Highs and Lows of Marathon Training

Less than five weeks to go until the Big Day.

I’ve been training hard for the London Marathon for 11 weeks and it’s fair to say there have been some highs and some lows. Here are a few that have been rattling round:

HIGH

The moment I realised that I no longer checked the weather every five minutes in the four hours before running home from work. I am going to run home in rain, snow, sun or anything in between.

LOW

Realising that no matter how fast I get, I have still to overcome my weak mental state. It won’t just fall in line with my stronger physical state.

HIGH

Finishing 4^th in the 20k Great Northern Run in Derby in 1.21.16. It was a rolling course in the countryside – everything I like – and I even led for a while in the third kilometre (although the winner eventually put more than four minutes on me)

LOW

Forgetting to rest after the 20k Great Northern Run and continuing training as if nothing had happened. 18 miles in the next two days and I was one broken Malc. Stoopid, stooped, stooped.

HIGH

Joining the track sessions at Oxford Tri and realising why people work so hard at training. Because when you’re with a group of people pushing you, and encouraging you, and helping you, it is damn near impossible not to get faster.

LOW

Realising that my life has limits. Before this I could tell myself that the only reason I never become a professional athlete is that I never had the chance. It is now painfully clear that I would never have had the ability

I’ve had to stop at three each because I can’t think of any more Lows – this has generally been an awesome experience and I wouldn’t change it. I reckon I could smash out about 20 more Highs.

 

Blog Action Day: The Power of We

The theme for this year’s Blog Action Day is The Power of We.

That theme resonates very strongly with myself as I have just taken up a new job with Earthwatch, an organisation based around the idea of ‘citizen science’ – getting the ordinary individuals to help in the collecting of data which provides the backbone of research.

 

The bulk of my time for the next year will be spent working on the HSBC Water Programme, a five-year project to study quality, quantity and biodiversity surrounding  sources of fresh water.

The research will be carried out around the world with fresh water sites already identified in China, Brazil, America, Canada, Australia, Japan, France and London to name but a few.

Research subjects will vary, depending on the location and the local issues, but will focus on:

·         The links between climate change and freshwater quality and quantity

·         The effects of changes in water supply on urban, and near-urban, freshwater ecosystems

·         Identifying the types of intervention that can best protect ecosystems downstream from major conurbations.

But crucially it will not be possible without the 'Power of We'. Earthwatch and our partners will need many thousands of private citizens to come forward in order to collect the vast quantities of data we need to make the project a success and scientifically valid.

Using a Smartphone data app, individuals will input their own research data into a global database, allowing direct comparison between sites and data sets. The resulting online database will be freely available to academics throughout the world.

Earthwatch has a long established record of citizen science and a recent project, the HSBC Climate Partnership, engaged 2,267 HSBC staff from 65 countries to complete the ‘Climate Champion’ programme.

The HSBC employees spent two weeks at a Regional Climate Centre working with scientists to monitor the health of the forests. Climate Champions also took part in discussions to further their understanding of climate change. Upon their return to work, Climate Champions delivered 700 environmental projects that furthered HSBC's commitment to sustainability.

Additionally, 63,000 employees volunteered to take part in environmental projects in their community, gaining practical experience of tackling climate change locally.

So yes, the Power of We seems oh so relevant to me at the moment.

 

Why I left journalism to save the world

So I did it. I left Higher Education and, to a lesser extent, I left journalism as well.

Why? I hear you ask with half-hearted ‘enthusiasm’.

Well the answer is simple – the job was too good to turn down. I am now Senior Communications Manager at Earthwatch, an international environmental charity which is committed to conserving the diversity and integrity of life on earth to meet the needs of current and future generations.

It is an NGO based on science – establishing facts through detailed, thorough research. I have wanted to work for an NGO for a long time, perhaps because of the guilt I still feel about being a Daily Mail reporter back in the day or perhaps because it has always fitted in with who I am. My ambition in journalism was to be the environment correspondent of the Guardian and at uni I took a Wildlife Conservation module which ended with a highly enjoyable week in Snowdonia taking water measurements and studying local flora and fauna.

It was a real wrench to leave the University of Gloucestershire, where I have worked as online journalism lecturer and Course Leader since 2008. The work was varied and we had made significant strides with the course which now recruits a good number of highly-dedicated students and, I have no doubt, will continue to grow in stature over the coming years.

To leave a job that I enjoyed and found challenging was no easy choice. But, coupled with my interest in the environment, I also felt that as a journalist with more than 15 years’ experience I still had a lot to learn.

Journalists’ attitude to people working in communications for corporations or other non-mainstream media organisations has long been one of patronising mocking – either you couldn’t make it as a journalist or you took the money to work on the ‘dark side’.

But the web and social media has opened up huge potential for self-publishing, not just by the individual citizen, but also by organisations large and small which means that people working in comms can be increasingly pro-active. There is much less begging for a few column inches or a few seconds of airtime and far more creation of content which can reach a wide audience even if the content would be viewed as niche by the mainstream.

So here I am – developing websites and social media strategies, writing copy and using my design skills to work on projects monitoring freshwater across the globe and encouraging the corporate world to help transfer their skills to help manage Protected Areas and World Heritage Sites. What could be better?