THE CHARITY: WWW.AFESIP.ORG

 This year Rupert ran the marathon for a small organisation in Cambodia that cares for victims of the child sex trade.

"I've chosen a charity this year from my experience of doing a story for ABCNews this month as part of a series for Good Morning America on different 13 year-old girls around the world. The story that I worked on was about a 13 year old Vietnamese girl sold into the Thai sex trade by her family when she was 6 years old. I've been very shocked and moved by the situation out there and by the plight of Somaly Mam, the woman who started the shelter that protects and rehabilitates these incredibly unfortunate children in Cambodia. See http://www.afesip.org/ I know this is an easy one to raise money for because it's abused children, so I need say no more. AND it's abused children in the most horrific way imaginable, so it should be especially easy to give. AFESIP are in the process of setting up a justgiving.com account, so for now just reply your pledge to me and we'll sort it out later. I have a target to reach for, but I'm just happy to raise as much as possible... if you're at a loss for how much to give £,$ or R1 per mile (x26) or 50p/cent per mile etc... I'll run 'em for you, you just pay:-) I have about £200 to start it with from unallocated/ late funds from the last marathon."

In AFESIP's words:

"AFESIP exists to combat trafficking in women and children for sex slavery; to care for and rehabilitate those rescued from sex slavery; to provide occupational skills and to reintegrate those rescued into the community in a sustainable and innovative manner. AFESIP also seeks to combat the causes and effects of trafficking and sex slavery through outreach work in AIDS prevention; through advocacy and campaigning; through representation and participation in women’s issues at national, regional and international forums."

To say a marathon is a momentous achievement is an understatement. To grapple with the idea that people actually do it for fun is worrying. Money, yes, be it charity or career is understandable. But then I realize that some people don’t always push themselves beyond their capabilities. Unfortunately that is my problem, pretty well in all walks of life. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it is just pure agony! As was the case on 23 April 2006.

Having completed two sub-3hour London Marathons as recently as 2002, it’s hard to be really happy with anything less, so this year I thought a different challenge would be to help a friend train to get her personal best down to 3hr30minutes, something that should be relatively easy for me. Having fully experienced what it is like to seriously train for a marathon (anything under 3hours is a more serious commitment than most people, even runners would believe), I thought I’d harness the experience gained and also try the challenge of creating my own “experimental” training program and see how well it would work for a “chilled-out” 3hr30 race. (As far as marathon training schedules go, it was quite a good one, so if you or anyone you know has ambitions to run one, I’ll be more than happy to impart the lessons learned).

Well, come the big day, my training friend had long lost her hope of a 3hr30 and there was I (and my amazing team-mate/wife/back-up crew - Chenoa) at the start in drizzly-grey Blackheath with a pace plan for a 3hr15minute race. The 3hr15 cut-off is critical because if I ever want to do this mad thing again, that gets me an automatic qualification for next years race, which means I may choose my own charity instead of having to get a place with one of the "golden bond" Giants that officially monopolise the event. 

My training in the last three weeks had not gone well due to a monstrous and pressured work schedule and the cherry on the top was a muscle injury due to a daft game last week of running around and jumping after a Frisbee of all things. So asking so much physically, in an endurance event is just asking for trouble. But I did have my pace plan for the 3hr30 to drop back on if it didn’t go hunky dory. 

Right from the start it was a disaster. I got stuck in the crowd with the 4hour runners which was immensely frustrating. In the last marathons I’ve done I’ve always started with the 3 hour group and everyone gets off like a shot. Not this time. To meet my hopes of a 3hour15 I would have to stick to a rigid 4min35second per kilometer pace for the whole race. Impossible in this dawdling crowd as we all ambled across the start line and then slowed to a walking pace at every bottle-neck in the road. I had duck and dive on and off the pavement through runners and spectators alike just to try and keep running past the masses. I lost a minute in the first mile. A minute is very, very difficult to make up especially as I would be running the whole race faster than what I had trained for, even without this loss.

The half marathon point dropped in 1hr40minutes as the Docklands section loomed and it was shortly after that that the Elite Men came running back past me the other way out of the gloomy Docklands section… that is unbelievable inspiration. To see these small-in-size men come gliding past looking as fresh as daisies and huge-in-stature is like spring after an endless winter. I have immense admiration for the achievements of those super-humans and their ability to deal with extreme physical performance with such endurance and control of debilitating pain. These marvels of nature run the whole race at a pace faster than most people can even sprint ONE mile!

At the 16 mile mark and already in silly agony, I was making up the time but knew that the grueling pace and dodging slow runners had taken its toll. It became clear that this was a recipe for hitting the dreaded “wall”, inevitable if you try to run too far and above what you’ve trained your body to deal with in the proceeding months. This was a bittersweet point as I decided there and then that I’d have to drop down my ambition to Pace Plan B. I thought, “fantastic! I can chill out completely and enjoy the day ‘merely’ doddling along at 3hr30pace, EASY!”. Whatever! With the damage I’d already done and the fact that running 26 miles at any half decent pace hurts, I was clinging on by a thread to just keep motivated to run it at all.

Now I knew I just had to finish for charity, so even the 3hr30 target was little inspiration. But I had my wonderful wife/best friend/love Chenoa, popping up at no less than FOUR points on the course which was incredible motivation. Her marathon chasing me around London is commendable to say the least! At any point I knew she might appear I suddenly got motivated, started running with zing, all just to look cool which actually helps a lot. I even sprinted the last few hundred meters to the finish only because I thought that I had an audience. No one I knew was watching but it still felt good anyway. Well, “good” is relative when I though I may have lost my left leg round the last bend and it felt as though I was running with one bloodied stump and one severely lame aching “good” leg. “Good” just means good to finish the damn race as quickly as possible and 3hr31 is quick for some. 2hr06 would have been better! That's what the winner did. Unbelievable! He'd have been in the pub for over an hour by the time I got in.

So no matter how you look at this event, everyone is doing something amazing on a massive collective scale. It’s such a melting pot of good spirit and a cauldron of gold for charities throughout the world. Thanks go to all who donate to the charity of my choice and those who follow my efforts to remind everyone that there is more to this life than just me, me, me. Spare a fraction of it for them

(Picture: Moments after the run with Class A Support Crew: Team Chenoa Angarita Dodds)  Just in: The results are out, see below...time was 3hr30min58sec - so that last minute sprint was worth it:

Results for: RUPERT. DODDS 
Runner No.: 13891
Nationality: GBR
Position (Overall): 4939
Position (Gender): 4331
Position (Age group): 1587
Splits
KM10: 0:47:22   KM20: 1:35:17
HALF: 1:40:39   KM30: 2:27:11
KM40: 3:19:38   FINISH: 3:30:58

Better days... picture: 2002. Time: 2hr59min43Sec - please note skinny ankles... not engineered for endurance running