Just Giving

A year ago, faced with the prospect of Lymphoedema for the rest of my life, with no cure and a stark absence of treatments, it felt that my whole world was changing. I was scared and felt abandoned by the medical profession. My GP tried his best but he knew less about my condition than  I did! Trawling the internet for the most part just added to my woes, revealing shocking images of grotesquely swollen limbs. However, my internet quest did bring up one gem, the Lymphoedema Support Network (LSN). Here was an organisation committed to helping people just like me and I seized on the chance to find out as much as I could, signed up for membership and with it gained access to a massive array of  information booklets, DVDs, a telephone helpline and self-help resources. In the last year, pushing their remit forward, the LSN has also instigated a major drive in the area of GP education, laying down important foundations for earlier diagnosis and better support.

Lymphoedema that occurs post-cancer is an area of medicine that has generated some research interest but in the main it's woefully under funded. This makes even more remarkable the service that the LSN provide. As part of my '2012 resolution of giving' my first task therefore is to try and raise some money for the LSN.

So how am I going to do this? Not wanting to depart too much from what I know, but also wanting to make it a challenge worthy of my friends & families support, I have signed up to run the Brighton Marathon on April 15th.

It will be 10 years since I last competed over the marathon distance. Since then I've endured a chronic Achilles tendonitis injury that stopped me running for 2 years and pushed me into cycling, not to mention having to deal with Lymphoedema. In recent years I've dabbled with a minor run element in my weekly program but nothing like the distance I need to build up to give due respect to the marathon distance. But that's part of the challenge.

Coach Helen and I sat down some months ago when this idea was first hatched to see if it was a realistic goal. Being sensible my damaged Achilles was never going to allow me to run repeatedly day after day and the high mileage approach I adopted ten years ago was a definite no-go. We devised a plan comprising of only 3 runs a week, training on alternate days of Monday, Wednesday & Friday, with a limit of around 40-45 miles per week. With my mind also on other challenges to come post marathon, we’ve combined these runs with my more usual bike training and it’s intriguing to see whether this ‘less is more’ approach will work.

Gradually I've been getting the necessary miles under my belt and now feel that I'll be there on race day.  For sure it will not be like my last race in April 2002; then I was in the championship race at the London Marathon and ran a respectable 2:52. I competed for myself, for personal gain.  This time it’s about completing not competing; how fast I run is mostly irrelevant although my hard-wired competitive streak has set a target of sub-3:30. This time it's about pushing to the limit for a far worthier cause and sincerely hope that you too will join me on this journey. I resolve to push out the bounds and run 26.2 miles, will you visit my charity page www.justgiving.com/JulietteClark and sponsor me?