Tom Runs the London Marathon for His Chosen Charity, CLIC Sargent

Tom describes the experience in his own words:

Fundraising for CLIC Sargent

I ran the London Marathon in support of CLIC Sargent and raised a total of £2,218.17.

CLIC are a charity that support children with cancer and their families, the cause is close to my family’s heart because my cousin Bobby had non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 14 which is not something any child or family should ever have to endure.

I ran for CLIC so that children like Bobby and their families get all the help and support they need.

Heath and wiltshire supporting the CLIC Sargent charity

Tom’s Training Programme

In terms of running, I used to run a lot when I was younger but since then not much at all.

This was the first time I have run a marathon and I trained for around 8 months running a mixture of interval sessions, long and recovery runs.

Typically, I would run 4 to 5 times a week with the longer runs usually at a weekend, for a while it seemed to take over my life!

Over the training I also ran a few races to get me used to the environment and test my pace in a race situation, the longest race was the Fleet half marathon around a month before London which I did in 1 hour 48 minutes.

I also needed to get used to fuelling, this meant trying out gels as well as carb loading in advance of the long runs.

The Day of the Marathon

The experience of running the London Marathon was incredible, the atmosphere almost makes you forget that you have to run 26.2 miles, unfortunately you do remember and I struggled after mile 19!

This was particularly heading through Canary Wharf and Limehouse before making my way back to Tower Bridge. At around mile 22 I met another runner who kept me going through a fairly low point and we actually finished the race together, this definitely helped.

Another big motivator was seeing my wife Carolyn, sister and her children at mile 23, this was also a cheer point for CLIC Sargent so this definitely picked me up and carried me to the end. Apparently I looked good at mile 23 but I definitely didn’t feel it!