Signing Off

Just wanted to close my bit of this blog by thanking a few people without whom…well, without whom I would have spent last week with my family eating reasonable food and sleeping in proper beds…

First and foremost, Cath “Three Kettles” Duhig has been an absolute star in her role as driver, nutritionist, logistics whizz, and everything you could ever ask for. We really couldn’t have got past the first stage without Cath. Apart from anything else, Cath’s knowledge of endurance events from personal experience meant that she knew how to support us, often before we knew we needed supporting. Incidentally, it wasn’t until the fourth day that our running mileage exceeded Cath’s race-walking record for 24 hours, which puts all of this in perspective.

Simon, of course, agreed to do the run in the first place, and so should be thanked just for that, but he took lots of initiative in organisation, and his Baden-Powell like behaviour wherever a map was concerned was great. I was struggling a bit in the last couple of days, so thanks also for pulling me around, and this might be a good time to remind him that he’s 20 years younger than me. I did try to tell him at the time, but he helpfully ignored me.

Lots of people have given us really good advice on the run. Other than those whose advice was simply not to do anything so stupid, it’s worth thanking Neil Featherby at Sportlink, who also was good enough to stir up the local media a bit, and Steve Broadbent, who ran the same route in 2005 and gave some really useful help in the planning stage.

James Hook at Adidas sent us a huge box of shoes and kit for the run, which was really great, and will keep us both at least looking like reasonable athletes for quite a while yet.

Staff at Virginmoney have been really supportive, and also managed to find somewhere for us to sleep on Friday and Saturday! Special thanks to Matt Bullock for designing a great logo, and for Antony Simm for sorting out and solving problems with the website, often at pretty odd times of the day.

Steve Bradley at Norwich 99.9 and Tom Williams from www.marathontalk.com both indulged us with interviews and support (and in Steve’s case, persuaded Sprowston Manor to help out after the event). If you’re a runner and you’re not familiar with marathontalk, have a listen to one of their podcasts – really worthwhile.

Lots of people have very generously sponsored us, and the rough target of four Whizz-kidz wheelchairs has been met, exceeded and is now just about nudging five, which is great. Thanks so much for this.

Mandy, Will, Lexian, who is a Whizz-kidz ambassador, and her Mum, Kathia, travelled to meet us at the end of Saturday’s stage into Greenwich which was really special, as was the run in from Grove Park with Helen and Georgina.

And many colleagues, friends, friends of friends and random stalkers were good enough to read the blogs, send comments and sign the guest book; this was really appreciated.

Finally, a big thankyou from me to Jack and the boys, who put up with the planning and execution of this in the same way that they’ve always put up with my lack of proper grown up responsibilities.

I’ll be back blogging on www.kevinrevell.com  from now on – do tune in to get continual whingeing comments on middle-aged torpor…