting of a treadmill.

In conclusion, marathon running is not just getting to the start line and of you go for 26 miles, it is all the hard work prior to it, which really warrants that individual to be sponsored. I personally have covered over 200 miles a month since November, which means by the time of the London marathon I would have run over a 1000 miles in training. So when you see people out and about on the streets just give them a thought and appreciate what they are trying to achieve. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who continues to support me during my build up and all the very kind donations and prizes from the community.

Please continue to support me, even a message in my guest book on the website is a sign of support. Thank you.

Ten days ago I thought my London marathon experience was over, however the healing hands of a local fitness trainer comes to save the day.

As I have stated before the training for the London marathon is very hard and takes a lot out of your body, especially the knees the worse part of it, is not knowing what is wrong should your body start to say no.

Ten days ago I came to a complete stand still with my training due to an unbearable pain in my left knee; I couldn’t rum more than 500 meters never mind over 26 miles. With only 2 weeks left to go before the marathon I was absolutely shattered and didn’t know where to turn. I was going to do the normal soldier task by taking pain relief and carrying on however that wasn’t working this time.

By fate I had previously been in contact with Boris from outrageously active by email about a charity event that we are planning to do together later in the year. As Boris comes under the category of personal trainer I didn’t think for a minute that me contacting him would help, as you would automatically think a personal trainer makes you fit and looses you weight, how wrong I was.

What Boris doesn’t know about how the human body works is not worth knowing, with 13 years as a Military PTI and 7 years in business with outrageously active he has bags of experience. I rang him on the Monday he had me in his studio on Tuesday and I was running 10 miles on Tuesday evening as if I had a new leg, absolutely amazing.

His main area of expertise is on the human posture and how the body is balanced, if the body is unbalanced and your posture is wrong it can lead to all sorts of problems, I could go on forever about his techniques and what effects what, but that is a book in itself, but at the end of the day he has put me well and truly back on track for the 13th April 08.

I would like to pass on a personal thanks to Boris and welcome him onboard the Charity Support team, and also I would like this to show what a great community spirit we have in Weymouth.