Extreme Knitting Redhead: The Battle Observer, Runner's World, the Olympics and my 2012 Challenge

Sunday, October 30, 2011

The Battle Observer, Runner's World, the Olympics and my 2012 Challenge

Battle Observer

Sue from Alzheimer's Research UK phoned me the other day and suggested we do a round-up of my fund-raising and marathon running exploits for the year and issue another press release. Her idea was to talk about the 4 marathons briefly, bearing in mind that we did press releases before each individual marathon anyway, and then mention my plans for next year.

Great idea I thought and so Mike decided to take a photo of me holding all 4 medals. First of all we went outside but it was so windy that each photo ended up with my hair covering my face leaving me looking like Cousin Itt from the Adams Family!

So we came inside and he took 2 photos of me in the hallway which he thought looked fine. Yeah, right! They looked OK on the camera but when I uploaded them I noticed that my vest had ridden up and you could see bits of myself through the lycra that I would prefer not to share with the world!

Eventually we got a decent shot and so off it went with the wordy bit. Sometimes we get follow-up phone calls or emails but nothing happened so I was quite surprised when I opened the local paper to see this fab article. It's wonderful when they get all the important bits about Alzheimer's Research into the article and ARUK will be delighted as we have had lots of coverage again this year.

Many thanks to the Observer and all the local radio stations for their ongoing support.

Runner's World

Each year Runner's World offer a number of runners the opportunity to train for a marathon (usually London but this year it was Paris) with a team of professionals.

Each year I enter but never get selected.

This year they've teamed up with Asics to offer this amazing opportunity to train for the Paris marathon in 2012.

Ever the optimist I've put myself forward again in the hope that they might help this fat but fit 54 year old achieve her dreams of pbs in 2012. A girl can but dream and I do actually run in ASICs shoes (Gel Nimbus)!

The 2012 Olympics

I don't think I've mentioned this before but the lovely people from ARUK put my name forward for the London 2012 'Moment to shine' campaign to become a torchbearer. They also nominated Dione who I've written about before. Both of us are Champions for ARUK.

Amazingly, out of the hundreds of thousands of nominees, both of us have managed to get through to the next stage. They have created a shortlist of 28,000 potential Torchbearers from all the nominations they received.

The stories will remain anonymous as the panels select the 2,012 most inspiring people to be one of the 8,000 Torchbearers needed in total for the Olympic Torch Relay. The nominees will have around a one in 14 chance of being a Torchbearer.

I felt very humble to have been nominated and it would be brilliant if one or both of us could make it through.

My 2012 Challenge

Which brings me nicely around to my 2012 challenge. You will see from the article in the Observer that I mentioned 'an Olympic effort' for next year. Well I was pondering what to do (more marathons, multiple marathons, ultra marathons?) when it just came to me that it had to be something that would be really hard for me to do. Anyone who has been reading my blog will have seen me try and fail to beat my marathon pb twice now so it was obvious what I should do - get faster across all the distances.

I can't believe I'm typing this but what I intend to do in 2012 is to beat my best times at 5k, 10k, 1/2 marathon and marathon.

No details yet but that's the plan. Oh my!

2 comments:

womble said...: Catching up after a long absence (and my own recent return to blogging). You moaned at me this year at VLM for going slightly faster than you! Why don't we pick a marathon some time next year to do together to bust your pb? It would need to be a bit further into the year to get me back running properly but it could be something for both of us to aim for (especially if you're rejected by RW). What's your pb (just in case it's 3.29 or something)?; November 6, 2011 at 10:18:00 AM PST
Susie Hewer said...: Hi Womble, lovely to hear from you. LOL at my comment to you during the London marathon. I think my knitting was getting heavy when I met you! Love the idea of doing a marathon together next year and I'll email you for a chat.; November 8, 2011 at 5:29:00 AM PST

Post a Comment

Mum's Story

In 1997 my mother, then aged 81, had a series of minor strokes. Shortly after that we started to notice behavioural changes notably memory loss and confusion over everyday items. We thought it was just old age finally catching up with her. Then she started wandering and had violent mood swings. Although she already lived with us it became obvious that she couldn't be left alone for long and so I left my job to care for her. The next few years saw a gradual decline into the blackness that is 'vascular dementia'. My normally placid mum became violent and aggressive. She had psychotic incidents where she would see imaginary people (children hiding in her wardrobe, Russians sitting on the stairs, women stealing her clothes) and she would shout at them and sometimes throw things too. She was so convincing that we used to go and check that there wasn't anyone there! When my sister died mum did not know who Judy was or that she was her daughter. There came a point when I suddenly realised she no longer knew that I was her daughter and this was a terrible time for me. In the last 2 years that she lived with us, life for us all became almost unbearable as she needed 24 hour care - she couldn't be left alone at all because she would either wander off or hurt herself, she never slept for more than 30 minutes at a time during the night, she became incontinent and incapable of doing anything for herself. Finally my husband and I realised that we could no longer provide her with the care that she needed and she went to live in a special care home where the team did a splendid job caring for her in the last few months of her life. There she lived a zombified existence unaware of who she was, what she was or where she was. It was heartbreaking. She died in March 2005, the day after her 89th birthday.

Thank you for taking the time to read mum's story and I hope you'll dig deep and sponsor me using the link below to help find a way of beating this destructive disease.