After a bit of a disaster in the pacer department I had been left with no pacers and no support team. With 9 weeks left till the run (eep!) and no pacers I was starting to get a little worried.

I was trying to stay positive and hoped somehow pacers/guides would appear. I had been proactive and contacted local running clubs, local stores and even put up posters in the local area. This resulted in 0 responses. I was a little deflated and unsure where to turn to next.

In the past few weeks I had added Up and Running on twitter, who are a UK wide running store. I am always impressed when brands and stores engage with the community. I had sent a few messages their way commenting on a few things, I then decided to ask if I could place a poster in some of their stores.

They agreed so I whipped up a little writeup in Word and sent it off. Going totally above and beyond Up and Running decided to turn it into a poster and display it nationwide!

I am incredibly happy that such a big store was willing to take my request on board and really run with it. The response already has been fantastic, some people local to the run have got in touch and offered their services.

I am in awe of Up and Running, taking a customers request to this level is amazing. If you live in the UK and they are not your local supplier maybe its time for a change! they have stores nationwide so should be one local to you!

I have included the poster they created below and I cant wait to visit in store! Will be popping over to the Sheffield branch this weekend.

On the face of it it appears I have been neglecting my blog. This is slightly true but I have been busy writing for so many other blogs and magazines I often forget they don’t appear on here!

In recent weeks I have created content for

TCL Sports
RunAddicts
Wired Playbook
Numerous applications for sponsorship
A couple of magazines
Others I cant even remember!

I plan to make an effort to try and feature some of the content here, or at least write more original content for my own blog!

I have been thinking how I could do a video describing how I achieve my run for a while.  So I decided to hold the iPhone while on a run last week and talk about how I know all the different sections.

I tried to give as much detail as possible but I am sure I left quite a bit out, so feel free to ask any specifics.

For Christmas my wife bought me an Inov8 rucksack with their H2Oriztonal hydration system.   The design is unique and a great idea to move the water lower to reduce movement and sloshing.  I have only just begun to use it and today was my third use.

After 2.5 miles it was time to take some water on board so I bit down on the valve and began to suck. Nothing.  I sucked harder. Nothing.  Equipment failures for me are pretty catastrophic; I have no idea what the point of failure is, just that it doesn’t work.  I can’t see if water is running up the tube or if the valve itself is broken.  Just as the rucksack was about to go sailing into the bushes I decided to call the cavalry,  I quickly told Sian what was wrong and we agreed to meet at collection point 3 to dump the bladder and go old school with bottles of water.

This meant changing my planned route, missing out on my hydration and nutrition timings and making a one-mile run to meet Sian.  Frustrated and angry I headed to collection point 3.  It turned out the valve was broken.  That setup cost me £60+ and it lasted 3 uses.  I will be sending a complaint email next week to Inov8.

With bottles of water on board I got back to the set route: running a few inclines.  By now my hydration and nutrition was shot and I was becoming frustrated, mistakes started creeping in and I fell down a ditch.  I still had 15 miles to go so I needed to get into a positive mind-set.  Just then Kanye West POWER! began playing which instantly perked me up followed by a runkeeper distance update.  Ahhhh 10 more minutes and I can crack out the Mr Kipling!

The next 10 miles went along swiftly, passing the half marathon mark the heavens opened.  This is the point I realise I forgot to pack my rain jacket.  I quickly gobbled a few Mr Kipling lemon slices and powered through.  The last mile was accompanied by the delights of Ray Charles and a Lucozade.

The bottles of water did prove somewhat of a distraction, as I constantly mistook the sloshing of the water bottles as footsteps.  So I desperately need a new hydration system.  So if anyone has any recommendations to one that can last and not flake after a few uses let me know!

Todays 8-mile run was the toughest run in recent memory.  I felt incredibly fatigued and dehydrated; thanks to a lack of food and water this morning.  Despite feeling rough and encountering a few issues along the way I did make the distance.

Running the usual route today proved far more challenging than normal, usually around once a week I will run into something, be it a random piece of rubbish a post or something larger like a ditch.  Today I managed to run/trip 3 times.  A new record but it really took its toll.  I tripped on THE largest piece of dirt I have ever found on a footpath; it was that large I am sure it will show as an incline on my RunKeeper stats.  I also managed to trip over what I believe was a pipe?? With the final obstacle being a traffic cone some genius had decided to place in the middle of the footpath, no actual road works to speak of, just one random cone in the middle of a path.

Paired with the fatigue these little incidents made todays run especially tough.  Each trip reminds me of the difficulties relating to the challenge I have undertaken, with each chipping away at my drive.  Every time I thought about quitting todays run and phoning Sian to collect me, I thought of the kind words I received from yesterdays post.  I didn’t begin this journey with the thought of inspiring others, I just wanted to achieve something for myself, to prove despite my failing vision I could still achieve amazing physical feats.  But armed with the knowledge my little adventure is inspiring others I dug deep, ignored the pitfalls and completed the short run.  Only another 35 miles to run this week, let’s hope someone has moved that cone!

Being blind introduces a number of challenges in my daily life; certain tasks can only be completed with support or guidance.  I wont bore you with the psychological effects and the stressors involved, I will just say its stressful.

Running is my way to alleviate stress, concentrating on my breathing and pace allows me to drift away.  Historically I used a guide runner to aid with my running, as running on the roads and blindness is a dangerous mix.   I began using RunKeeper while I had my guide runner, it gave me a great sense of control.  The audio cues allowed me to feel in control of my pace and not rely on input from my guide.  This frankly felt great for the first time ever I was able to give pacing information to my guide rather than the other way round.

Then I lost my guide runner, with university calling he moved to another city and I was left with one option: the treadmill.  Now the treadmill at first would appear the ideal solution after all it offers a very low risk of death.  But the treadmill itself offers a number of issues that actually removed control from me and into the hands of a guide.  The majority of treadmills now feature touch screens, pretty useless to someone who is unable to see the screen, I wouldn’t be able to change speed or incline, I wouldn’t know how far I had run or indeed for how long.  I could of course of used Nike+ for this information but it wouldn’t solve the actual operation of the treadmill.

So instead I chose something with may of appeared impossible: run solo on the roads with RunKeeper.  I memorised a 3-mile stretch of pavement and began practicing.  With each dip, lamppost and foreign object memorised and paired with distance audio cues through RunKeeper I was now in control.  RunKeeper allowed me to break free of the shackles of guide runners and feel a true sense of control and freedom.  It is difficult to express the difference one iPhone app has made, not only my running but my life as a whole.  For those 5 runs a week I forget I am blind and just run, RunKeeper made me just like everyone else on those 3 miles of pavement.

RunKeeper has not only allowed me to run solo but also kept my dream of running a 100-mile race alive.  Finding a guide runner who shared the same goals as me had proved difficult; no one was willing to train to that distance.  But now I have a running partner that doesn’t complain about the long runs and lactic acid, they simply deliver my audio cues that keep me running.  So this June armed with RunKeeper I will be attempting the Cotswolds 100.