12 hours 30 minutes and 40, 39, 38 seconds...

And they're off!


That's right, this time tomorrow the first part of Aubrey's challenge will be over! 

The weather forecast predicts misery aka cold, wind and rain. Only one thing to do put the head down, suck it up and run!

See you on the other side! 

Knee injury

Emma: Earlier this year, while preparing for the Barcelona marathon I developed a knee injury that plagued my marathon and made it even more of a challenge than I'd hoped for. It turned out I have a problem with my IT band and needed physio to loosen it. IT band massages are painful stuff but they really work .

My physio discovered that the injury was caused by the way that I run, I have a slight overpronation, meaning that when I run my ankles roll inwards. To combat that you need a shoe that offers support in the inside. As it's only slight I have to be careful to choose a shoe that doesn't push me the other way causing other problems.

I run in New Balance WR860's these runners are a fairly neutral shoe and offer some support. I need to add an orthotic to them to make them my perfect fit, I've found them fantastic and they've helped me stay injury free throughout my training.

Now, if I had only worn them all the time instead of the super flat ballet pumps I wear so often that offer no support(fashion over function here I'm afraid!). Wearing these almost daily and upping my mileage has caused my old injury to resurface. This is not something you want happening 11 days before a marathon.

Yet this is something that happened. Doing an easy breezy 5km run on Tuesday night hurt, well my knee hurt and I knew exactly why. I panicked. I have spent the last 4 months training for this and now, last minute this happens. Luckily my physio was able to see me almost immediately and diagnosed the problem. With injuries, they can come back when you up your mileage and once you deal with them quickly they should be no problem. To treat it I've to stretch three times a day and use my trusty trigger point roller aka torture device.

So after a moment of panic about the most painful marathon mark two, it looks like thanks to my amazing physio, things will go to plan!

Until then I'm banned from wearing those shoes!

This day next week - Part 1 of the challenge

Aubrey: One week to go and I am like a coiled spring.  It is very frustrating I have a lot of energy but have to wait until race day before I can release it, as the tapering (wind down) has started.  This means that you must rest for about two weeks prior to race day with some short runs, so rather than the normal 25-30 k at the weekend I ran just 12 and this week will only do three 5 k runs.

On the upside the nervous excitement has started, and we will be heading into the Dublin City Marathon Expo this Saturday morning to pick up the race pack, with race numbers and some fun stuff...

I just hope the weather keeps fine and we don’t have a repeat of yesterday as I will need to bring arm bands and a canoe on the day if it does. Not sure if that's in the rules!

The Final Countdown

19 days, 18hours, 40 minutes and 35 seconds.

Yesterday I completed my last 'long run' before the marathon, 32km or to put some context on it from Cabinteely to Clontarf... and back! It went well, I had fuelled properly throughout the week, was properly hydrated, had some amazing cheesy tunes to keep me going I was ready for anything. Some might call it strange but I enjoyed nearly every second of that run, I knew this was the last time I'd run this distance before the big day and that spurred me on!

The week before I completed a similar distance, and it nearly killed me. I had properly fuelled in the days leading up to it but I ate too early that morning and ran too late. By the time I hit 24km on the Rock Road I thought I was going to die. And I mean really die. I hurt everywhere, even my fingers hurt, I was moving at a good pace but in my mind I was shuffling along. The final 6km took what seemed like hours, but after checking my pace it was 20 secs off my optimum time per km. Not too bad for someone who was convinced she was going home in an ambulance!

We're now in the final stages of our marathon preparation, 4 months of hard work is paying off. The next 19 days for me(13 days for Aubrey) will be spent slowing our training right down and eating properly. We've done nearly all we can do to physically prepare for the marathon(or marathon's in Aubrey's case) and unlike an exam you can't get in any last minute cramming(unfortunately as I'm a crammer!). In fact I learnt the other day, not allowing your body to rest in the next few weeks will actually do you more harm than good!

We've still a good bit to go to reaching our target, so for those of you that haven't sponsored us yet click here and sponsor us online.

All money that we raised will go towards the Irish Cancer Society's cancer support services including research.