Katie Davis

19th May

Admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:49:00 GMT

Katie: Until now, Ben and I have used the columns to make people laugh, to poke fun at ourselves and our feeble attempts at training and to bleat on about injuries and fears.

However, this week it seems far better to focus on the reality of why so many take part in the challenge and why it should be supported by everyone in the capital.

Since I started work at the Ham&High, Marie Curie has become a part of my professional dictionary. Before coming to Hampstead I wasn’t aware of the work that the charity does – I don’t think I even knew what a hospice was.

But now, given the great amount of support everyone here has for the Hampstead hospice in particular, it has become a familiar landmark in my mind.

It is perhaps one of the easiest charities to support because we have all of lost someone to cancer. Everyone has seen the cruel disease take life too soon and, for far too many, before it has even got going.

Much is focused on the scientific fight to find a cure, which the charity also supports, but comparably little is written about the day-to-day work that really has an impact on human lives.

The staff at Marie Curie offer the care, support and advice that is as essential as medical treatment for patients. Their tireless efforts bring comfort, and even smiles and laughter, to those who are facing the hardest battle of their lives – and that is one of the most powerful and admirable achievements I have ever witnessed.

In our pages we have had celebrities paying tribute to the wonderful work the charity does, we have run countless appeals, but still it isn’t enough to fund this into the future.

Once you see and know how important this charity is to someone who is suffering, you realise just how priceless it is. And to help just a little way towards it is an honour and would be worth running the marathon a billion times over.

March 27th

Admin — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:25:00 GMT

AS the Marathon fast approaches I have found myself in a reflective mood.

Gone is the mad panic of: “What do I do if I need the loo? Can Carluccio’s in Hampstead supply enough pasta? And how can I hide my steaming red desperate face from the watching world?”

It is, so those clever phrase-writing people tell me, the calm before the storm. And rather than losing it, I find myself retrospective about the Marathon experience.

When it’s over the achy legs will end, my carbon footprint from stockpiling water bottles will be diminished and my hair will return to normality and not the sweaty tangled mess it’s become. My interests will cease to be swallowing flies, picking blisters and getting drunk after a sniff of alcohol.

But what will I do? Training for this endeavour has become, rather sadly you probably concur, my life. I’ve been on a six-month job and jogging programme.

What will I do with my time? Maybe I’ll start going to the Town Hall more often - I’ll be found wandering aimlessly around the General Purposes Committee begging for more items for the agenda. Maybe I’ll start investing my time in Hampstead’s cake shops – training to acquire a stone in weight for every mile I’ve run.

So far my answer remains amiss and as those same phrase-writers would probably scribe: que sera, sera.

However, mostly when I’m naval or Marathon gazing I think of all the nice things along the way.

I know Ben and I have had amazing support – not just like normal runners do from family and friends – but from readers who have met us once or twice and decided that we’re worth the bother. We’ve had local physios coming to the aid of our failing limbs and the excellent sports store Runners Need fitted trainers to our stinky feet.

With just three weeks to go the final push is down to our battered legs – but thankfully there has been lots of helping hands along the way.

March 6th

Admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:12:00 GMT

THERE is a measly six weeks left to the London Flora Marathon. That is 42 days, or rather, five long runs, and a lot of mid-week ones avoided with poor excuses.
To say I’m scared is an understatement. At the moment, I’d take a tea party with Sweeney Todd, Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers while juggling fire and eating swords to avoid the run.
I don’t think it helps that when we started I never really thought of the race itself.
At that point my programme was running 15 minutes with the odd swim and making sure I treated myself to extremely expensive trainers.
Then it became about running 18 miles. And now 18 miles, oh and while you’re at it wait a day and then do another 18 miles. On the day, I’ll have to run another eight and a half miles on top of my regular 18.
The fear of that task is driving me mad. In the middle of the night I wake up in cold sweats. Flashes of Scooby Doo and Jade Goody sprinting into the distance laughing at me, my loved ones shaking their heads in disappointment at the sidelines and Marie Curie officials taking aim with blow-up daffodils haunt my sleep.
The only thing, however, lifting my mood is seeing Ben going through it too. Slowly he and I, and I’m guessing 29,998 others, are being driven mad with fear and physical exhaustion.
And that, although I guess it makes me rather sadistic, also makes me feel better. So this weekend, my marathon pledge is to sponsor young Ben McPartland for making me feel a little less odd.
Most importantly, I hope everyone else will do too (not least of all, because we have a joint Just Giving web page).

