On Sunday 7th January I ran the Tadworth 10 (ten mile race) in a time of 1:14:06, which given my current fitness level is okay, but I was 3 minutes faster last year. I know that I have some way to go to full fitness if I can ever get there.

I'm now keeping a diary of my running, so I can look back to see how my training has gone. I have been trying to increase the milage week on week since New Year.

I am also trying to take weight off. At Christmas I was 10 stone 6 pounds, which I think is far to heavy if I'm going to run this marathon in a respectable time. I'm rather be something like 9 stone 10 pounds - something like that. I tried to just cut out all snacks and puddings, but without the desired effect, so I have now also cut out breakfast, although everyone tells me that this is a stupid thing to do. It has worked before, and it seems to be working now too, as I am now 10 stone pretty well exactly, so if I can keep up this diet as well as keep up the running, I'll be happy.

I have hit a problem this week. From 7 days ago, I ran in the Surrey Country cros country league event at Wimbledon Common on Saturday (approx. 5 miles, I finished in 36:20 or the like), on Sunday an 11 mile run, on Tuesday run into work and back (8 miles total), and on Tuesday down to the running track at K2 in Crawley for a hard fast training session. I rested on Wednesday, but when I ran four and a half miles on Thursday, I had an increasing but intermittant problem in my left hamstring. When I ran a mile on Friday, it was still there, so I'm probably going to rest up until next Tuesday, and then start training again from there. Hopefully this will not be lasting damage, but just a small muscle pull.

I sold 9 Scalextric cars on ebay for £130 towards the fund, and have another 10 cars listed at the moment. I'm also going to try to sell my stamps, but I have a great deal of stamps which are not worth a lot, so difficult to sell individually. I'm thinking on what to do.