Running Behind Enemy Lines

With just four days to go to my undercover mission, the excitement and nerves and starting to build in equal amounts.

As an ardent Swansea City fan, the thought of venturing east along the M4 to Cardiff (aka Basseyville) is enough to make me want to hire a coach with free police escort.

But alas, this trip isn’t football related, it’s all about running. Which incidentally – if you listen to all those Bluebirds out there – is what us Jacks are pretty good at, but I’ll let the heavies debate that one 🙂

Nope, I’m talking about proper running and the Cardiff Half Marathon. For this Sunday will see me take my first EVER leap into the unknown world of half marathon running. 13 miles of pure, ermm sweat, chafing and pain I guess.

Whilst I’ve done the distance in training, doing the business with 14,999 others will be a whole new experience and challenge for me. And doing it behind enemy lines in Cardiff just serves to make it all that more special and interesting of course!

Tempting though it is to wear my Swansea City jersey for the race, the fear of chafing induced bloody (literally!) nipples really doesn’t appeal to me, so I’ll stick to wearing some black and white running kit instead. In fact, the closest I’ll come to being tooled-up will be being having a jar of vaseline in my kit bag – which for clarification is purely for use on my nipples!

I’m hoping to complete the course in under 1 hour and 50 minutes, but as it’s my first time at this distance and with such a large field of runners, race tactics could be a problem. One thing for sure is that I don’t want to run the early miles too quickly, otherwise the last few are REALLY going to hurt.

So for those of you reading this, taking part or even perhaps just coming along to watch, keep your eyes peeled for my number and don’t forget to shout some words of encouragement – even if it is to only call me a “Jack B*stard”. I’d prefer a simple “Go on big boy you can do it!” instead though 🙂

Seriously though, good luck to everyone else who is taking part and especially those of you whom are raising money for such a wonderful charity as Barnardo’s.

Pob lwc i pawb!