GUEST BLOG: Ian Chalk runs London Marathon for The Children’s Trust

On Sunday, Adot is sponsoring Ian Chalk to run the London Marathon for a great charity, The Children’s Trust. Ian has written a blog for us, letting us know about his training regime and how he is feeling now that the big race is just days away…

We have a young family (including our new baby boy Harry is now 8 weeks old) so family commitments and the inevitable child illnesses are also added into the mix and have made training quite tricky. My wife Ali is carrying most of the workload in this regard which is really helping me out.

With the time pressures, I’ve tried to replace mid -week runs with cycling to and from work on my road bike – at pace to keep the cardio work up at a decent level. This may have been a blessing in disguise as I’ve been struggling with my left ankle, which was causing left knee pain. Cycling of course is less stressful on the joints.

For the long weekend runs, my Dad has been an absolute star. He’s been riding along next to me for 2 or 3 hours in the snow or rain for most of the winter which has been a great morale booster.

A few weeks ago we both went down to The Children’s Trust in Surrey to see the great work the guys do. TCT specialise in brain injury rehabilitation in children. It’s a very worthwhile charity which I am proud to be supporting.

I’ve had a few proper sports massages recently (which I’ve not done before) and they really seem to be paying off in terms of resolving small niggles and tightness. I have one booked in for the night before to get me set for marathon day. It is also our 3 year olds birthday party on the Saturday so I will need a bit of stress relief.

It’s now only days to go and as for this week’s training, I managed to squeeze in a short run last night – 5K in less than 20 mins – not sure where that speed came from but I need to be wary of getting carried away on Sunday.

Wish me luck!