There’s not been a great deal to write about since our trip to Santander back in the middle of January. A mixture of saving up for future plans, general laziness and just making the most of cheaper weekends in Durango has seen to that – I suppose you can’t go away every weekend.

Speaking of Durango, it was carnival a few weeks ago. Basically everyone just dresses up and gets bladdered. Can you guess what my costume was?

Making Durango great again.

However in a complete contrast to the past few weeks of working, drinking and repeating, I’ve rather impulsively decided to run a half marathon in Vitoria-Gasteiz on May 6th. Yep, really.

It’s hard to say why or where this came from, but I think a number of things have made me want to do this. I was going to say ‘inspired me to do this’, but I thought that might sound a bit wanky. I’ve not changed that much.

Taking the best part of a month off alcohol in January honestly had me feeling really good about myself. I’m not sure how much of an actual effect it had on my health, and if it did then the first few weeks of February completely erased the positivity anyway, but I felt better. If I can convince myself that it’s correct then that’s good enough for me, which is coincidentally my attitude to most things in life*.

Close enough.

It’s clear that my willpower is at its best when I have a target, so I guess this is as good a way as any to motivate myself to be a bit healthier!

My main motivation for signing up to run 13 (THIRTEEN) miles or 21 (TWENTY-ONE) kilometres through choice however, was the recent passing of what would have been my mum’s 57th birthday.

I’ve written at length about my mum before, the effect she had on my life and how travelling helped me cope with my loss. I’ve wanted to do something to raise money in her memory for quite some time, but truth be told I’ve just never got round to taking it further than the ideas phase. I figured that I should probably just sign up for the run and worry about the rest later, so here we are!

Happy times!

As I type this I’m currently on week two of the training programme I’m loosely following. It’s been a case of slowly building up the stamina with a series of three-mile runs during the week building up to a longer one at the weekend. As I say, week two. I might not sound as blasé come week nine.

I’ve actually run a couple of 10k races before in Leeds and Manchester and finished those in the 48-50 minute mark. I took part in those races with very minimal training, so I reckon with a few months training my aim for the half marathon should be around the two hour mark. This could be either optimistic or pessimistic – I have no idea. Answers on a postcard please.

I’ll also have some company on the run as my best mate’s step-dad Nick will be joining me all the way from Lanzarote, so if anything I’ll be spurred on by not wanting to be beaten by an old geezer our valiant joint efforts.

Just looking at this picture should tell you how long it’s been since I ran any great distance.

So now we get to the begging part. My chosen charity is one that is obviously very close to my heart – brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of UK adults and children yet receive less than 1% of the national spend on cancer research. Brain Tumour Research is a charity that funds sustainable and continuous research into this area.

You can find a link to my Justgiving page here. I’ve been blown away by people’s generosity so far and would love to carry on smashing my target. Any donation, no matter how large or small, will help a very worthy charity to continue their vital research.

* – not really, I promise.