Introduction

Let’s get this out in the open to start with:

I am not an athlete.

I like sitting on the sofa, listening to Jazz FM, drinking red stripe and occasionally walking to the kitchen for another pack of jaffa cakes.

Up until recently I considered running for a bus too challenging and regularly missing flights from Heathrow as I was too lazy to make my way to the gate at anything less than a pleasant amble.

So, why Siberia?

When my father passed away last year my family and I were lucky enough to be able to nurse him through his last days so that he died peacefully and calmly at home. As a family we pulled together and were able to make those last few days special, calm and, importantly, dignified. Later, I came to realise how important this is and through my own readings became aware of the excellent work Ian Rennie does on a daily basis. One half marathon and a cheque for eight hundred quid later I felt my running days were over. I had paid my own final respects to my father and hopefully changed a few lives too with my modest fund raising efforts. The day after I handed over the cheque to Ian Rennie I received an email thanking me for my support and asking: what are you going to be next?

And I thought: maybe a few beers and a side order of pork pies…

I wasn’t interested in running a marathon, not least because I felt that the training would be too intense, but because everyone and his dog runs marathons. The gym is always full of happy, healthy looking folk who are training for London, Brighton or even New York. Every dinner party I go to eventually turns around to the merits of Boston (apparently flat and fast) over New York (a run through all five boroughs) and how Snowdon is a great run on a wet afternoon.

In his own way my dad was a remarkable man (well, he did a pretty good job of educating me and keeping me out of too much trouble) and Ian Rennie does remarkable work so whatever I did next had to be, in itself, remarkable.

And, of course, I wanted to have the ultimate dinner party anecdote (aside from the one about me driving across North Korea…)

And so when my wife came home from work one day and found me sitting on the sofa with an atlas on my knee and three cans of Red Stripe the better and I announced that I was going to undertake a marathon across a frozen lake in Siberia for charity, she rolled her eyes and mouthed the words: mid-life crisis at me before retreating to the kitchen in mock horror.

Getting Trevor on board was less challenging as during the training for my half marathon I had promised that on pain of death I would never run a marathon and so he was already expecting me to change my mind:

‘Trevor, do you want to run a marathon in Siberia and raise a shed load of cash for Ian Rennie?’

‘Err…let me ask the wife….. ’

Who, apparently, threw her hands in the air and said: ‘He is having a mid life crisis…’

Our aims are pretty simple: We are going to raise as close as possible £10k for Ian Rennie. If I have to drag myself (or more likely have Trevor drag me) across Lake Baikal on my knees I will finish the race.

As we get closer to race day we will have a number of ways in which you can support us but for now it is time to sit back, thank the lord that you probably don’t make overly ambitious promises, and enjoy the next few months as I blog about my training and the long, winding road to fitness.

-Philip