February 14th

Admin — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:08:00 GMT

SPECIALIST sports shops are to me what the lingerie department is to my boyfriend – needless embarrassments which plainly should be avoided at all costs.
Just like any bashful man baby-stepping into a world of lace, cups and under wiring, I know I’m leaving shame-faced with no money and something I don’t want.
We all know how it works – these shops have secret alarms invisible to the naked eye. Just like the knickers section might have a ‘perv’ spotlight loitering above a well-meaning man - the sports section equivalent points all eyes my way.
And even if I persevere rather than racing to the door my panicked eyes will only meet misery, or as it is otherwise known, lycra.
Once, when I was more naïve, I built up the guts to squeeze into the prescribed runner’s kit of black lycra t-shirt and shorts.
I thought a Kelly Holme’s figure would look back at me – encouraging me for the task ahead, sadly only Baby Shamu was in.
Now I run on the Thames embankment, so as you can imagine that is a case of mistaken identity best avoided.
The other problem is, of course, the jargon. These clothes “wick” away sweat – that isn’t a verb I have ever come across and frankly raises my suspicion.
I admit no vast understanding of physics, but how can a top keep me “warm against the elements but cool against the heat of running”?
And then, just as men know when they smuggle smalls to the check out, out comes the sales assistant with the technical hitch.
She will scan and scan and type in the code, but all the time just delaying that inevitable Tannoy announcement: “Can someone get me another pair of these extra sweat-resistant socks with built in athletes foot and verruca treatment for this lady’s hobbit feet?”
This being Valentine’s week, my experiences will give me greater sympathy for the underwear-weary man. When he looks my way he will get a sympathetic smile, I just hope that pervert alarm’s always wrong.

January 31st

Admin — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 14:07:00 GMT

BEFORE I started training, “oww” was never a word so often heard in my vocabulary.

Sure, I have suffered a bit of the man-flu like the next, stubbed the odd toe and, dare I say, even had my heel clipped by the odd trolley or two.

But only since training for this ancient Greek punishment have I realised the true and complex meaning of the three-lettered moan.

I have muscles aching in places I didn’t even know muscles and, more worringly, aches could exist. My knees are bruised, my feet stink and my toes are so blistered they look like a colony of tiny jellyfish have set up their own tentacled close.

For me blisters were always in the safe domain of a Saturday night when, at quarter past late, you switch your ill-thought out heels for a friend’s flats without missing a Beyonce beat.

Unfortunately, there is no such luck with running and it seems no one wants to swap shoes or, more importantly, any amount of time with me since I started.

I have been left suspended between two worlds – the world of gyms, knee supports and knowing what those giant exercise balls are for, and the world of pub, conversation and using them to sit on and roll off.

I’ve become boring and obsessed – friends will be discussing the latest political scandal and I will start talking donations just-giving style; someone will offer me a drink and I will umm and ahh over the nutritional merits of orange juice vs Coke.

Luckily, I have a new army of friends to help in my quest. I am sad enough to admit songs have taken over as my support. Under Pressure is on hand for Haverstock Hill, and All by Myself when I slump in a heap half way up. Billie Jean is for the trip round Belsize when the security lights flash on and off with every foot.

Yes, I have become a loser, but at least I can channel my “owws” into a Michael Jackson number now.

January 24th

Admin — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:54:00 GMT

LAST year I watched the London Marathon with two thoughts in mind – how could thousands of people be so collectively mad and how could I navigate the crowds to the ice cream man?

The thing is, I don’t like running – or really any form of sport. I don’t like gyms, and perhaps most importantly, I don’t like people who like exercise.

I just can’t relate to a group of muscular armed women and sweaty men grunting about how much they can “press”, or huffing and puffing about protein shakes.

And even more irritating is the way these individuals defend the marathon as some kind of man against nature struggle – they want to “push the limits” of human achievement and “challenge themselves”

It is a run – you move your legs. In my mind a valuable challenge is making yourself dip into Ulysses or Nietzsche. Making your nipples bleed and losing the humility which stops you defecating on a road is not.

The enlightenment didn’t come about because some gym bunnies got together for a monster work out; civilisations weren’t built on the backs of swimmers and Mr Motivator will never get a Nobel Peace Prize.

I stuck a quote on my door in university: “I don’t exercise; if God wanted me to bend over he would have put diamonds on the floor.”

So at this point you may ask, why, on earth, have I entered for this year’s London Marathon?

I understand it’s for charity, and none can be better than Marie Curie Cancer Care, but I’m not really doing it for the cash (if I was I could do a sponsored cake eating day).

The truth is, and I know it’s pathetic, I am running the London Marathon because no-one thought I could.

When I responded positively to the offer of a place the collective reply was “you?”

On Christmas Day my granddad offered me £500 not to do it because I would hurt myself – and asked one of my brothers to do it in my place.

I am 24. The thought that people think I am so unfit they will pay me not to physically exert myself in order to prevent an injury, is a little frightening.

I know I am going a little out of my depth to prove a point but, if, just if, I can pull this off – I will be back to the ice cream and not the gym and that will add up to a glorious I told you so.